64. Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Crown, 1988).
65. Ring Lardner Jr., interview by Howard Suber, Suber Files, Archives, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.
66. The project was left incomplete, and transcripts of the interviews were forgotten in a box in the Writers Guild Foundation Library for approximately thirty years.
67. Editorial, “Guild History Starts,” WGAw Newsletter (February 1978), 1.
68. Erna Lazarus, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 15 February 1978), 13.
CHAPTER 1 THE ARTIST EMPLOYEE
1. William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America 1932–1972, vol. 1 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1974), 32.
2. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “On the Bank Crisis,” 12 March 1933, in FDR’s Fireside Chats, ed. Russell D. Buhite and David W. Levy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992).
3. Nancy Lynn Schwartz, The Hollywood Writers’ Wars (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), 5.
4. Ibid., 9.
5. The name of the new group was officially the “Screen Writers’ Guild.” In consultation with Joanne Lammers, director of the archive at the Writers Guild Foundation, and in order to keep consistency throughout the text, I use “Screen Writers Guild.”
6. Charles Higham, Merchant of Dreams: Louis B. Mayer, M.G.M., and the Secret Hollywood (New York: Donald I. Fine, Inc., 1993), 197.
7. Ibid., 200.
8. Samuel Marx, Mayer and Thalberg: The Make-Believe Saints (New York: Random House, 1975), 206.
9. Philip Dunne, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 20 March 1978), 1.
10. James Kotsilibas-Davis, The Barrymores: The Royal Family in Hollywood (New York: Crown, 1981), 146.
11. Ibid.
12. Otto Friedrich, City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 72.
13. Friedrich describes the laughter as “dutiful” (ibid., 72), whereas in Higham’s description everyone in the room laughed (Merchant of Dreams, 200).
14. Marc Norman, What Happens Next: A History of American Screenwriting (New York: Three Rivers Press/Random House, 2008), 156.
15. Ibid., 156.
16. Schwartz, Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 10.
17. Lester Cole, “The Way We Were: The Beginning,” WGAw Newsletter (February 1986): 24.
18. Mark A. Vieira, Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 306.
19. Dunne, Oral History Project, 1.
20. Brian Marlow, “Apostles to the Gentiles,” Screen Guilds’ Magazine 1, no. 1 (July 1934): 17.
21. This clause appears in multiple places, including Section 11 of the Academy Code and Section 10 of the Screen Playwrights Code. It is mentioned, as well, in the National Labor Relations Board assessment, “In the matter of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and Motion Picture Producers Assn., et al., and Screen Writers Guild Inc.” (4 June 1938), 22–25, Decisions and Orders of the National Labor Relations Board 7 (1 May 1938–30 June 1938): 690.
22. “Committee Urges a Writers’ Union,” New York Times, 16 July 1916, I7.
23. “Title Insurance Grant Deed,” 2 June 1921, Mary H. O’Connor Files, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles; Percy Heath, “The Screen Writers’ Guild” Photodramatist 3, no. 2 (July 1921): 17.
24. Alfred Hustwick, “The Guild Forum,” Photodramatist 3, no. 3 (August 1921): 5.
25. Another such precursor organization is the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC), which formed in 1919 and is still around today.
26. Christopher D. Wheaton, “The Screen Writers’ Guild (1920–1942): The Writers’ Quest for a Freely Negotiated Basic Agreement” (PhD diss., University of Southern California, 1973), 21–22.
27. Ibid., 50; Florence Peterson, American Labor Unions: What They Are and How They Work (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944), 18.
28. Lardner, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 1978), 5.
29. Wheaton, “Screen Writers’ Guild (1920–1942),” 22–23.
30. Frederica Sagor Maas, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim: A Writer in Early Hollywood (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 63.
31. Ibid., 67.
32. Richard Fine, Hollywood and the Profession of Authorship, 1928–1940 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985), 56.
33. Frances Marion, Off with Their Heads! A Serio-Comic Tale of Hollywood (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 64.
34. Bernard Schubert, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 1978), 1–2.
35. Dudley Nichols, “Conversation Piece,” Screen Guilds’ Magazine 2, no. 1 (March 1935): 5.
36. Fine, Profession of Authorship, 64.
37. Ben Hecht, A Child of the Century (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), 466.
38. The Writer Speaks: Julius Epstein, DVD, 1994, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.
39. See Lea Jacobs and Richard Maltby, “Rethinking the Production Code,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 15, no. 4 (1995): 1–3.
40. Ibid.
41. Hecht, A Child of the Century, 479.
42. Fine, Profession of Authorship, 85.
43. In reality, fewer than a handful of these scripts were ever used. Authors’ League Bulletin 11, no. 7 (October 1923): 8.
44. Fine, Profession of Authorship, 12.
45. John Schultheiss, “The Eastern Writer in Hollywood,” Cinema Journal 11, no. 1 (Autumn 1971): 13.
46. Fitzgerald, quoted in Gene D. Phillips, Fiction, Film, and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1986), 27.
47. Wilder quoted in Joseph Leo Blotner, Faulkner: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1974), 773.
48. Maurice Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood (New York: Putnam, 1977), 72.
49. The Writer Speaks: Julius Epstein.
50. Edmund North, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 14 March 1978), 1–2.
51. Devery Freeman, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 4 April 1978), 4–5.
52. Bob Thomas, Thalberg: Life and Legend (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1969), 186.
53. William Ludwig, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 16 May 1978), 4.
54. The Writer Speaks: Julius Epstein.
55. Donald Ogden Stewart, “Writing for the Movies,” Focus on Film, no. 5 (Winter 1970): 52.
56. Fine, Profession of Authorship, 141.
57. Schwartz, Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 8.
58. David King Dunaway, Huxley in Hollywood (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), 98.
59. Fine, Profession of Authorship, 13.
60. North, Oral History Project, 1–2.
61. Wheaton, “Screen Writers’ Guild (1920–1942),” 61.
62. Ibid., 80.
63. Lizzie Francke, Script Girls: Women Screenwriters in Hollywood (London: BFI, 1994), 41.
64. Marion, Off with Their Heads!, 240.
65. John Howard Lawson, letter to Louise Silcox, 19 April 1933, Writers Guild History Files, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.
66. Schwartz, Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 49–50.
67. George Wasson, letter to J. J. Gain at Fox Film Corporation Studio, 12 May 1933, Writers Guild History Files, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.
68. Wasson to Gain regarding Sonya Levien’s contract, 16 May 1933, Writers Guild History Files, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.
69. The Writer Speaks: Fay Kanin, DVD, 18 May 1998, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.
70. Thomas, Thalberg, 267.
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sp; 71. Ian Hamilton, Writers in Hollywood, 1915–1951 (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1990), 87.
72. Quoted in Greg Mitchell, “How Hollywood Fixed an Election,” American Film (November 1988): 30.
73. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Coming of the New Deal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959), 98–99.
74. Tom Kemper, Hidden Talent: The Emergence of Hollywood Agents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 22.
75. Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community 1930–1960 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 29.
76. Variety, 17 October 1933, 7.
77. Variety, 2 January 1934, 2.
78. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 31.
79. Ibid., 32.
80. Marion, Off with Their Heads!, 240.
81. See A.L.A. Schecter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935).
82. Harry Tugend, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, c. spring 1978), 5.
83. It was, in fact, the first year that the statuettes were referred to as “Oscars,” although the awards had been distributed since 1927.
84. Michael Charles Nielsen and Gene Mailes, Hollywood’s Other Blacklist: Union Struggles in the Studio System (London: BFI, 1995), 25.
85. Variety, 29 April 1936, 27.
86. Thomas, Thalberg, 267–268.
87. Dalton Trumbo, Time of the Toad: A Study of Inquisition in America (1948; rpt., New York: Harper, 1972), 36.
88. Schwartz, Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 67.
89. Ibid., 68.
90. Dunne, Oral History Project, 2–3; James O. Kemm, Rupert Hughes: A Hollywood Legend (Beverly Hills, CA: Pomegranate Press, 1997), 248. John Bright referred to Howard Emmet Rogers as “the Grey Eminence, because he was the only totally pale Southern Californian I had ever seen.” John Bright, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 26 July 1978), 7.
91. Editorial, Los Angeles Examiner, 27 April 1936.
92. “Screen Head Sounds Plea,” Los Angeles Times, 30 April 1936, A1.
93. Screen Guilds’ Magazine, May 1936, 28.
94. Dudley Nichols, “Cooking a Goose,” Screen Guilds’ Magazine, May 1936, 6.
95. Freeman, Oral History Project, 1.
96. Samson Raphaelson, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 1978), 1.
97. Ibid., 1–2.
98. Schwartz, Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 66.
99. Ibid., 71. Dore Schary described Ryskind as a man who “in his younger days had been a flaming . . . liberal”; interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 1978), 1.
100. Mary McCall, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 7 March 1979), 1.
101. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 39.
102. Dunne, Oral History Project, 3.
103. Schary, Oral History Project, 2.
104. Erwin Gelsey, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 1978), 1.
105. Wheaton, “Screen Writers’ Guild (1920–1942),” 135.
106. Variety, 16 September 1936, 2.
107. Hecht, A Child of the Century, 471.
108. Variety, 15 June 1938, 7.
109. Schwartz, Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 73–74.
110. David L. Goodrich, The Real Nick and Nora: Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, Writers of Stage and Screen Classics (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2001), 101; John Bright, Worms in the Winecup: A Memoir (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002), 15.
111. Roland Flamini, Thalberg: The Last Tycoon and the World of MGM (New York: Crown, 1994), 206.
112. Ibid., 207.
113. Schwartz, Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 113.
114. Michael J. Utvich, “WGA Fiftieth Anniversary Program,” 7 September 1981, Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.
115. Wheaton, “Screen Writers’ Guild (1920–1942),” 136.
116. Ibid., 135.
117. The Writer Speaks: Julius Epstein.
118. National Labor Relations Board, R-402 to R-420 (4 June 1938), 6.
119. Leo C. Rosten, Hollywood: The Movie Colony, the Movie Makers (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1941), 318.
120. Variety, 8 June 1938, 21.
121. Goodrich, The Real Nick and Nora, 103; Schwartz, Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 124.
122. Variety, 15 June 1938, 7.
123. “All Writers Join Move On Closed Shop,” Motion Picture Daily, 18 April 1936. The Screen Actors Guild had a 90 percent closed shop. Directors and assistant directors were given an 80 percent closed shop. Only the American Society of Cinematographers and the Screen Publicists Guild were given virtually 100 percent closed shops—and that was only after they had threatened to strike. Variety, 30 August 1939, 4.
124. Variety, 14 February 1940, 5.
125. Sheridan Gibney, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 6 March 1978), 1–2.
126. Variety, 8 May 1940, 7.
127. Wheaton, “Screen Writers’ Guild (1920–1942),” 162.
128. Gibney, Oral History Project, 13.
129. Ibid., 2.
130. Tugend, Oral History Project, 11.
131. Rosten, Hollywood: The Movie Colony, 176.
132. Bright, Oral History Project, 2.
133. Catherine L. Fisk, “The Role of Private Intellectual Property Rights in Markets for Labor and Ideas: Screen Credit and the Writers Guild of America, 1938–2000,” Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law 32, no. 2 (2011): 257.
CHAPTER 2 TWO FRONT LINES
1. Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community 1930–1960 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 252.
2. The Hollywood Reporter, 7 May 1947.
3. Nancy Lynn Schwartz, The Hollywood Writers’ Wars (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), 257.
4. Philip Dunne, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 20 March 1978), 15.
5. James O. Kemm, Rupert Hughes: A Hollywood Legend (Beverly Hills, CA: Pomegranate Press, 1997), 289–290.
6. Schwartz, Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 253.
7. Ibid., 457.
8. Louis Sahagun and Robert W. Welkos, “Ring Lardner Jr., Last of the Hollywood 10, Dies,” Los Angeles Times, 2 November 2000.
9. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 262.
10. House of Representatives, Hearings Before the Committee on Un-American Activities, 80th Congress, First Session, Public Law 601, Section 121, Subsection Q (2), 1947.
11. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 265.
12. For more on Jews in Hollywood during this era, see Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Crown, 1988), 370.
13. Quotation from the Washington Post dated 21 October 1947, in The Screen Writer, December 1947 (Los Angeles: Screen Writers Guild), 10.
14. Quotation from the New York Times dated 2 November 1947 in The Screen Writer, December 1947 (Los Angeles: Screen Writers Guild), 11.
15. Larry Ceplair, “SAG and the Motion Picture Blacklist,” Screen Actor 39 (January 1998): 23.
16. Association of Motion Picture Producers, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers, “The Waldorf Statement,” press release, 3 December 1947, Archives, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.
17. James M. Cain, letter to the executive board of the Screen Writers Guild, 16 February 1948, Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.
18. William Ludwig, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 16 May 1
978), 9–10.
19. Ben Urwand argues that moguls took directions from Georg Gyssling, vice consul in the German consulate based in Los Angeles, and were therefore collaborating with the Nazis. Other historians, including Thomas Doherty, offer a more convincing argument that considers the nuances of Hollywood decision-making and examines some actions that were not so virtuous but were not pure collaborations with Hitler or the Nazis. See Urwand, The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), and Doherty, Hollywood and Hitler, 1933–1939 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).
20. Christopher D. Wheaton, “The Screen Writers’ Guild (1920–1942): The Writers’ Quest for a Freely Negotiated Basic Agreement” (PhD diss., University of Southern California, 1973), 115, quoting Ford in TAC: A Magazine of Theatre, Radio, Music, Dance (October 1938), 3.
21. Schwartz, Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 176.
22. Ibid., 178.
23. Marc Norman, What Happens Next: A History of American Screenwriting (New York: Three Rivers Press/Random House, 2008), 209.
24. “Employment Status of Writers as of May 15, 1945,” The Screen Writer, June 1945, 38; “Employment Status of Writers as of June 15, 1945,” The Screen Writer, July 1945, 40; “Employment Status of Writers as of Nov. 5, 1945,” The Screen Writer, November 1945, 38; “Employment Status of Writers as of Dec. 15, 1945,” The Screen Writer, December 1945, 37.
25. This service was the brainchild of Rex Stout, president of the Authors’ League of America.
26. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 187.
27. War Activities Committee of the Motion Picture Industry, “War Activities Committee Report on American Motion Picture Industry’s Gift to U.S. Army of 16 mm Film Programs for Showing in Combat Areas Overseas to U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps and other ‘Persons in Uniform,’” 1943, Archives, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.
28. Screen Writers Guild, “Report on the Activities of the Hollywood Writers Mobilization,” 24 October 1944, Archives, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles, 1.
29. Ibid., 4.
30. Screen Writers Guild, draft of the Manual for Writers, sent to Robert Riskin, Chief of the Bureau of Motion Pictures, Office of War Information, Overseas Division, January 1944, Archives, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles, Introduction.
The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild Page 36