The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild

by Miranda J. Banks

  31. Ibid., 6.

  32. Ibid., 11.

  33. Ibid., 9.

  34. Ibid., 8.

  35. Judy Stone, Eye on the World: Conversations with International Filmmakers (Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1997), 628.

  36. As laid out in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s State of the Union address before Congress in 1941, these are: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

  37. Harold Medford, “Report from a GI Typewriter,” The Screen Writer, June 1945, 17–19.

  38. Bernard Gordon, letter to the editor, Los Angeles Times, 2 June 2002.

  39. Patrick Goldstein, “Cornered Rats and Personal Betrayals,” Los Angeles Times, 20 October 1997.

  40. Michael Kanin, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, spring 1978), 5.

  41. Phillip Dunne interviewed by Thomas Stemple, box 25, OH 36, vol. 1, Darryl F. Zanuck Project, Oral History Collection, American Film Institute, Louis B. Mayer Library, Los Angeles, 103.

  42. Screen Writers Guild, “Report on the Activities of the Hollywood Writers Mobilization,” 2.

  43. Schwartz, Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 202–203.

  44. Neal Gabler, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (New York: Random House, 2006), 364.

  45. Telegram to the executive board of the Screen Writers Guild from 45 members of the Screen Writers Guild, undated, Archives, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  46. For more on this tension between the IATSE and the CSU, see Brett L. Abrams, “The First Hollywood Blacklist: The Major Studios Deal with the Conference of Studio Unions, 1941–47,” Southern California Quarterly 77, no. 3 (1995): 215–253.

  47. Reynold Humphries, Hollywood’s Blacklist: A Political and Cultural History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 32.

  48. Screen Writers Guild Planning Committee, “Film Industry Planning Committee for Mass Meeting, June 19, 1944,” 19 May 1944, Archives, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  49. This recommendation was adopted at a Screen Writers Guild membership meeting. Screen Writers Guild, “Membership Meeting Notes,” 10 April 1944, Archives, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  50 Carey McWilliams, “The Inside Story of the Hollywood Strike,” PM Examiner, 2 September 1945, 9.

  51. In the matter of Columbia Pictures Corporation, Loew’s Incorporated, Paramount Pictures Inc., RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., Republic Productions, Inc., Twentieth Century–Fox Film Corporation, Universal Pictures Company, Inc., Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. and Screen Set Designers, Illustrators & Decorators, Local 1421, AFL and International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture Machine Operators of the United States and Canada, Local 44, AFL. National Labor Relations Board Case No. 21-RE-20 (1945), 4.

  52. John Bright, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 26 July 1978), 14.

  53. Erna Lazarus, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 15 February 1978), 3.

  54. Daniel Taradash, The Writer Speaks: Daniel Taradash, DVD, 1998, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  55. Mel Shavelson, The Writer Speaks: Mel Shavelson, DVD, 25 June 1996, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  56. Bright, Oral History Project, 14.

  57. Ludwig, Oral History Project, 11.

  58. Bright, Oral History Project, 14.

  59. Lardner, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 1978), 7.

  60. Ludwig, Oral History Project, 16.

  61. Dunne, Oral History Project, 9.

  62. Ceplair, “SAG and the Motion Picture Blacklist,” 22.

  63. Ibid., 21.

  64. George Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 99.

  65. Screen Writers Guild, memo to Eric Johnson, c. 12 October 1945, Archives, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  66. Screen Writers Guild, “Hollywood Strike Strategy Committee Memo,” 28 October 1945, Archives, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  67. Abraham Polonsky, “How the Blacklist Worked in Hollywood,” interview by James Pasternak and William Howton, Film Culture 50–51 (1970): 45.

  68. Other Hollywood-based publications emerged around the same time as The Screen Writer, including the Hollywood Quarterly. Published out of UCLA, the Quarterly had what Schwartz calls “an undercurrent of conscience.” Schwartz, Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 230.

  69. Editorial, The Screen Writer, June 1945, 37.

  70. Editorial, The Screen Writer, September 1945, 51.

  71. As of June 1945, there were 236 SWG members on active duty, and 32 had returned. By December 1945, 171 were still in the services, and 125 had returned. See the “Employment Status of Writers” statistics in the issues of The Screen Writer for June, July, November, and December 1945.

  72. Robert R. Presnell, “The Great Parenthesis,” The Screen Writer, September 1945, 13.

  73. Lester Koenig, “Back from the Wars,” The Screen Writer, August 1945, 27.

  74. James Hilton, “A Novelist Looks at the Screen,” The Screen Writer, November 1945, 31.

  75. Audrey Wood, “Too Fast and Too Soon,” The Screen Writer, August 1948, 35–38.

  76. George Corey, “The Screen Writer and Television,” The Screen Writer, August 1948, 16–22.

  77. J. D. Marshall, Blueprint on Babylon (Tempe, AZ: Phoenix House, 1978), 14.

  78. James Wong Howe, “The Cameraman Talks Back,” The Screen Writer, July 1945, 36–37.

  79. Arch Oboler, “Look—Then Listen,” The Screen Writer, December 1945, 26–30.

  80. David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 334.

  81. Charles Grayson, “Communication: Writers’ War,” The Screen Writer, August 1946, 39.

  82. Budd Schulberg, “The Celluloid Noose,” The Screen Writer, August 1946, 15.

  83. Editorial, The Screen Writer, July 1945, 37.

  84. Jean Renoir, “Chaplin Among the Immortals,” The Screen Writer, July 1947, 1–4.

  85. Eric Johnston, letter to Emmet Lavery, and Emmet Lavery, letter to Eric Johnston, in “SWG Bulletin: The French-American Film Agreement” The Screen Writer, August 1946, 45–51.

  86. Editorial, The Screen Writer, July 1945, 38.

  87. Raymond Chandler, “Writers in Hollywood,” Atlantic Monthly, November 1945, 50–54.

  88. Philip Dunne, “An Essay on Dignity,” The Screen Writer, December 1945, 2.

  89. Ibid., 4.

  90. Thomas M. Pryor, “About the Writer and Why He Does Not Get More Notice,” New York Times, 5 August 1945, as quoted in the editorial “A Note on Recognition,” The Screen Writer, September 1945, 53.

  91. Selection from an article in the Providence Journal as quoted in the editorial “A Note on Recognition,” The Screen Writer, September 1945, 54.

  92. Lardner, Oral History Project, 6.

  93. It is unclear why there is a discrepancy between the number of attendees and the number of votes. One must assume that either some members left before the vote and/or that some members abstained from voting. Editorial, The Screen Writer, August 1946, 3.

  94. James M. Cain, “Just What Is AAA?” The Screen Writer, October 1946, 1–4.

  95. Lardner, Oral History Project, 7.

  96. William R. Wilkerson, editorial, Hollywood Reporter, 19 August 1946.

  97. Ezra Goodman, The Fifty-Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood, 3rd ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), 24–25.

  98. Selections from articles in the Chicago Tribune, 9 August and 14 September 1946, as quoted in “AAA Pres
s Survey,” The Screen Writer, October 1946, 37, 47.

  99. Draft of correspondence from Philip Dunne, Howard Estabrook, Sheridan Gibney, Mary McCall Jr., Marguerite Roberts, Frank Partos, F. Hugh Herbert, David Hertz, and Waldo Salt to members of the Screen Writers Guild, undated, Executive Director Files, Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  100. Lardner, Oral History Project, 6.

  101. “Hollywood’s World View,” New Movies, National Board of Review, July 1946, as quoted in The Screen Writer, August 1946, 30.

  102. Howard Koch, “Mr. Rankin Has Made Me Self Conscious,” The Screen Writer, September 1945, 9.

  103. Lewis R. Foster, letter to Dalton Trumbo, editor, The Screen Writer, December 1945, 38.

  104. Editors’ response to Lewis R. Foster, The Screen Writer, December 1945, 39.

  105. Garrett Graham, “Communications: A Plea for Urbanity,” The Screen Writer, August 1946, 37.

  106. Philip Dunne, “SWG—Trade Union or Writers’ Protective Association,” The Screen Writer, October 1946, 6.

  107. Editorial, “Reds in Hollywood,” Chicago Tribune, 20 January 1947. Editorials in the Tribune were notoriously anti-Semitic at the time.

  108. Emmet Lavery, “You Never Can Tell,” The Screen Writer, August 1946, 34–35.

  109. IATSE Office of Roy Brewer, “IATSE’s Reply,” The Screen Writer, February 1947, 46.

  110. Jack Warner, quoted in Schwartz, Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 254.

  111. Ben Roberts and Ivan Goff, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 28 April 1978), 3.

  112. M. G. Pomerance, executive secretary of the Screen Writers Guild, telegram to the Honorable Harry S. Truman, President of the United States, 19 September 1945, Executive Director Files, Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  113. Correspondence between Maurice Rapf, Screen Writers Guild, and J. E. Benton, Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel, 18–20 June 1946, Executive Director Files, Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  114. Arthur Ross, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 19 April 1978), 2.

  115. Philip Dunne, letter to Emmet Lavery, president of the Screen Writers Guild, 12 September 1947, Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  116. Dalton Trumbo, Time of the Toad: A Study of Inquisition in America. (1949; rpt., New York: Harper, 1972), 36.

  117. Ibid., 37.

  118. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 418.

  119. Schwartz, Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 271.

  120. Sheridan Gibney, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 6 March 1978), 7.

  121. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 286.

  122. Ibid., 286–287.

  123. Dunne, interview by Thomas Stemple, 106.

  124. Dunne, Oral History Project, 11.

  125. Victor Navasky, Naming Names, rev. ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2003), 369.

  126. Dunne, Oral History Project, 11–12

  127. Ibid., 16–17.

  128. Eric Johnson, as quoted by Dalton Trumbo in Time of the Toad, 35.

  129. In 1950, Valentine Davies (Miracle on 34th Street, The Glenn Miller Story), who was a board member and had served as president of the SWG from 1949 to 1950, refused to sign a loyalty oath. Stanley Rubin, telegram to Valentine Davies, 23 October 1950, Archives, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  130. “The Screen Writers’ Guild Is Facing a Crisis,” The Screen Writer, November 1947, 1.

  131. Navasky, Naming Names, 176.

  132. Gibney, Oral History Project, 6.

  133. Editorial, The Screen Writer, October 1948, 13.

  134. Navasky, Naming Names, 174.

  135. The SWG lost this first case on a technicality. The second trial was settled out of court. Harry Tugend, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, c. spring 1978), 15.

  136. Editorial, “A Molotov among Us,” Hollywood Reporter, December 17, 1947, 1.

  137. Editorial, The Screen Writer, September 1948, 18.

  138. Biberman and Dmytryk served six-month sentences.

  139. Carl Foreman quoted in Schwartz, Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 265.

  140. Board of the Screen Writers Guild, “Screen Writers Guild Anti-Communist Oath,” 3 December 1951, Executive Director Files, Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  141. Gibney, Oral History Project, 12.

  142. Paul Jarrico and Marsha Hunt, interview by Elizabeth Farnsworth, NewsHour, PBS, 24 October 1997.

  143. Marsha Hunt, interview by Glen Lovell in “50 Years: SAG Remembers the Blacklist,” special issue, National Screen Actor 39, no. 3 (January 1998): 12.

  144. Devery Freeman, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 4 April 1978), 8.

  145. Walter Bernstein, personal interview with author, 16 July 2009, New York, NY.

  146. Joan Scott, interviewed by Howard Suber, tape 6, Suber Files, Archives, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  147. David Robb, “Blacklist Ended Lardner, Schulberg Relationship,” Hollywood Reporter, 3–5 November 2000, 64.

  148. Gibney, Oral History Project, 9.

  149. Borden Chase, letter to the executive board of the Screen Writers Guild, 2 April 1951, Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  150. Navasky, Naming Names, 369–370.

  151. Larry Markes, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, spring 1978), 21–22.

  152. Greg Krizman, “Hollywood Remembers the Blacklist,” in “50 Years: SAG Remembers the Blacklist,” special issue, National Screen Actor 39, no. 3 (January 1998): 32.

  153. Lardner, Oral History Project, 8.

  154. Jon Lewis, “‘We Do Not Ask You to Condone This’: How the Blacklist Saved Hollywood,” Cinema Journal 39, no. 2 (2000): 3–30.

  155. Schwartz, Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 255.

  156. 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): 274–275.

  157. Polonsky, Film Culture, 47.

  158. David Robb, “TV’s Blacklist: You Are There,” Hollywood Reporter, 14–16 November 1997, 78.

  159. Gladwin Hill, “Movie Companies Settle Red Suits,” New York Times, 4 January 1952.

  160. “Hollywood Suits Due to Be Withdrawn,” Motion Picture Exhibitor Magazine, New York State edition, 16 January 1952, Press Clippings, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  161. Nedrick Young, “‘Please Don’t Pound the Gavel at Me’: The Testimony of Nedrick Young,” in “Hollywood Blacklisting,” ed. Gordon Hitchens, special double issue, Film Culture 50–51 (Fall–Winter 1970): 8.

  162. Affidavit of John Howard Lawson in Nedrick Young v. Motion Picture Association of America, Inc., 299 F.2d 119 (D.C. Cir. 1962), 95.

  163. Larry M. Wertheim, “Nedrick Young, et al. v. MPAA, et al.: The Fight against the Hollywood Blacklist,” Southern California Quarterly 57, no. 4 (Winter 1975): 383–418.

  164. Freeman, Oral History Project, 13.

  165. Transcript of “Foreman Awards Screen Laurel,” WGAw News, May 1976, 22.

  166. Michael Wilson, “Acceptance Speech,” Writers Guild of America Laurel Awards, 1976, Archives, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  167. Sadly, Jarrico died in a car crash on his way home from the event.

  168. Joan Scott, interviewed by Howard Suber, tape 5.

  CHAPTER 3 THE INFANT
PRODIGY

  1. Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

  2. “New Television Writers Union Opens Offices,” Los Angeles Times, 26 August 1952, Press Clippings, Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  3. “Writers Call Strike against TV-Alliance: Seek 100G Fund,” Daily Variety, 6 August 1952; “TV Strike Spurned by Radio Writers: Guild Calls Action of Authors League Illegal and Declares It Will Not Support Tie-Up,” New York Times, 18 August 1952.

  4. “Authors League Unions to Set Course in Strike,” Variety, 1951, Press Clippings, Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  5. Charles Isaacs, “Early TV Writers Faced Blacklist,” Los Angeles Times, 3 November 1997. Isaacs says that there was only one series (Fireside Theater) recorded on film, but in the early 1950sthere were a number, including I Love Lucy and Amos & Andy.

  6. “New Television Writers Union Opens Offices.”

  7. David Harmon and Nate Monaster, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 15 February 1978), 3.

  8. “Mary McCall Won’t Run for Reelection as Prexy of SWG,” Variety, 3 September 1952, New York City edition; “TV Writers Reject: Video Scribes Pushing for Union Entirely Their Own; Issue List of Objectives,” Hollywood Reporter, 15 October 1952.

  9. Joan Moore and Burton Moore, “The Hollywood Writer” (unpublished, c. 1970), ch. 3, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library Archives, Los Angeles.

  10. “TV Writers Reject.”

  11. “New Desilu Hearing Completed,” Television Writer 2, no. 2 (May 1953): 2.

  12. Philip Dunne, letter to Alice Penneman at the Screen Writers Guild, 31 January 1951, and Alice Penneman, letter to Philip Dunne, 1 February 1951, Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  13. Philip Dunne, “An Essay on Dignity,” The Screen Writer, December 1945, 5.

  14. Stanley Rubin, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 9 May 1979), 11.

  15. Michael Kanin, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, spring 1978), 6–7.