The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild

by Miranda J. Banks

  16. Ibid., 7.

  17. William Weaver, “Television Harnessed to Benefit Pictures,” Motion Picture Herald, 10 May 1952, Press Clippings, Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  18. Ernest Kinoy, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, spring 1978), 7.

  19. The Writer Speaks: David Dortort, DVD, 4 June 2007, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  20. Erna Lazarus, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 15 February 1978), 11.

  21. Jon Kraszewski, The New Entrepreneurs: An Institutional History of Television Anthology Writers (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2010), 27.

  22. “Boost Granted in Writers Salaries,” Longview [WA] Daily News, 24 January 1952.

  23. “Writers Get Extra Pay for Re-use of TV Scripts by Webs,” Daily Variety, 20 May 1952, Press Clippings, Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  24. Memorandum by Mary McCall to the membership of the Screen Writers Guild, “S.W.G. in 1952,” Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles

  25. Ibid.

  26. “Boost Granted in Writers Salaries.”

  27. “Radio, Pix Scribes Grumble at Low Pay for Telepix,” Daily Variety, 15 May 1952, Press Clippings, Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  28. Karl Tunberg quoted in Moore and Moore, “Hollywood Writer,” 27n1.

  29. William Boddy, Fifties Television: The Industry and Its Critics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 86.

  30. Robert Schiller, interview with the author, 29 January 2007.

  31. Leonard Stern, interview with the author, 14 January 2010.

  32. Norman Lear, interview with the author, 20 August 2013.

  33. Carl Reiner, interview with the author, 29 August 2013.

  34. “Deported Reuben Ship ‘Forces’ Reinstatement in Screen Writers Guild,” Variety, 10 September 1953.

  35. “SWG Continues Harboring Reds, Brewer Charges,” Hollywood Reporter, 9 November 1953.

  36. Ibid.

  37. “Prexy Mary McCall, Dudley Nichols Lead SWG Opposition to MPIC ‘Loyalty Board,’” Daily Variety, 3 July 1952.

  38. “Referendum Ballots Mailed to Members,” Daily Variety, 3 July 1952. The article recounts that the MPIC loyalty plan was on the table at the special membership meeting on 2 July, but it could not be voted on because a quorum was not present. Overall sentiment at the meeting was that the SWG would not approve the plan. At the meeting, “Miss McCall, Dudley Nichols, Edward Huebsch and John Howard Lawson spearheaded the fight against the opposition of the loyalty plan. Leading proponents of the plan included Sheridan Gibney, Virginia Kellogg and Leonard Spigelgass.”

  39. See The Radio Writer, bulletin of the Radio Writers Guild, published August 1947–February 1952. Radio Writers Guild, Periodicals, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  40. Larry Marks, “Television, Anyone? Western V.P. Reports,” The Radio Writer 3, no. 8 (8 February 1952): 8.

  41. “M’Carran [sic] Lists Radio Writers As ‘Subversives,’” New York Compass, 27 August 1952.

  42. Sam Moore, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 18 June 1979), 7. Moore was a radio writer on the West Coast.

  43. Rex Stout, letter to “All Members of the Authors League of America,” advertisement in Daily Variety, 11 August 1952.

  44. “RWG Officially Refuses to Join in Video Strike; Walkout Termed Illegal,” Hollywood Reporter, 18 August 1952.

  45. Robert White and Phyllis White, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, spring 1978), 15–16.

  46. It is hard to know whether the structure would have changed as the union grew, since the TWA did not last longer than two years.

  47. “Screen Writers Guild, TV Alliance Negotiate to End Six-Week Strike,” Daily Variety, 15 September 1952.

  48. “SWG Votes to Limit Use of Proxies; Elects F. Hugh Herbert Prexy,” Variety, 18 November 1953.

  49. “Writers in TV Control Battle: TWA’s NLRB Petition May Stall Screen Writers Guild’s New Web Pact for Full Year,” Daily Variety, 13 October 1952.

  50. “Writers for TV Films End 14 Week Strike,” Los Angeles Times, 17 November 1952, 1, 5.

  51. “NOTICE TO ALL TELEVISION WRITERS: You Do Not Need to Join TWA!” advertisement in Hollywood Reporter, 1 July 1953.

  52. “SWG Votes to Limit Use of Proxies.”

  53. Richard L. Breen, “SWG: The Challenge,” Film Daily, 35th anniversary issue, 13 August 1953.

  54. “SWG Prexy Candidates Differ on Loyalty Oath,” Variety, 29 October 1953.

  55. “TWA Prexy Opposing Own Board’s Proposal to Bar Commie Members,” Variety, 2 September 1953.

  56. “‘I Love Lucy’ Union Rejected,” Los Angeles Times, 19 July 1953, 2.

  57. Isaacs, “Early TV Writers Faced Blacklist.”

  58. White and White, Oral History Project, 15.

  59. F. Hugh Herbert, letter from the Screen Writers Guild to the members of the Radio Writers Guild, 6 April 1954, page 4, Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  60. Hy Freedman, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 6 April 1978), 4–5.

  61. Kraszewski, New Entrepreneurs, 18. The Authors League had a deficit of $40,000, which made the choice to separate ties more obvious. “Authors League Seeks Stronger Central Power,” Variety, 17 June 1952.

  62. F. Hugh Herbert, president of WGA West, letter to Adolph Deutsch, president of the Screen Composers Association, 15 October 1954, Screen Composers Association Records, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverley Hills, CA.

  63. Moore and Moore, “Hollywood Writer,” 29.

  64. White and White, Oral History Project, 16.

  65. “Chevigny Hopes to Get TWA into ALA ‘to Replace RWG,’” Hollywood Reporter, 3 August 1953; “Radio Writers Feud Goes On,” Variety, 16 September 1953.

  66. “Authors League Seeks Stronger Central Power,” Variety, 17 June 1952.

  67. The Writers Guild Library did not become part of the foundation and open its doors until 1984, but talk of the library began in 1948. Art Arthur, letter to members of the executive board, 12 January 1948, Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles. All writers (as well as aspiring writers and the community) have benefited from the work of the foundation over the years; at the time, however, the screenwriters were wary of their new partners. Although in later years the WGA East would have a small foundation, the Writers Guild Foundation was founded out of the coffers of Hollywood screenwriters.

  68. Kinoy, Oral History Project, 7.

  69. Ibid.

  70. Stern, interview with the author.

  71. Richard Levinson and William Link, Stay Tuned: An Inside Look at the Making of Prime-Time Television (New York: Ace Books, 1981), 12–13.

  72. Boddy, Fifties Television, 1.

  73. Maurice Tombragel, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 23 May 1978), 11.

  74. Edmund North, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 14 March 1978), 8.

  75. Harmon and Monaster, Oral History Project, 4–5, 9.

  76. Ibid., 8, 10.

  77. Moore and Moore, “Hollywood Writer,” 30.

  78. RKO stopped production in 1957, and then there were seven companies. Christopher H. Sterling and Timothy R. Haight as cited in Peter Lev, The Fifties: Transforming the Screen 1950–1959 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 302.

  79. In a battle over the screening of the Italian film Il Miracolo (co-written
by Roberto Rossellini and Fredrico Fellini), the Supreme Court decided in Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson (1952) that film censorship was in violation of the First Amendment. See Laura Wittern-Keller and Raymond J. Haberski Jr., The Miracle Case: Film Censorship and the Supreme Court, Landmark Law Cases and American Society (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008).

  80. John Michael Hayes, interview with Patrick McGilligan in Backstory 3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 181.

  81. For a brilliant, well-researched overview, see Christopher Anderson, Hollywood TV: The Studio System in the Fifties (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994).

  82. Kraszewski, New Entrepreneurs, 139.

  83. Stirling Silliphant, interview with Patrick McGilligan in Backstory 3, 341.

  84. The Writer Speaks: David Dortort.

  85. Bob Chandler, “Deadlock a Pix Biz Poser,” Variety, 27 October 1959.

  86. Ibid. See also Jonathan Kandell, “Lew Wasserman, 89, Is Dead; Last of Hollywood’s Moguls,” New York Times, 4 June 2002, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/04/business/lew-wasserman-89-is-dead-last-of-hollywood-s-moguls.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.

  87. Michael Conant, as cited in Lev, The Fifties, 138.

  88. Chandler, “Deadlock a Pix Biz Poser.”

  89. “Writers Ordered Out on Strike Ineligible for State Unemployment,” Hollywood Reporter, 18 January 1960. Variety estimated that the number was closer to between $190 million and $250 million, based on approximately 2,500 films available from the studios to sell to television at a historical average price of $70,000–$100,000 per film. “What Are the Post-48’s Worth?” Variety, 21 January 1960.

  90. Mel Tolkin, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 26 July 1978), 1–2.

  91. Harmon and Monaster, Oral History Project, 11–12.

  92. “Writers Make Stiff Demands: 70% Wage Hike, TV Pay and ‘Rights’ Are the High Points,” Variety, 27 April 1959.

  93. “Writer Strike against Film Producers Slated,” Los Angeles Times, 2 October 1959.

  94. Thomas McDonald, “Hollywood in Tension: Writers, Producers Reach Pay Scale as a Strike Is Voted—Newcomers,” New York Times, 8 November 1959.

  95. Richard R. St. Johns, memo to all Alliance members, “Expiration of Writers Guild Contract,” Alliance of TV Film Producers, 27 October 1959, United Artists Corporation Records 1919–1965, ZIV–United Artists, Inc. Legal Files, 1951–1963, box 7, folder 9, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

  96. Michael Franklin quoted in “WGA to Skouras: Join ‘Struggle,’” Variety, 31 December 1959.

  97. “Writers Press Guild to Strike Major Studios on Jan. 7,” Hollywood Reporter, 29 December 1959.

  98. Harmon and Monaster, Oral History Project, 19–20.

  99. “Writers Ordered Out on Strike Ineligible for State Unemployment,” Hollywood Reporter, 18 January 1960.

  100. Ten of these series were at Warner Bros., three were at Twentieth Century–Fox, eight were at Screen Gems/Columbia, and one was at Disney. Paramount, MGM, and Allied Artists also had television productions in development. Bob Chandler, “Oddity If Writers Guild Strikes Majors: Members Working for Same Bosses’ Telepix Would Support War Chest against Theatrical Features,” Variety, 11 November 1959.

  101. “Writers Ordered Out on Strike Ineligible.”

  102. Oliver Crawford, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 9 March 1978), 2.

  103. The lower estimates are from “Writers Guild Strike Spreads to Film Studios,” Los Angeles Times, 17 January 1960; the higher estimates are from “Writers Ordered Out on Strike Ineligible.”

  104. “Movie Studios Lay Off over 100 Secretaries in Writers Strike,” Wall Street Journal, 18 January 1960.

  105. “Prexies and Writers Sked Meet,” Daily Variety, 18 January 1960.

  106. “Pact Impass with Nets So WGA in Huddle,” Daily Variety, 8 February 1960.

  107. “Prexies and Writers Sked Meet.”

  108. Bob Chandler, “‘Hyphen’ Service Defined by WGA,” Daily Variety, 29 January 1960.

  109. Stephen Lord, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 21 February 1978), 1.

  110. Harmon and Monaster, Oral History Project, 29–30.

  111. Sy Salkowitz, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 4 April 1978), 12–13.

  112. North, Oral History Project, 10.

  113. Freedman, Oral History Project, 10.

  114. Frank Moss, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 22 February 1978), 1–2.

  115. Kay Lenard, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 14 March 1978), 4.

  116. William Ludwig, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 16 May 1978), 11.

  117. John Bright, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 26 July 1978), 24–25.

  118. “TV-Film Writers, Producers Fail in Strike Peace Hopes,” Los Angeles Mirror-News, 28 April 1960.

  119. “Film Studios and Writers OK Contract,” Los Angeles Mirror-News, 11 June 1960.

  120. “Screen Writers New Privileges: (1) B.O. Royalties in France, Spain; (2) Firmer Control as to Credit,” Variety, 22 June 1960.

  121. Ibid.

  122. Michael Franklin, memo to WGA members, “Attention!: Royalty Plan,” 1 March 1963, WGA History Files, Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  123. “Writers Accept 6-Year Pact,” Hollywood Citizen News, 20 June 1960.

  124. Frank Pierson, interview with the author, 15 February 2011.

  125. Herb Meadow, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 15 March 1978), 15.

  126. Harmon and Monaster, Oral History Project, 7.

  127. North, Oral History Project, 3.

  128. Kanin, Oral History Project, 16.

  129. Jay Presson Allen, interview with Patrick McGilligan in Backstory 3, 25–26.

  130. Hal Kanter, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 21 June 1978), 5–6.

  131. Michael Franklin, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 20 March1978), 10.

  132. Rubin, Oral History Project, 10–11.

  133. Thomas Schatz, “New Hollywood,” in Film Theory Goes to the Movies, ed. Jim Collins, Hilary Radner, and Ava Preacher Collins (New York: Routledge, 1992), 8–36.

  134. Lisa Rosen, “Take Five: 3 Wise Men,” Written By: The Magazine of the Writers Guild of America, West, Summer 2013, 12.

  135. Justin Wyatt, High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 71.

  136. “MGM/UA under Kerkorian Meant 20 Years of Change,” Los Angeles Times, 8 March 1990, http://articles.latimes.com/1990–03–08/business/fi-2987_1_mgm-grand.

  CHAPTER 4 MAVERICKS

  1. The Writer Speaks: William Goldman, DVD, 27 May 2010, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  2. Frank Pierson, interview with the author, 15 February 2011.

  3. Sherwood Schwartz, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 3 May 1978), 2–4.

  4. John Furia Jr. and David Rintels, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 3 May 1978), 44–45.

  5. Patrick McGilligan, Backstory 4: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1970s and 1980s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 4.

  6. James Crawford, “Film Credit” (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 2013), 236.

  7. Catherine L. Fisk, “The Role of P
rivate 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): 218.

  8. Virginia Wright Wexman, “One Man, One Film: The Directors Guild of American and the Cultural Construction of the Artist” (paper delivered to the Society for Cinema & Media Studies Conference, Chicago, 8 March 2013).

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

  10. Andrew Sarris, “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962,” in Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 6th ed., ed. Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen, and Leo Braudy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 561–564.

  11. Fisk, “Role of Private Intellectual Property Rights,” 274–275.

  12. Michael Franklin, interview with the author, 8 August 2013.

  13. Fisk, “Role of Private Intellectual Property Rights,” 257.

  14. Crawford, “Film Credit,” 287.

  15. Jesse Heistand, “The ‘Credit’ Card,” Hollywood Reporter, 31 March 2005.

  16. Pierson, interview.

  17. Len Chassman, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 8 August 1978), 20–21.

  18. Pierson, interview.

  19. Herb Meadow, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 15 March 1978), 25.

  20. Mel Brooks, interview with the author, 15 August 2013.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Carl Reiner, interview with the author, 29 August 2013.

  23. Director’s Guild of America, “Possessory Credit Timeline,” DGA Magazine, February 2004, http://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/0402-Feb-2004/Possessory-Credit-Timeline.aspx.

  24. See Timothy Corrigan’s notion of “the commerce of auteurism” in “Auteurs and the New Hollywood,” in The New American Cinema, ed. Jon Lewis (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 38–63.

  25. Bernard Weinraub, “Screenwriters May Walk Out Over Film Credit and Respect,” New York Times, 16 January 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/16/business/screenwriters-may-walk-out-over-film-credit-and-respect.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.

  26. George Eckstein, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, spring 1978), 1.