The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild (15 page)

Central to these conversations about best practices during the war effort was a demand for verisimilitude and heartfelt storytelling that captured the real-life drama in a way that spoke to soldiers, the American people, and even global audiences. Paul Jarrico said of films like
Song of Russia
, a tribute to the Russian war effort that he co-wrote, “All the studios made movies like that. . . . [W]e were writing under orders of the Office of Wartime Propaganda [the OWI]. Louis B. Mayer never let anything he thought was Russian propaganda into his movies. We even had to take out the word ‘community,’ because he felt it sounded too much like ‘Communism.’
”
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Created as propaganda for the American war effort,
Song of Russia
was later condemned by HUAC as
communist propaganda. Michael Kanin, writer of
Woman of the Year
, recalled that “those who were suspected of being Communists were among the hardest and most dedicated workers in all war effort causes.”
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Philip Dunne suggested that perhaps the term “mobilization” came back to haunt some writers as having a sinister, communist ring to it.
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Writers’ interest in defining their role and supporting the liberal causes of freedom and democracy did at times go beyond their studio work and into the realm of education and outreach. Writers were eager to discuss what they had learned and to share information. Following the first American Writers Congress in 1941 on the craft of writing and the social function of writers, those involved in the Hollywood Writers Mobilization suggested a second congress to bridge the gap between writers and educators and to examine the possibilities of writing in the postwar era. In 1943, 1,500 writers and scholars gathered on the Los Angeles campus of the University of California to hear one hundred papers on the war effort and the ways that writers could provide guidance to audiences, clarifying the stakes of World War II and setting the terms for a future peace. Topics ranged from a talk on “The Responsibility of the Industry” by Darryl Zanuck, to “The Exiled Writer in Relation to His Homeland” by novelist Thomas Mann, to “The Director’s Point of View” by Edward Dmytryk, to “The Function of the Radio Dramatist” by Arch Oboler.
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The event and the discussions it generated were progressive; the writers involved saw it as an opportunity to galvanize support for the war.

But for some in the studio front offices and for politicians like Jack Tenney, a Republican state senator from California who already saw Red whenever he looked at Hollywood writers, the conference came to represent an example of dangerous political behavior and provided evidence of communist infiltration in the motion picture industry.
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Tenney and his California Senate Factfinding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities (known as the Tenney Committee) had been ready to attack Hollywood liberals for a number of years. Once the war was over, the time seemed ripe to investigate the industry’s war efforts and, specifically, the Hollywood Writers Mobilization.

Labor Strife in Hollywood: Screen Cartoonists and the CSU

As detailed in
chapter 1
, studio moguls fiercely opposed unionization in Hollywood. Two events help to illuminate how anti-union, anti-left sentiment within the industry had been building in the decade leading up to the trial of
the Hollywood Ten. The first was the Disney animators’ strike in 1941; the second was the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU) strike in 1945. It is important to note that this anti-labor rancor seethed among the independents as well as the eight major studios, and that the managerial attack was aimed not just at above-the-line creatives but also at below-the-line craftspeople.

The Screen Cartoonists Guild formed in 1938 under the leadership of Herbert Sorrell. The union quickly secured contracts with some of the major companies: MGM, Leon Schlesinger Productions (creator of
Looney Tunes
and
Merrie Melodies
for Warner Bros.), Screen Gems, Walter Lanz, and Terrytoons. In the spring of 1941, many artists at Walt Disney Studios, fed up by salary cuts and layoffs, decided to join the Screen Cartoonists Guild. Art Babbitt, who was an animator on such films as
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
and
Fantasia
and who created the character Goofy, joined the Screen Cartoonists Guild leadership. Studio head Walt Disney saw Babbitt’s action as a personal betrayal and fired him, calling Babbitt a Bolshevik.
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The following day, in the midst of their work on
Dumbo
, the Disney animators went out on strike.

The Screen Writers Guild officially expressed its sympathy for the striking animators, but the SWG leadership did not go so far as to recommend a boycott of Disney pictures.
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The tone at Disney Studios changed completely because of the strike; almost half of the employees left or were laid off within months of the walkout. Walt Disney himself declared the Screen Cartoonists Guild communistic and even offered his assistance if the Tenney Committee should want to investigate the possibility of communists infiltrating Hollywood. The strike lasted five weeks. Ultimately, with the assistance of a federal mediator, negotiations took place that ended in favor of the animators, and Disney, grudgingly, signed a union contract.

Skirmishes involving below-the-line unions were not a new phenomenon in Hollywood. For years, craftspeople in IATSE had struggled with their union leadership. In the 1930s, organized crime syndicates and mafia bosses strategically positioned George Browne and William “Willie” Bioff in leadership positions of IATSE, and in 1936 IATSE secured from the studios closedshop status. Attempts at forming a progressive branch of IATSE met with little success. When Browne and Bioff were sent to jail for extortion, a number of independent labor groups took advantage of this vacuum in IATSE leadership to form a new joint labor union, the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU), that covered a number of below-the-line technicians officially still under the jurisdiction of IATSE. Film producers far preferred the more conservative
IATSE over the CSU, which they viewed as a more threatening and potentially more demanding union in negotiations.
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As historian Reynold Humphries states, “The IATSE . . . was the producers’ union: a threat to it was a threat to themselves.”
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The studio executives still felt they had an advantage, though, because the CSU could not call a strike since most Hollywood unions had agreed to a no-strike pledge during the war.

In late spring 1944, members of thirty-eight guilds and unions gathered to discuss how to respond to attacks against labor by the MPAPAI, which was branding unions and their leaders as communists. As a result of these meetings, the unions released a statement that declared, “The unity of the war effort and the unity of the industry are inseparable at this time.”
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In April, the board of the SWG officially condemned the Alliance for its statement that “the industry is dominated by Communists, radicals and crackpots,” and asked the other Hollywood guilds and unions, as well as the MPAA, to “discuss and find ways and means of combating such harmful and irresponsible statements.”
⁴⁹
As a whole, SWG members were ready and willing to support the war effort and to fight what they saw as outrageous and unfair vilification.

At issue was whether workers had the right to be represented by the union of their choosing. Their livelihoods and their basic rights as workers were at stake. The tension escalated to the point of crisis with the CSU strike in 1945. Under the umbrella of the CSU, the Painters Union local was the first of the below-the-line unions to face the producers and ask for a pay raise. Herb Sorrell, then the Painters Union’s business agent, had some success lobbying for this cause; consequently, he rose to the top ranks of the newly formed CSU. Other locals from IATSE were eager to join the CSU’s collective bargaining units and to renegotiate their contracts, and thus affiliations and local charters were granted for Story Analysts, Screen Set Designers, the Screen Office Employees Guild, and the Screen Publicists Guild.

In January 1945, seventy-seven members of the Screen Set Designers asked to go into labor negotiations with the producers, but the producers refused to meet, declaring that they could not talk to the members without IASTE leadership present. This jurisdictional issue left the Screen Set Designers no easy choice: they could acquiesce and accept the status quo of being represented by IATSE, or they could walk out in protest. One local paper specifically questioned whether a work stoppage by the Screen Set Designers would be a strike or a lockout.
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What was clear was that others in the CSU would soon face a similar conundrum, and so the CSU unions together made
the decision to strike. Producers declared that the strikers were “lawfully discharged and ceased to be employees because they struck in violation of the War Labor Disputes Act.”
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After a cooling-off period, the painters called a strike in March 1945, and soon other locals within the CSU joined. Bearing down on the strikers were not just the studio heads but also Roy Brewer, the new head of IATSE, and his anticommunist enforcers. The first few months on the picket lines were relatively peaceful; but as time went on, threats against CSU workers became more frequent, and by autumn 1945, the picket line had become a dangerous place.

Writers were conflicted, both as a unit and individually, about how to respond to this below-the-line walkout. They had a number of concerns to weigh: their contractual obligations to the studios, their agreement not to strike during wartime, and their strong desire for solidarity with other film workers and their unions. Officially, a sympathy strike was not an option; contractually, writers were obliged to cross other employees’ picket lines. The only circumstance under which they could avoid crossing the lines would be threat of bodily harm. In the early days of the strike, the possibility of physical injury seemed absurd. As John Bright recalled, with dance directors, story readers, and publicists pacing the picket lines, the fight was far from a bloody battle.
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Many sympathetic writers felt caught between their desire to support their fellow workers and their position as “essential employees” in the war effort. Erna Lazarus remembered: “We were at war and we were considered an essential industry and, as such, we had certain privileges. But one of the things that we could not partake in was a jurisdictional strike. And I happened to be the SWG representative at Columbia at the time that this happened, and it was a very difficult thing because writers wanted to go out on strike.”
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Many writers hated the idea of turning a blind eye to their fellow workers’ struggles when they themselves had suffered so much at the hands of the producers.

Few studio heads supported their writers, although there were some exceptions. Daniel Taradash, writer of
From Here to Eternity
, was at Columbia Pictures at the time. He described Harry Cohn as “much more a writer’s man. In fact, he liked to taunt his producers. In a meeting with a producer, a director, and a writer in his office, Cohn would almost always direct his questions first to the writer. The director he paid a lot of respect to. And if he wanted to make a nasty crack he would direct it at the producer.”
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But other moguls, like Zanuck, sided with their producers in any dispute. As tensions rose in Hollywood, more executives—and unions—jockeyed to take sides.

Writers at the time were doing fairly well for themselves, and many writers were apathetic to the concerns of the CSU and hostile toward the idea of engaging in labor actions, given that their long struggles for unionization had ended only four years earlier. With the MBA in place, they had a sense of security. And business was booming. The studios needed new products for their movie houses every week. Mel Shavelson, who wrote for Bob Hope for many years, saw the mid-1940s as a great era for writers, especially those who were tied to a popular star: “The day you started working on a screenplay, you’d know when it was going to appear in the theaters because the studios were like factories. Everything was done to schedule.”
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SWG meetings were heated, with different constituencies declaring very distinct allegiances. The more conservative members asserted that, on principle and in keeping with the terms of their contract, Guild members could not and should not support the CSU. The more liberal-leaning writers demanded that the Guild take a stand in solidarity with fellow film workers. John Bright remembered Mary McCall Jr., writer of
Craig’s Wife
, announcing that she could not join the picket line; instead, she proposed that the SWG contribute $25,000 to the CSU strike fund. Bright found this idea disconcerting at best, the equivalent of “buying our way with money” and “putting a price tag on our conscience.”
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This kind of conflicted behavior manifested itself collectively in Guild decisions and also in the stances taken by individual writers. As William Ludwig explained, some writers played for both sides:

A few of those people who maintained publicly that they would never walk through a picket line and got great kudos for the nobility of their principles—they wrote at home and they sent their stuff in by studio car. I never felt that this was too much of an adherence to principle because Metro never minded if you worked at home. They didn’t get off payroll. They never announced to the studio that they were not working because there was a picket line around. But they got great public acceptance for their extremely liberal positions and I always felt that was kind of shabby.
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A handful of writers did support the strike both in word and in deed—but the punishment for this choice was severe. Bright, in good conscience, decided he could not cross the picket line and refused to continue working on a project with Arthur Freed. Though MGM’s general manager Eddie Mannix tried
to strong-arm him and then to shame him by making an example of him, Bright refused to budge. As he remembered, with a laugh, “I was blacklisted before the blacklist.”
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