The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild (52 page)

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 1978), 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.

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.