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➨ 1979 1980 1981 Jud Taylor Elected DGA President >Serves 1981-1983 Negotiations Gains >First industry deal for residuals for made-for-TV movies. >First DGA diversity provisions for women and minorities. >Directors win the right to select ADs. Residuals Climb to More Than $23 Million Membership Reaches 6,500 Founders Honored >Seven surviving original members are honored at the annual awards. First Guild Computer System Goes Online Residuals Up >Collections reach $12 million, up 60 percent from the previous year. Women's Steering Committee and Ethnic Minority Committee Founded Record Residuals >Administrative improve- ments result in record residual collections of $20 million. Frank Capra Achievement Award Established >Honors outstanding contributions of AD/UPM members. Emmett Emer- son, a member since 1937, is the first recipient. George Schaefer Elected President >Serves 1979-1981 >The impetus for a Guild diversity plan began in 1979 when a group of award-winning women directors—Susan Bay, Nell Cox, Victoria Hochberg, Joelle Dobrow, Dolores Ferraro, and Lynne Littman—noticed they were not getting as much work as their male friends. (In 1980, 11 percent of Guild members were women, 654 out of 5,992.) They formed the Wom- en's Steering Committee and spent a year analyzing DGA deal memos, then quanti- fied their findings at a June 1980 news con- ference. They revealed that between 1941 and 1980, only 0.05 percent of the available work in film and television had gone to women directors. Their findings inspired the forming of a DGA ad hoc Affirmative Action Committee to lobby on behalf of women and minority members. The Guild's leadership realized that in order to make any progress, the DGA would have to become aggressive in its advocacy. In 1983, the Guild filed suit against Warner Bros. and Columbia Pictures, charging dis- crimination. The class action was dismissed in 1985, but the suit had sent a message and continues to do so today. And just as the women were getting mobilized, so too were the Guild's minority members. Wendell Franklin, one of the first two African-American members of the Guild, formed the Ethnic Minority Committee in 1980, along with prominent black direc- tors Ivan Dixon, William Crain, and Reuben Watt. (In 1994, it became the African American Steering Committee.) Ted Lange, a former co-chair, says the committees make the industry aware of all the talented directors, whether they be African-American, Latino, Asian-American, or women. As Lange put it, the commit- tees work to get executives out of their "bubbles." DGA.org/DiversityHistory 1979 GUILD SUPPORTS DIVERSITY King Vidor (left), Rouben Mamoulian, and five other directors who became founding members on Jan. 15, 1936, are honored at the annual awards. (Top, left to right) Women's Steering Committee founders Susan Bay, Nell Cox, Joelle Dobrow, Dolores Ferraro, Victoria Hochberg, and Lynne Littman in the early '80s and (bottom, left to right) Dobrow, Cox, Littman, Hochberg, and Bay at the 35th anniversary celebration of the committee in 2014. "We came to the Guild and asked if we could go before the Directors Council and be a committee. And that was the beginning of what became this long period of struggle and action." —VICTORIA HOCHBERG | Women's Steering Committee Co-Founder 46 dga quarterly 80-YEAR ANNIVERSARY 80-YEAR ANNIVERSARY PHOTOS: (CLOCKWISE, TOP LEFT) DGA ARCHIVES (5); TONYA WISE