Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/618780
58 dga quarterly eetings would go on, and finally George Ste- vens would speak." This is what George Ste- vens Jr. remembers hearing about his father during his two terms as president of the Di- rectors Guild. He chuckles now to think of it. It was a view so widely held, he recalls, that it was often repeated as folk wisdom among fellow directors. "Dad would wait. He was thoughtful and smart. He had a strategic way of thinking, and above all he had timing." As founding director of the American Film Institute, George Jr. (DGA member since 1951) has wielded a less publicized yet profound long-term influence on how movies are made. His son Michael Stevens (DGA member since 2005) in turn led the Kennedy Center Honors to their present apex of showmanship and ratings popularity and was emerging as a gifted filmmaker in his own right until his death in October 2015 of cancer at age 48. The achievements of the Stevens family thrive in tandem with the DGA across generations. The life and legacy of George Stevens are essential, not just in his role as a visionary filmmaker (A Place in the Sun, Shane, Giant), a winner of two DGA Awards and a Lifetime Achievement Award, but as a Guild hero to be cherished as the DGA celebrates its 80th an- niversary. "He wasn't at the first meeting," says his son, referring to the fabled gathering of a dozen or so directors at King Vidor's house on Dec. 23, 1935, "but he joined immediately thereafter, served two terms as president, remained on the board and was active and inter- ested in the Guild throughout his life." His contribution to this orga- nization remains primary and enormous, particularly as he became its moral leader at a showdown in 1950, the low point of the blacklist era. Conservative in his sense of duty to others— having dropped out of high school to support his par- ents, professional stage actors who moved from the Bay Area to Hollywood in the 1920s—Stevens was an ardent, lifelong liberal in terms of racial and gender equality. Strong, independent-minded women are rep- resented in many of his films, starting with Alice Adams (1935). Nonwhite characters are treated without conde- scension or stereotyping. Matters of prejudice—racial or political—always troubled Stevens. As a teenager working for Thomas Ince, he was appalled to discover that "most of the guys I knew were members of the Ku Klux Klan." The heroic portrait of that organization in D.W. Griffith's 1915 The Birth of a Nation made it freshly, even wildly popular for a time. One night, climbing the hills above his family's home in Glendale, California, Stevens gazed down on a sight he never forgot: "A tremendous parade of guys in white sheets, with a man on horseback in the fore- ground. They were burning fires and there must have THE FAMILY BUSINESS The story of the Stevens clan—from George to George Jr. to Michael—spans the 80-year history of the Directors Guild. It is not only a legacy of indelible films, but one of respect for service and responsibility. By F.X. FEENEY M