Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/618780
dga quarterly 59 PHOTOS: (TOP) PHOTOFEST; (RIGHT) COURTESY STEVENS FAMILY; (OPPOSITE) BYRON GAMARRO night. The former was directed by George Jr. and the latter by Michael for the DGA's 75th anniversary. Although both films understandably express family pride, every witness interviewed—Mankiewicz, Hus- ton, Fred Zinnemann, and many more—vehemently testifies that Stevens saved the night, and with it the Guild. In the weeks leading up to the meeting, he'd done patient detective work—revealing step by step how DeMille was subverting the Guild and the conspiracy against Mankiewicz. As Mankiewicz would later say, "George waited until the exact perfect moment" to spring his findings. His evidence was so damning that DeMille retreated to the back of the room while John Ford, who'd been silent to this point, proclaimed his support for Mankiewicz and tipped the scales, as Stevens hoped he would. been a thousand men." Later the dangerous artistry of Leni Riefen- stahl's 1935 valentine to Adolf Hitler, Triumph of the Will, moved Stevens to volunteer for frontline service in World War II despite his being old enough to dodge uniform and sit things out. Stevens served as DGA president just before entering the war, from 1941 to 1943, and again upon his return in 1946. Cecil B. DeMille—an ardent anti-Communist who identified unions with hammers and sickles—had been slow to join the DGA, but once Vi- dor wooed him into the fold, he set about stocking the board with like- minded cronies. This was a sleepy state of affairs until, at a carefully chosen moment when Guild President Joseph L. Mankiewicz was out of the country, DeMille forced a vote that would dictate that ev- ery DGA member sign an anti-Communist loyalty oath. The instant Mankiewicz discovered what had been done, he publicly opposed it, facing not only impeachment by the Guild but personal ruin. John Huston, William Wyler, and John Ford rallied behind Stevens in coming to Mankiewicz's aid. Each was a World War II veteran disgusted by what he saw as DeMille's coup d'état, outraged that Americans should politically persecute other Americans after so many lives had been sacrificed ridding the world of Nazis and Fas- cists. The division in the Guild came to a head in a seven-hour meet- ing on Oct. 22, 1950. Two documentaries, George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey (1984) and DGA Moments in Time (2011), offer suspenseful accounts of that THREE GENERATIONS: (above) George Jr. with his father; (right) a family album snapshot of George Stevens Sr. with grandsons Michael and David. (opposite) George Stevens Jr., Guild President Taylor Hackford, and DGA Awards Chair Michael Stevens at the 65th DGA Awards in 2013.