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64 C I N E M O N T A G E m e e t i n g o f w h a t w o u l d b e c o m e t h e Screen Story Analyst Guild at his home on Hollyridge Drive. Mystery novelist/ screenwriter Dashiell Hammett ("The Maltese Falcon," "The Thin Man") was the guest speaker, and likely his long- time girlfriend, story analyst turned playwright/screenwriter Lillian Hellman ("The Children's Hour," "The Little Fox- es") was also in attendance. In 1939, the National Labor Relations Board recognized the new Guild as the bargaining agent for all story analysts, then called "screen readers," at the major studios. The Guild demanded a wage hike, shorter hours, and improved working conditions, all of which it soon gained for its members: a 40-hour week, with straight time up to 44 hours and time and a half after that; a rate of $45 dollars per week, with a "Special Read- ers" rate of $55 (perhaps for the more creative work, e.g., listening to pitches a n d t u r n i n g t h e m i n to t re a t m e n t s / synopses). Apprentices started at $30 weekly, with wages set to increase as they accumulated experience, an early version of a provision still seen in the current contract, which raises the pay scale per months on the job, up to 55 months. In those days, the Guild was the bargaining agent for both in-house and the aforementioned "outside" analysts. Studio story departments provided a rare bright spot for working women, particularly educated women who didn't have so many avenues open to them in the working world. Some rose to eventually run these departments after being pro- moted from the ranks of readers, holding F E A T U R E Ayn Rand relied on her story analyst pay til she made it as a writer - and darling of the right Yet despite doing this vital work, sto- ry analysts are practically invisible even to the higher-ups who count on them. In George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart's hit 1930 Broadway satire of Hollywood, "Once in a Lifetime," voluble studio head Herman Glogauer shows up to a movie set on the last day of shooting, only to realize the director has shot the wrong script. Glogauer proclaims, "After this, I make a ruling – every scenario we produce, somebody has got to read it." In fact, "somebody" – story analysts -- had been reading those "scenarios" as early as the 1910s. (For an example of one of those early story analysts, see the story on MGM's Kate Corbaley on page 58.) From the teens through the 1950s, when Americans were movie-mad and often attended several pictures a week, the studios churned out around 400 movies annually to meet demand. At MGM alone, the analysts of the story department handled more than 20,000 pieces of material a year. Nearly all the major studios maintained story depart- ments on both coasts. They employed both "inside" (in-house, union) analysts paid by the hour, as well as "outside," w o r k- a t - h o m e a n a l y s t s p a i d b y t h e piece of material, with differing rates for screenplays and books, etc. Early story analysts realized that or- ganizing into a union was key to a decent living in the business. Writers, actors, directors and below-the-line workers had similar ideas. Thankfully, some writ- ers who'd come from story analyst ranks were sympathetic to the cause. I n 1 9 3 4 , f o r m e r U n i v e r s a l s t o r y analyst Don Gordon attended a meeting of the Screenwriters Guild (later the WGA), where he rose to decry "sweat- shop conditions" under which story analysts labored, an incident that made it into The Hollywood Reporter. Dalton Trumbo ("Roman Holiday," "Spartacus," "Exodus"), who had started as an analyst and by 1939, was making his living as a screenwriter, hosted the very f irst then rare-for-women executive jobs. One such woman was Columbia journalism school drop-out Frederica Sagor Maas, who served as a script reader at Univer- sal's east coast story department and was upped to story editor in the 1920s before ultimately pursuing screenwrit- ing. Novelist Winnifred Eaton took a similar path, briefly running Universal's East Coast, and then its West Coast, story departments, before moving on to screenwriting. (Eaton's granddaughter is now-retired, longtime Warner Bros. story analyst Diana Birchall, whose fa t h e r a n d s o n a l s o w o r ke d a s a n a - lysts; Birchall believes hers is the only family that can count four generations in the profession). But this tale of women-dominated story departments in old Hollywood isn't as empowering as it looks. Male studio executives of the time may have had the notion that women were best-suited to judge material that would draw female moviegoers. Naturally, there were male readers on staff too: director/producer Mervyn L eroy claimed, "as a r ule, a man is better qualified" to read "highly technical books on aviation, or on naval maneuvers" – e.g., source material for war movies. Such bias has been around as long as Hollywood. It's possible story analysts' status in the studio hierarchy – low despite the vital part they played in the studio's movie-making machinery – might have something to do with the female-heavy departments in which the work was originally done. Male and female story analysts took an outsized, highly visible part on the front lines of strikes in the mid-1940s. In the Hollywood Quarterly, Paramount story analyst Frances Kroll Ring recalled that in a 1945 strike involving 6,000 motion picture workers, "the paradox of (the story analysts') numerical size and their prominence in the strike caused a producer's representative to comment, SEE PAGE 98