DGA Monthly

8 I D G A M O N T H L Y February 2025 marks 86 years since the Guild achieved it's first contract. Here is the story of how an ingenious strategy employed by then President Frank Capra made that possible. For three years — amid broken promises and bad faith — the Motion Pictures Association had refused to accept the Directors Guild. That all changed in February 1939 when members, led by President Frank Capra, boldly threatened to boycott the Academy Awards. In its final days, the long battle to win studio recognition of the Screen Directors Guild would come down to a face-off between two distinct personalities. In one corner was Joseph Schenck, president of the Motion Pictures Producers Association and chairman of 20th Century Fox. Schenck — a man so steadfast in his opposition to organized labor that he eventually spent several months in prison for strike-related illegal payoffs. In the other corner was Frank Capra, the hugely popular Director who was both the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the newly-elected second president of the Screen Directors Guild. Neither was a man to be trifled with, yet that's just the strategy Schenck seemed to choose when he engaged Capra. Up until that point, the struggle for Guild recognition had involved nearly three years of fruitless negotiations. In early February 1939 the producers negotiating committee called a meeting with the Directors and declared they would not negotiate with the SDG unless it threw the assistant Directors out of the Guild. This was particularly irksome because the same demand had been made — and rejected — nearly a year and a half earlier. Fed up, the SDG walked out of the meeting. Capra called a special meeting of the SDG board the following Monday and filled the members in on Schenck's behavior and warned them that Schenck would only yield to power; that they needed to "move quickly, gamely and lethally — or forget the Guild." At the behest of W.S. Van Dyke, Capra placed a call to the Guild's attorney Mabel Walker Willebrandt, urging her to demand the producers send a telegram by Feb. 16 promising to conclude The First Contract (L-R) Founding members Howard Hawks and W.S. Van Dyke fought for the Guild, while Capra's opponent, Motion Picture Producers Association president Joseph Schenck, maneuvered for the producers. Celebrating Our History Screen Directors Guild President Frank Capra engaged in a classic chess match in 1939 before the Guild finally prevailed and gained acceptance. negotiations for a basic agreement. When the telegram failed to appear, Capra proposed a bold strategy to the board and suggested that they disrupt the upcoming Academy Awards banquet even though he had invested four years as Academy president, was slated to preside as master of ceremonies on the big night, and his own picture, You Can't Take It with You, had been nominated for seven Oscars. Given the conflicts, Schenck may have assumed that Capra would be incapable of such a move but had underestimated the shift in Capra's loyalties. "First, I will immediately resign as president of the Academy, and withdraw as master of ceremonies," Capra told the SDG board. "Reason: the rude, contemptuous attitude of the Motion Pictures Producers Association toward the Screen Directors Guild and its officers. This accusation will make the world's front pages." The second move, he suggested, was to call an emergency meeting of all Directors in the Guild and news of the meeting was leaked to the trade papers, which played it up big. On Thursday, Feb. 16, 1939, more than 250 angry film Directors and Assistant Directors assembled at the Hollywood Athletic Club. A strike vote was called and immediately seconded. Capra realized, as he recounted later, "that a strike vote and the Academy boycott would give me a one-two punch that might force Schenck to throw in his hand." The vote to strike, if it came to that, was approved unanimously, as was Capra's resignation from the Academy and a boycott by Directors of the Academy Awards. Willebrandt was instructed to send an ultimatum by telegram: Management had 24 hours to sign an agreement recognizing the Guild as the bargaining agent for Directors and their assistants. If no positive response arrived within

• Cover