DGA Monthly

3 2 I D G A M O N T H L Y DGA History: A Guild is Born — continued from page 30 CELEBRATING OUR HISTORY In fact, according to a document entitled "A History of the Motion Picture Directors Association" by Douglas Bell, the MPDA turned down overtures from the American Federation of Labor in 1923, when the tide of unionization was beginning to rise across America. The following year, the guild would be familiar to its successors today: more input into script development, casting and other aspects of pre-production; freedom from interference from micromanaging producers and studio executives; the right to be in the editing room and deliver their own cut of the film that would bear their name. What brought them together initially were issues related to the treatment of Directors and their creative rights including everything from the Director's credit, to problems with producers taking credit for work that Directors did, to having the chance to edit their movies. Some of those issues had existed since the beginning of the movie industry — but the dozen- plus men who met in private to plot the course of the Guild had been fighting their battles individually for years. Since 1915, the Directors' only organization was a group called the Motion Picture Directors Association (MPDA), with a charter that described its aims as "to maintain the honor and dignity of the profession," "to improve the moral, social and intellectual stand of all persons" in movies, "to cultivate social intercourse" among Directors and "to aid and assist all worthy distressed members of this organization." Essentially, the MPDA was a non- profit gentlemen's club, with rituals that were vaguely Masonic in nature. "They had a clubhouse on Cahuenga Avenue [in Hollywood], and they had Directors' chairs with names on the back," remembered one of the Guild's founders, King Vidor, in a 1986 interview conducted for the DGA's 50th anniversary. "But it seemed to be more social; it didn't suggest labor or group bargaining in any way." THE RANKS GROW: Director Rouben Mamoulian signed his membership papers on Jan. 16. 1936. Herbert Biberman Frank Borzage John Ford Howard Hawks — continued on page 35

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