DGA Monthly

J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 6 I 4 1 DGA History: A Guild is Born — continued from page 39 CELEBRATING OUR HISTORY more, this time dispatching attorney Lawrence Beilenson to file incorporation papers with the state of California. Those meetings, particularly the first, have long since passed into legend. As is the case with most legends, though, the details have changed in the retelling. All of the original participants have long since passed on, and their recollections of the founding were often conflicting when they were still alive — no doubt due to the likelihood that some of the founding Directors were at both of the meetings, some at only one. Whether the contributions were made during the initial meeting at Vidor's home, as most retellings have it, or at the subsequent meeting on January 8, remains unclear. In addition, other meetings had certainly taken place since the encounter outside the Roosevelt. In his autobiography, They Started Talking, Frank Tuttle recalls a gathering at his house, and in his oral history Vidor also remembered "half a dozen" Directors meeting at Tuttle's. Early accounts identify the participants at the key December 23 meeting as Vidor, Borzage, Ford, Howard Hawks, King, Rowland V. Lee, Mamoulian, Milestone, Edward A. Sutherland, Tuttle, William Wellman "and others whose names are lost to history"; other Guild-written accounts and oral histories included W.S. "Woody" Van Dyke, William K. Howard, Gregory La Cava, Herbert Biberman and Richard Wallace as attending the first meeting. However, the details played out, this much is indisputable: The Screen Directors Guild was launched in late 1935 and early 1936 by a band of mostly prominent Directors, numbering around 15, who met in secret. To prevent the news from leaking out, the articles of incorporation, which were filed on January 13, 1936 in Sacramento, identify the group as "S.D.G., Inc."; five days later, after the Guild had been announced, a certificate of amendment was filed changing the name to Screen Directors Guild, Inc. The day the announcement hit the papers on January 17, the SDG received 100 applications. (There was no initiation fee for Directors who joined before the next meeting.) "Directors have done much to make this business," William K. Howard told the Hollywood Reporter, "and they are about to be disenfranchised." At the end of that first week, Variety covered the new Guild in a regular column titled "Aside from the News." After noting that the Guild founders included "quite a number who are noted for their intestinal fortitude and independence," it described what it saw as the goals of the Screen Directors Guild. "They want to make pictures in such a way that they will participate in the production practically from its creation," the paper wrote. "They want to be in on story conferences; they want to have a say on the selection of their casts; and they want to be in on the cutting of their pictures, as they feel if they are given screen credit, they should also be given a right to protect their reputations on what reaches the screen..." And then, the anonymous Variety columnist made a prediction: "If they conduct themselves in a sane, consistent and constructive manner, the producers cannot ignore their grievances." Of course, the producers tried to ignore the grievances; recognition came three years later, under the administration of the second SDG president, Frank Capra. But that story — the expanding membership rolls, the battles in front of the National Labor Relations Board — came later. In January 1936, the story began with a small group who stood together and fought for their art, in a way that their successors would continue to fight for for the next seven decades. What drove Vidor and the crew was the integrity of their work. Nearly a century later, that still rings true. For the DGA of the 21st Century, the debate is not just about the Director, but about the nature of the art form. Is the picture the singular vision of one person, albeit a collaborative expression, or is it more of an industrial product? That was the debate in 1936, and it's still the debate today. The idea that moved us was not just to get more salary for the Director and to get Directors more authority. The ultimate purpose was better films. – ROU BE N MAMOU LIAN As the DGA continues to celebrate our 90-year existence, see more articles on our history in future issues of DGA Monthly.

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