DGA Monthly

3 0 I D G A M O N T H L Y A Guild is Born by Steve Pond For the next chapter of our history, this reprint of another DGA article tells the story of how the Guild was founded. among the greatest individualists in the world," said John Ford, one of the founders and a man who understood why the move might take a few people by surprise. "But all of us realized the need to band together to protect the integrity of motion picture production." It was a dramatically different time for Directors in Hollywood in the '30s, but the demands made by the new Th e a n n o u n c e m e n t c a m e i n m i d - J a n u a r y 1 9 3 6 , overshadowing news about the purchase of Universal Studios, the big opening of the musical Strike Me Pink and a legal battle over the rights of theaters to show double bills. "DIRECTORS ORGANIZE!" blared a banner headline across the front page of Daily Variety, which breathlessly reported that a group of motion picture Directors had just dropped a bombshell on the producers and studio moguls who ran Hollywood and controlled the fates of everyone who worked in the movie business. They were now members of an organization called the Screen Directors Guild, and they intended to negotiate as a group for better treatment, better pay and better conditions. The move, coming as it did from a band of mavericks, many of whom were successful enough to wield considerable clout on their own, sent ripples of shock through Hollywood, which had already seen its actors and writers form unions in the previous two years. Wrote the Hollywood Reporter, "Get- together of the Directors, the industry's most individualistic group, while several times predicted and often discussed, came as a distinct surprise." But that surprise arrived only after years of provocation, of diminishing control and worsening conditions; it came in the midst of an organized labor movement that was sweeping the Depression-torn United States, and had taken hold in Hollywood; and it came after months of quiet discussion among a handful of Directors, followed by a few clandestine meetings and a secret trip to Sacramento. "Now Directors, because of the nature of their profession (some might say the cussedness of their natures, too) are BIG NEWS: On Jan. 17, 1936, a banner headline in Variety announced the arrival of the new Guild. In 1936, a group of courageous and forward- thinking fi lmmakers banded together to protect Directors' rights. Ninety years later the DGA is still standing up for the same things. — continued on page 32 CELEBRATING OUR HISTORY

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