DGA Monthly

J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 6 I 3 5 DGA History: A Guild is Born — continued from page 32 MPDA did launch a plan to take the reins of production into its own hands, announcing that it would fund a handful of movies over which its members would exercise control and reap the profit. But no sooner had that scenario been announced than the motion picture producers closed ranks, declared that they would blacklist any participant, and effectively killed the plan. Thus chastened, the MPDA returned to its purely social function, though it also published a magazine on the art of directing titled The Motion Picture Director. Over the years, some Directors had continued to try to organize. John Ford, who became president of the MPDA in 1927, was one of those who agitated for more involvement. In 1931, four Directors — King Vidor, Cecil B. DeMille, Frank Borzage and Lewis Milestone — announced a plan to form a guild and produce independent films under a "Directors Declaration of Independence." They even planned to name the new collective the Directors Guild — but could not secure financing for their project. It's not hard to see why the men would want to step outside the studio system, which at the dawn of the sound era was becoming increasingly restrictive for Directors. Studio chiefs assigned Directors to projects a day or two before the beginning of principal photography, essentially cutting them out of the pre-production process; on the other end, they kept them out of the editing room as well. Multiple Directors would be assigned to a single production, or a producer or studio chief would supply a list of shots and expect the Director to do nothing but execute somebody else's artistic (or, more likely, commercial) vision. Even those who'd enjoyed significant artistic freedom during the days of silent films found their power eroding: Vidor, for example, had long enjoyed near carte blanche to make socially conscious films such as The Crowd. But as the studio system strengthened in the early '30s, as moguls began to exercise more of an assembly-line approach to filmmaking, he found that he was being asked to make lighter, less substantial movies. When he tried to find a studio willing to back his social drama Our Daily Bread, he wrote in his THE SITE: King Vidor's mission- style house on Coldwater Canyon, where a secret meeting on Dec. 23, 1935 resulted in the founding of the Guild. Vidor's membership card. William K. Howard Henry King Gregory La Cava Rowland Lee — continued on page 36 CELEBRATING OUR HISTORY

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