DGA Monthly

3 6 I D G A M O N T H L Y DGA History: A Guild is Born — continued from page 35 autobiography, A Tree Is a Tree, "All the major companies were afraid to make a film without glamour, even though admitting that the struggle depicted was a heroic one." Vidor was forced to go outside the studio system and finance the film with personal loans. In March 1933, a crumbling economy caused President Roosevelt to enforce a bank holiday in a largely successful attempt to stop runs on banks around the country. In the aftermath of that move, studio chiefs announced their own plan to cut salaries by 50 percent throughout the industry. To announce and help implement the plan, they enlisted the support of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The fledgling Academy was used by the industry to mediate labor disputes, but in its early years it essentially sided with the studios and the producers, and helped fight the rising tides of unionization. It was in that climate when, in early March 1933, the Academy called a meeting at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. "The industry leaders wanted the employees to take a 50 percent pay cut," remembered Vidor. "The meeting was called to let the heads of a few of the studios try to put this cut in effect. The feeling was very strong there that anyone who got up and objected to... taking this cut was fired.... And a few fellows had courage enough to do it, to get up and talk, and you could see the anger on some of the executives' faces. You could see this anger growing that these men were objecting to what they wanted to do." After the meeting, Vidor said, a handful of the Directors in attendance — he remembered Henry King, but couldn't recall who else was involved — knew it was time to get organized. "The realization was very strong that we must have an organization to speak for us," he said. "So after the meeting was over, about six or eight Directors stood on the sidewalk on the side street [likely Orange Avenue] by the Roosevelt Hotel. It was just bluntly stated, 'We must have a guild to speak [for us], and not the individual, who can be hurt by standing up for his rights.'" The pay cut went into effect and lasted for eight weeks, though opposition from IATSE resulted in a less draconian cut for many industry workers. Before salaries were restored, the writers had already taken action, forming the Screen Writers Guild in early April 1933. Two months later, the actors followed suit, founding the Screen Actors Guild. Studios and producers refused to recognize or negotiate with either guild, even after the June passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act, part of which granted labor unions the right to collective bargaining. And while the studios agreed to the Code of Fair Competition for the Motion Picture Industry, which permitted workers to form unions and was signed into law on November 27, the code failed to guarantee that the studios would recognize those unions. "I firmly believe that this kind of cooperation is plainly our duty unless we are satisfied to remain an insignificant and exclusive club," Ford said in a speech to fellow Directors in 1933. "Let's try to get back to the old days — when the people on the set looked to the Director for leadership. Let's pitch in with our co-workers and try to find a way out of this mess, and for the industry. Let's not be high-hat; let's help the others. I grant you that the producers haven't recognized us, but for Christ's sake — and I say that with reverence — let's not get into a position where the workers of the industry don't recognize us." Around the country, strikes spread from mine and auto workers to farmers and teamsters, often meeting with violence at the hands of resistant employers. Congress, though, strengthened the hand of the working man as the decade Lewis Milestone Edward Sutherland Frank Tuttle W.S. Van Dyke — continued on page 39 CELEBRATING OUR HISTORY

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