DGA Monthly

F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 6 I 2 3 There was no red carpet. No movie-star presenters. No paparazzi, no questions about "who are you wearing," no pundits talking about what it all means for the Oscars. When the Screen Directors Guild presented its first award for the year's best directorial achievement, the Hollywood awards landscape was very different. The Golden Globes had taken place five times, without drawing much attention. None of the major Hollywood guilds had begun to hand out their own prizes. The only real game in town, in many ways, was the Academy Awards, which had existed for almost 20 years but wouldn't be televised for four more. But in 1948 — the same year the British Academy Film Awards was established, and a year before the Emmy Awards would have its inaugural ceremony — the Screen Directors Guild made a declaration of independence from the Academy. "It isn't that we're dissatisfied with the Academy Awards," SDG President George Marshall told the United Press at the time. "We just want awards of our own judged on technique only. The Academy Awards involved personalities and publicity." Besides, he added, "At the Academy Awards the public's interested only in the stars. They don't give a damn about Directors." The result was four quarterly awards, culminating in a low- key dinner at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel that took place before the SDG's annual business meeting on May 22, 1949. At that dinner, the quarterly awards went to Joseph Mankiewicz for A Letter to Three Wives, Fred Zinnemann for The Search, Howard Hawks for Red River, and Anatole Litvak for The Snake Pit. Mankiewicz was also given the first Annual Award for Directing for 1948-49. "The highest award a man can get," said Mankiewicz that night, "is to be selected by his fellow craftsmen." But before these men could take the stage, the Screen Directors Guild had to lay the groundwork. At the time, tension still existed between the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Guilds, which was largely run by the studio chiefs. A decade earlier, the fledgling guilds had organized a boycott that damaged the Oscars' authority, asking their members not to attend the ceremony in 1936, limiting the turnout of actors, writers, and Directors. But even in the aftermath, the guilds did little to challenge the Academy's authority. When the Screen Directors Guild, Screen Actors Guild, and Screen Writers Guild collaborated on the first "Tri-Guild Ball" in 1938, at a time when all three were fighting for recognition from the Hollywood studios, the program for that event, after introductory remarks from the three Guild presidents, merely singled out the members of each guild who won Oscars that year. The First Awards by Steve Pond In 1949, the Academy Awards was pretty much the only show in town — until the Guild launched its own event. Then as now, the idea was for Directors to honor their own. In 2026, the DGA turns 90 years old. In celebrating our nearly century-long existence, in this reprint we look back on our first awards ceremony honoring the outstanding achievement of Directors as seen by their peers. THE FIRST VENUE: The ceremony was held at the Roosevelt Hotel on May 22, 1949. (Credit: Hollywood Photographs) CELEBRATING OUR HISTORY — continued on page 24.

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