Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/904648
106 SAG-AFTRA | Fall/Winter 2017 | SAGAFTRA.org Snapshot by Valerie Yaros A little over five years ago on March 30, 2012, the late Ken Howard stood before a cheering crowd of Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA members in the Guild's James Cagney Boardroom and announced, "SAG-AFTRA is born." Merger was a long time coming, but it had been actively discussed and debated for more than 70 years. In 1959, merger seemed imminent. In advance of the '59 AFTRA convention, AFTRA and Screen Actors Guild each formed their own merger study committees, and members of both groups met at the Guild's Hollywood headquarters to discuss selection of an organization for a thorough study of some form of merger of the two unions. Among the nearly 30 committee members were AFTRA National President Virginia Payne and former AFTRA national presidents Ken Carpenter, Bud Collyer, Alan Bunce and Frank Nelson. The SAG committee included President Howard Keel and former presidents Ronald Reagan, Walter Pidgeon and Leon Ames. A special convention recap issue of Stand By, the magazine of the New York Local, noted, "The New York Local's resolution that the convention go on record in enthusiastic, wholehearted favor of AFTRA and SAG [merging] was unanimously passed." In 1960, the merger plan was outlined by noted lawyer/labor arbitrator David L. Cole in his report Is Merger Practicable? He proposed the creation of a new entity: TRASAG (Television, Radio and Screen Actors Guild), but it was rejected by the Screen Actors Guild's board of directors, disappointing AFTRA leadership and members. But Cole's recommendation for closer cooperation between AFTRA and the Guild led to joint SAG and AFTRA negotiations and administration in TV commercials and videotaped TV entertainment programs. When the first joint commercials negotiation commenced that October, few could have predicted that it would take nearly 52 more years and three membership referendum votes to at last make the two unions one. CONVENTION 1959: MERGER TALK WAS IN THE AIR Pictures from the 1959 convention as printed in AFTRA's New York Local magazine Stand By. The "air conditioning" reference in the cartoon refers to the failed air conditioning at the Biltmore Hotel during the previous year's summer convention in muggy Manhattan. Snapshot by Valerie Yaros