Writers' Wars: The Screen Writers Guild Versus Hollywood

In 1927, during Hollywood's Golden Age, the movie studio bosses created the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, today best known for the annual Oscar awards. Its members were movie directors, actors, technicians, producers, and writers. At the time, the bosses created it primarily as a way for their employees to settle their disputes; and, if any of those disputes got out of hand, the moguls would mete out disciplinary actions that would, at best, end careers.

Writer Dorothy Parker once said, "Looking to the Academy for representation was like trying to get laid in your mother's house."

I.A.T.S.E.

In 1933, during the depths of the Depression, the studio heads issued an edict where all employee salaries would be cut in half. At the time, members of the Academy had no recourse. Only I.A.T.S.E., a stagehands' union that was unaffiliated with the Academy, threatened a strike. The studio bosses backed down, setting a precedent for other Hollywood professionals.

A few months after I.A.T.S.E.'s show of strength, the Screen Writers Guild was formed by a handful of Hollywood writers. John Howard Lawson, a firebrand and unabashed communist, was the Guild's first president.

The Screen Writers Guild

The bosses immediately enforced a blacklist against members of this fledgling organization. In 1936, Lawson and the others attempted to stir screenwriters and other Hollywood trades into a strike against the movie studios. This created dissension within the Guild's ranks, some members supporting a strike and others not. Sensing this conflict, the moguls created their own dummy writers organization for dissenting members of the fledgling Screen Writers Guild.