Screen Guilds Magazine (July 1935)

What The Screen Writers’ Guild Really Wants I N common with plumbers and steel workers, Screen Writers draw weekly pay; unlike them, they are essentially individualists. They are leaders o£ thought, and instinctively rebel against the herd-idea. Mass-anything bores them. And rightly so. They live by ideas—and an idea is a seed of crea¬ tion, springing only from the loins of rebellion. It is understandable, therefore, that Writers abhor clubs, community or¬ ganizations and anything smacking of the one-for-all and all-for-one philoso¬ phy. Nevertheless The Screen Writers Guild, not yet three years old, already boasts a membership of more than eighty-five percent of all the Screen Writers of American Motion Pictures. T HE present Guild sprang into exist¬ ence at the time of the fifty percent cut. The Writer’s purse was suddenly pinched. Writers immediately became practical business men. They forgot their individualism and joined together in common cause against a terrifying dragon who waved a wand and said, “Presto!—Half pay!” Since that time (March, 1933) despite the fact that there has been no other crisis to turn dramatists into business men, the Guild has steadily grown into the solid and permanent organization it is today, with a membership rapidly approaching the complete roll call of Screen Writers. This would seem to indicate that Writers have at last come to realize the need for such an organization as the one which they created and to which they continue to give their loyal support. Y ET, frequently one encounters mem¬ bers who have a very hazy idea as to what exactly The Screen Writers’ Guild stands for or what it is striving to achieve. They know, for instance, that the Guild’s commission arbitrates and conciliates disputes. But why does the Board of Directors, fifteen busy writers, devote one night a week to the business of the Guild? What is the business of the Guild? Why do you and I pay our dues? Some wonder if it was not just a bugaboo to scare Producers into not instigating another sudden pay cut. No!—it is not. If it were, it would have faded into oblivion a long time ago. The Producers—the heads of stu¬ dios—are as shrewd and smart a body of men as ever captained any major industry. They are welded into a powerful unit known as the Producers Association, They are backed by hund¬ reds of millions of dollars and are counselled by a battery of the best legal brains that millions of dollars can buy. The Producers, therefore, cannot be scared by bugaboos or kept in leash by any false front. They deal in facts, not fancies. The same, we are glad to say, can be said of The Screen Writers’ Guild. It is a business organization, the consoli¬ dated business brain of all Screen Writ¬ ers, whose job it is to deal with the facts of Writers’ business problems. Guild Shop T HE Guild is fighting for one thing —GUILD SHOP. We are not interested, at the moment, in a deal with the Producers. Nor are we interested in a Producer-Writer Code of Fair Practice, such as is being “revised” at the present time by the Academy. A contract is only as strong as the penalties for abuse of it are hurt¬ ful ... A contract which is not enforce¬ able is no contract at all. That has been the trouble with Pro¬ ducer-Writer contracts in the past. Company unions (and what else is the Academy?) see to it that contracts are non-enforceable through lack of penal¬ ties except on the part of the employee. A contract, at best, between Writers and Producers would be a ‘ ‘ gentleman’s agreement”, worth less than the paper it is written on. It would be observed and respected only as long as it suited the purpose of the Producers; when it irked or impeded them, the contract would be scrapped or violated—as all similar Codes and Contracts have been violated in the past. I F the Guild had been able to make a fair deal with the Producers through the N. R. A., the Guild would have made it, with the assurance that it had the backing of the U. S. Government to en¬ force it. The Producers, at the time of Mr. Sol Rosenblatt’s last official visit to Hollywood, (November, 1934) were willing to make an “unfair” deal, and the Guild rejected it. Now that the N. R. A. has been rendered more or less impotent, the Guild is not at all anxious By Ernest Pascal to make a deal with Producers. What it wants—and what it means to get—is GUILD SHOP. What Is Guild Shop? T the present time Writers are oper¬ ating under Open Shop—that is to say, any Writer irrespective of whether he is a member of The Screen Writers’ Guild, or any other Writer Organiza¬ tion, may be employed by a studio. GUILD SHOP must not be confused with Closed Shop. Closed Shop might conceivably re¬ sult in a virtual monopoly of the labor market. Closed Shop could, and would, insist upon certain definite qualifica¬ tions for Writers, so that only Writers properly qualified could Work. That is practical for plumbers and steel work¬ ers—for groups whose work can be standardized and gauged exactly for their market worth, et cetera. A Writ¬ er’s Work, however, cannot be standard¬ ized, gauged or judged good, bad or in¬ different. The guage of a Writer’s work is Public Judgment. GUILD SHOP, on the other hand, is, and has been proved to be, thoroughly practical. GUILD SHOP opens its door to every Writer regardless of qualification. The Writer merely agrees to abide by the rules of the Guild—and no writer, ex¬ cept a Guild Writer, may be employed in a Motion Picture Studio. Why Guild Shop? UILD SHOP for Writers (and for Actors too) is a means to an end. First and foremost it places talent on a fair bargaining basis with Pro¬ ducers. Individuals cannot bargain adequate¬ ly against organized and concentrated power and wealth. Picture companies are organized individually and are or¬ ganized jointly—the Producers Asso¬ ciation. The GUILD SHOP idea has been tried and proved conclusively. The Dramatists Guild has, and always has had, GUILD SHOP. Through GUILD SHOP it corrected all the evils that ex¬ isted for the Dramatists in the theatre. (Continued On Page 23) i • July , 1935