Hollywood Spectator (1938)

Hollywood Spectator Page Eleven takes, and with decent tolerance of each other and common sense and fairness we shall avoid them, Red-Baiting Goes On . . . Y DEAR Welford, I know you are waiting to hear me say something about screen art and the real business of the writer, and I should like to have my say about that too, ardently as I agree with you on some items and violently as I dissent in others. But these facts needed to be recounted, so that we may not be befogged so easily. The red-baiting goes on. I am tainted myself, because I had the sense to visit Russia and see for myself, as if a man should be called a fish because he goes in swimming. For my¬ self I make it a point not to know the political and economic leanings of fellow members unless they choose to tell me, which none of them does. It is none of my business. I know their leanings as writ¬ ers and that is my business. I know many of them are politically conservative and I fervently hope many of them are equally radical. You can enter no in¬ telligent group today without encountering both right and left. To be without the left would be a sign of dry-rot. To be in a group that is all ex¬ treme right would be damned dull, and that’s a fact. Have you ever spent a night at the Union League Club in Boston? I spent a year there one night. Conservative and Nihilist . . . RITERS are supposed to be people who think and a good writer is supposed to have courage. Name me the ten greatest writers from Voltaire down to Shaw, and I’ll show you ten people who laughted at ruling ideas and the authority of their day, and had a grand time doing it. One century’s heterodoxy becomes the orthodoxy of the next. The only thing that doesn’t change is change. The only time a brook stops running is when it freezes or dries up. I don’t want either. And the man who tries to keep things exactly as they are, trying to keep the brook of time from running into the future, isn’t a conservative. He’s a damned nihilist. The man who goes out and throws away his life for the sake of democracy is your real conservative. He’s trying to conserve some¬ thing important to us all. . . . But this isn’t a lec¬ ture. And screen writers aren’t allowed to use politi¬ co-economic ideas anyway, so the fate of screen art doesn’t hang on the matter. Is Not a Bogeyman . . . KNOW what you’re saying: Let’s cut out all this dialogue and get down to the art of the camera, and why don’t you fellows forget all your goingson and get down to brass tacks — write good pic¬ tures? We’re going to. Soon the producers will dis¬ cover that the Guild isn't the bogeyman they thought it was, that they have nothing to fear from us and great good to gain from us, and there will be recog¬ nition and we’ll all chip in and buy Mr. Schenck a gold-engraved testimonial, and maybe Jack Warner can have one too, because he's already mixed up with a lot of folk from the three Guilds in the Motion Picture Relief Fund. And then I can stop writing letters like this and turn out that script for Pan Ber¬ man, for after all RKO’s paying me. . . . Only I would like to sneak one more night and take up the gauntlet with you about screen writing. Meanwhile, Birthday Greetings to the Spectator. Dudley Nichols. Actors Guild By Kenneth Thompson ( Executive Secretary, Screen Actors’ Guild, Incorporated) /HAVE been asked to do this article for the Specta¬ tor and gladly comply, because your Editor in¬ sists that I outline the aims, duties, responsibilities and aspirations of the Screen Actors’ Guild. Naturally most of the Guild history before April of a year ago was made by the earnest group of actors and actresses who met weekly to consider the best way to gain recognition of the abuses suffered by actors in the Hollywood area and to devise some way of correcting them. From this sturdy group was formed the Screen Actors’ Guild. While the early years of the organi¬ zation were marked with many rebuffs, they were never marked with a loss of enthusiasm or courage. When the Guild’s board of directors achieved Guild Shop last year, they had accomplished a major objec¬ tive, for they had won a contract with the producing companies which gave a ten per cent increase for all extra players, established the principle of fair arbitra¬ tion and gained many other valuable concessions for all classes of players. Naturally this brought a tre¬ mendous increase in membership, for the books of the organization had to be kept open as provided in the contract, and created a number of immediate re¬ sponsibilities which differed in many ways from those ever shouldered by any similar group of artists. Some Guild Accomplishments . . . HE tasks of, checking the provisions of the con¬ tract, interpreting the complex problems and the