Jurisdictional disputes in the motion-picture Industry : hearings before a special subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives, Eightieth Congress, first-session, pursuant to H. Res. 111 (1948)

MOTION-PICTURE JURISDICTIONAL DISPUTES 257 ]Mr. ReagajST. Before lunch we had jnst finished with the reading of the transcript of the phone call. There was one point in the phone call, if you will recall, the question I asked of Mr. Birthright that was not answered. That question was, I told him that Mr. Hutcheson in Chicago had told us there was more than one clarification written, and I asked him if this was true, and there was no answer on that. I would like to add now that Mr. Hutcheson did not tell us that, we inferred that. We inferred it because in discussing the three arbitrators, Mr. Hutcheson said to us, when they first wrote a clarification, they again in August referred to the 1926 agreement, and he said, "I would not stand for them mentioning that again in the clarification. We simply asked them if they could go ahead and write another clarification." And that is what I was asking him about in that phone conversation. Following the phone conversation, those of us who had been on the phone stayed there in the room and, of course, there had been two things that we thought had come out in the phone call — first, the question had been answered as it was repeatedly put to him by Gene Kelly and as was heard at the end, in regard to what did they mean and did they intend in regard to jurisdiction ; and the second thing that dropped unknowing among us was when that became evident that they did not have the same clarification that had been received here, that there was a difference in the one we got and the one they thought they had written or said they had written, and what was received here and purported to be their clarification. We debated that for quite some time to find out as to what was the best procedure — what we should do from there. It was finally decided that we would have a meeting with the same group at the Knickerbocker Hotel, namely, representatives of all the 43 unions, a meeting on October 26, at which time we would report this phone call to them. However, on the next morning, the morning of the 26th, after this meeting had been called, a telegram was received at the offices of the Screen Actors Guild addressed to George Murphy. He had at one time been president and had been a member of this labor committee, and was a member of the board, so we didn't have any hesitation in opening this telegram, and it was from Mr. Birthright in Indianapolis, and that telegram was considered by us as a correction of the previous afternoon's telephone call. Mr. McCann. That telegram has been received in evidence and I believe I read to you the other evening and compared the copy furnished by Mr. Sorrell with the original that you had in your possession, and you said that copy was correct. Mr. ReagajST. Yes, sir. Mr. McCann. Now then, will you tell me this, Mr. Reagan ; before we proceed further, can you tell me whether or not you know that we have received in evidence not only the clarification, but the clarification that came from Green? In other words, have we in the evidence both of those clarifications to which you have referred? Do you know about that point? Mr. Reagax. Well, the one that came from Green is the original August directive which was received here. The only other evidence 67383 — 48 — vol. 1 18