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 919 Mr. Keenan seemed interested, indicated his very definite interest, and asked time to think it over. Well, if I may — I believe he said, "I will not commit myself, but I will come out and look the situation over," because at the end of that time we expected Mr. Keenan — this conversation, that he would come out, although he was not committed to the job. That was Thursday, the 31st day of October. The next day our counsel, Mr. Laurence Beilenson, called me, I guess it was in the evening, at home, and said, "I have just been delivered a letter by Mr. Frank Pestana, attorney for the CSU, which purports to redraft the agreement and is in complete disagreement with the things which we had decided upon." He read it to me,. and it stated that the international presidents need not sign this agreement, but that it would be binding upon the signatures of two-thirds of the locals in Hollywood. If I way — well, I will wait until I get to that in due course. It said some other things we didn't notice until later, that came up at a later meeting, which I will report on. Mr. Keenan, in the meantime, had been delayed. We discussed, Mr. Tyndall, Mr. Brewer, and myself, whether or not we should call Mr. Keenan. It was not fair to ask him to come out. We thought we had an agreement but we didn't have. However, we thought Mr. Keenan could himself pull the disputant groups together and we would take the chance, although it seemed like a dirty trick on Mr. Keenan, to let him come. Mr. Keenan's trip was delayed and he arrived on the morning of Friday, November 8, and we went into immediate session, all of the groups, although the group now had grown until our board room was two-thirds, three-quarters full ; there were 25, 26 people, representatives of practically every union in Hollywood. Included were a number of international officers of the various unions. I made note of them. Mr. Maurice Hutcheson — Maurice, son of William Hutcheson — of the carpenters. Mr. McKinney, of the plumbers; Mr. Finney and Mr. Milney, of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers ; and about 23 in addition. And on behalf of the Conference of Studio Unions were three attorneys, spokesmen for the group, Mr. Abe Izzerman, Mr. Ben Margolis, and Mr. Frank Pestana, They started the meeting, and they pointed out their objections to the original agreement we had made the Sunday and Monday before between Mr. Sorrell, Skelton, Brewer, Touhy, and the rest of us on the original committee. They maintained it was impractical, that it would take too long to get the international presidents to sign. We then went over the document point by point, and there were any number of little discussions about how we would appoint a successor to Mr. Keenan in case he failed, refused, got sick, or died, or what not, and whether there should be an appeal from Mr. Keenan's decision. At the end of the day it was agreed that Mr. Beilenson, our counsel, would meet with Mr. Margolis, CSU counsel, over the week end, to see if they could redraft the agreement, incorporating the points taken up at the meeting. We met again the 11th of November, at 10 o'clock in the morning, and we began a detailed study of the work done by the attorneys