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)

1140 MOTION-PICTURE JURISDICTIONAL DISPUTES I think it only fair that the committee should know what that means in a studio operation. The production of a picture in a studio requires considerable advance planning and timing. You have actors to engage; you have all your crew to engage; you have props to get ready at a certain time; you have the wardrobe and everything else to be done. There are some 40 departments that are involved in the production of a picture. Their work must be timed and coordinated. When we build sets for a picture we do not build all the sets that are required for the shooting of that picture at one time. In the first place, our stage facilities are so limited we could not do it. Therefore, if a picture opens up in a hotel or a cafe, we will probably build that hotel set and that cafe set. Maybe later after we have shot for a few weeks we will anticipate the next move and have a set built at some other stage. Sets must be stricken from one set to make way for another set. All of this takes, as I say, careful planning, and if we do not do it that way it would cost us manj^, many thousands and maybe millions of dollars. At that time there was probably an average of 4 or 5 productions going on at each of the 10 major studios. If you will realize that the average daily shooting costs of a company are somewhere l)etween 10 and 15 thousand dollars—multiplied by 4 at each studio would be 40 to 60 thousand dollars and multiplied by 10, the major com- panies, you see we are talking about 400 to 600 thousand dollars a day of just shooting costs. Now, we are told that we must switch over by the next morning. We tell them we will give them a prompt answer. Mr. Johnston had previously attempted, when the August 16, so-called, clarification of the directive had come down, attempted to get together with Mr. Walsh and Mr. Hutcheson. He had tried to get Mr. Hutcheson to meet. Mr. Hutcheson had refused. He had gone to Mr. Green. We gave them our answer on that same day, on September 11. We said to them, "We are powerless to settle this dispute." We agreed in the October meeting at Cincinnati, to abide by the decision that the arbi- trators laid down. We were not concerned with what they did decide. We were not concerned with who got them in or who did which work. What we were concerned with was that the work be done and that there be no work stoppages. We asked them to settle it among themselves if they could but if they could not we were obliged to abide by the agreements which we had made and which we had agreed to accept as final and binding and there was no other alternative. If we could not operate and they threw 3,000 people out of work the responsibility was theirs. They nevertheless refused to change their position. We waited a few days because we still could shoot on the sets that had been completed. Then it became very important to us to be able to plan future moves and make our commitments wnth actors and others. So we sent them another letter in which we again pleaded with them to return to work, to recall their decision to live up to the 1945 directive. We said to them in that letter that if you refuse we will then be obliged to engage other men to do this work. They continued to refuse and by the 23d we had called in all of the carpenters and all of the painters who had followed suit with the