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Much has been said and little understood about the Hollywood strikes. Here Mrs. St. Johns, with her great gift for sensing the human side of the news, brings the complicated picture into sharp focus through the eyes of friends you know — Ronald Reagan, John Garfield, Robert Taylor, Gene Kelly, Edward Arnold.
_ The Editors
THE picket line in front of the M-G-M gate moved slowly, round and round, ghostly figures in an early-morning fog.
A young man, black head shining above an old white sweater, hopped out of a car, then stood immobile on the curb, watching. The wheeling line brought him face to face with another man about his own age and they stood for a moment eye to eye. The young man in the white sweater put his hand on the other’s shoulder, took a long bi’eath — and crossed the picket line, which began to move again, slowly.
Inside the studio gates Gene Kelly went to his dressing bungalow with wet eyes. An assistant director
said, “You better hurry, they’re waiting on the set.”
Gene Kelly looked at him. He said, “Got to make a phone call.”
He dialed and after a little wait said, “Look, Mrs. Smith, this is Gene — Gene Kelly. I just crossed the picket line and I met Bill. I guess it was the toughest thing I ever had to do. I kept thinking about when we were in the Navy together, and how we were in the same crew and — now. I had to tell you about it, you’re his mother and you can make him understand. Will you tell him the way I see it, we’re doing it for him? The way I see it, you tell him, is that we have got to make everybody see jurisdictional strikes are wrong. We’re just trying to do our bit so there won’t be any more of them, that’s all the whole Screen Actors Guild is trying to do. Will you explain that to him?” I don’t know what the former sailor felt when he got home that night and his mother told him about Gene Kelly’s call. I do know how Gene felt — and still feels. “I just say,” Gene
Liberal John Garfield (with Glenn Ford and Henry Fonda) says, “The human element is tough. There are guys on that picket line I’ve worked with . .