Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1948)

and which more than any other one factor has hurt and does hurt the cause of organized labor — the jurisdictional strike, a strike called by one union as a power play in a dispute over which union shall have as members the men doing certain work. What is the matter with the American Federation of Labor that it permits quarrels between its member unions to culminate in strikes which actually reduce the yearly take-home pay of tens of thousands of its workers in other AF of L unions, all over the nation, not even concerned in the disputes?’ ” Thus movie stars have moved into the national labor picture and in a short time accomplished more than all the statesmen, politicians and labor and industrial leaders have done in years. They succeeded in getting Richard Walsh, President of IATSE, and William L. Hutcheson, President of the International Union of Carpenters — who are actually the leaders of the two rival factions— into the same room and that, as Eddie Arnold put it, is something. And something no one else had been able to do. They presented and got passed a resolution on setting up arbitration machinery within the American Federation of Labor for the first time in over forty years. AND by the end of that week in Chicago, Hutcheson, all-powerful and muchfeared seventy-seven-year-old head of 800,000 carpenters, and Arnold, a movie star, were calling each other “Bill” and “Ed.” “The first time he called me ‘Ed’ on the telephone,” Eddie Arnold told me the other day, “I froze up. I couldn’t think of a line of dialogue to say back. I put my hand over the transmitter and said to George Murphy and Ronnie Reagan and Gene Kelly and everybody, who was standing around listening, ‘He called me Ed. What’ll I say?’ Ronnie said, ‘If he called you Ed, that’s good. Tell him we’ll be right up.’ ” “It seemed to us,” Ronnie Reagan told me as we sat at lunch the other day, discussing those meetings in Chicago and the whole dramatic history of the strike, “that a vital principle, morally essential to us all was involved. The principle of arbitration itself. Arbitration by agreement, arbitration with all members of a dispute present and consenting and binding themselves to abide by such arbitration between free Americans desiring to settle their differences in the democratic way without injury. Arbitration to end — and to prevent— war, whether between nations or between labor and industry under the American system of private enterprise.” He stopped and looked at me for a moment, his eyes twinkling. In Hollywood today, Ronnie Reagan is regarded as an able young leader. From here on in, I think you will hear of Reagan in the national scene and of his wife, Jane Wyman, for everyone tells me they work as a team. Active member of the AVC, which is the most liberal of the veterans’ organizations, Reagan is himself a liberal, and therefore, he says, not in spite of, he has stood solidly in this fight for one thing — arbitration of jurisdictional disputes. “Do you know,” he said, still grinning, “Jane says I make speeches now in my sleep — and probably the best ones, at that. We’ve spent so much time on this, we were so anxious to get out the whole Guild vote when the strike issue came, that one night we kept calling and calling until finally Jane hung up the receiver, looking very sheepish, and said, ‘Oh dear — that was Claudette Colbert and she’d been asleep for hours. Maybe we better quit!’ But everybody had to be there when we took our stand — and they were, too.” They tell me that the SAG meeting, at which it was voted to cross picket lines because the strike was jurisdictional and to send a committee to Chicago, was one of the most exciting ever held and that Reagan’s speech was a triumph — whether he rehearsed it in his sleep or not. The opening day of the convention proved the power of the movie stars because, frankly, they stole the show. And that, as Walter Pidgeon expressed it, was not because the stars wanted publicity, but because they wanted to show the American Federation of Labor that they could then and always reach the public through the press and radio with the clear and simple truth, that as mediators they could always go to the whole country with honest and unbiased opinion. Walter, by the way, played in real life the part of an ambassador of good will with as much tact and charm as he gives to such a role on the screen. BUT, frankly, it was Eddie Arnold who became the most successful of the group. Big, bluff, with a cigar in his mouth, with power and humor, the union leaders accepted him as one of themselves, such leaders as William Green, and George Meany, and Dave Dubinsky, and finally even Bill Hutcheson. The first night an appointment was made to see Hutcheson, and the whole committee turned out. The girls wore their best dresses and their best new hats and shed some glamour on the scene — glamour which even a labor leader could hardly overlook. “Mr. Hutcheson was so gentlemanly,” Alexis Smith told me. “Once he said somebody was nuts — and then apologized, saying, ‘If the ladies don’t mind my using such a slang phrase.’ It’s a great thing to meet the men who are the powers in this labor movement. You look at Mr. Hutcheson and something tells you that he will ours Jor a Philip Morris Americas finest Cigarette ALWAYS BETTER .... BETTER ALL WAYS p 93