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An Interim Report on A. A. A.
Snowball in the Spring
EMMET LAVERY
EMMET LAVERY, president of the Screen Writers' Guild, is chairman of the over-all AAA committee of SWG. He is an active member of the Dramatists Guild, author of The Magnificent Yankee, which has just wound up a cross-country tour.
UNLIKE the rolling stone that gathered no moss, the snowball tossed out in the early spring by the AAA committee of the Screen Writers Guild has gathered a lot of snow — and a lot of momentum.
Thanks to the formal cooperation of the Council of the Authors League of America, approximately 9,000 copies of the special (March) supplement on AAA were distributed to members of the four guilds of the League. Above and beyond this, 4,000 additional copies were sent by the Screen Writers Guild to unaffiliated writers and members of the arts and professions throughout the country.
Today, the proposals advanced in the AAA supplement are officially before the member guilds of the League and the Council of the League for official consideration. In due time the member guilds will be asked to ballot on the AAA and the full Council of the Authors League of America will be asked to decide, on the basis of this balloting, whether this particular form of licensing shall be put into operation.
To prepare intelligently for this voting, the AAA committee of the Screen Writers' Guild is proposing to the Council of the Authors League of America that a
*As this issue of THE SCREEN WRITER was going to press, word was received from New York that the Licensing Committee of the Authors' League of America is preparing to make a formal report on AAA to the Council of the League in the near future. It is not certain, naturally, that the final disposition of AAA will be made according to the procedure outlined above. It is quite possible that the Licensing Com'mittee may recommend that the whole question be determined :n, and by, the Council of the League.
sub-committee of the AAA committee of the Screen Writers' Guild go East in the near future to :
( 1 ) confer with the full Council of the Authors League of America
(2) confer with the individual boards of the member guilds of the League
(3) conduct an all-day seminar in New York — and perhaps other regional centers — for detailed analysis and discussion of the plan by League members.*
West Coast members of the Authors Guild have already gone on record, by a vote of 38 to 6, in favor of the AAA licensing program as outlined in the special supplement of the Screen Writer. Two hours of solid discussion were devoted by this group to the project at a recent meeting chaired by Albert Maltz. James Cain, Morris Cohn and Emmet Lavery spoke in favor of the AAA plan and Rupert Hughes led the discussion against it.
Meanwhile strong indications have been received from England that members of the Screen Writers Association look with a friendly eye on many of the proposals advanced in AAA. While they would probably not approach the problem of licensing with the same kind of machinery in England, they are keen to cooperate in any universal program which will establish the principle of licensing as against the principle of outright sale.
(In this connection it is worth noting that, in discussions of licensing in England, the phrase "assign