Sometimes the story stutters. More than sixty years ago, Hollywood experienced its first major labor battle. Actors and screenwriters went on strike against the film industry in an unprecedented social movement. An episode in everyone’s mind today, while the unions (of actors, screenwriters, etc.) have engaged in a new showdown with producers to better share revenues, especially those from streaming platforms and find effective shields against artificial intelligence threats.
January 1960. The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) ask their members to cease all activities. Actors and screenwriters are demanding salary increases, at a time when television is disrupting the entire sector. Between 1950 and 1960, the number of equipped households increased from 9 to 90%. Studios are already starting to sell old movies to the chains, for prime-time broadcast. Fans of the big screen no longer have to go to the cinema to watch a film. Does this remind you of anything?
The actors and scriptwriters then feel aggrieved. These two professions are asking for financial compensation, in the form of residual rights (payment for the rebroadcast of content already broadcast).
SAG and WGA members also wish to benefit from mutual health insurance and private pension systems. These social benefits corresponded at the time to the norm in other sectors of activity. The unions then submitted these requests to the Alliance of Television Film Producers (ATFP) in 1959. But the contract negotiations ended in failure. On January 16, 1960, Hollywood screenwriters went on strike. Actor Ronald Reagan – who would become President of the United States decades later – was at the helm of SAG at this time. And while the work of the screenwriters is at a standstill, he demands from the Association of Motion Picture Producers (AMPP), the producers’ union, the obtaining of the residual rights on the films made since 1948. The negotiations do not did not succeed, and the SAG in turn joined the social movement on March 7. America’s dream factory is officially shut down.
To counter this WGA strike, Warner Bros reuses old scripts including those signed under the pseudonym of W. Hermanos. But due to a lack of available actors, the studios quickly found themselves in difficulty filming. Various big-budget films are interrupted, and stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe are laid off. Thousands of people are being fired by the studios, which are trying to throw stones at SAG. “5,899 actors voted to strike and thousands of studio workers are now out of work,” AMPP states in the Motion Picture Daily on March 9, 1960. Regarding residual rights, AMPP accuses actors of wanting “to be paid twice for a single job”. Despite rumors of cancellation, the 32nd Academy Awards did take place on April 4, 1960. It opened with Bob Hope’s famous comment, “Welcome to Hollywood’s most glamorous strike meeting.”
If Tony Curtis, Spencer Tracy and Janet Leigh, all members of the SAG, support the strike publicly, celebrities are still a minority in the two unions. “The image of SAG as a country club of privileged stars has persisted,” scholar David F. Prindle points out to National Geographic. Yet more than two-thirds of union members earn an annual salary of less than $4,000. These minority figures were the most favorable to the strike at the time, when 17% of SAG voters opposed the social movement. Among the best known, Hedda Hopper, whose anti-union convictions propel her to the rank of “the most publicized opponent”, according to biographer Jennifer Frost. At the time, the actress also draws a parallel between the strike and communism.
On April 18, 1960, SAG accepted a compromise with the studios and signed the end of the strike. Its members can now receive residual compensation for films made from 1960 (and not 1948). The producers also pay $2.65 million for the actors’ health and retirement plans. But the agreement is not unanimous within the union. Some members criticize Reagan for being too concessional. In turn, the writers end their “blockade” on June 12. Their union also manages to obtain residual income as well as financial support for health insurance and pension plans for its members. Although it does not meet all their demands, this contract is then described as “revolutionary”.
