Hollywood Barricades

In an industry whose wage earners range from Greta Garbo to $4-a-day porters, labor troubles are inevitable, complex and continual. Current Hollywood labor troubles have centred around three groups: actors, technicians, writers. Last week, all three groups contrived to make more progress in one direction or another than they have since the cinema's latest rash of controversies began a month ago (TIME, May 10).

Gulping deep the Tuesday morning air to cure their Memorial Day hangovers, Hollywood actors and actresses last week reported for work under a new wage scale won for them by the Screen Actors Guild. From now on, minimum day's pay for extras will be $5.50 instead of $3.20. Cinema cowboys will henceforth get $11 instead of $5 a day. With wages for other low-bracket actors up proportionately, the Guild's new scale affects all companies, makes most difference to bargain-hunting independents, who make 240 of Hollywood's 700 feature pictures a year. Costs will increase from $2,000 to $5,000 a picture.

The Actors Guild got producers to meet its demands by a threat to join the strike of the Federated Motion Picture Crafts (painters, scene designers, hairdressers, make-up artists) which began April 30. By last week, Crafts pickets had been reduced from indignant lines to a single bored armband wearer at each studio gate. On the same day that the actors began working under their new scale, Federal Labor Conciliator Edward A. Fitzgerald arranged a compromise between leaders of the striking group and its rival, the International Alliance of Theatrical & Stage Employes. Basis of the Fitzgerald compromise was that scenic artists and painters, retaining affiliation with the International Brotherhood of Painters got a 10% raise, admission to the union shop pact with producers; make-up artists and hairdressers were placed under jurisdiction of the I. A. T. S. E. and would get a 10% raise if the I. A. T. S. E. raise granted last April could be expanded to include its new affiliate. At 2 o'clock the following morning, after Conciliator Fitzgerald had left Hollywood for San Francisco under the impression that his job was done, striking painters repudiated the settlement, voted 640 to 276 to hold out for F. M. P. C. jurisdiction over hairdressers and make-up men. Next day, the hairdressers and make-up men voted to reject the terms agreed to by their officers, refused membership in the I. A. T. S. E., which has a five-year non-strike agreement with producers. Deadlocked again but now minus a conciliator, F. M. P. C. members put on their pith helmets, went back to picketing along Hollywood's barricades.

Screen Writers, whose pay runs from $150 to $5,000 a week, have always been among Hollywood's most uneasy workmen. Last week, two rival groups of Hollywood scribblers were hoping for majority representation which would enable them to bargain with producers under the terms of the Wagner Act. First group was the Screenwriters Guild of the Authors League of America, technically the oldest organization of film writers. In 1932 when a 50% pay cut was announced, a Screenwriters Guild of California was incorporated independently of the Authors League, collapsed last year when a projected revision of its constitution lost it the support of a large bloc of its membership. Some dissenters formed a new group called Screen Playwrights Inc. which won the favor of Producers; others signed up with the original but temporarily quiescent Screenwriters Guild of the Authors League. Last week most of the Guild's old supporters and many new ones voted to apply for recognition as the official union for Hollywood writers. This week a temporary steering committee headed by Lillian Hellman and Dudley Nichols will call a second meeting to elect permanent officers. A night after the Guild's revival, when 400 screenwriters met in the Hollywood Athletic Club, 40 members of Screen Playwrights Inc. met at the Roosevelt Hotel for a similar purpose.

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