The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild by Miranda J. Banks Page A
Authors: Miranda J. Banks
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against both
TSW
and left-leaning SWG members, not only to provoke pro-AAA writers but also to stop what they believed was leftist infiltration of the industry. Some even used the pages of
TSW
to vilifythe journal and its editors. Lewis R. Foster (
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
) wrote in a letter to the editor, “It is being said that
The Screen Writer
has at last appeared in its true colors—red and yellow.” 103 Foster called the journal communistic (red) and cowardly (yellow) and claimed that
TSW
represented only the subsection of writers on the extreme Left. In the same issue, the editors replied, “It is to be hoped the time will never come when writers are obliged in their work to express the ‘collective viewpoint’ of any group.” 104
Frustrations about the tone and temperature of Guild meetings made their way into
TSW
as well. Garrett Graham (
The Noose
) dismissed the possibility of communist infiltration, given the structure of Hollywood film production: “In all this time, I have never seen the slightest crevasse through which any Communist propaganda could possibly trickle to the screen. Motion pictures are big business, controlled from Wall Street. Even the most autocratic studio head in Hollywood is a mere chore boy for the financial powers that direct the major companies and the theater chains.” Having shown that writers had no chance to infuse films with their own political agendas, Graham issued a “plea for urbanity” at Guild meetings and an end to infighting. 105
Philip Dunne, as a member of the editorial committee of
TSW
but writing as an individual Guild member, posed the question directly in his article “SWG—Trade Union or Writers’ Protective Association?” Dunne argued that the Guild should be both: it should serve as a workers’ syndicate that protects writers as employees and also as a trade association that protects writers as the authors of original material. 106 Dunne became a board member of the SWG at the end of 1946 in hopes that he could keep pertinent political issues front and center for writers—which he did, but not at all with the outcome he hoped.
The Hollywood Ten and the Waldorf Declaration
The battle to define the Guild’s politics—from within and by outsiders—was reaching a climax as 1946 came to a close. The Red-baiting in Hollywood was merely an echo of the panic that had taken hold in the public discourse on a national level. Republicans had been voted into the majority in both the US Senate and the House of Representatives; from then on, as Nancy Lynn Schwartz notes, any official opposition to HUAC or to its investigations was minimal. By December 1946, the newly elected SWG board faced a number of inherited crises: the effects of the pending anti-union Taft-Hartley Act andthe heightened public Red-baiting of Hollywood writers. Cries for an AAA had petered out. Everyone in Hollywood seemed to be bracing for a storm of attacks from the East Coast. Even as the politicians focused on left-leaning writers, studio heads came under the microscope as well. In January 1947 the
Chicago Tribune
published a series of articles claiming that Hollywood was overly friendly to the Soviet Union because of familial legacies. It noted “three Hollywood dynasties”—the Schencks, the Mayers, and the Warners—thereby implicitly aligning Jews with communism. 107 Emmett Lavery, president of the SWG at the time, was also under attack. Lavery, who had written
Behind the Rising Sun
(directed by Edward Dmytryk) and had run for the 16th US Congressional District in Los Angeles, seemed unimpeachable, given that he was a staunch Catholic, a blue-blooded Democrat, and the author of a play and screenplay based on the life of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. In discussing his own convictions, he declared, “I take my social conscience from the Gospels of the Apostles, not from the essays of Karl Marx.” 108 Yet conservatives argued that he was sure to be a Red,
TSW
and left-leaning SWG members, not only to provoke pro-AAA writers but also to stop what they believed was leftist infiltration of the industry. Some even used the pages of
TSW
to vilifythe journal and its editors. Lewis R. Foster (
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
) wrote in a letter to the editor, “It is being said that
The Screen Writer
has at last appeared in its true colors—red and yellow.” 103 Foster called the journal communistic (red) and cowardly (yellow) and claimed that
TSW
represented only the subsection of writers on the extreme Left. In the same issue, the editors replied, “It is to be hoped the time will never come when writers are obliged in their work to express the ‘collective viewpoint’ of any group.” 104
Frustrations about the tone and temperature of Guild meetings made their way into
TSW
as well. Garrett Graham (
The Noose
) dismissed the possibility of communist infiltration, given the structure of Hollywood film production: “In all this time, I have never seen the slightest crevasse through which any Communist propaganda could possibly trickle to the screen. Motion pictures are big business, controlled from Wall Street. Even the most autocratic studio head in Hollywood is a mere chore boy for the financial powers that direct the major companies and the theater chains.” Having shown that writers had no chance to infuse films with their own political agendas, Graham issued a “plea for urbanity” at Guild meetings and an end to infighting. 105
Philip Dunne, as a member of the editorial committee of
TSW
but writing as an individual Guild member, posed the question directly in his article “SWG—Trade Union or Writers’ Protective Association?” Dunne argued that the Guild should be both: it should serve as a workers’ syndicate that protects writers as employees and also as a trade association that protects writers as the authors of original material. 106 Dunne became a board member of the SWG at the end of 1946 in hopes that he could keep pertinent political issues front and center for writers—which he did, but not at all with the outcome he hoped.
The Hollywood Ten and the Waldorf Declaration
The battle to define the Guild’s politics—from within and by outsiders—was reaching a climax as 1946 came to a close. The Red-baiting in Hollywood was merely an echo of the panic that had taken hold in the public discourse on a national level. Republicans had been voted into the majority in both the US Senate and the House of Representatives; from then on, as Nancy Lynn Schwartz notes, any official opposition to HUAC or to its investigations was minimal. By December 1946, the newly elected SWG board faced a number of inherited crises: the effects of the pending anti-union Taft-Hartley Act andthe heightened public Red-baiting of Hollywood writers. Cries for an AAA had petered out. Everyone in Hollywood seemed to be bracing for a storm of attacks from the East Coast. Even as the politicians focused on left-leaning writers, studio heads came under the microscope as well. In January 1947 the
Chicago Tribune
published a series of articles claiming that Hollywood was overly friendly to the Soviet Union because of familial legacies. It noted “three Hollywood dynasties”—the Schencks, the Mayers, and the Warners—thereby implicitly aligning Jews with communism. 107 Emmett Lavery, president of the SWG at the time, was also under attack. Lavery, who had written
Behind the Rising Sun
(directed by Edward Dmytryk) and had run for the 16th US Congressional District in Los Angeles, seemed unimpeachable, given that he was a staunch Catholic, a blue-blooded Democrat, and the author of a play and screenplay based on the life of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. In discussing his own convictions, he declared, “I take my social conscience from the Gospels of the Apostles, not from the essays of Karl Marx.” 108 Yet conservatives argued that he was sure to be a Red,
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