The final time performers and writers unions in Hollywood had been putting on the similar time, it may need been arduous to note. Whereas 1000’s of pros had been abruptly out of labor, the actors weren’t picketing. Motion pictures had been nonetheless releasing at a gradual stream. And the 1960 Oscars, which came about smack in the course of the shutdown from early March to mid-April, weren’t boycotted a lot as full of Hollywood’s greatest names. Winners like Charlton Heston had been left to simply accept their trophies and determine whether or not or to not handle the large elephant within the room. Largely, they may go away that process to host Bob Hope, who referred to as the glitzy ceremony “probably the most glamorous strike assembly ever” and requested the gang, “Who else however actors would quit working for Lent?”
It’s price remembering that whereas the trade has been right here earlier than, it additionally hasn’t—in some methods, 1960 has nothing on 2023. This yr’s twin strike between the Writers Guild of America and the Display screen Actors Guild—American Federation of Tv and Radio Artists is ramping up, with SAG-AFTRA formally becoming a member of the writers on picket strains late final week. A-listers like Rachel McAdams and Mandy Moore are braving the sweltering July warmth, and nil stars have publicly given their assist to the studios on the opposite facet. Again in 1960, when Ronald Reagan was SAG president, dissent wasn’t precisely within the majority—83% of members voted to authorize the strike—but it surely was at occasions being expressed by a small pool of actors. And overlook awards present attendance. The 2023 Emmys are all however sure to maneuver from the present September date resulting from an inevitable boycott, and all campaigning is prohibited by the guild, a prohibition that was not in place in 1960.
The 1960 actors strike started within the warmth of Oscar marketing campaign season. “There isn’t any letup within the heated marketing campaign of actors and film studios to win votes for the Oscars,” reported The New York Instances. The Los Angeles Instances argued that “for a couple of hours, a minimum of, the previous establishment will prevail; that is the evening for the celebrities to howl.” After Heston received finest actor, he quipped, “Now that I’ve bought the Oscar, I’m out of a job.”
The 1960 strikes erupted resulting from a well-known difficulty: residuals. Again then, there was no system for continued funds for movie work. Whereas streaming is the large disruptor driving in the present day’s strikes, again then, it was tv; studios had begun licensing movies to the then nascent medium for extra rankings and income. (The union’s first-ever strike came about eight years prior in 1952, additionally over the difficulty of TV and compensation.) None of that added success was shared with actors or writers as a result of there was no precedent for it. SAG needed share funds for actors in all movies offered to TV relationship again to 1948—generally known as tv’s turning-point yr—in addition to for all movies produced going ahead. The studios, with the famous exception of Common—which reduce its personal cope with unions—didn’t think about the proposal remotely negotiable. Their solely counter was zero, a standoff acquainted to in the present day.
At the beginning of the 1960 strike, greater than 4,000 trade professionals had been laid off. A number of movies shut down, together with George Cukor’s Let’s Make Love, starring Marilyn Monroe; BUtterfield 8, the movie which might win Elizabeth Taylor an Oscar the subsequent yr; and Blake Edwards’s Excessive Time, with Bing Crosby. Just a few huge names defied the studios by signing with SAG and impartial producers, akin to Frank Sinatra, to maintain Ocean’s 11 shifting. (Throughout this era, Sinatra turned recognized for an “indifference to studio authority,” as The New York Instances put it on the time.) A star of Edwards’s shuttered Excessive Time, the teenager idol generally known as Fabian, needed to get in on this insurrection too. His supervisor tried to purchase the movie outright from twentieth Century Fox himself. Los Angeles Instances columnist Hedda Hopper categorized this specific try within the “Now-I’ve-heard-everything division,” writing, “Fabian, who admits he can’t sing and is completely sincere about it, has been in our trade a little bit greater than a yr.”
Impartial tasks are at the moment looking for waivers from SAG to both proceed or start filming; so far, even studios as important as A24 have obtained them. Again in 1960, the one challenge that filmed all by means of the strike was Studs Lonigan, a manufacturing by the outsider Hal Roach firm that independently signed with the guild. “Whereas we’re capturing I really feel good, however on the finish of the day, whenever you go away the studio you all of the sudden notice that yours is the one image being shot in Hollywood all throughout the strike,” director Irving Lerner mentioned throughout manufacturing. “It feels bizarre.” In the meantime, filming restarted on the fantasy drama The Misplaced World—however just for the film’s creatures, dealt with by non-striking Teamsters members. “The monsters, all handmade, are permitted to carry out for the digicam as a result of they don’t seem to be thought-about actors,” The New York Instances defined. This was generally known as the primary “shoot-around”—whereby manufacturing proceeds with an unavailable actor(s)—by which filming commenced round a whole solid.
Hollywood salaries in 1960 weren’t what they’re in the present day, however there was nonetheless a divide between SAG’s most well-known faces and its working class. After Elizabeth Taylor’s BUtterfield 8 shut down, she went on an prolonged trip to Jamaica together with her husband, Eddie Fisher. (They got here again for the Oscars.) Again in Los Angeles, unemployment workplaces had been overflowing.
As Fran Drescher emphatically argued final week, no quantity of good-faith negotiating or star energy has introduced in the present day’s studios again to the negotiating desk. Seemingly, the guild has been iced out, left to strike. It’s one other main level of distinction from the 1960 dispute; by the top of that first week, a federal mediator had been assigned to the controversy between actors and studios, and negotiations had been set to renew. And this was earlier than the guild {accused} the studios of stalling.
On the time, the trade was grappling with the concern of the international market overtaking Hollywood in movie manufacturing, and there was concern {that a} extended strike would solely clear the way in which for European producers to leapfrog the most important studios being boycotted. This additionally meant it was tougher for the guild to drum up huge assist. The extremely regarded movie critic Bosley Crowther argued within the midst of the strike that actors had a “ethical declare” that didn’t justify shutting the trade down. “It doesn’t seem to this layman that [the actors] have a authorized declare,” he wrote. “It’s as in the event that they had been asking for a few of the income from a subsequent sale of a chunk of actual property that they had offered beforehand.” (The guild later printed a prolonged rebuttal in Crowther’s paper, The New York Instances.)
