Today we salute the seventy-third anniversary of the above headline , which was reprinted in today's Variety to advertise their new online archive.
The IATSE (sometimes referred to in those days as the "International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employes") was striving to rep every Tinsel Town worker who drew a paycheck, including actors, writers, and directors.
It didn't pan out that way, but the IA gave it the old college try. As Variety said seventy-three years ago: ...
"Conference will be held at 1 p.m. today in office of E.J. Mannix, Metro general manager, to discuss demands of International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes for screen credits on films and jurisdiction over all workers in industry ... Session will be attended by William Bioff, West coast head of IATSE and personal representative of George E. Brown[e], President ...
Bioff and Browne, of course, later gained fame as convicted felons who were sent to the Big House on racketeering charges.
But all that was later. On this day in 1937, B. and B. were looking to pick up all the marbles in the Hollywood labor game. Three and a half years later, they would attempt to represent Disney cartoonists in a deal with Walter Elias Disney. That plan wouldn't bear fruit for another decade ...
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WOW! The Adventures of Robin Hood cost less than TWO MILLION to make! BRAVO!
And the Mickey Mouse Radio Show gets it's start. Are there any recordings of those available?
Wouldn't "May Day" be a better time for you guys to celebrate? I mean, after all, if you want to be all honest and all.
Oh, and wear something red to celebrate it too, k?
Robin Hood came in north of $2,000,000. Two thirds of the way through, studio chief Hal Wallis (still producing movies in the late 1970s) removed director William Keighly in favor of director Michael Curtiz.
Filming commenced in September '37, and wrapped in January 1938. Release came in May, RH was Warners' second three-strip Technicolor film, and its highest budgeted picture to that time.
Snow White, on this date near the end of production, cost almost as much, and minute for minute, cost more.
The most expensive pre-war pictures? Gone With the Wind cost $4 million in 1939 dollars. But Pinocchio cost $3,250,000, ran 87 minutes to Wind's 3 hours, 42 minutes and so was easily the most expensive feature film on a dollar-per-minute basis.
'Wouldn't "May Day" be a better time for you guys to celebrate? I mean, after all, if you want to be all honest and all."
We're AMERICANS---not "tea bagger" gNOp corporate communists--like you.
And the Mickey Mouse Radio Show gets it's start. Are there any recordings of those available?
Believe one promotional episode surfaced on the older Snow White disk ('01 DVD, not the current Blu), but I don't have a copy nearby to check.
Not sure if it was Walt still doing Mickey for the radio; the show was okay, but no Edgar Bergen.
After the deaths of thirteen workers in the Pullman strike of 1894, Congress passed a law to create a Labor Day holiday in September.
By then, at Sam Gompers's suggestion, most U.S. unions had been celebrating Labor Day in September to avoid the radical connotations of May 1, and to avoid reminders of the Haymarket police riot, in which strikers were blamed for an incident in which most of the deaths were policemen shooting each other by mistake.
The main reason we celebrate Labor Day in September is because otherwise there would be no major holiday between July 4 and Thanksgiving. What a radical, lefty idea.
Bioff & Browne were hardly heroes of labor. Variety fails to mention that William Bioff was also the personal representative of Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti. They squeezed the studios for millions, but they skimmed from the unions too & intimidated the rank & file to keep wages down.
Walt tried to get us under the IA during the strike of 1941. I'm proud of those guys for not playing ball. Anybody remember Art Babbit's story about being "taken for a ride"?
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000863174
Walt tried to get us under the IA during the strike of 1941. I'm proud of those guys for not playing ball. Anybody remember Art Babbit's story about being "taken for a ride"?
Not to mention that most of the horror stories the deluded still fling today about Walt's "anti-semitism" were the direct product of strategic smear-campaign squeezing, to help Walt make up his mind--
In 1941, you didn't have to guess too hard about what dirty politics played most effectively with the other studio bosses, and what mud would stick.
But imagine how much better it would all be without writers.
The same tactics were used against the CSU, the umbrella group led by the carpenters & painters which the IA replaced. They were smeared as a Communist front organisation.
Truth be told, the CSU actually did have significant ties to the Communist Party.
The CSU did have Communists in it, though most of the Communists & other "premature anti-Fascists" were in above-the-line guilds like the writers & directors. The Red menace did make the Syndicate more appealing as a business partner at the major studios. Under Bioff, the IA was also allied to interstate trucking & the longshoremen (vital to movie distribution). He was very helpful to the majors in keeping new players out of the film business. From a business perspective, there's no good economic argument why workers' rights shouldn't be seen as a commodity to be bought & sold just as policemen or politicians were in those days.
I feel I have to add here that we have always been an honest & democratic union, as far as anyone I know can tell. If it doesn't sound too self-interested (& it shouldn't in this forum) I'm glad we joined the IA in the 50's. Who would listen to a bunch of cartoonists if there wasn't a chance the projectionists would walk out in sympathy.
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