FEATURES
The Great Society: Highlights from the Early Years of the Editors Guild
 Ben Lewis in the M-G-M cutting room in 1933. Photo Courtesy of Marc Wanamaker/Bison Archives |
1937
In the throes of the Great Depression, Hollywood was a notorious anti-union factory-town. Central to these efforts was the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, conceived in 1927 by Louis B. Mayer––not just as a publicity extravaganza, but emphatically as a company union. In the years leading up to the founding of the editors’ first union, the Society of Motion Picture Film Editors (SMPFE) in 1937, there were a number of crucial events that laid the groundwork for choosing a union. The choice was pragmatic. Events leading up to the founding of the union made the choice a prudent one and clearly reduced the risk of contentiousness among the editorial community.
Hollywood studios imposed numerous pay cuts and lay-offs between 1927 and 1931. Soon after the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933, studios announced a stunning 50 percent pay cut. Screenwriters and screen actors, feeling betrayed by the Academy in its capacity as their bargaining agent, resigned and formed the Screen Writers Guild and the Screen Actors Guild. That year, the IATSE––a presence in Hollywood since 1909––struck Columbia Studios, hoping to win jurisdiction of sound technicians there. This led to a range of jurisdictional disputes. Much of Hollywood was in turmoil.
 I. James Wilkinson, right, reviewing footage of New Faces of 1937 with one of the RKO Studio editors in 1937. Photo Courtesy of Marc Wanamaker/Bison Archives |
In Gerald Horne’s book Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930-1950: Moguls, Mobsters, Stars, Reds and Trade Unionists (University of Texas Press, 2001), Edmond DePatie, a Warner Bros. vice president, is quoted, saying that workers at the time were “exploited en masse.” It was “not uncommon to work people as late as 11 and 12 o’clock at night” and “every Saturday night, 52 weeks a year.”
Guild members who joined the SMPFE in the late 1930s agreed, referring to work at this time as “slave labor.” All of them readily endorsed the significance of the union, saying it applied welcome disincentives to the long hours that were rampant in post-production before 1937. In those years, it wasn’t uncommon for “cutters” and their assistants to sleep in their cutting rooms, hoping against hope for something called premium pay.
 Crossroads of the World in 1937. Photo Courtesy of Marc Wanamaker/Bison Archives |
The National Labor Relations Act was signed into law in 1935, establishing the right of workers to join trade unions and bargain collectively. The Screen Directors Guild (now the DGA), formed in 1936, led a boycott of the Academy Awards ceremony. None of the guilds had yet been recognized as bargaining agents by the studios. The Academy, under the leadership of director Frank Capra, quickly got out of the labor relations business.
Hollywood’s unionization drive was given a boost on April 12, 1937, when the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Act, passed by Congress two years prior. The ruling forced the studios to recognize the unions for actors, writers and directors. By May 9, the Screen Actors Guild completed its first contract with Hollywood producers.
 Philip Cahn, left, editing Arabian Nights at Universal Pictures in 1942. With him is his son Dann, who joined the Motion Picture Film Editors that year. Photo courtesy of Dann Cahn |
On May 20, 1937, the Society of Motion Picture Film Editors was founded by editors I. James Wilkinson, Ben Lewis and Philip Cahn. Four days later, the Society’s Board of Directors first met. At the third meeting of the Board on June 7, the initial slate of officers was elected: Edmund D. Hannan, President; Frederick B. Richards, Vice President; Edward Dmytryk, Secretary; and Martin G. Cohn, Treasurer. At that meeting, it was also decided that the Society’s offices would be located at 1509 Crossroads of the World on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. William Sharp was hired the following year as the Society’s first Business Agent. Society membership was a solid 571 men and women, encompassing picture and sound editors, assistants, apprentices and librarians.
By November 15 of that year, the organization ratified its first contract with the producers, increasing salaries and improving working conditions. Feature editors now earned $100 a week, second editors (trailers and shorts) $75, and sound editors and librarians about $60. They each worked a 54-hour week over the course of six days, with time-and-a-half on Sundays and double time on holidays. Assistants and apprentices were paid an hourly rate––assistants earned $1 an hour.
1940
 Hal C. Kern, left, and James E. Newcom, editing Gone with the Wind (1939), for which they won the Oscar for Best Editing in 1940. |
The SMPFE held its first dinner-dance at the Florentine Gardens in Hollywood on September 20, 1940. An early playground of the stars, the Gardens was known for its huge bar and dance floor, and lush floor shows. The evening was the result of the “social gathering” proposed at the Society’s June 6 Board of Directors meeting by M-G-M’s Fredrick Y. Smith, who was named head of the organizing committee.
No photographs or personal recollections of the event survive, but something of the spirit of the evening is left to us in the form of a tattered copy of the impressive 72-page program book, some of which is reproduced here. Director Frank Capra, President of the Screen Directors Guild, wrote the foreward. Praise for the editor’s craft came from people like director Norman Taurog, who said, “The finest jobs of film editing are those in which the editing is not apparent.” Dorothy Arzner, herself a former editor, said that editors were “in the only field that is a school for direction.” Producer and former editor Sam Zimbalist painted a picture of the harried film editor as set upon by everyone from the star to the writer to the director. And with tongue somewhat in cheek, Hal C. Kern, fresh from his 1939 Oscar win with James E. Newcom for editing Gone with the Wind, wrote of editors and assistants alike, “If we would count to five before springing some of our ‘great ideas,’ nine times out of ten we would keep our mouths shut.” Sound advice from David Selznick’s film editor.
 Edmund D. Hannan, President of SMPFE 1937-40. |
The program book included congratulatory ads from the likes of Jack Benny, Pacific Title and Art, Pathe Labs, Hal Roach, Technicolor, Hal Wallace, Spencer Tracy, Hal Roach, Mattson’s of Hollywood, Edgar Kennedy, Consolidated Film Industries, Bing Crosby, Clark Gable, Rita Hayworth, Hedda Hopper, Alfred Hitchcock and Groman Mortuary.
Nineteen-forty was a watershed year in other respects. Music Editors were admitted to the Society as an official classification, editors in New York began working on forming their own Guild, John W. Lehners was hired as the Society’s Business Agent (a position he would hold until 1972, minus a two-year stint in WWII) and, perhaps most importantly, in February of that year, Society members gained a 10 percent wage raise over the first contract with producers.
1943
On January 1, 1943, the SMPFE published the first issue of The Leader, the organization’s debut newsletter and precursor to today’s Editors Guild Magazine. However, Society President Fredrick Y. Smith of MGM seemed less than optimistic about the periodical’s prospects for success. “Out of approximately 700 members in our society, there are some who probably will not give two hoots for this sort of publication and who may not even be interested enough to read it…” Smith was astute enough, however, to know that the majority of members were “interested in the welfare of their society.”
 Fredrick Y. Smith, President of SMPFE 1941-42, resigned in January 1943 due to active duty in the US Naval Reserve. |
Amid the reporting about raise increases for overscale members, and adjustments and collections of wage claims, was a great deal of concern about members who had joined up or been inducted into the armed forces. As of this date, 214 members were serving, a number that was soon to increase, “thanks to Tojo and Schickelgruber,” according to Bulletin Committee member Richard Currier. The board, however, did its bit, cutting its meetings to once a month from every week in an effort to conserve precious tire rubber.
Alas, this first Guild publication was not to last, and ceased publication in 1944 after just six issues, when the Society affiliated with the IATSE.
Speaking of IATSE, editors on the East Coast followed in the footsteps of their fellow soundmen, cameramen and projectionists who had already been unionized by the IA, and formed their own union. IATSE granted East Coast editors a charter in 1943 and Motion Picture Film Editors, Local 771 was born.
1944
When the Society of Motion Picture Film Editors (SMPFE) agreed to accept a charter from the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employes (IATSE) in 1944, it was at a time in Hollywood when unions faced widespread jurisdictional disputes and attempts at consolidation. The IATSE was the logical choice. Having established itself in Hollywood in 1909, it had become an effective bargaining agent for many categories of film work. It should also be noted that in 1944, three years had passed since a corruption scandal led to the conviction of two former IA leaders on racketeering charges, growing out of their close ties with organized crime boss Frank Nitti. By 1944, these influences had been repudiated by the IATSE and the IA was determined to leave this disgraceful episode behind it.
A number of offers were made to the SMPFE to combine with other Hollywood labor organizations. Most notable among them was an offer by the Screen Directors Guild, which would have included only picture editors. There were similar offers for music editors and effects editors. Those and others were turned down. But, on July 17, 1944, by a vote of 446 to 119, the Society of Motion Picture Film Editors voted to become a part of the IATSE.
On August 2, 1944, IATSE Presi-dent Richard Walsh awarded a new charter to editorial workers, and the Society of Motion Picture Film Editors became Motion Picture Film Editors, Local 776. The membership stood at approximately 900.
For former Editors Guild president Stan Frazen, who joined the Society in 1942, choosing the IA was simple: The IA offered to take all editorial workers, not just the picture editors, like the Directors Guild proposed. Splitting up the editors was not an option, according to Frazen. All of the members didn’t feel that way at the time. Dann Cahn, ACE (son of Philip, co-founder of the Society), who joined the SMPFE in 1942, thought that editors might have done better with the directors, and that perhaps the assistants could have been brought in later.
“I think one of the reasons the Society voted to go with the IA in 1944 was all the young members,” posited Gerard J. Wilson, who joined the organization as a sound editor when it was founded in 1937 and, like so many others, enlisted in the Armed Forces during World War II. “There was a lot of new people working at the studios who never would have been able to get jobs if it hadn’t been for the war––and these younger people knew that joining the IA would stabilize their employment situation after the war ended. Because our memberships were on suspension while we were in the service, we had no vote on the merger. I think, though, that it would have happened sooner or later anyway.”
Cahn agreed with that assessment. “They had a vote of those who were here,” he said. “I was in the service making training films during most of World War II. When I came back, we were in the IA.”
Music and picture editor Edward Haire, another 1937 alumnus of the society, noted that when the IA vote came, there was an unusually high number of women working in editorial because of the war. As a result, according to Haire, they played a leading role in selecting the IA.
Women in the Cutting Room
 Editor Viola Lawrence and actor Chester Morris review footage from The Devil's Playground (1937). Photo courtesy of Photofest |
Women had made their presence felt in Hollywood cutting rooms early on. As Cecil B. DeMille’s primary editor, Anne Bauchens began editing in 1915 and was the first women to win an Academy Award for editing DeMille’s Northwest Mounted Police. Margaret Booth and Barbara McLean both began editing in the 1920s and went on to become notable editorial department heads––Booth at MGM starting in 1939 and McLean at Fox a decade later. McLean won the editing Oscar for Henry King’s Wilson in 1944, while Booth was awarded an Honorary Academy Award for her contributions to the art of editing in 1978 (see Editors Guild Magazine MAR-APR 06 for a feature article on these three women).
Editors and editing room workers who joined the SMPFE soon after it was formed in 1937, uniformly confirmed the common observation that women did well in the ranks of editorial during those early days, better than they did in other lines of work––in and outside the industry. Editors, retired and active, have a range of opinions as to why women fared as well as they did.
 Bea Selck, music editor on Victory Through Air Power at the Disney Studios in 1943. Photo Courtesy of Marc Wanamaker/Bison Archives |
Mary Steward, who joined the Society in 1937 and worked as a negative cutter, a librarian and an editorial assistant, recalled that while there were relatively few women in editorial, those that advanced did so according to their skill and temperament. “There were women who did very well, and they were successful more or less on their own,” she said. “But they were more aggressive women, whereas women like myself always stood back.” She was a negative cutter at 20th Century Pictures during the early 1930s, she said, but when the independent studio merged with Fox Film Corporation in 1935, things changed. “When I went over to the Fox Studio, the negative cutters were all men––and they didn’t want me,” she continued. “When asked what I wanted to do, I said, ‘I guess I want to work in the editorial department,’ so that’s how I got there [and became a librarian]. If I had my life to live over again, I think I’d do it a little different.” After a pause, she added, “But it was a good life and I enjoyed every minute of it.”
The conventional wisdom, unchanged until just recently, expected women to show a discreet deference to men, according to legendary editor Dede Allen, ACE. She pointed out that professional women were openly admonished not to take jobs away from men with families.
According to Dann Cahn, ACE, successful women editors were thought to be especially good at accommodating the demands of their male bosses. “Women knew how to handle directors’ egos,” he said. “Being an editor under the studio regime and working on the big pictures, you really had to know how to handle people.”
Music editor Edward Haire agreed that lots of “lady editors” were drawn to editing at a Moviola, because it was like running a sewing machine, and “was not like manual labor” nor required as much heavy lifting as other film crafts did. He also noted that women “filled the gap in editorial” when men went off to war in the early 1940s. But he does recall women editors before the war: “I remember Viola Lawrence at Columbia Pictures; she was one of the studio’s top editors.”
Stan Frazen remembers many women starting in the library and becoming music editors. “There was one woman editor, Dorothy Spencer,” Frazen recalled. “She used to come and visit my cutting room; terrific lady. She cut Stagecoach in 1939 and got an Oscar nomination for it,” said Frazen, who was quick to link Spencer’s success with his own daughter Nancy’s ability to work as an editor today.
 Anne Bauchens was the first woman to win an Oscar for Editing for Cecil B. DeMille's Northwest Mounted Police (1940). Photo Courtesy of Marc Wanamaker/Bison Archives |
“Women did very well in editorial because they were very patient and editing requires a lot of patience,” posited Elmo Williams, another 1937 alumnus editor. He recalled that women “were very good at details, very good at organizing and keeping all of their trims. They were better than we men,” he acknowledged. “At the time, we grudgingly accepted the fact that they were very capable.” Williams also admitted to having met the three most powerful women editors of the Golden Age: Bauchens, Booth and McLean. “Yeah, I knew all of them,” he said. “We used to have lunch together sometimes. But for the most part, men and women kind of hob-knobbed with their own gender.”
Perhaps the most fascinating theory of why women were well represented in editorial was put forth by a long-time editor who shall remain anonymous. He surmised that during the Depression, women may have taken advantage of the relative frequency of strikes before the union began in 1937 and took over vacated editors’ jobs, allowing them to avoid the widespread barriers of seniority and sexism.
Compiled by Jeff Burman and Michael Kunkes.
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