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WORKERS UNITE: ARTÏSTS ORGANIZE

Stage Set for Action

With a few exceptions, artists remained outside the considerable union activity among American workers in the late nineteenth century. Yet during the first two decades of the twentieth century—as owners, producers, and managers in several creative fields formed business trusts to increase their bargaining power with artists—artists began to organize, seeking control over their work and careers. The political atmosphere of the day was also conducive to union activity, owing in part to the strength of Progressive reform movements and the bargaining power American unions gained during the war years.

Early Organization

Playwrights were among the first artists to organize during the 1910s, forming the Dramatists Guild in 1912 to help individual playwrights bargain with producers. Actors were next, forming the Actors Equity Association on 26 May 1913 in response to what they felt was inequitable treatment from theatrical management. By then a few people controlled the majority of the theaters across America. The most powerful of these producer-managers were Abe Erlanger, Mark Klaw, the brothers Charles and Daniel Frohman, Martin Beck, partners B. F. Keith and E. F. Albee, and the Shubert brothers. In 1900 the managers formed a central booking service—later formalized as the United Booking Offices of America (UBO)—to which actors had to pay a fee to get work in affiliated theaters. Actors who chose to work in non-UBO theaters were blacklisted. By the mid 1910s the UBO controlled bookings for nearly fifteen thousand theaters nationwide. Actors Equity was formed not only to fight the booking fee but also to request specific benefits such as rehearsal pay, reimbursement of travel expenses, right of appeal in case of dismissal, and advance notice of closings. Actors Equity, which admitted women as well as men, was strongest in New York City, but it also had chapters in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.

The Mid 1910s

Throughout the 1910s Actors Equity continued to negotiate these issues with two management groups, the National Association of Theatrical Producing Managers and the United Managers' Protective Association. In 1917 the two sides agreed to institute a standard contract that addressed many of the actors' grievances. After it was drawn up, however, the contract was ignored by the majority of producers. Meanwhile, songwriters had organized as well, forming the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) in 1914. One of that group's first acts was to sue a New York City restaurant whose orchestra was giving unauthorized performances of numbers from Victor Herbert's operetta Sweethearts. Composers believed that they should receive royalties when their works were played in theaters, at concerts, and in other entertainment venues. Ruling on the ASCAP case in 1917, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "If music did not pay, it would be given up."

The Equity Strike of 1919

By the end of the decade actors were still not faring well in their negotiations with theater management, which had formed yet another group, the Producing Managers' Association (PMA). By 1919 almost all American industries were full of unhappy workers who had little bargaining power during a postwar recession. That year four million workers went on strike. Among them were some two thousand Broadway actors, singers, dancers, musicians, and stagehands. On the first day of August nearly fourteen hundred Actors Equity members in New York City signed a petition demanding that the PMA formally recognize their union; five days later nearly twice that number of actors met in the Astor Ballroom and resolved to strike. The walkout, led by Frank Bacon, the star of the extremely popular and profitable play Lightnin', began on 7 August, shutting down a dozen Broadway shows immediately and darkening another two dozen theaters within the next two weeks. During that time the Shubert Brothers organization sued Actors Equity for $500,000, and Florenz Ziegfeld secured temporary restraining orders against striking actors in his Follies, Both of these attempts to stop the strike were ultimately ineffective. On 12 August, Broadway chorus girls formed an auxiliary union called Chorus Equity, which promptly struck; on 16 August stagehands and musicians joined the action; on 26 August the Teamsters Union backed the walkout.

A Significant Victory

Like the striking actors, representatives of management held demonstrations and claimed loyalty to the theater. (One of them was George M. Cohan, who by then was more invested in the theater world as a producer and director than as a songwriter and actor.) But the strikers won the public's heart by staging a parade down Broadway and giving Actors Equity benefit performances at the Lexington Avenue Opera House. The fact that many of the strikers were stars—W. C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, Ethel and Lionel Barrymore, Lillian Russell, and Ed Wynn were among those who joined the picket lines—also swayed public opinion in the actors' favor. On 6 September the PMA knew it was beaten and agreed to the actors' demands. The Actors Equity strike had a happier ending than most strikes: there was no violence, and from then on the union was formally recognized by management—a victory most unions did not realize until after the passage of the Wagner Act of 1935, which gave federal protection for union activity. Actors Equity is still the main union for Broadway actors.