The Agony and the Ecstasy: Charlton Heston and the Screen Actors Guild

Charlton Heston, one of Hollywood's most prominent political activists, devoted much of his time to the Screen Actors Guild. Throughout the course of Heston's long acting career, the guild shifted its policy emphasis on several occasions. During the 1960s, when Heston served on the executive board, the guild adhered to its traditional strategy of focusing on wages, benefits, and working conditions. At that point, Heston took a moderate approach toward guild business, often showing his willingness to compromise. In the 1970s, the guild leadership was captured by more "liberal" actors who wished to expand the union's activities into social and political channels not directly related to the job of acting. In the 1980s, the guild's leadership became even more militantly liberal. The resulting policy shifts provoked a reaction from Heston and a number of other conservative actors. It quickly became evident that Heston was no longer willing to compromise; he began to take an ideological, hard-line approach to guild matters. He not only led the conservatives in a successful campaign to return the guild to its original policy focus, but he also shaped federal labor policy with his efforts. Convinced that safety mechanisms were needed to protect guild members from a politically active board in the future, Heston advocated federal policies that would allow union members to withhold part of their dues if they disagreed with the political activities undertaken by union leadership. His prominence as a well-known actor, and his relish for engaging in public affairs, allowed him to have a significant impact on labor policy in the United States.

Industry regulations required that Heston join the guild, a "union shop," when he received his first movie role in Dark City (1950). When the guild officers recruited him to become the third vice president in 1960, he joined a fairly conservative governing body. Since the guild's founding in 1933, the board had insisted on moderation, in part because of the stance of the powerful studios toward labor unions. Producers promised to blacklist any actor who participated in union organizing outside the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), an organization established in 1927 to represent all aesthetic workers—producers, writers, directors, actors, and technicians—and to negotiate between the groups to solve differences. The fact that the academy was not solely devoted to the actors' interests, combined with its highly oligarchic governing system, led many actors to grow frustrated with the company-controlled union.¹ Moreover, the academy could not prevent pay cuts in 1933 or thwart the behavior of overbearing producers. Directors often shot for long hours without breaks, subjected actors to uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous conditions, and indulged in generally unscrupulous behavior. Therefore, in June 1933, eighteen actors officially chartered the Screen Actors Guild. The ragtag group set forth its goals—to correct the abusive behavior of producers and directors and to negotiate better wages and working conditions for actors. The antilabor climate in Hollywood made the group's decision to organize outside the academy a bold one, so the charter members of the guild felt it necessary not to appear overly bellicose in a business that relied on favorable public opinion. The choice to form a craft guild, rather than a union, was a deliberate move to avoid added conflict. According to the historian David Prindle, the founders were socially and politically conservative and "would have been uncomfortable in any group that featured 'union' in its title." Thus, the actors chose the term "guild," a name that "harked back to the medieval associations of artisans."²

In addition to its founding, the guild demonstrated its conservatism through its bargaining practices and policies. First, the guild distinguished itself from its fellow craft guilds with its guarded stance toward strikes. Whereas most unions needed only a simple majority to launch a strike, the guild would not undergo a work stoppage unless 75 percent of its members agreed to do so. The founders believed the guild would be a more effective bargaining agent if its strikes were less frequent and were supported by...