Weavers of Dreams, Unite!: Actors' Unionism in Early Twentieth-Century America

Images

Lee and J. J. Shubert, key figures in the American theater industry and the AEA’s most formidable opponents during its formative years. Courtesy The Shubert Archive. Holmes_Weavers text.indd 1 12/7/12 8:28 AM Members of the At 9:45 company parading down Broadway in the pouring rain, August 1919. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIGggbain -29272. Striking actors congregate outside a theater on West Forty-fifth Street in New York City, August 1919. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-B2–4997–10. Holmes_Weavers text.indd 2 12/7/12 8:28 AM A striking chorus girl taking the Equity message out on to the streets of New York City, August 1919. Courtesy Corbis Images. Holmes_Weavers text.indd 3 12/7/12 8:28 AM As this series of cartoons by Norman Borschardt demonstrates, contemporary commentators were quick to identify the actors’ strike of 1919 as an entertainment spectacle as well as an industrial dispute. Cartoon by Norman Borschardt. Courtesy The Shubert Archive. Holmes_Weavers text.indd 4 12/7/12 8:28 AM Actor Brandon Tynan leads the cast of the Equity benefit at the Lexington Avenue Opera House in the cry of “Equity! Equity! Equity!” August 19, 1919. Actors’ Equity Association Photographs Collection, Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Tamiment Library, New York University. The Grandi Brothers’ tent show photographed in Pratt, Kansas, in 1921, the year that Bob Grandi hired habitual drunkard Billy Grigg. Photo courtesy of Southwest Collection /Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, Bickerstaff Collection, SWCPC 366-E5. Holmes_Weavers text.indd 5 12/7/12 8:28 AM In the eyes of many commentators both inside and outside the film industry, the AEA embodied an outmoded theatrical tradition that had no place in the motion picture studios. Editorial Cartoon “And the Villain Still Pursued Her!” by Edmund Gale, Los Angeles Times, June 1929, section 1, p. 1. Copyright © 1929. Los Angeles Times. Reprinted with permission. Holmes_Weavers text.indd 6 12/7/12 8:28 AM ...