James M. Cain and the American Authors' Authority 9780292755949

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James M. Cain and the American Authors' Authority

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American Studies Series William H. Goetzmann, Editor

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James M. Cain and the American Authors' Authority

by Richard Fine

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS, AUSTIN

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Copyright © 1992 by Richard Fine All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 1992 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fine, Richard. James M. Cain and the American authors' authority / Richard Fine. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (American studies series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN O-292-74024-7

i. Cain, James M. (James Mallahan), 1892-1977—Political activity. 2. Authorship—Political aspects—United States—History—20th century. 3. Politics and literature—United States— History—20th century. 4. American literature—Societies, etc.—History—20th century. 5. Novelists, American—20th century—Political activity. 6. Authorship—Societies, etc.— History—20th century. I. Title. II. Series. PS3505.A3113Z66 1992 813'.52—dc20 91-46895 CIP

ISBN 978-0-292-75594-9 (library e-book) ISBN 978-0-292-75595-6 (individual e-book)

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To Sara, Mary, and Alice

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Contents

Abbreviations

ix

Preface

xi

Acknowledgments

xvii

PART i. The Profession of Authorship

i

i. The Origins of the Profession of Authorship

3

2. James M. Cain and the Literary Marketplace

31

3. Writers Organize (1883-1946)

60

PART 2. The American Authors' Authority

79 7

4. The Genesis of the American Authors Authority (January 1945-July 1946) 5. A War of Words (August-October 1946)

81 116

6. The Second AAA Plan (November 1 9 4 6 April 1947)

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161

7. The Muse and the Mug (May-June 1947)

189

8. The End of the AAA

214

Notes

245

Bibliography

265

Index

275

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Abbreviations

AAA AAAA AFM AG AL ALTC AMC AMPAS AMPTP ASCAP ATFP AWA BMI BSA CFA CP or CPUSA CSOM CSU DG EPC HUAC IATSE ICCASP MBA MPA

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American Authors' Authority American Association of Advertising Agencies American Federation of Musicians Authors Guild Authors League Authors League Television Committee Associated Magazine Contributors Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Alliance of Television Film Producers American Writers Association Broadcast Music Incorporated British Screenwriters Association Committee for Action (in the Authors Guild) Communist Party of the United States of America Committee on the Sale of Original Material Conference of Studio Unions Dramatists Guild Economic Program Committee (of the SWG) House Committee on UnAmerican Activities International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Independent Citizens Committee for the Arts, Sciences and Professions Minimum Basic Agreement (of DG, SWG, RWG) Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals

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X

MPA MWA NIRA NLRB PEN RWG SWG TWOC WGA

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Abbreviations

Managers Protective Association Mystery Writers of America National Industrial Recovery Act National Labor Relations Board International Association of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists Radio Writers Guild Screen Writers Guild Television Writers Organizing Committee Writers Guild of America

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Preface

SOME EIGHT YEARS AGO, I happened across the extensive collection of papers that author James M. Cain donated to the Library of Congress shortly before his death in 1977. There I first uncovered evidence of Cain's remarkable effort in 1946 to create what he called the American Authors' Authority (AAA), which he promised would give writers unimagined new power in the literary marketplace. I also learned of the contentious debate Cain's proposal prompted within the literary community, a year-long controversy much in the news at the time but now long forgotten. I have been following the paper trail of the American Authors' Authority ever since. Simply put, Cain conceived of the AAA as a central copyright repository that would hold in trust its members' copyrights and the subsidiary rights to them. It would scrutinize each contract for a writer's work and then execute only those agreements that leased rather than sold the rights it held in trust; it would never negotiate for writers, but only ensure that the contracts that writers or their agents negotiated conformed to the licensing provision. Cain also proposed that the AAA would keep a central record of all rights and royalty arrangements, freeing writers from a chore for which they were ill-equipped. As trustee, the Authority would be well positioned legally to protect its members in plagiarism or breach-of-contract cases; it would also lobby vigorously for copyright and tax legislation more favorable to writers. Cain's plan was extraordinarily ambitious—he aimed to organize all writers who owned their copyrights in all fields—and, given the prevailing economics of the postwar marketplace, his scheme was nothing short of revolutionary. No attempt to organize their profession ever so divided American writers or provoked so much public controversy. Conservatives in Hollywood, Washington, and the press saw in the AAA a brazen attempt by the Communist Party (CP) to subvert free speech and

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a free press, and Cain's plan became very m u c h implicated in the wave of anti-Communism soon to crest in the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (HUAC) hearings and McCarthyism. Within the literary community, the argument over the specific provisions of the proposal quickly turned into a searching debate about the status and role of the writer in contemporary American society. Significantly, the AAA marked the last chance, as it turned out, for American authors to rewrite the economic equations that governed their professional lives. If the AAA movement ultimately failed, the history of its failure, chronicled in the following chapters, reveals m u c h about the complicated literary and political landscape as America emerged from the Second World War. Cain's proposal prompted a kind of collective identity crisis among American writers, a self-examination made especially urgent by the ideological extremism and personal opportunism of the postwar Red Scare. The debate over the American Authors 7 Authority ranged over issues small and great, from the minutiae of publishing contracts, the complex history of copyright law, and the intricacies of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, to the dynamics of author-publisher relations, the nature of authoritarianism, and the duties of a writer in a free society. In so doing, it defined m u c h of the professional context in which American literature was created at mid-century, and its history serves as a primer of sorts on the complicated interplay of commerce, law, technology, and art that makes up the literary marketplace. I have divided this book into two sections. The first maps out the general context for understanding Cain's plan and the controversy it stirred. Its opening chapter traces the history of the profession of authorship, focusing on the development in England of both literary commerce and the concept of copyright and their relevance to the American experience. A second focuses on the growth of the American literary marketplace in the first half of the twentieth century, and a third concerns the various guilds that writers organized to advance their professional interests. Although a lengthy preamble to the AAA drama itself, this first section is meant as a short history of the literary marketplace and the profession of authorship up to the time Cain launched the AAA in early 1946. The second, longer, section narrates the controversy over the AAA as it played out over time in three principal arenas: the Authors League (AL) and its guilds, which considered the plan; the national press, which so fulminated over its reputed Communist direction

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Preface

xm

and intent; and among the community of individual writers themselves, who ultimately determined the AAA's fate. Chapter 4 explores the genesis of Cain's plan within the Screen Writers Guild (SWG) and examines the first detailed version of the Authority, which appeared in July 1946. Chapter 5 relates the initial responses of writers, the guilds, and the press to the AAA and details the negotiations between the Authors League and the Screen Writers Guild over its implementation; it concludes with an account of the riotous series of meetings in New York in late October, at which Cain tangled with James T. Farrell, Dorothy Thompson, Elmer Rice, and Marc Connelly, among others, but also won over more than four hundred other writers to his cause. Cain continued to try to win support for the AAA, in part by revising his plan to meet criticism, and two chapters detail the nature and fate of this altered plan. A final chapter explores the reasons for the scheme's failure and also briefly examines the AAA's significance in light of developments within the profession of authorship and the literary marketplace in the last forty years. I began this project with a basic question: Why did Cain's plan, which to my mind seemed eminently sensible and full of promise, alarm so many writers and ignite such anger and violent rhetoric? Chapter 8 assays an answer to this question, by placing the AAA debate within the context of American writers' unsuccessful efforts to adapt their profession to the realities of the twentieth-century literary marketplace. Several individuals and institutions helped greatly in piecing together the story of the American Authors' Authority. Mrs. Alice Piper, Cain's executrix, granted me access to his papers, and James Hutson and his staff in the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress proved their efficient and informed custodians. Cleo Paturis, James T. Farrell's executor, granted me permission to examine letters and other items pertinent to Farrell's involvement in the AAA controversy. Kathleen Reed and Georgiana Ziegler located relevant files in the huge and still incompletely catalogued Farrell Collection in the University of Pennsylvania's Van Pelt Library. Prof. Dennis Flynn, of Bentley College, Farrell's biographer, also helped m e find my way to the appropriate boxes in the Farrell Collection. My special thanks to Marge White of the Writers Guild of America, west, Inc. and Helen Stephenson of the Authors Guild for tracking down files now forty years old and arranging permission for me to inspect them. The staffs of the following libraries were also

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particularly helpful: the Wisconsin Center for Theater Research at the University of Wisconsin, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, the Billy Rose Theatre Collection in the Center for the Performing Arts of the New York Public Library, and the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, Scotland, where I investigated the history of the English book trade, copyright, and authorship. A Virginia Commonwealth University Grant-in-Aid in 1986 helped me start this project, and I completed the bulk of the work on it while a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow in 1988-1989. This support was invaluable. Gordon Kelly of the University of Maryland, Janice Radway of Duke University, Dorothy Scura of the University of Tennessee, William Goetzmann at the University of Texas, Jim Kinney here at Virginia Commonwealth, and Robert Bennett of the Universite de Caen all lent their support or advice to this project in one way or another over the years. I also owe a large debt to Roy Hoopes, w h o m I don't know personally, but whose biography of James M. Cain led me not only to the Cain papers at the Library of Congress but also to the man himself. I have also benefitted from and very m u c h appreciate the fine work of the staff at the University of Texas Press— Carolyn Cates Wylie, Barbara Spielman, Lisa Tippett, Kathy Bork, and especially Frankie Westbrook. The following individuals were helpful in obtaining permission to quote from copyrighted or unpublished material: Jill Frisch of the New Yorker; Doreen Braverman, Cheryl Rhoden, and Vicky Summers of the Writers Guild of America, west, Inc.; Jessica Cooper of the Wisconsin Historical Society; Robert Axelrod of Shirmer Books; Patrick Lawlor of the Butler Library, Columbia University; Nancy Shawcross of the Van Pelt Library, the University of Pennsylvania; Cynthia Farar of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin; Donald Crafton of the Center for Film and Theater Research at the University of Wisconsin; and Nancy Johnson of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. My thanks to them all. Let me note a few fussy details about style. Much of this book concerns the workings of the Authors League and its constituent guilds. None of these organizations now uses an apostrophe in its name but in the past some have, and in references to the guilds the apostrophe appears capriciously: Authors 7 League, Dramatist's Guild, Screen Writers' Guild, and the like. Even guild officials often so erred. In this case, clarity and convenience happily converge, so following the recent practice of these organizations I have dropped the

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apostrophe in all cases. Also, I have often had to refer to organizations and committees with long and unwieldy names and so have reluctantly resorted to using acronyms or abbreviations, stated in parentheses after the first full mention in the text. A complete list of abbreviations is in the front of this book.

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Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to quote from various materials: The Estate of James M. Cain; Alice M. Piper, literary executrix: Quotations from letters of James M. Cain to the following: Edmund Wilson, 29 June 1940; Harrison Smith, 8 February 1947; Marjorie Sirich, 31 March 1938; Wolcott Gibbs, 16 April 1938; H. L. Mencken, 16 July 1947; Sara Maurino, 28 September 1946; Morris Markey, 23 September 1946; Taylor Caldwell, 15 March 1947; Arthur Strawn, 12 April 1947; Stefan Heym, 7 June 1947; Phyllis Gordon Demarest, 14 July 1947; Hedda Hopper, 3 September 1947; George Sokolsky, 22 November 1947; Cyril Clemons, 18 August 1947; Hedda Hopper, 6 September 1947; Rex Beach, 13 July 1947; Eve Bennett Haberl, 27 August 1947; Christopher LaFarge, 31 July 1946; and Elmer Rice, 18 September 1946 and 14 October 1946. The Estate of James T Farrell, Cleo Paturis, literary executrix, and the Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania: Quotations from letters of James T Farrell to Elmer Rice, 3 October 1946; and to Ward Moore, 28 April 1947. The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin: Quotations from the letter of Maxwell Anderson to Alvin Johnson, 17 November 1918. The New Yorker: Reprint of 'The Muse and the Mug" by E. B. White. Reprinted by permission; © 1946, 1974 E. B. White. Originally in The New Yorker. The Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania: Quotation from the letter of Ward Moore to J. T Farrell, 21 April 1947. Center for Film and Theater Research, University of Wisconsin: Quotation from the letter of Emmet Lavery to Screen Writers Guild, 20 October 1947. Writers Guild of America, west, Inc.: Quotations from the following files: The American Authors7 Authority (1947); Sale of Orig-

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A cknowledgm en ts

inal Material (1945); AAA Overall Committee—Correspondence with Marc Connelly (1946-1947); AAA Overall Committee; AAA Subcommittee on PR (Press Clippings); AAA Overall Committee— Correspondence; Response to AAA Supplement; AAA Subcommittee on Strategy; Minutes of AAA Overall Committee; General Membership Meetings (1946).

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i. The Origins of the Profession of Authorship Literature is Business as well as Art, and almost as soon. —WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

ON A BALMY SUMMER'S DAY in June 1945, several hundred influential liberals who had organized as the Independent Citizens Committee for the Arts, Sciences and Professions (ICCASP) gathered in the comfortable surroundings of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to consider their place in postwar America. Carl Carmer, president of the PEN Club, told one session that he could safely predict boom years ahead in the literary marketplace, given the dramatic increases in reading during the war, the great vitality of textbook and educational publishing, and the expansion plans already announced or anticipated for the theater, the movies, radio, and television. Indeed, "full employment" for writers might even be in the cards.1 Harrison Smith attended the ICCASP convention, and the veteran editor of the Saturday Review of Literature left convinced that it was "a good profession to be an American writer today" and that the future looked brighter still. He predicted that within a few years, "the intelligent writer who has to live in the proverbial garret will be hard to find." Soldiers and civilians alike had taken to reading during the war, and books would flood the market once paper was again freely available to printers. Entrepreneurs were planning new magazines, newspapers, and publishing houses. The anticipated end of Broadway's longtime hegemony in the commercial theater and the growth of regional companies would give more playwrights work nationwide. The motion picture industry needed writers more than ever as production neared an all-time high. To Smith all of this meant that, "in the future, when a young man leaves college to write his first novel, his father and mother will not feel betrayed but may feel that he is entering a career that sometimes offers as much wealth in a few years as any other profession or business in the nation." 2 A continent away in Hollywood, veteran author James M. Cain similarly considered the future of his trade and reached a strikingly

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4

The Profession of Authorship

different conclusion. He characterized the American writer's professional situation as a "plight" truly "desperate." 3 Everywhere Cain looked he found the writer at the mercy of predatory publishers, rapacious Hollywood producers, cavalier editors, unscrupulous advertising agencies, and an indifferent Congress and court system. The remedy he proposed—concerted, collective action by American authors themselves—Cain gave little chance of success. Still, he was convinced that if writers could act together in their own selfinterest, if they could take advantage of the shifting forces changing the marketplace, they could win for themselves at a stroke rights long denied them. So, in 1946, Cain unveiled a daring plan to revolutionize literary economics, his proposal to establish what he called the American Authors 7 Authority. Cain's decision to join such a revolt of American writers, m u c h less to lead it, startled many of his friends. A craggy-faced, myopic bear of a man, Cain often impressed people as the stereotypically irascible and hard-drinking newspaperman he had indeed been before landing in Hollywood in 1934. He had never been especially active in writers 7 organizations, and, in fact, writing had not even been his first choice of career; his one passion in life was the opera, and behind Cain's tough-guy public persona lay a sensitive and cultured man who had turned to writing only after admitting the limitations of his own voice. He was a highly paid screenwriter at Universal Studios in 1946 and the celebrated author of best-selling novels; however, his screenwriting career had disappointed h i m deeply, and he sensed that he had already done his best work as a novelist. Cain's fiction was controversial in its day. His work usually featured unsavory characters who typically lusted then murdered, people who—in Cain's own formulation—found a dream come true only to see it turn into a nightmare. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), "Double Indemnity" (1936), and Serenade (1937) shocked readers and critics. Although Cain implied more sex and violence than he actually portrayed, and did so in language that was at its worst only mildly profane, the lurid, bosomy cover art that kept his sales brisk in the reprint racks of drugstores and railway stations confirmed for many that he was a negligible, meretricious writer. By temperament and public reputation, then, James M. Cain appeared singularly unsuited for his role as writers' champion, yet for all that, Cain's decision to lead a writers' revolt was anything but silly or preposterous. For one thing, his work was respected by other writers. H. L. Mencken, for one, claimed that Cain was "the only

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Origins of the Profession

5

author I knew who never wrote a bad article" for the American Mercury; in fact, he never turned down any of Cain's work. 4 Others considered Cain a powerful and innovative stylist and the author of the quintessential tough-guy novel in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Cain was so respected in Europe and, above all, in Paris that Rebecca West once chided him: "You were a fool not to be born a Frenchman. The highbrows would have put you with Gide and Mauriac if you had taken this simple precaution." 5 Late in his life, Cain confessed that he felt no great sense of accomplishment, even after sixty years as a working writer, but at the time he devised the plan for the American Authors' Authority, he had already enjoyed an active, varied, and successful writing career judged by any standard but the strictest self-criticism. Moreover, Cain's career had taken h i m into most every corner of the literary marketplace: he had worked as a reporter and editorial writer; he had contributed to many leading magazines and edited one of them; and he had written plays, short stories, serials, and novels, as well as worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood intermittently for well over a decade. Few other writers of his generation had his breadth of professional experience. The American Authors' Authority ostensibly concerned narrow questions of the writer's position in the marketplace; however, it also embodied Cain's own vision, developed over his thirty-year career, of the profession of authorship. This, rather than the more narrow issues of literary economics, ultimately ignited the greatest controversy in 1946. As such, the true significance of the debate resides within the context of the history of the literary marketplace, the writer's role in it, and the development of the profession of authorship in general. Indeed, Cain knew little of the profession w h e n he chose it in 1914, and in this, among twentieth-century American writers, he was not alone. The European Background of Authorship Patronage The introduction of mechanical printing in Western Europe occasioned the development of a literary marketplace; before that, writers, as all artists, relied on the support of a patron. Such patronage essentially involved an exchange relationship between persons of unequal status: the patron gave the author any combination of food, shelter, money, and protection from harassment; the author provided the patron with the less-tangible commodities of prestige, fame, and the eloquence of words. The essential fact of patronage for

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The Profession of Authorship

6

the writer, however, was dependence. In the ancient world, writers possessed expertise and a useful craft, which powerful figures eagerly exploited, none more notably than Gaius Maecenas, who convinced Caesar Augustus to reward Virgil, Horace, Sextus Propertius, and other Roman writers as long as they praised the emperor and helped promote his policies. 6 Slaves did the actual work of copying manuscripts in Augustan Rome as in ancient Greece, such copies sometimes numbering in the thousands, and every notable villa had its library of such manuscripts. The cachet of the written word was so powerful that wealthy Roman citizens, according to one historian, sometimes owned "reading slaves to complement their writing slaves," a practice emulated two thousand years later by Louis B. Mayer, the "emperor" of MGM, who kept on the studio payroll a staffer to do his script reading for him. 7 Merchants sold manuscripts in markets, but although Cicero implies in some of his letters that payments were made to Roman writers, no other evidence exists suggesting that writers profited in any direct way from the distribution of their works. With the decline of Rome, cultural activity, including writing, withdrew into the Christian monasteries. The Church supported the production of texts, as monks labored in scriptoria; so arduous was the process of making manuscripts that such copying was commended as a labor of love. There were no lay writers, there was very little original writing, and literacy itself was severely limited. Authorship in the modern sense simply did not exist. As Elizabeth Eisenstein concludes, within the medieval world view "a writer is a man who 'makes books 7 with a pen, just as a cobbler is a man who makes shoes on a last." 8 The Stationers'

Company

The first European nation to vest the author with property rights proved to be England, whose literary law and custom has guided so m u c h American practice. The Renaissance arrived in England at roughly the same time as the printing press; thus, the appearance of a literate public hungry for books coincided by chance with the technological innovation that made it possible to supply that increased demand. During the Middle Ages such booksellers as existed, the stationarii, had acted chiefly as brokers for illuminated and other manuscripts. In England, the first merchants of printed books, the stationers, dealt exclusively in imported volumes until Caxton established a press in the abbey precincts at Westminster in 1476, and the next year produced the first book printed on English

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Origins of the Profession

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soil. He was soon joined by other printers, Wynkyn de Worde and Julian Notary among them, as books were eagerly sought in an England then very m u c h in the thrall of the Renaissance. If we generally define a publisher as one who controls or owns a text and who finances its production as a book, then these early printers were also the first English publishers, for Caxton and his contemporaries performed all of the functions of the early book trade: they chose texts, edited them, printed them, and offered them for sale to the general public. Thus, they were at once printer, publisher, wholesaler, and retail bookseller, and for this reason such printers were referred to as "booksellers/ 7 Demand steamed so far ahead of domestic production in the late fifteenth century that Richard III enacted a law to encourage book importation and to attract foreign-trained printers to England. The Statute of Richard succeeded so well that production soon exceeded demand, and in 1533, under pressure from domestic printers, Henry VIII reversed his predecessor and banned the sale of imported books. 9 In 15 5 6, the most important printers received even further protection with the chartering of the Stationers' Company, which granted a virtual monopoly in English publishing to a guild of some twenty London printers. The Stationers' Company gained total control of the printing industry and the growing market for books, while the Tudors used the guild to harass Protestant dissenters and suppress Reformation tracts and sermons—a practical arrangement for both parties. The concept of copyright, however, on which literature as a marketable commodity rests and on which professional authorship eventually came to depend, developed out of the Stationers' Company's internal procedures. A Stationer simply registered at Guild Hall the title to a manuscript he planned to print and in so doing possessed the unrestricted and exclusive right to print the work. This came to be known as the right of copy, ox simply the copy, to a manuscript. Only the presses of the ecclesiastically governed universities remained outside the control of the Stationers' Company, which was also authorized to search for and destroy both unlicensed works and clandestine presses. It did both with vigor. "This was censorship," historian Maurice Holland notes, "but it carried w i t h it the seeds of copyright." 10 Under the licensing acts, authors' rights to manuscripts were acknowledged, but they could take cold comfort from this, since they could publish only through the Stationers' Company and on its terms. The valuable property in literature was not in the writing, but rather in the right to make copies, and the right to make copies belonged to the owner of the press. In Tudor England, then, literary works began to acquire commer-

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The Profession of Authorship

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cial value, but their authors did not at first benefit from this development. The system of prior censorship conceived by the state and zealously implemented at Stationers' Hall kept authors in a precarious position until the end of the seventeenth century. Severe penalties were meted out to those whose work was deemed treasonable or blasphemous, or who violated the licensing provisions. Printers acquired manuscripts by fair means or foul, and in one historian's memorable phrase, the author under licensing "was m u c h more likely to have his ears cropped off than his purse filled." 11 Elizabethan

Patronage

As long as the Stationers' Company so tightly controlled the literary marketplace, writers occupied one of only two stations in English society: they were wealthy gentlemen who wrote without thought of financial gain; or, lacking independent means, they continued to rely on the support of a patron. Literary talent therefore concentrated at court, and most courtly literature was intended for oral or manuscript circulation, not for print. Gentlemen did not publish, and it was considered bad form to write for remuneration instead of reputation. Some writers even hid the fact that they were paid by printers, and a distinctly amateur conception of letters prevailed. The print revolution posed a thorny dilemma to such a gentlemanwriter: if he did not allow printers to issue his work, perhaps the right people would never discover that he was a poet; if he did, the right people might suspect he was no gentleman. Hence many authors wrote anonymously, or used initials or pseudonyms to mask their authorship. As mercantilism stimulated social mobility and strengthened the commercial classes in seventeenth-century England, the nature of such patronage changed considerably. Just at the point when the gentry and commercial classes embraced literature, the court began losing interest in cultivating writers. No longer could an author count on one aristocratic patron for long-term support; one Elizabethan author, Robert Greene, dedicated seventeen books to no fewer than sixteen patrons. Print also made possible collective patronage in the form of multiple dedications. Elizabethan writers also began to solicit dedication fees from a number of patrons, with the highest bidder buying the author's fulsome praise. In the end, the dedication market, which lingered on into the eighteenth century, became something of a racket, with authors charging set fees for less-than-heartfelt dedications. Even if the quid pro quo at the heart of patronage came to involve less hypocrisy and became more of an

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overtly commercial exchange, a writer's income still derived from patrons, not from the book trade directly. More often than not, writers shared the poet Churchill's contempt for their keepers: ' T h e y patronize for fashion sake—no more/And keep a bard just as they keep a whore." 1 2 Although a few patrons continued their loyal support of authors, the number of unsponsored authors in England multiplied. Many retreated to the seedy, foul boarding-houses near Moorflelds in London. Grub Street quickly came to signify feckless literary hackdom. Oliver Goldsmith summed up the plight of all Grub Street writers in his eulogy to one: Here lies poor Ned Purdon, from misery freed, Who long was a bookseller's hack; He led such a damnable life in this world I don't think he'd wish to come back. 13 Of course, since Grub Street provided a ready supply of pliable writers who would work for a pittance, the Stationers' Company delighted in this situation. Gentlemen, moreover, eager to disassociate themselves from Grub Street, clung ever harder to the notion that it was beneath their dignity to accept money for their work; rather than deal with the Stationers' Company, many took to distributing handmade manuscript copies of their work to a select group of friends, thus avoiding publication altogether. Those in the Stationers' Company then simply pilfered or otherwise obtained these manuscript copies and printed them without compensation. Authors were outraged, but impotent. "For many of our moderne booksellers are but needless excrements, or rather vermine," fulminated George Wither in The Scholar's Purgatory (1625), "since they take upon them to publish books contrived, altered and mangled at their own pleasures, without consent of the writers." 1 4 More than three hundred years later, Cain and other writers would feel much the same about Hollywood producers. Indeed, the sharp practices of the Stationers' Company prove a key source of the historical animosity writers have felt toward those who distribute their work for profit. Despite the powers granted the Stationers' Company and the Draconian punishments inflicted on those who defied the licensing acts, the English monarchy could not stop the Reformation. For every clandestine press dismantled, another appeared. In 1637, a decree of the Star Chamber added to the licenses and identifications needed for publication, including the stipulation that the author's

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name appear on every book. This implied no recognition of an author's rights, however, but merely served to make it easier to apprehend authors judged dangerous. Even after the abolition of the Court of the Star Chamber, Parliament remained indifferent to authors' rights; in 1643, it continued the monopoly of the Stationers' Company and upheld the licensing acts. As a result, English publishing remained a small-scale, medieval industry. In 1688, London still counted less than two hundred printers, including journeymen and apprentices. 15 As long as the book trade remained such a tightly controlled monopoly, few authors could expect or demand favorable terms. The Statute of Anne Change came with the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and the rise of the Whig Party. Parliament permitted the licensing acts to expire and, in 1694, the Stationers' Company lost its monopoly after a century and a half as the most powerful and restrictive of guilds. Prior censorship was abolished. For the first time in more than a century, presses could be set up without official sanction and without fearing the stationers' iron hand. The writer's situation in the marketplace and in English society changed so profoundly in the early eighteenth century that many historians date the origins of professional authorship from that time. For one thing, a new and more appealing form of patronage developed in the late seventeenth century. Emulating Augustan Roman practice, Tory and Whig politicians alike began to employ authors to communicate their positions on issues and explain particular policies to the swelling ranks of the literate and politically engaged. Writers were paid well for this service, some even receiving fixed salaries or coveted posts in government. While many Grub Street hacks willingly sold out to the highest bidder, regardless of the cause to be championed, other writers worked for political patrons w h o m they could easily accommodate. Fielding, Swift, Defoe, and Pope all profited financially from this new form of patronage without great risk to their integrity. 16 Patronage converged with the cash marketplace even more directly when London booksellers experimented with subscription publishing. Under this scheme, publishers would announce two editions of a work simultaneously: a regular volume at a modest price, and a more expensive edition for those patrons who wished to support or underwrite the author. Some authors found beating the bushes for subscribers demeaning and distasteful; Dr. Johnson, for

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one, disparaged the patron as "a wretch who supports with insolence and is paid with flattering/' and many Augustan authors similarly chafed at the restrictions of the patronage system.17 However, other authors, among them Dryden and Pope, profited handsomely from this confluence of patronage and publishing and argued that it at least afforded a greater measure of intellectual and economic independence than did traditional patronage. Developments in journalism provided writers further avenues to escape the restrictions of sustained patronage. The flood of new magazines, reviews, and newspapers in early-eighteenth-century England created a lively free-lance market, and the success of the Tattler, the Spectator, the Monthly Miscellany, the Guardian, the Gentleman's Magazine, and other such journals—all avidly read and discussed in coffeehouses, political clubs, and parlors throughout London—spelled the beginning of the end of patronage as the primary means of writers7 support.18 The watershed for authors, though, occurred with the passage in 1710 of the Act for the Encouragement of Learning, or the Statute of Anne, as it came to be called, which first recognized authors' work as a valuable commodity for which they could claim protection of law. The Statute of Anne proved the key factor in dragging the English book trade from the backwaters, for until that time English printers had not matched their Continental counterparts in either quality or scope. This changed within two generations. The Statute of Anne also set the pattern for copyright legislation internationally for the next 250 years. As such, it stood as the most important event in the history of authorship since the invention of the printing press. After the licensing laws lapsed, the Stationers7 Company continued its practice of recognizing the right of copy in order to prevent internecine competition. When independent publishers took to reprinting books claimed by the company, the stationers cried foul; in 1709, they petitioned Parliament to act in their defense, arguing that the independent publishers were infringing the common-law copyrights acquired during the period of the licensing laws, copyrights that the company contended it owned in perpetuity. The pleas of the stationers fell on deaf ears, however, as by then the intellectual tide had turned against such reasoning. The old mercantilist theory that commerce should be conducted by monopolistic guilds under the strict supervision of the government had been repudiated; new libertarian doctrine called for more economic freedom. Property rights, among them copyright, began to be thought of as rights belonging to individuals rather than as corporate privileges or franchises.19 The belief that authors possessed a common-law right in their

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property that needed statutory protection had been gaining currency for at least fifty years, and the copyright law that Parliament passed on 10 April 1710 for the first time explicitly protected the author, by vesting copyright in authors for a term of fourteen years, renewable for a further fourteen-year period, by detailing the registration and deposit procedures necessary to obtain this protection, and, crucially, by mandating a serious penalty for infringement—the destruction of all illegal copies and a cash indemnity to be payed to the copyright holder based on the number of infringing pages. The Statute of Anne strengthened the writer's hand in the marketplace considerably, for no longer could works be pirated with utter impunity. Copyright had been transformed from a printer's right to an author's right. 20 With acceptance of authors' legal right to what they created, with expanding literacy and a wider distribution of wealth providing larger markets for literary production of all kinds, and with the publishing industry no longer fettered by the monopoly of the Stationers' Company, writers finally could conceive of a sustaining, independent literary career as more than a pipe dream. The rise of mercantile capitalism occasioned great shifts in the social and economic structure of England, which redounded favorably on the world of letters. The reading public's center of gravity shifted to the new commercial middle class and to bankers, merchants, shopkeepers, and any number of professional groups—doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, and factory managers together with their families—formed a new audience for books. Curious about the changing social world around them, women in particular encouraged the development of a new literary form, the novel, which soon came to dominate the book trade. Novel writing was stimulated further by the circulating libraries, the first of which appeared in London in 1740. Under this scheme, three-volume novels could be borrowed for a penny a volume. The circulating libraries soon broadened the distribution and spurred the production of fiction. To satisfy this emerging readership, the English publishing industry expanded in ways that demanded new business arrangements. Printers had remained notoriously undercapitalized to succeed as publishers. As early as the sixteenth century, cash-poor printers had begun calling in outside financiers, often retail booksellers, who became the first publishers in the modern sense. In the early eighteenth century, as Ian Watt describes in The Rise of the Novel, "the decline in literary patronage by the court and the nobility had tended to create a vacuum between the author and his readers; and this vacuum had been quickly filled by the middlemen of the liter-

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ary marketplace, the publishers, or as they were then usually called, the booksellers, who occupied a strategic position between author and printer, and between both of these and the public/ 7 Such booksellers dominated the literary marketplace in Augustan London, and although authors grumbled that booksellers degraded literature by subjecting it to the laissez-faire law of supply and demand, Watt concludes that "the booksellers actually supported more authors more generously than ever patronage had/ 7 2 1 However dramatic the changes in the literary marketplace at the time, one can easily overdramatize their impact on English writers. The audience for books, although increasing rapidly, had begun from an extraordinarily low base; one estimate suggests that there were only thirty thousand readers in England in 1750. 22 The field of writers aspiring to professional status was also crowded with country parsons and the minor gentry For all of its expansion, then, the eighteenth-century book market had its limits, and if professional authorship was now a possibility, the profession of authorship, in one historian's judgment, was at the time about "the last profession that a liberal mind would choose." 2 3 The American-born journalist James Ralph pioneered the use of the term "author by profession" in 17 5 8 when he published The Case of Authorship by Profession or Trade, stated with regard to Booksellers, the Stage and the Public, but Ralph's own reputation as a dreary hack merely brought the phrase into disrepute. 24 Throughout the eighteenth century, even the most popular authors relied on another occupation for financial security: Dr. Johnson was a schoolmaster; Fielding, a barrister; Goldsmith and Smollett, physicians. Yet if the Statute of Anne did not immediately shift the balance of power in the marketplace from the publisher to the author, it did put more money in the pockets of authors. If publishers continued to demand that writers sell their copyrights outright, still the prices they paid for t h e m rose appreciably throughout the eighteenth century. At a time when it cost less than £100 a year to live in a modicum of comfort, Swift's publisher paid h i m £200 in 1726 for the rights to Gulliver's Travels, Fielding received £700 for Tom Jones in 1749 and £1,000 for Amelia three years later, and Dr. Johnson himself was paid £1,575 f ° r his Dictionary when it appeared in 1755. Some writers were able to strike even better deals. Alexander Pope, for example, received £200 for a one-year lease of the copyright to his Essay on Man (1733).25 One sure index of the rise in prospects for writers was the new use of the word literary itself to mean not only literate, but also to refer to the practice and profession of writing. 26 However, the Augustan

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writers faced a dilemma in attempting to establish themselves as professionals: they wanted to earn a livelihood from the marketplace, but they also wanted to maintain the status and esteem, the "reputation," as well as the economic and creative independence traditionally afforded leisured amateurs. No matter the difficulties writers still encountered, by the end of the eighteenth century patrons no longer controlled literary production; publishers did. Patronage had been necessary when there had been no middle class, and when wealth and education had been concentrated at court and in a single aristocratic class. As wealth and education became more dispersed in Britain, the writer no longer needed to curry favor with the higher echelons of society and could negotiate directly with the booksellers who serviced a middle-class audience. In the process, authorship began to be thought of as respectable and self-supporting, and the British authors of the time— Johnson, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Goldsmith, Gibbon, Burke, Bunyan, and Pepys, among others—proved to be the first generation of legitimate professional writers. Authorship and the Marketplace in America, 1609-1870 Any number of factors worked against the writer in colonial America. The harsh realities of frontier life left settlers with little time for writing books or even reading them. The Puritans in New England and, to a lesser extent, the Quakers suspected imaginative literature, fearing that "pleasing" works that delighted the senses also clouded reason. Moreover, the English licensing laws impeded the establishment of colonial presses throughout most of the seventeenth century. Type was chronically scarce, the direct result of a 1637 Star Chamber decree that aimed to stamp out unlicensed presses by severely restricting the output of English type foundries. Well into the eighteenth century, royal governers in America suppressed political dissent by discouraging printers. While colonists enjoyed the protection of English common-law copyright, the only American statute to deal with copyright, passed by the General Court of Massachusetts in 1673, merely protected the colony's printers and booksellers from unauthorized reprinting by competitors. Such books as could be found in colonial America, with few exceptions, had been imported from England and remained expensive throughout the colonial era. Eighteenth-century book prices, in relative terms, were three times higher than today's. A book then cost as m u c h as a healthy cow; faced with the choice, most colonists bought the cow.27

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Despite these obstacles, the colonies did develop at least the beginnings of a literary culture. Printing presses—the sine qua non of an indigenous literature—were set up, the first operated by Stephen Day in Cambridge in 1637. Before 1700, others were printing in Boston and Philadelphia. These small hand presses kept busy printing government documents as well as the odd job for local merchants and tradespeople; soon ambitious printers began to publish modest gazettes containing occasional poems, essays, and other literary miscellany. By 1735, Boston alone featured five such papers; by the Revolution, presses operated in all thirteen colonies. Booksellers had also established themselves in the growing cities. Colonists purchased a surprising number of books, considering their cost, a testament to the value placed on learning and literature in the colonies, despite the isolated, arduous lives most settlers led. Gradually, the colonies acquired the institutions necessary to sustain literary culture. Schools and universities were founded, private and public libraries assembled. Particularly in N e w England, where Puritan belief deemed literacy essential so that, through the reading of the Bible and history, all souls could acquaint themselves with God's laws and his actions on earth, the potential audience was quite high. The political debates over the colonies' relationship with England, so often conducted through pamphlets and broadsides, kept colonial presses h u m m i n g throughout the mid-eighteenth century. If colonial printers prospered, colonial writers remained largely unrewarded in the absence of effective legal protection. Even before the colonies gained independence, several writers (including Tom Paine, Timothy Dwight, Joel Barlow, and Noah Webster) argued the nationalist case for such legislation. Webster's spelling primer was the most popular book in the colonies, and he traveled indefatigably after 1782 to urge state legislators to adopt copyright statutes that would protect such works from piracy. His efforts paid off when the Continental Congress recommended that each of the colonies pass its own copyright law patterned after the Statute of Anne. In January 1783, Connecticut did so, giving to authors resident in America "the sole Liberty of printing, publishing and vending" for a term of fourteen years any book of their creation not previously published. With this precedent set, Webster lobbied the other states, and twelve of the thirteen former colonies eventually approved copyright laws. However, each of these acts included a reciprocity clause, making it contingent on all of the other states also to pass such legislation; thus Delaware's failure to pass a copyright bill effectively negated the efforts of the other twelve states. 28

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Agitation for copyright then moved to the national stage. The framers of the Constitution ultimately desired cultural as well as political independence from Britain; they were true nationalists in this sense, and thus in Article One they granted to Congress the authority "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries/ 7 On 31 May 1790, the First Congress passed the Federal Copyright Act, which protected books, maps, and charts in terms almost identical to those of the Statute of Anne. Indeed, "if the Statute of Anne had been under copyright," Holland wryly observes, "its copyright would have been infringed by the first American copyright statute." 2 9 Congress rejected the notion of perpetual copyright and adopted the English term of fourteen years, with an identical renewal period. Crucially, the act only extended protection to American authors; it left the door wide open for the pirating of British books, an opening that American printers wasted little time rushing through. Even after the enactment of federal copyright legislation, then, no writer could hope to make a living in such an economic environment. Authorship remained the avocation of lawyers, clergy, the rural gentry, and the wealthy planter. The creation of literature required learning, study, and reflection, which in turn presupposed leisure. So long as the author could not buy time to write in the marketplace, authorship would remain elitist in character, the province of the well-to-do. This image of the writer as a man of letters directly taps into the English authorial tradition of the patrician gentleman-amateur. Its exemplar in America was Thomas Jefferson, whose private printing of Notes on the State of Virginia recalls Elizabethan authors' practice of circulating manuscript copies among a small circle of admirers rather than subject their work to the indignities of the marketplace and themselves to the charge of ungentlemanly conduct. In essence, the man of letters—and they were virtually all men—was a patrician bibliophile who wrote for the love or satisfaction of it, and without reference to the market. He regarded reputation rather than remuneration as the arbiter of his worth, not so surprising, since there was no viable market for his work in any case. The American appetite for books, magazines, and newspapers grew steadily during the first decades of the nineteenth century. Population growth, the spread of literacy through education, advances in the education of women, improvements in communications and transportation, the growth in sophistication of both rural

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and urban societies, and the popularity of the Lyceum and other lecture circuits all encouraged reading. Technological improvements in paper- and ink making, in machine type casting, and especially in printing machinery itself helped printers meet this growing demand. In 1825, printers marveled at the speed of the new Napier steam press, which could produce two thousand copies an hour; in 1847, the Hoe rotary press, ten times faster, condemned the Napier to obsolescence. By mid-century such improvements had not only increased production but also lowered the unit prices for books, often by as m u c h as 400 percent, and one historian of the publishing industry estimates that the trade in books, measured in real dollar value, increased fivefold from 1820 to 185o.30 Again, American printers and publishers profited from this expansion far more than did American authors. Since the Copyright Act of 1790 had limited its protection to American authors, printers found it far more lucrative to pirate British books than to publish American writers. Such piracy required considerable planning and some capital, but was immensely profitable. A printer would hire an agent in Britain to obtain and send the unbound sheets, or even the galley proofs, of a British book. A fast ship could cross the Atlantic in a month, so that the pirated sheets would arrive at about the same time the English booksellers received the book and weeks before copies could be exported. The pirated sheets, once in America, were divided among several typesetters, then printed quickly, often in a matter of days. Piratical American publishers could in this way coopt the market before the legitimate edition arrived from England and, since they made no payment to authors in Britain, could reap a considerable profit. For this reason, virtually every American publisher in the early nineteenth century opposed international copyright agreements, and at the height of such piracy, about 1815, they produced very few books by American authors. The reading public, fed a steady diet of British books, demanded more British books. "What publisher will pay a native writer for ideas that he may import for nothing?" complained James Fenimore Cooper to Henry Carey, the leading publisher in Philadelphia and himself a zealous pirate. 31 Well into the nineteenth century, then, American authors, if they wished to reach an audience, were forced to underwrite the publication of their own books. In 1821, William Cullen Bryant, for one, in order to see his collection of verse published, had to finance its printing, pay a commission to his publisher for handling it, and allow bookstores to carry it on consignment. Many other writers did

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much the same thing, contracting a printer to produce a book and then paying a commission to a bookseller to distribute it. Such practices were common well past the 1820s, and under such conditions there were few true publishers in the sense of the capitalist who finances a book's production, distribution, and marketing. Distribution was particularly primitive, little more than a simple barter arrangement by which printers and booksellers exchanged titles. A few ambitious publishers in New York and Philadelphia—most notably the shrewd Matthew Carey—aspired to expand beyond the eastern cities, but this involved hiring a corps of traveling sellers. What publishers paid to such agents they usually made up at the writer's expense. For all of the changing technology, well into the 1830s most printers still cast and set type by hand, and printed only small editions of no more than a thousand copies. If the book market was singularly unpromising for the American writer of the time, even fewer opportunities existed in the magazines or the theater. Before 1820, in particular, American periodicals cribbed their copy from English magazines; publishers paid poorly for those few contributions they accepted from American writers and ran them anonymously to prevent individual authors from commanding a price. In large part spurred by the advances in printing and illustration, a host of new magazines appeared after 1820-Afew England Magazine, the Southern Literary Messenger, Graham's, Godey's Ladies Book, and Harper's among them—which began paying their contributors modestly. A handful of popular writers earned as m u c h as fifteen hundred dollars a year from magazine sales, but the vast majority of writers working in this market earned considerably less than a living wage. Dramatists faced an even more depressing situation: performance rights were not protected under copyright law until 1856, and even after that theatrical managers usually insisted on purchasing such rights outright for extraordinarily low sums. 3 2 In short, as long as American readers were still dependent on English tastes and standards, and the economic infrastructure of the literary marketplace remained small-scale and undeveloped despite its growth, authorship as a true supporting profession remained out of reach for the American writer. After the introduction of the rotary press, some even believed that books themselves had been rendered obsolete, since newspapers could now print pirated novels in dime editions. Although writers began to rely more on journalism and the lecture circuit, and less on the law, politics, or the church for financial support, the economics of the marketplace remained such that

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most writers either enjoyed independent means or continued to work in nonliterary fields. The tradition of the author as a m a n of letters continued. 33 Often writers justified their marginal status in early nineteenthcentury American society by embracing an image of the artist taken largely from the English Romantic poets, although occasionally flavored with a distinctively American optimism. Art, to these Platonic idealists, was the product of inspiration, and the artist was a "genius." True art was by its nature timeless, universal, and appealed to the ages, not to its own time. As such, any valuation based on the temporal standard of the marketplace demeaned both artists and their art. The romantic writer had to avoid commercial pressures, then, and write only from the imagination. The grubby realities of mine, mill, and marketplace confronting the English Romantics led them to reject the modern commercial and industrial world. 34 In America, however, the romantic image of the writer found its ultimate expression not in the besotted figure of Poe but rather in the careers of Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, and in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson to an audience of Phi Beta Kappa inductees at Harvard in 1837: "He must accept—how often!— poverty and solitude. . . . For all this loss and scorn, what offset? He is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of h u m a n nature. He is one who raises himself from private and breathes and lives on public and illustrious. He is the world's eye. He is the world's heart. He is to resist the vulgar prosperity that retrogrades ever to barbarism." 3 5 For the nineteenth-century American writer who embraced this romantic identity, art and commerce were inimical, professional authorship an oxymoron. Because it was impossible to earn a decent and honorable living as a writer, and because literary culture existed outside the prevailing materialist and commercial ethos of American society, authors, in self-defense, embraced an identity that spurned the marketplace just as the marketplace spurned them. At about mid-century, however, and despite the absence of international copyright, a viable literary marketplace began to take shape in America. Conditions began to turn in the author's favor. The business of publishing and selling books changed profoundly after 1850, when the railroads crossed the Alleghenies and publishers no longer depended on inefficient river transport to reach readers in the provinces. New York emerged as the nexus of literary commerce. Book sales soared, stimulated by the new western markets opened

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up by the railroads, by the national campaign against illiteracy, and by the educational reform movement, which doubled school attendance (and the need for textbooks) between 1850 and 1870. To take advantage of this expanding market, publishers invested heavily in modern machinery, organized advertising and promotion departments, and increased the number of traveling agents in the field.36 Carrying more overhead, publishers either modernized their business methods or they went under. The old barter arrangement by which publishers and booksellers swapped titles with other local shops yielded to a more efficient national distribution system based on the railroads. Publishers began to rely on newspaper and magazine advertising to stimulate reader interest and offered booksellers generous discounts to carry the books they advertised most heavily. They also developed new subscription schemes to attract rural readers remote from bookshops. Much of this change—particularly the increased sums spent on promotion—was made possible by informal agreements struck by leading houses concerning the publishing, and pirating, of British books. Before 1840, the honest publisher who actually bought a British title faced prohibitively fierce competition from cheaper pirated editions. This led to chaotic market conditions and made effective advertising impossible: honest publishers had no assurance that potential buyers, on seeing their notices, would not then simply buy cheaper pirated reprints. Beginning in the 1840s, though, most of the leading eastern publishers agreed to observe what was known euphemistically as the courtesy of the trade: a publisher who bought a British title had simply to announce the acquisition and competitors agreed not to pirate it. These unwritten courtesy-of-the-trade understandings brought a measure of stability to the industry for the first time and all publishers benefited. 37 It also allowed the more prosperous and secure houses to begin publishing American writers, since the higher prices charged for British books once the cheaper pirated reprints left the field meant that American books were now competitively priced. Writers also profited from new opportunities in journalism. The circulation of daily newspapers tripled between 1850 and 1870. Hundreds of magazines and rotogravured Sunday papers appeared— by 1870 over four thousand were published nationally with a combined circulation of well over ten million. 38 One innovation in publishing particularly helped writers: the growing practice of serialization, by which magazines or newspapers would print extracts from novels in successive issues near the date of publication in book form. The Atlantic Monthly regularly serialized novels in the early

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1850s, and by the 1870s, once publishers had discovered that serialization stimulated rather than depressed book sales, the practice became widespread. More often than not, popular fiction appeared in the magazines before it reached the bookstores. 39 In the decades after the Civil War, even middle-sized cities enjoyed at least one bookshop, and the numbers of public libraries supported by taxation and philanthropy continued to swell. Illiteracy steadily declined. Dozens of magazines, including the Atlantic, Century, Harper's, the Ladies Home Journal, and The Youth's Companion, touted circulations in the hundreds of thousands. Technological innovation continued to stimulate reading and writing: first gas illumination, then incandescent lighting and central heating all made reading easier and more enjoyable. In 1885, Ottmar Merganthaler's invention of the linotype revolutionized commercial printing, and the steady if less-spectacular advances in rounding, case-making, backing, and gathering machinery led to the complete mechanization of bookmaking. 40 Genteel

Authorship

Rising levels of compensation, serialization, the linotype, and particularly the vigorous and expanding magazine market combined to make it possible for a sizable number of American authors, for the first time, to support themselves exclusively by writing. Authorial professionalism finally became a reality. As that happened, writers began to consider just what kind of profession authorship should be. They looked first to England, where those few hundred authors who could and did support themselves by writing had institutionalized their new social and economic status by forming the first organization for working writers, the British Society of Authors, in 1887. Its founder, Walter Besant, argued that writers should no longer feel it "beneath their dignity to speak of money." He advised prospective writers that "the literary life offers attractions which are almost irresistible. The old bug bear—the prejudice formerly so well founded—of poverty has vanished. It is now well known that a respectable man of letters may command an income and a position quite equal to those of the average lawyer or doctor. It is also well known that one who rises to the top may enjoy as m u c h social consideration as a Bishop and as good an income." 4 1 Thus Besant did not define the profession of authorship purely in economic terms: the decision to become a writer, he advised, m u s t be made "most seriously and earnestly, and with due regard to the responsibilities of the work"; if one devoted oneself to literature, the

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life of letters conferred "more dignity and respect upon a man than any other line of work, unless it be the Church/' 4 2 Besant believed authorship now commanded the respect traditionally reserved for the professions of law, medicine, and theology; each required the greatest devotion, and each granted dignity, the respect of the community, and a certain independence of mind and means. Besant's definition of the profession of authorship tells us as much about the class bias of nineteenth-century literature as it does about the act of writing itself; it still vested literature and its creation with quasi-religious status. While conceding that writers could negotiate a living in the literary marketplace, Besant's reverential diction betrays his vision of authorship as a genteel profession. While genteel professionals could sell their novels, stories, and articles on the open market and earn a living wage, it was as bad form to write simply for profit as it was ever to display avarice. Moreover, to do so was to commit oneself to hackdom, to Grub Street, and to sell out the ideals of literature grandly conceived. There was money to be made in the marketplace, the British Society of Authors suggested, but writers m u s t remain gentlefolk, loyal in their work to genteel moral uplift, and refuse to pander to the appetites of the masses or succumb to the lure of the newly invented cash register. This conception of genteel authorship powerfully influenced Victorian American writers, not yet as prosperous, but also searching for a workable definition of authorship, given that the marketplace now offered a living wage. An expanding market and the courtesy of the trade agreements kept publishing profitable for all concerned throughout the 1870s and into the 1880s, but this first generation of professional writers was not at all comfortable with its newfound status. They approached the marketplace with all the enthusiasm of Carry Nation entering the Last Chance Saloon. The late literary historian William Charvat was the first to look closely at the selfimage of the nineteenth century American author, and he links genteel authorship directly to the English tradition of the gentlemanamateur: Historically the creative writer was not a worker or producer, but a gentleman-amateur who exhibited his talent to his social equals but did not depend on it for a living; or he accepted the patronage of a social superior, and was still independent of buyers and readers. . . . In a pecuniary society under democratic patronage, this proud and independent attitude was an anachronism, but vestiges of it survived until 1850 and later. . . . Long after Byron and Scott had proved that a "gentleman" could write

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for money, we see the mark of the patrician in the American writer's demand for privacy, in dignity in his commercial relations and in his resistance to commercial exploitation.43 Since publishers were producing books to a higher standard than ever before, writers began to trust them to do a competent job of editing, printing, and distributing their books. An era of good feeling interrupted the often stormy relations between author and publisher, since publishers now provided an essential service to the genteel author aside from actually publishing a work—they shielded the writer from the marketplace. Victorian publishing was the province of educated people from established families—it and the wine trade were said to be the only career options for true gentlemen. The sympathetic, cultivated publisher mediated between the artist and the commercial world, so that the writer's art would remain sheltered from the degrading influence of the marketplace. Literature-asdivine-art and writing-as-a-mercenary-metier were starkly opposed. One other dimension of Victorian authorship needs mention. The education of women, much more of a commonplace in the late nineteenth century than previously, profoundly influenced the literary marketplace. While the education of men emphasized technical and vocational subjects, women's education focused on the enrichment of life. Historians now believe that, as a result, middle- and upperclass women made up most of the audience for literature in the 1870s and 1880s.44 This ''feminization" of the popular audience, part of a more striking feminization of cultural institutions generally in the Genteel Era, left the literary community removed from the masculine, aggressive world of the dominant business culture. The sentimental style of much mid-Victorian literature lay at odds with the commercial society in which it was created. As long as writers continued to insist that writing was an inspired calling, as long as they revered genius rather than hard work, they would remain at the margins of a society that respected work but suspected genius. William Dean Howells captured well the ambivalence of this first generation of professional writers in America in his classic essay "The Man of Letters as a Man of Business." Howells pondered the character and situation of the genteel author caught on the horns of a dilemma: how did one reconcile a belief in literature as a divine art with the desire to make of writing a professional career, pursued in the marketplace? Writing in 1893, Howells granted that literature had become a business, but unlike Besant, he insisted that even the best-known authors were not really wealthy. Some might enjoy the income "of a rising young physician, known to a few people in a

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subordinate city/ 7 but few were building faux chateaux in Newport. 45 He blamed this on the vicious competition to which American writers had been exposed in the absence of international copyright legislation, as well as on the fact that domestic copyright protected literary property for only forty-two years. Howells insisted that authors had the right to earn a decent living, yet even so financially successful a writer as Howells, one who had consciously and successfully pursued writing as a career, still did not believe that any man ought to live by an art. People feel that there is something profane, something impious, in taking money for a picture, or a poem, or a statue. Most of all, the artist himself feels this. He puts on a bold front with the world, to be sure, and brazens it out as business; but he knows very well that there is something false and vulgar about it: and that the work which cannot truly be priced in money cannot be truly paid in money . . . He can say that, as the thing is, unless he sells his art he cannot live, that society will leave h i m starve if he does not hit its fancy in a picture, or a poem, or a statue; all this is bitterly true. He is, and he m u s t be, only too glad if there is a market for his wares. Without a market for his wares he m u s t perish, or turn to making something that will sell better than pictures, or poems, or statues. All the same, the sin and the shame remain, and the averted eye sees them still, with its inward vision. Many will make believe otherwise, but I would rather not make believe otherwise; and in trying to write of Literature as Business I am tempted to begin by saying that Business is the opprobrium of Literature. 46 The more contracts Howells and his contemporaries signed and the more books they sold in the marketplace, the more these authors came to distrust commercial values and to view profitable books with suspicion. To say that "Tennyson and Longfellow and Emerson sold the poems in which they couched the most mystical messages their genius was charged to bear m a n k i n d / ' Howells argued, "does not change the nature of the case." Even if such authors accepted money for their work, they merely "submitted to the conditions which none can escape; but that does not justify the conditions, which are nonetheless the conditions of hucksters because they are imposed on poets." 4 7 Ultimately, Howells had no solution to the conundrum dogging genteel authors: "Again I say that no man ought to live by any art; it is a shame to the art if not to the artist; but as yet there is no

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means of the artist's living otherwise and continuing an artist/ 7 4 8 This self-image of the genteel author, engaged in a calling rather than a career and shielded from the debasing realities of the marketplace, referred back to the various incarnations of the gentlemanamateur existing since the invention of mechanical printing. As we shall see, it also persisted within the American literary community well into the twentieth century; indeed, Cain consistently railed against just this notion when, in trying to rally writers behind the AAA, he accused t h e m of being their own worst enemies. International

Copyright and Progressive

Publishing

During the Progressive Era the American literary marketplace finally came of age, supplying a vast continental market by using modern production and marketing techniques. If newspapers and magazines had been first to tap the potential of an increasingly literate and affluent population in the 1880s and 1890s, book publishers, reacting to developments in the previous decade, promptly followed suit in the first decade of the twentieth century. The most important of these events was the passage of the Piatt-Simonds Bill, the first American international copyright act, which went into effect in 1891. As early as 1870, publishers had begun to fear unrestrained piracy from competitors more than international copyright and gradually abandoned their opposition to it, although they still warned that such an act would send book prices skyrocketing. The other main foes of international copyright, the printing unions, feared a flood of imported books would threaten their members' jobs, but they too were won over by the inclusion in PlattSimonds of a manufacturing clause, stipulating that only books physically printed in America would benefit from American copyright protection. 49 The passage of Piatt-Simonds proved the most significant landmark in the history of publishing since the Statute of Anne, but international copyright alone did not disabuse publishers of their genteel notions or transform publishing into a modern, large-scale industry overnight. The financial panic of 1893, and then the more severe depression of 1896-1897, bankrupted many privately owned houses, Harper's and Appleton most prominently, which then came under the control of banks and investment trusts. These finance capitalists hired new managers who stressed aggressive marketing, internal office efficiency, and rational distribution. Publishers enlarged the scale of their businesses by acquiring rival houses, distri-

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bution companies, and printing firms; the publishing industry consolidated as the stronger houses drove out or absorbed their weaker rivals. 50 The turn of the century also saw an infusion of new blood into the ranks of publishers; these firm believers in efficient management a generation earlier might have been attracted to other industries. Walter Hines Page and Frank Doubleday, most notably, conceived of publishing essentially as a business, rather than merely as a respectable literary avocation. 51 As greater expertise and productivity slashed manufacturing unit prices, other publishing costs soared. Page, Doubleday, and the other progressive publishers believed that one had to spend money in order to make it, and competitive bidding among houses for popular authors encouraged the widespread adoption of the royalty system once investment risk was legally protected by international copyright. Indeed, royalty rates reached an all-time high between 1900 and 1905. Cheaper editions brought smaller royalties but commensurately larger sales. Such competition also led publishers to dangle larger and larger advances before the eyes of popular authors. Budgets for advertising and promotion also ballooned, as publishers tried to stimulate sales by building up reader curiosity in advance of publication. Publishers had discovered what in the 1920s was called ballyhoo and today is known as hype, and they exploited it for all it was worth. The mounting costs of all this could be justified, indeed were necessary, in an ever-expanding market. In 1910, American publishers issued 13,470 titles, three times the figure of just twenty years before. More people were buying more books than ever. More advertisers were pouring more dollars into the Ladies Home Journal, the Saturday Evening Post, and other mass-circulation magazines. Publishing had become, in real terms, a billiondollar business. 52 How did writers fare in this bull market for literature? Expansion did bring a measure of security to many authors whose income from writing grew both larger and more predictable. There were now opportunities for income from a greater number of sources than simply trade (hard-cover) book sales: from reprints, from commissioned journalism, from foreign editions, from serialization in both magazines and newspaper syndicates, and from the sale of dramatic rights, which, with the growth of the theater after 1890, became quite lucrative. For the novelist, in fact, the greater financial reward, according to Howells, lay in the serial and not the book, with magazines paying as m u c h as ten thousand dollars for serial rights. 53 The writer's business affairs grew more and more complicated as such

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opportunities multiplied, and many authors came to rely on literary agents to negotiate contracts and to sort out their complicated rights arrangements. Christopher Wilson, who understands authorship in the Progressive Era as well as anyone, argues that a dramatic change occurred at the time in American writers' conception of their status and role; the tradition of the gentleman-amateur was challenged by a new view of the writer's identity. Prose writers in particular came to see their craft predominantly as a product of hard work and technical expertise rather than of genius: "The new publishing establishments provided new financial resources for American authors, freed writers from the occasional restraints of patronage, allowed time for extensive research, and widely expanded available audiences. . . . Literature, therefore, could be conceived as a product of labor rather than romantic inspiration." Progressive Era professional authors for the first time moved from the margins to the mainstream of American life; they achieved "a widely recognized place in American social and even political life." Wilson cites Jack London, Upton Sinclair, David Graham Phillips, Lincoln Steffens, and Frank Norris as among those writers who "embodied the hopes set forth in Walt Whitman's 'Democratic Vistas'." The American author became a "Man of the People." 54 Wilson believes that this "professionalization" of authorship was partly an expression of the new emphasis on expertise within American society as a whole during the Progressive Era. Robert Wiebe's classic analysis of American Progressivism identifies this increasing emphasis on professionalism as a response to the anomie and anxiety felt by the middle classes in the face of widespread and disorienting industrial change. Progressives valued expertise and questioned the utility of amateurism, which the Victorians had so esteemed. 55 A newly affluent class of urban professionals embraced continuity, rationality, efficient administration, and management by expert as a means to cope with the strains and dislocations of twentieth-century industrial society. The expert became a new cultural icon, and many occupations—doctors, lawyers, teachers, journalists, and social workers, among others—took steps in the late nineteenth century to trumpet their expertise and then cement their standing as elite professions. Virtually every modern profession, Wiebe concludes, began to establish itself in the ten years from 1895 to 1905, and authorship proved no exception. Of all the professional choices available, however, a career in writing remained the riskiest and least well defined; only a small fraction of authors, even in the Progressive Era, did not have to subsidize their writing. 56

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International copyright certainly improved the writer's prospects in the marketplace. Novels in particular sold like drugs on the market, and in 1895, for the first time, American publishers issued more novels by American than by British authors; magazines were paying popular writers as m u c h as $150 per thousand words. More money was flowing into authors 7 hands than ever. However, the bureaucratic orientation identified by Wiebe as a major strand of Progressive thought, and which transformed publishing from 1890 to 1910, did not always work to the writer's advantage—increased competition among publishers for authors, sophisticated promotion not only of books but now of their authors, a new emphasis on bestsellers, and a greater role for publishers in conceiving and planning books all signaled greater managerial encroachment on the author's turf.57 Frank Norris, not only a novelist but also at one time a reader for Doubleday, saw this as a threat to writers' independence: No one not intimately associated with any one of the larger, more important "houses" can have any idea of the influence of the publisher on later-day fiction. More novels are written— practically—to order than the public has any notion of. The publisher again and again picks out the man . . . , suggests the theme, and exercises, in a sense, all the functions of instructor during the period of composition. . . . Time was when a publisher waited for the unknown writer to come to h i m with his manuscript. But of late the Unknown has so frequently developed, under exploitation and by direct solicitation of the publisher, into a "money-making proposition" of such formidable proportions that there is hardly a publishing house that does not hunt h i m out with all the resources at its command. 58 Both Norris and Wilson may exaggerate the extent to which such encroachment on the writer's autonomy marked a dramatic change in publishing practice; Charvat, for example, reveals that as early as the 1850s publishers had suggested subjects and formats to writers. 59 Even before that, in 1843, the North American Review had complained: "Literature begins to assume the aspect and undergo the mutations of trade. The author's profession is becoming as mechanical as that of the printer and the bookseller, being created by the same causes and subject to the same laws. . . . The publisher in the name of his customers calls for a particular kind of authorship just as he would speak [order] a dinner at a restaurant." 6 0 It is fair to say, though, that in the wake of international copyright, publishers more than ever before suggested ideas to writers and directed their work.

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Writers may have embraced international copyright in order to establish legal recognition of their intellectual property, then, but in doing so they indirectly set in motion economic forces that cost them some measure of their artistic autonomy. 61 The shift to a modern industrial literary marketplace at the turn of the century did not occur without strains and rancor. As the economic stakes quickly rose for both publishers and authors, tensions surfaced between t h e m that had lain more or less submerged during the Genteel Era. Some publishers complained that advances and royalty rates were spiraling out of control. They protested that authors had taken to shopping manuscripts around from publisher to publisher, in search of the highest bidder, a practice unheard of two decades before. They argued that authors had come to enjoy the lion's share of the profits from successful books, leaving publishers little margin to produce less-profitable work. They often pointed to the literary agent as the chief culprit in all this, an avaricious third party destroying the traditionally close personal relationship between publisher and author. Henry Holt, for one, never tired of railing against this "commercialization of literature" as he saw it, and he spoke for many of the old-line publishers when he advised that "it would be an immense gain for the cause of literature and to the profit of all worthy authors (though at the expense of the unworthy ones) if the 'commercial enterprise 7 that has come in from Wall Street and the energetic West were taken out of the publishing houses—if the competition consisted simply in selecting books wisely, making t h e m tastefully and honestly, informing the interested public of their existence and supplying t h e m to whatever legitimate demand they might effect through their merit." 6 2 Echoing the thoughts of many of his colleagues, Holt claimed that "agents have forced over-production by selling several of an author's books before they were written, and dazzling h i m with forced earnings from forced work, followed by inferior earnings from inferior work"; he warned publishers and authors alike that "it is almost as dangerous to make money the main end, as in the general conduct of life to make happiness the main end." 63 Such idealism convinced few authors or publishers to mend their ways and revert to the standards and practices of genteel publishing. The genie had escaped the bottle. Many authors, like those cited by Wilson, brought to authorship a new vision of professionalism based not on inspiration but on hard work, as well as a new and less hostile attitude toward the marketplace itself. They rejected genteel authorship and viewed writing as a career, not a calling. Authors remained unswayed by publishers' cries of poverty; one writer even

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offered to sign over all of his rights and royalties for just one percent of the stock in a prominent publishing house.64 Agents became key players in the literary marketplace, despite great hostility on the part of publishers; in some part, actually because of it. Indeed, it was during the Progressive Era, as we shall see in chapter 3, that authors' resentment of their treatment by publishers led to the first tentative attempts to organize their profession. The modern literary marketplace had opened for business.

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2. James M. Cain and the Literary Marketplace It would be difficult to exaggerate the plight of the American writer. —JAMES M. CAIN

BORN IN 1892, James Mallahan Cain was a member of that generation of distinguished writers—Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dos Passos, MacLeish, Cummings, and so many others—who were raised in turn-of-the-century America, watched their childhood certainties vanish in the maw of World War I, then brought American literature center stage during the next two decades. The son of a professor of English literature, Cain grew up on the Chesapeake Bay, first in Annapolis, where his father taught at Saint John's College, then in rural Chestertown after the elder Cain accepted the presidency of Washington College. After graduating from Washington College himself in 1910 (when he was just seventeen), Cain drifted from job to job for several years. In 1914, Cain quit his job selling sheet music in Kann's department store in Washington after being refused a raise. Brooding on his future, he walked along Pennsylvania Avenue, sat on a bench in Lafayette Park across from the White House, and then and there determined to become a writer, a decision apparently based on little more than the praise he had received for the reports he had written while working for the Maryland Road Commission the previous year. In 1940, Cain recalled that "writing to me was distinctly a consolation prize," accepted only after facing the bitter truth of his limitations as a singer: "If I could get one tenth the excitement from the prospect of a book coming out that I used to get from an invitation to sing at some amateur entertainment, I would probably write more books and feel happier about them. But I don't. To me, writing is mainly work, and the fact that I write a lot better than I sing doesn't quite fix things up." 1 On that day in 1914, Cain made virtually an arbitrary choice; that is, he clearly was more interested in finding a career, an occupation by which he could support himself, than he was in pursuing the Muse. Broke, unhappy, and drifting, Cain more or less fell into writing; at least, he heard no clarion call, felt no priestly devotion to

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literature, nor was he driven by any particular compulsion to put pen to paper. He knew little of, and certainly did not embrace, the tradition of the gentleman-amateur that informed the social identity of the American writer. All of the evidence indicates that Cain considered writing to be the result of hard work and technical expertise rather than inspiration; his ill-formed ideas about a writing career conformed most closely to the image of the Progressive professional writer identified by Christopher Wilson. In sum, he conceived of authorship primarily as a means to an end—financial security and vocational independence—rather than as an end in itself. From such unpromising beginnings, Cain fashioned an estimable career, one that brought h i m both financial success and critical acclaim. Over the next thirty years, or up to the time when he devised his plan for the AAA, Cain's life and literary career closely paralleled those of many of his contemporaries as they too established themselves as professional writers. Moreover, Cain's career encompassed virtually every field available to the professional in his day. By tracing that career, then, we can conveniently chart the contours of the literary marketplace in the first half of the twentieth century. Beginnings As the first step toward professional authorship as he conceived it, Cain returned to his parents 7 home in Chestertown to try to teach himself to write, but the dozen stories he submitted to New York editorial offices during 1914 only yielded as many rejection notices. Discouraged, he accepted a teaching post and relegated his own writing to night work. Cain's career as a journalist began when he moved to Baltimore in 1917, determined to take the first job offered him. He happened into the offices of the Baltimore American and convinced the short-handed city editor to hire him as a reporter. Cain continued at the American throughout 1917, then jumped to the more prestigious Baltimore Sun. He would consider himself first and foremost a newspaperman for the rest of his life. 2 Like so many aspiring writers of his generation, Cain was anxious to take part in the Great War then in progress, and he convinced his draft board to accept h i m even though his army doctors had discovered a suspicious-sounding and possibly tubercular lung. After basic training, Cain was assigned to the Headquarters Troop of the 79th Division, and sailed for France in mid-summer. Few writers experienced the horrors of trench warfare, as Cain did when he took part in the bloody fighting of the Meuse-Argonne campaign in the aut u m n . He remained in France after the armistice, first as the editor

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of the 79th ; s divisional newspaper, the Lorraine Cross, and then as the unit's first publicist, writing stories about the exploits of the division for hometown newspapers. Cain later believed that this work, amateurish though it was, had helped h i m as a writer, not only in mastering the straightforward, grammatically precise style he would later use to great advantage but also in understanding newspaper operations from bottom to top. On 18 May 1919, Cain left France with the 79th and he was demobilized in June. Returning to Baltimore and the Sun, he worked for a time on the city desk and nursed his ambition to advance from journalism to fiction writing. In 1920, Cain married Mary Clough, a teacher he had known for years; this first of his four marriages was, as he admitted later, "an ill-starred venture, one that started badly and kept going downhill with no ups of any kind." 3 Restless at home and at the office, Cain convinced the Sun to send h i m into the field to cover labor disputes at a time when a series of bitter strikes nationally and the postwar Red Scare were making headlines. Iconoclastic by nature, Cain went against the grain of most coverage of the labor movement by writing a number of sympathetic articles about the leaders of a West Virginia miners 7 local who had been charged with treason. His first published magazine article, based on the miners 7 trial, was bought by the Atlantic Monthly for $125. His outspoken sympathy for the union gave Cain a reputation as something of a daring and forceful writer, and he tried, unsuccessfully, to write a novel pleading the miners 7 case. While at the Sun, Cain was also befriended by H. L. Mencken, the most celebrated member of its staff. Although he later discounted Mencken 7 s influence on his own prose, Cain always admired Mencken and learned m u c h from his extraordinary knowledge of the American language. The two became lifelong friends, leading Hoopes to conclude that Mencken "would probably have more impact on his [Cain7s] life than anyone else. 774 That impact was first felt in the early 1920s, when Cain, with Mencken 7 s help, began placing articles with several leading national magazines, after Mencken recruited h i m to write a long feature about a controversial union official for the first issue of American Mercury. Bored with his assignments and increasingly unhappy with the management of the Sun, Cain quit the paper in 1923 and accepted an offer to teach journalism at Saint John7s College in Annapolis, where his father had made his first success, and where Cain frequently quoted Samuel Johnson to his students: "No one but a blockhead ever wrote anything except for money. 775 Although he enjoyed these classes, Cain soon entered a chaotic and desperately un-

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happy period in his life. He resigned from Saint John's after clashing with its autocratic president over a trivial incident; his marriage broke up in great bitterness, and his lung ailment was finally diagnosed as tuberculosis, which led h i m to spend several months convalescing in a dreary state sanitarium. In all, 1924 proved to be the worst year of Cain's life. Again broke and without prospects, drinking heavily despite his illness, brooding over his failed marriage and discouraged about his writing, Cain at age thirty-two decided to move to New York for a fresh start. Although the presence in New York of Elina Tyszecka, the Finnish divorcee who later became his second wife, undoubtedly influenced his thinking, Cain's professed reason for traveling north was to try for a job on the New York World, then one of the most prestigious and powerful newspapers in the country. Herbert Bayard Swope edited the paper. An extravagant and entertaining boulevardier, Swope was also a shrewd newspaperman with a keen eye for journalistic talent. He attracted to the World some of the best writers in the country, including Marc Connelly, E. B. White, Edna Ferber, George S. Kaufman, and Ring Lardner. 6 In 1922, Walter Lippmann joined the paper specifically to write on foreign policy, and within the year was placed in charge of the editorial page. Lippmann, just a few years older than Cain, supervised an eminent staff of leader writers, including Allan Nevins, Charles Merz, John L. Heaton, and Maxwell Anderson. The op-ed pages of the World soon enjoyed the reputation as the best written, most intelligent, and liveliest in the city. Cain's clear thinking and crisp, correct prose impressed Lippmann and won him a job on the paper, replacing Maxwell Anderson, who had just resigned. "When m y ear caught the participles that didn't dangle, the infinitives well buttoned in, the pronouns all with antecedents," Lippmann later confided to Cain, "it occurred to me you could take Anderson's place writing h u m a n interest editorials." 7 Cain, for his part, appreciated Lippmann's integrity as well as his open-minded, informal manner, and he spent the rest of the decade working at the World, writing editorial essays on baseball, food, music, and whatever topics that struck his, or Lippmann's, fancy. The 1920s: The Golden Age of Publishing If Cain had yet to achieve his ultimate goal of a career as a selfsupporting free-lance writer, he had at the very least reached the journalistic big leagues. He had a stable job with a comfortable salary and more than a modicum of intellectual challenge. Just as

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important, he had positioned himself at the center of the national literary marketplace at a time when it was thriving as never before. New York was long established as the center of the nation's literary commerce, and as such its vast network of publishing houses, editorial offices, theatrical production companies, and literary agencies had lured writers for more than forty years. Countless other aspiring writers, like Cain, had reached the conclusion that to make it as a writer in America meant to make it in New York; as the playwright Maxwell Anderson, Cain's predecessor at the World, had written shortly before his own journey to Manhattan, "nowhere else do you get a glimpse of what's required for the kind of success that enables one to support himself by writing." 8 By any measure, the 1920s were a time of enormous creative accomplishment and economic prosperity in the literary marketplace. New Yorkers could choose from among more than fifteen daily newspapers, each of which offered jobs on copy desks or reporter's beats to apprentice writers; more experienced hands worked as editorial writers or columnists. A host of new weekly magazines devoted to the arts and politics surfaced, among t h e m the New Republic, the Saturday Review of Literature, the New Yorker, and monthlies like American Mercury. The Saturday Evening Post, Redbook, Collier's, and other general-interest magazines bought an enormous amount of new material—serialized novels, short stories, poems, and assorted nonfiction—and paid generously for it. 9 Theatrical production peaked in the 1920s, with well over two thousand plays opened on Broadway, a 40 percent increase over the previous decade. Book publishers similarly prospered. The number of titles issued nearly doubled during the twenties, retail sales increased by 70 percent, and eighteen new publishing houses entered the business. Only one of them failed. The literary marketplace was, in Malcolm Cowley's memorable phrase, "booming like General Motors." 1 0 Cain was happy at the World, but he did not consider it the last stop of his literary career. Cain was still a salaried writer, and such work, however secure and satisfying, was not what he was after; he wanted to be a full-fledged, independent free-lance writer, able to write what he wanted and then shop it around the marketplace himself. To this end, his thoughts turned to Broadway. Today authors write screenplays hoping to hit the commercial jackpot; in the twenties, they wrote plays. A hit on Broadway yielded its author several thousand dollars a week in box-office royalties during the length of its run, and as m u c h again over time in ancillary income. Like many other salaried writers in New York, Cain had taken note of how the successful production of What Price Gloryl—the play

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his predecessor Maxwell Anderson had written with Laurence Stallings—had catapulted Anderson out of the editorial room. Cain determined to follow suit. In the mid-twenties he started a play that, like his earlier aborted novel, was set in the West Virginia coalfields; like many such ventures in the 1920s, however, Crashing the Gates closed before reaching Broadway. In 1927, Cain turned once again to free-lance articles for the Saturday Evening Post, Mencken's American Mercury, and other magazines as a way to establish his reputation and escape the restraints of salaried editorial writing. In 1928, publisher Alfred A. Knopf wrote to Cain expressing interest in his work. Knopf was one of a host of new publishers—Horace Liveright, Charles and Albert Boni, Lincoln McVeigh, Richard Simon, and Bennett Cerf were others—instrumental in revitalizing American publishing after World War I. They had recognized that most of the older established houses—Scribner's, Holt, Putnam's, and Harper Brothers among them—remained wedded to Victorian literary tastes even as they updated their business practices. Genteel Anglo-American fiction continued to dominate their lists. The field was open, therefore, for the newer houses to cultivate the growing taste for modern writing, for the latest European experimental fiction, and, in particular, for new American writers, since in the 1920s, finally, "American writing had come to seem important/' as Van Wyck Brooks later noted; when Sinclair Lewis's Main Street sold four hundred thousand copies in the early twenties, publishers and authors alike fully appreciated the enormity of the public appetite for American writing with a modern sensibility. 11 Shocked out of their complacency by the success of the newer houses, many of the older firms quickly joined the bandwagon and, after 1925, frequently published as m u c h daring new writing as did their brasher competitors. 12 Both favorable market conditions and the influx of new publishers for w h o m American writing mattered led to something of an entente cordial between authors and publishers in the 1920s, a muting of the antagonism that had often poisoned relations during the wrenching changes of the Progressive Era. Publishers remarked on a new sense of loyalty on the part of authors as they and their agents came to appreciate the advantages of a sustained relationship with one publishing house. For their part, publishers took an active personal interest in their authors after several decades of delegating literary matters to their editors and concentrating solely on the business end of publishing. 13 Walter Hines Page wrote in 1904 that "every great publishing house has been built on the strong friend-

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ships between writers and publishers. There is, in fact, no other sound basis to build on ; for the publisher cannot do his highest duty to any author whose work he does not appreciate, and with whom he is not in sympathy/' 14 Ironically, this seemed to be more true in the 1920s than when Page had written it a generation earlier. As a rule and with notable exceptions, author-publisher relations in the 1920s reflected remarkably the values of the Genteel Era; indeed, lubricated by healthy amounts of capital and credit, and servicing an expanding market, publishing in the twenties, in its emphasis on cordial author-publisher relations, in the author's loyalty to a publisher and the publisher's deference to and cultivation of authors, illustrated the ideals of genteel professionalism. Publishing in the twenties was more Victorian in this sense than Victorian publishing itself. As long as the bull market for literature existed, as long as most publishing houses were relatively small, privately owned businesses, such courtesies cost neither side very much. By 1929, Cain had published enough first-class articles to act on Knopf's interest in his work, and in early 1930, Knopf issued Cain's first book, Our Government, a diverse collection of essays, most of which had first appeared in the American Mercury Although the book was not a financial success (it earned Cain only $250), its reviews were generally enthusiastic. Cain was finally launched, at age thirty-seven, as an author of books. Knowing full well that a book's publication was of an importance to a writer far greater than its immediate financial return, Cain was disappointed but not overly discouraged by Our Government's poor sales. As Roger Burlingame, an editor at Scribner's and a long-time observer of the way in which literary careers were built, once explained: 'The immeasurable profit of 'prestige' comes only from a book. A 'great name' in literature comes wholly from a writer's books. No amount of magazine production, lecturing, radio broadcasting or movie production has a comparable effect. Yet all these highly profitable things are often made possible to an author because of the reputation he gains from one book which may be unlucrative or even costly in itself. For it is a curious fact that a book need not sell in great numbers to build a wide reputation. Libraries, reviews, quotations, prizes and honors are all concerned in this result." 15 Alfred A. Knopf made just this point to Cain when, in 1936, he urged the by-then established author to abandon other projects and concentrate on finishing a halfwritten novel: "How much would it take to persuade you to drop everything else and do this book? How long from the time you dropped everything else would it be before we had the manuscript?

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I mean, forgetting serials, magazines, newspapers, movies, every damn thing except turning out a novel by the author of The Postman Always Rings Twicel"16 Knopf was reminding Cain of the central fact of the prose writer's dealings in the literary marketplace, one that was to prove crucial to Cain's plan for the AAA: book publication, even if hard-cover sales proved uninspired, still drove the professional author's career. This was a question not only of reputation, as Burlingame described, but also of providing new sources of income: subsidiary rights could be sold, advances negotiated for work-in-progress, articles and stories submitted to newly interested magazine editors. In this sense, by 1929 Cain had climbed another significant step as a professional writer. Cain and the Literary Marketplace in the 1930s Although Cain must have been buoyed by the publication of Our Government, his base at the World suddenly seemed less secure. The newspaper had been in financial trouble for some time, and by 1930 office gossip had it that the paper was for sale; the rumors proved true when the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain purchased the World in February 1931 and merged it with the New York Telegram. In March, Cain—like so many other Americans that year— was out of a job and, although he could not know it at the time, his newspaper days were over; nor could he have imagined that by the end of this decade that began so dismally, he would be one of the most successful writers in the country. The World had fallen victim not only to the mismanagement of Joseph Pulitzer's son Herbert, who ran the paper after 1930, but also to the grim realities of the depression. Although the heady literary marketplace of the 1920s, like the rest of the economy, had not buckled immediately after the crash in 1929, by 1931 publishers, theatrical producers, and newspaper and magazine owners all had retrenched. Worse was to come as the deepening financial crisis put paid to the bull market for the writer's work. Publishers in New York and booksellers across the country went bankrupt; the number of titles issued each year plummeted as book sales decreased sharply between 1930 and 1935. Several major magazines folded, others reduced their size, and all reduced their budgets for new material, relying on their backlog of previously purchased stories and articles. Broadway also suffered profoundly. Fifty fewer plays opened in 1930 than the year before; by 1933, there were only half the openings

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there had been in 1926. Theaters were closing left and right, demoralizing managers and playwrights alike. 17 Given the depression's effect on the literary marketplace in New York, the 1930s was a decade of diminished opportunities for American writers nationally. Those who had already made a name for themselves in the 1920s were usually able to hang on despite the economic collapse, but younger or less-established writers found the going m u c h more difficult. Publishers and theatrical managers had little money to risk on first novels or plays, magazines spent what money they had budgeted for new material on the work of established writers, and most newspapers, magazines, and publishers were laying off, not hiring, salaried staffers. The Federal Writers Project took up some of the slack after 1935 and at its peak employed more than six thousand writers, but given the limited opportunities for young writers, many turned to radical politics—the John Reed clubs, the Communist Party, and the League of American Writers—for solutions to their professional dilemma. Only a complete restructuring of the American economy, it was felt, would create meaningful work for the nation's artists and writers. In the N e w Playwright's Theatre, the New Masses, and other such outlets, these radical writers, with mixed results, sought to fuse their literary practice with their revolutionary politics. 18 Cain, although he briefly shared the terror of so many others in receiving the pink slip just as the literary marketplace was collapsing, luckily did not remain long unemployed. His reputation as a polished stylist and a skilled copy editor led Harold Ross to hire h i m as the New Yorker's managing editor and charge h i m with organizing that magazine's perpetually chaotic operations. Cain found working for the irascible Ross as difficult as had Ralph Ingersoll, Ogden Nash, and his other predecessors in the job of the magazine's resident "Genius" (or "Jesus" to some), as the staff referred to its managing editor. He quarreled with Ross about the magazine's informal system of drawing accounts (by which Ross lent money to writers without notifying Cain); he tangled with Ross over the latter's inordinate fear of libel suits; overall, he found it impossible to impose order at the magazine when Ross so often acted behind his back. By Thanksgiving Cain was pleading with his agent, James Geller, to find h i m work in Hollywood so that he could put an end to w h a t he later called "the most compromising, to self-respect, of any period in m y life." 19 When Geller arranged a short-term screenwriting contract with Paramount Pictures, Cain quickly joined the exodus

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of writers heading west to work in Hollywood, for writers 7 need for a steady paycheck had coincided with the American film industry's need of experienced novelists and playwrights. After the introduction of sound in the late twenties, studio managers had quickly realized that their small scenario departments, staffed with writers whose forte was plot construction, simply were not up to the task of writing credible dialog. So, checkbook in hand, they headed to New York to woo writers west. By 1932, Fortune magazine was reporting that "more members of the literati work under Thalberg," MGM's production chief, "than it took to produce the King James Bible." 20 Although Hollywood's treatment of the writers in its employ generated great controversy in the literary community, and the writers who worked in the studios often expressed great dissatisfaction and even despair, the studios clearly provided many writers like Cain with m u c h needed employment at precisely the time their professional opportunities in New York had so diminished. 21 The move west proved a smart one for Cain. He remained in Hollywood for seventeen years, and although he never joined the top echelon of the screenwriting trade (and in fact often considered himself a failure as a screenwriter), during that time he did write the series of novels that won him fame, fortune, and critical acclaim. Cain finished the first of these books, The Postman Always Rings Twice, in 1933 and promptly sent it off to Knopf, who initially rejected the novel as too crude to merit publication; but after some lobbying by Walter Lippmann, who liked it very much, Knopf relented. He eventually offered Cain what were at the time standard contract terms: a five hundred dollar advance against a sliding scale of royalties—10 percent of the retail price of the first twenty-five hundred copies sold, 12 percent on the next twenty-five hundred, and 15 percent on all sales over five thousand copies. Knopf would also have the option of publishing Cain's next two books. While awaiting Postman's publication, Cain began to write a thrice-weekly column for the New York American, which was syndicated in other Hearst newspapers. The eighty-five dollars this brought h i m each week helped considerably, since his Paramount contract had long since expired and, after a brief stint at Columbia Pictures, he was again without a studio job or steady income. When The Postman Always Rings Twice was published in 1934, however, Cain's money worries ended, albeit temporarily, for with this, his first novel, Cain achieved the writer's dream—a commercial hit that was also praised as a considerable literary achievement. Indeed, Hoopes calls it "probably the first of the big commercial books in

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American publishing, the first novel to hit for what might be called the grand slam of the book trade: a hard-cover best seller, paperback best seller, syndication, play and movie/ 7 2 2 The extraordinary success of The Postman Always Rings Twice put an end to Cain's journeyman status. At age forty, he was now a successful novelist. As such, he found himself suddenly in demand at the studios, and soon signed a contract with M G M to write a script for a Clark Gable picture. Cain felt so flush at this point that he returned MGM's three thousand dollar advance when he could not make any progress on the script, causing quite a stir within the Hollywood writers' colony, where giving money back to the studios bordered on heresy. 23 Cain immediately regretted the gesture, for he soon found himself strapped for money after buying a rambling house in the Hollywood Hills. Hoping to make a quick sale to the magazines, he turned to writing a serial about a scheming wife's plot to kill her husband for his insurance money, but despite constant tinkering with the story, it never really pleased him. Most of the major magazines evidently agreed with his judgment, and Geller ultimately placed "Double Indemnity" with Liberty in 1935 for a disappointing five thousand dollars. Later, Billy Wilder would make a successful movie based on the Cain serial, but Cain never changed his opinion that it was a lesser work, too close in plot and atmosphere to his first novel. Despite his success with Postman and its continuing royalty and rights checks, and despite another brief stint at Paramount, by the fall of 1936 Cain was again out of work, pressed financially, and discouraged overall. Although he reported an income of eleven thousand dollars in 1936 (as opposed to three thousand dollars in 1933, the year before Postman), supporting his house in the Hollywood Hills, his second wife, Elina, and her two children, plus paying alimony to his first wife in Maryland, left h i m continually in need of cash. It was at this point that Knopf wrote to h i m pleading for a second novel. Cain found it difficult advice to follow, though, and for the next several years he divided his time between several short screenwriting jobs, work on a play, batting out magazine articles, and, when he could find the energy, sitting down with the manuscript of his novel about the affair between an opera singer and a Mexican prostitute. Only the novel, Serenade, published by Knopf at the end of 1937, turned out well, and even it did not enjoy the critical or popular reception that had greeted Postman. Exhausted after these feverish efforts and deeply disappointed that his play 7-11 had closed after only a week's run in a small summer theater, Cain went on a brief holiday to Europe with his wife in

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January 1939. By the end of February, however, he was back in Hollywood, accepting screenwriting assignments when his one thousand dollars-a-week price was met, and planning another novel. At about this time Edmund Wilson, through Knopf, asked Cain for his thoughts about the writer's life in Hollywood, and Cain's considered response reveals a great deal about his conception of his own career, and about the Hollywood path so many writers had taken in the 1930s. "A writer is h u m a n / ' Cain confessed to Wilson, and that $1000 a week, or $1,750, or $2,500, or whatever it is [in salary] has its effect. . . . It isn't so m u c h that he can't give up the pool, and the three servants, and the genuflections at Ciro's, as that after being paid such sums his own work no longer excites him. With luck, his novel may pay h i m $10,000, $25,000 if it sells to pictures. But it will take h i m six months, perhaps a year, to write, and what are such buttons to a shot who could make $50,000 in the same space of time, working for pictures? His own work ceases to seem real. And—they become silly. They drink, they collect first editions, they believe the reviews about "sparkling dialogue," they become incorporated institutions, managed by agents. For myself, I'm a lucky case. I work for them [the studios] now and then, rather cynically, I am afraid, and not any too successfully, though they pay me rather well when they do send for me. The rest of the time I manage to make a living without them, and I hope retain m y own ideas of what my work should be like. 24 The case Cain makes here is one heard from many serious novelists and playwrights who traveled from Manhattan to Hollywood in the thirties: one wrote as creditably as one could for the movies in order to buy time to write as an independent free lance. Nathanael West, William Faulkner, S. J. Perelman, Lillian Hellman, and many others successfully balanced salaried work with longer periods off payroll devoted to their own books and plays. European writers in particular (Aldous Huxley comes immediately to mind) accepted Hollywood contracts for what they were—the most lucrative salaried writing in the world. These writers' conception of professional writing included such salaried work as part and parcel of a career; they had accommodated the modern literary marketplace to the extent that they conceived of two categories of professional writing: salaried, or service, work; and independent, or free-lance, writing. Professional authorship in the modern marketplace usually required both, with

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writers striving for independent, free-lance status. Economic independence, literally, bought a good measure of creative independence. The War Years Despite Cain's professed sangfroid to Wilson, his personal and professional fortunes through the war years were something of an emotional roller coaster. In 1939, a magazine serial representing his total output for the year failed to sell. On top of this, when he chanced to see a newly released Universal picture, When Tomorrow Comes, he stormed away from the theater, convinced that the movie plagiarized his novel Serenade, especially the notorious scene in which his main characters frenziedly make love in an abandoned Mexican church. He immediately instructed his lawyer to sue Universal for plagiarism. Cain's sagging morale received a boost in 1940, however, when having finally fulfilled the two-book option clause in his contract with Knopf, he could shop his next novel, Mildred Pierce, to several interested publishers. Knopf himself, anxious to retain Cain on his list, eventually made the best offer, but the book proved only a moderate success, selling fewer than fourteen thousand copies in hardcover when it appeared in 1941. Cain soon found himself once again in financial difficulty. Indeed, 1942 proved to be another disastrous year for Cain, as his personal misfortunes mirrored those of the country now at war and hard-pressed by enemies around the world. His second marriage broke up, and Cain was forced to leave his house in the hills for a room in a shabby bungalow hotel. His debts mounted and he found it all but impossible to work under the combined emotional and financial strain. He was also forced to find a new agent when James Geller left the Morris Agency to take a job at Warner Brothers. Then Cain's plagiarism suit against Universal was thrown out of court. Discouraged, his work not selling for the first time in years, his personal life a shambles, Cain embarked on what he described as a prolonged drunk. 25 Ironically, the next three years would be Cain's peak earning years, as from 1943 to 1945 he made more than two hundred thousand dollars. His first bit of luck was a one thousand dollar-a-week contract with Twentieth Century-Fox, which extended for seven months. Then, in 1944, Paramount's version of "Double Indemnity" proved an enormous hit; as so often happened in Hollywood, even though Cain had not contributed to the script, he suddenly found

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himself in great demand as a screenwriter. After a lucrative assignment at MGM, Cain felt secure enough to quit movie work for a while to concentrate on fiction. The brisk sales of his novels in reprint editions during the war, when Cain proved to be one of American servicemen's favorite authors, helped him in this decision. Despite restrictions on materials, especially paper, imposed by the War Production Board, the publishing industry prospered remarkably during World War II, spurred by the tremendous growth in such paperback reprint editions. The immediate success of Pocket Books, founded in 1939, in issuing small, easily-carried paperbacks priced at twenty-five cents, quickly spawned many imitators, and the Pocket Book format became the standard for low-priced reprints; "pocket book" quickly became the generic term for such editions. 26 The millions of low-cost, lightweight Armed Forces Editions distributed during the war also hastened acceptance of the pocket book format. Distribution for the domestic civilian market also underwent a revolution during the war. Only five hundred bookstores existed in the entire country in 1940, mostly located in the largest cities. The thin profit margins on paperback reprints only made business sense given significant economies of scale, and thus the reprint publishers developed a m u c h wider distribution system using drugstores, five-and-dimes, and train and bus stations as outlets. As the war ended, and despite forecasts of continuing shortages, many publishers, anticipating even greater demand for mass-produced and massmarketed books, announced plans for rapid expansion. Pocket books were not the only ancillary market that had opened up for the writer. Book clubs, for another, enjoyed increasing popularity between the wars. Both the Book-of-the-Month Club, launched in 1926, and the Literary Guild, begun a year later, distributed hundreds of thousands of copies of featured titles each m o n t h throughout the depression and the war years. In 1946, the Literary Guild alone counted more than 1,250,000 members, and was shipping more than four hundred thousand books monthly. 27 Dozens of other specialized book clubs operated on a smaller scale. All of the clubs paid a lower royalty than did trade publishers, which in turn claimed at least a half-share of all such book club rights from their authors, but a sizable return often awaited those few score authors lucky enough to have books selected each year by one of the major clubs. Commercial radio also promised a bonanza for writers, although in 1946, with the industry more powerful than ever, that bonanza had yet to be realized. Commercial broadcasting had taken shape in the 1920s; despite the depression, the radio industry grew at a steady

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if unspectacular pace during the 1930s. During the early forties, war news kept American audiences glued to their radio sets, where they were expected to remain once the war ended. 28 With so many new fields opening up for writers, and others like television broadcasting clearly on the horizon, many writers shared Harrison Smith's optimism about the professional prospects of the American literary community, as well as his vision of writing as a career that offered a young person leaving college "as m u c h wealth in a few years as any other profession or business in the nation. " 2 9 Cain himself was prospering as never before. Despite the personal and professional crises of the immediate past, he could look back on the thirty-odd years since he had determined to become a writer with some satisfaction: he had achieved the lion's share of his goal of a sustaining career as an independent writer. Many writers in Cain's position would have been satisfied with the state of their careers and heartily endorsed Harrison Smith's bullish outlook. Cain had certainly made more money than all but a handful of American writers. He enjoyed good relations with Alfred Knopf, one of the most eminent publishers in the country, and usually had been well represented by his literary agents in New York and Los Angeles. Although he wrote what were often mistakenly dismissed as mere genre novels, his work was taken seriously by his peers if not by every critic. Yet for all this, he had suffered many lean, miserable years as a writer. Several times in his career financial crises had distracted h i m from his work and turned his life topsyturvy. He had learned a great deal about the literary marketplace in his long and varied career, and the lessons had often been painful. By 1946, he had accumulated a long bill of particulars with which to indict publisher, theatrical manager, and movie producer alike. He could not shake the feeling that, however comfortably he was living, he still deserved a larger share of the considerable profits reaped by those who produced his work. Simply put, Cain was convinced that he and most other writers got a raw deal in the marketplace. Cain's Assessment of the Postwar Marketplace In 1946, Cain published a long article in the Screen Writer, the magazine of the Screen Writers Guild, detailing his plan for the American Authors' Authority. He began by describing "the plight," as he called it, of contemporary writers in the marketplace. Cain's analysis of the writer's status and role attacked all those who employed writers or marketed their works. This analysis, the litany of

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injustices detailed by Cain as he surveyed the major markets for the writer's work, and his own experiences, which underpinned both, taken together reveal much about the commercial arrangements under which writers operated in the marketplace. Ultimately, Cain's plan for the AAA focused on just these arrangements. In essence, Cain claimed that writers were taken advantage of at best and shamefully exploited at worst in all of the major markets that depended on their work—book publishing, the magazine industry, the theater, the movies, and radio. In each case, Cain pointed to inequitable contracts as the major problem; thus, it is worth taking some time to consider the general terms of the contracts writers signed with publishers, magazines, theatrical producers, and the like. Copyright, the legal foundation of any material success an author might enjoy, remained at the heart of the matter. Copyright and Subsidiary Rights Under common law, the writer created not only a literary work but also a potentially valuable commodity. Before the passage of the Statute of Anne, authors' rights were protected, if at all, not because they created an imaginative work, but because they owned a physical manuscript. By the twentieth century, the real value in an author's work lay not in the manuscript, but in the right to reproduce it for profit. This right is what we know commonly as copyright. In fact, the singular form copyright misleads, since it implies one indivisible title to a literary property, whereas copyright actually exists as a blanket or umbrella protection against unwarranted use of an author's material in any form or by whatever means of transmission. Copyright, then, involves a large number of rights, corresponding to each possible commercial use of the material in question. In 1946, for example, the Authors League identified nineteen such potential markets for a literary property: first serialization in magazine or newspaper; second serialization in magazine or newspaper; serialization in a foreign magazine or newspaper; trade edition of a book; reprint edition of a book; foreign edition of a book; omnibus or anthology edition of a book; motion picture; radio; television; dramatization; musical comedy; amateur theatrical; stock; book publication of dramatic version; amateur and educational 8 mm and 16 mm films; mechanical and electrical reproduction; comic strip; and promotion of merchandise.30 Each use of a literary property, then, was protected under copyright law and in theory a publisher, for example, needed to acquire only one of these rights (trade edi-

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tion) to publish a particular work in hardcover. The remaining rights, the subsidiary rights, remained with the holder of statutory copyright. Similarly, a movie producer would only need to acquire the motion picture rights in order to make a film of an author's work, leaving the author in possession of the remaining subsidiary rights. This was the theory; let us now examine how copyright transactions occurred in practice. Book Publishing. In the publishing industry, the outright sale of copyright by an author to a publisher, by which the publisher would acquire the entire copyright (all rights) for all time for a flat sum payment, a practice that had been common in the nineteenth century, rarely took place in the 1940s. Thus, in almost all cases when publishers "bought" books, they did not actually purchase the copyright, but rather licensed the right to produce the work in a certain form, for a certain geographical market, and for a specified amount of time. Thus, the common habit of referring to a publisher as "buying" a celebrated author's new novel, for example, misleads, since most often the publisher is leasing the right to publish a trade edition of the work. In return, the publisher contracts to compensate the author by royalty, paying a certain percentage of the receipts for each copy sold. Royalty payments first became common practice in late-nineteenth-century Britain, as publishers began to spread the increasing financial risk by offering to share it, and a percentage of the profits, with the author.31 By the 1920s, almost every American publisher paid by royalty, and by the 1940s standard, if uncodified, rates prevailed throughout the industry. Novelists, for example, received 10 percent of the retail price for the first twenty-five hundred copies sold, 12 percent on the next twenty-five hundred, and 15 percent thereafter. Best-selling authors could on occasion demand a higher rate, and publishers often paid less for first-time novels, as well as for poetry and specialized nonfiction. Such a royalty scale, calculated as a rough halving of the profits from the venture, was generally considered fair by both parties. Cain, for one, was less angered by the rate of royalty paid him than by when it was actually paid. He detested publishers' practice of retaining royalties due authors "for six, eight even twelve months after they are earned, regarding them not as money held in trust, but as funds subject to all ordinary commercial risk."32 Cain's own royalty statements from Knopf support his charges of delay: such statements were issued only twice a year and then accrued royalties were

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still not payable until six months after the statement date; thus, he would not be paid for a book bought in a store in March until the following March. Royalty matters, though, remained secondary in Cain's indictment of the publishing industry; publishers' position concerning subsidiary rights annoyed him far more. By Cain's time such rights were crucial to an author's livelihood. Subsidiary rights had possessed little value for either publisher or author before the midnineteenth century, but the expansion of newspapers and magazines after 1850 had created a sizable new market for the writer's work: both first serial rights (the right to publish a work, all or in part, in a magazine or newspaper prior to its publication in book form), and to a lesser extent second serial rights (the right to publish after the appearance of the book) increased in value. In the 1920s, R Scott Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser, William Faulkner, Ellen Glasgow, Sinclair Lewis, and countless other writers routinely earned more from the sale of first serial rights to the magazines than they did from hardcover sales. After 1900, dramatic rights (the right to produce a play based on a novel, for example) became increasingly valuable, as did motion picture rights after World War I. The popularity of magazines like the Reader's Digest, which published condensed versions of books, had created a market for abridgment rights. Book club rights, radio rights, British Commonwealth rights, foreign translation rights, foreign radio rights, and even television rights were each of potential value. All such rights, though, important as they had become by the 1940s, paled next to the reprint rights to a work, or the right to reproduce a book in a format other than the initial trade edition. A reprint might be a specially illustrated and signed limited edition for collectors, sold at a price considerably higher than the trade edition, but by the 1940s, most reprints were mass-produced, mass-marketed pocket books. The publishing history of The Postman Always Rings Twice again proves informative, as it indicates the new significance of subsidiary rights in the modern literary marketplace. By 1946, not only was Cain's novel still selling in the two-dollar trade edition, but it had already been issued in three paperback editions; one of them, a Pocket Book, had sold more than a million copies. Postman had been serialized in four newspapers, including one in London; it had been published in Britain and translated into at least seventeen languages. It had been adapted for the stage, and MGM had purchased the screen rights to it.33 Indeed, so many rights transactions had taken place that Cain had difficulty keeping track of the exact status of each one. Only in the

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years in which the hardcover edition of one of Cain's novels was published did his royalty income from trade edition sales surpass his income from subsidiary rights. For example, his royalty statement from Knopf for the six months ending on 31 October 1945 listed $277 in royalties from hardcover sales and $2,701 due the author for sales of reprint editions and foreign rights; Knopf's statement for the same period in 1946 indicated no royalties due Cain from hardcover sales, but $3,500 due h i m for reprint and foreign rights; and in the six months ending 31 October 1947, three hardcover titles had accrued royalties of $217, but Cain received $6,911 from reprints and foreign rights. 34 Admittedly, Cain was a best-selling author whose subsidiary rights were more exploitable than most. The basic point, however, related to the market itself and not to any single author's fortunes: income from subsidiary rights was central to an author's economic livelihood, and by 1946 growing more central all the time. Cain's quarrel with the publishing industry turned on the fact that, while publishers needed to obtain only the right to publish the trade edition of a book, they historically insisted on obtaining many of the subsidiary rights, all or in part, as well. As a rule, publishers would agree only to contracts that granted them reprint, book club, abridgment, and serialization rights, and often British Commonwealth, translation, and dramatization rights as well. In effect, they would act as the author's agent in the sale of these rights and claimed as m u c h as a 50 percent share of the proceeds from their sales. Publishers also claimed a share of the rights that remained for the author or the author's agent to sell. Established writers could often negotiate better terms than first-time authors, or those whose previous works had sold poorly, but the industry stood firm in its position that the publisher was entitled to a healthy share of the income from subsidiary rights. Publishers justified their acquisition of such rights in two ways: they reasoned that the value, indeed, the very existence, of subsidiary rights derived from the primary fact of a book's publication; and they argued that they needed the income from the sale of these rights in order to make a profit, since the appearance of a book in a reprint, book club, digest, or other edition, trade publishers maintained, depressed hardcover sales. Cain and many other authors categorically rejected this argument: "Publishers demand rights there is no reason they should have: abridgement rights, reprint rights, foreign rights, and serial rights, to name only those which are claimed by practically all publishers, and there are not three who will not accept, if they can get away with it, the picture rights and a share of the picture money. From those of the rights they control,

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they take 50% of the revenue, although they give h i m [the author] no service except that customarily given by an agent, and often bungle the exploitation with an incompetence few agents would be guilty of."35 As to the argument offered by publishers that they were entitled to a share of subsidiary rights income because the sales of these rights depressed the sales of their trade editions, "not one word of this is true. Appearance of a book in Reader's Digest does not hurt their sales, but stimulates them, which is also the case with reprint, foreign, and serial publication, while the increase that results from the appearance of a picture based on it is prodigious." Cain was particularly outraged by publishers' demands for half the proceeds of sales of book-club rights: "The claim that these cut in on their sales is simply grotesque, for their beneficent effect on business is legendary. Did any club ever pick a book because of something contributed by the publisher? . . . The Book Clubs encouraged this split because at first they encountered opposition from the publishers, and they dissolved that opposition by a bribe. But it was a bribe at the expense of the writer, who was all hot for clubs, for the occasional jackpot they would give him, and willing to close his eyes to the blue chips that went to the house." Indeed, all the arguments advanced by publishers for a share of subsidiary rights were "phoney," Cain argued, and they were able to "get away with the gyp" only because "on this issue they encircle the writer with a completely unified front. There is no place he can turn to get his book published without giving up these rights which should belong to him." 3 6 Cain's own experience with reprint rights drove this indictment of the publisher's role in their sale. His contract with Knopf for The Postman Always Rings Twice not only stipulated that Knopf would split reprint income equally with Cain, but also gave the publisher the exclusive right to negotiate reprint sales. Since Knopf routinely sold reprint rights for a 4 percent royalty on retail sales, this meant that Cain received precisely one penny for each twenty-five-cent pocket book sold, which he then had to split with Knopf. On the sale of 150,000 such books, he received only $750; the reprint house itself reaped three times the profit. Cain's blood pressure routinely soared when he read royalty statements that reflected such a modest return on such huge sales. He was similarly demoralized, while adapting Postman for the stage, when he reread his contract with Knopf and realized that the publisher was entitled to 25 percent of all the stage royalties Cain might earn and that, in addition, under the terms of the sale of the screen rights of the novel to MGM, the

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studio was also cut in for a full third of all stage royalties. Cain would receive less than half of the normal author's royalty for a play he had written, based on a book he had written. 37 Such incidents led Cain to protest that publishers had no business controlling an author's subsidiary rights, and he was convinced that the AAA he had conceived would put an end to the practice once and for all. Magazines. When Cain turned to the magazine market, he found the deck similarly stacked against the writer. He condemned the traditional injunction against multiple submissions, that is, offering a piece to several magazines simultaneously. While magazine editors might protest that it took them time to consider submissions deliberately, and that they would make poorer decisions if hurried by the knowledge that others were also considering the piece, Cain insisted that "the purpose actually is to deprive h i m [the author] of a competitive market, and eliminate the one factor which might operate toward reasonable promptness." In addition, just as in book publishing, the writer as a condition of acceptance had to "yield to the magazine a senseless catalogue of rights of no use to it," but of "considerable value to himself, on the pretext that it m u s t 'protect itself until after publication, when they will be returned to him, a promise usually broken." In practice, magazines would copyright articles in their own name and transfer the copyright back to the writer after publication, reserving for themselves a share of reprint and other potentially valuable subsidiary rights. In Cain's opinion, the writer submitting to magazines "hasn't even the appearance of a favorable status." 3 8 A small incident during the AAA controversy speaks to the justice of Cain's claim, as well as to his touchiness on the subject. When, early in 1947, he received payment from the Saturday Review of Literature for a piece he had written on the AAA the previous fall, it arrived with a request that Cain assign his copyright to the magazine and also grant it the power to license reprintings for a 50 percent share of all reprint royalties. Cain fumed. He batted out a testy letter to Harrison Smith, one of the magazine's editors and an acquaintance, in which he declared: "Simply on the principle of the thing, considering the subject under discussion [the AAA], I could not endorse such an agreement as appears on the voucher. The right to copyright in your name, of course, is a practical convenience under the present copyright law. That I don't quarrel with. However, there is nothing about reassignment of the copyright to me. And a right to license others and reprint I certainly will not grant you, and your claim to 50% of the proceeds of such reprint, or to any share in

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them is grossly out of line with fairness."39 Smith wrote back several weeks later agreeing to transfer copyright back to Cain, but making no mention of the reprint issue. That writers rarely requested such re-assignment is suggested by Smith's confession that the Saturday Review had no printed form to effect such a transfer; rather than pay a lawyer to draft one, he assured Cain that his letter granting the transfer would be legally binding on the magazine.40 Theater. Cain allowed that the market situation was better for playwrights than for any other group of writers, in great measure because in the 1920s dramatists had negotiated a standard contract with theatrical producers (see pp. 68-70). This Minimum Basic Agreement (MBA) stipulated that all plays would be copyrighted in the name of the author, who had the contractual right to approve all script changes. It called for a floor on royalties of 5 percent of gross weekly box office receipts, but imposed no ceiling, and explicitly stated that royalties belonged to the author as soon as they were earned, to be held in trust by the producer until actual payment. This meant that producers, unlike publishers, could not hold royalties for as long as a year, nor would dramatists lose money owed them if theatrical producers went bankrupt. A revision of the MBA in the 1930s had assured that producers could not claim more than a 50 percent share of subsidiary rights and granted the producer only a 40 percent share of most rights. Moreover, the playwright, not the producer, controlled the negotiations of all rights' sales. Finally, the MBA ensured competitive bidding for film rights to a play through the office of the film rights negotiator within the Dramatists Guild; this negotiator would handle the sales of film rights to all plays produced under the MBA. The negotiator received bids from the studios, evaluated them for fairness, and then awarded the rights to that studio that tendered the best bid. In fact, the abuses of theatrical managers in regard to film rights had provided the impetus for playwrights to demand a basic agreement in the first place: managers had been caught colluding with the film studios in the 1920s to lower the sale price of such rights while collecting a sizable fee from the studios for arranging the deal. The film rights negotiator effectively ended this practice.41 Cain admitted that the MBA prevented playwrights from suffering many of the ills afflicting book authors, and he attributed the dramatists' success in achieving this standard contract to the fact that playwrights did not have to ''deal with big, formidable corporations," as did book and magazine writers, but rather "with individual producers, most of them temperamentally peculiar, so that

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collectively they are weak and relatively easy to handle." For all this, however, Cain still cautioned that "the writer for the stage is favorably situated only if he has a hit on his hands." 4 2 If not, as Cain's own frustrating attempts to write plays had taught him, writers often saw months or years of work produce very little financial return. Cain had written three plays by 1946: Crashing the Gates closed before reaching Broadway; his adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice closed after only seventy-two performances; and 7-11 played only one week in a provincial theater. He had spent months working on each of them and was severely disappointed at the failure of 7—11 in particular. "What keeps writers poor is writing plays," he advised a friend at the time, "between the loss of income while you are writing t h e m and the hotel expenses in N e w York, it is stupid to write them at all." 43 Motion Pictures. Cain trained his heaviest guns on the practices in the motion picture industry, both as an employer of writers and as a purchaser of the rights to original scripts or previously published work. Over the course of his seventeen years as a screenwriter, Cain had made hundreds of thousands of dollars; at the time he tried to launch the AAA, Cain was employed by RKO Pictures, and in 1946 he earned $42,083 in salary from the studio as opposed to only $4,406 in royalties and rights payments from Knopf.44 Thus he was not one to discount the economic rewards of studio work. Cain knew full well, though, that he had fared m u c h better than most within the studio system, even if he had never reached the very top echelon of the screenwriting trade; he had seen for himself that large weekly salaries misrepresented the screenwriter's earnings, since very few writers actually worked more than a small fraction of the year. In his own case, during his seventeen years in Hollywood, Cain averaged only about thirteen weeks per year under contract. The Screen Writers Guild reported that only about 40 percent of its members made more than $10,000 for the year beginning in April 1944; only seventeen screenwriters, or 2.5 percent, earned more than $75,000. Ten percent made no money at all. 45 Clearly, few writers had actually struck it rich in Hollywood. Moreover, although in the early 1940s the Screen Writers Guild had succeeded in negotiating its own M i n i m u m Basic Agreement (which the studios had fought stubbornly for more than a decade) specifying m i n i m u m terms of employment, setting m i n i m u m salary scales, and prohibiting the worst kinds of abuses screenwriters had previously suffered (such as the producers' power to determine writing credits), salaried writers still faced daunting conditions of employ-

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ment. To begin with, as Cain pointed out, they owned "not one dot or comma" of what they wrote; all screenwriting contracts specified the studio as the legal author of anything written under contract to it. The studio owned all copyrights by way of such release contracts. In addition, the writer was straitjacketed by any long-term screenwriting contract, bound to the studios for five years or more, while the studio was committed for only six months at a time. Moreover, many studios claimed first option on any original work screenwriters might produce even on their own time during the life of the contract. This led many a frantic writer to employ the ruse of listing on contracts as work-in-progress (and thus exempt from the release clause) any number of all-purpose titles for works they in fact had not yet conceived. The complaints of writers laboring within the film industry are celebrated and legion.46 However, Cain was equally concerned with pointing out the inequities facing a writer selling screen rights to the studios, or an original script not written under contract: "Here, by established custom, he is compelled to part with his property forever, often for sums so small they are grotesque in comparison with the amount made out of it by the company that buys it, and then to stand by and see it remade time after time, without participation of any kind in the perpetual bonanza that he has created."47 Again, Cain spoke from bitter personal experience, for he regretted his entire life that Geller had persuaded him to sell the screen rights to The Postman Always Rings Twice to MGM for only $25,000, half of which went to Knopf, only to see his novel made into not one, but three successful pictures over the years. He received nothing other than his initial $12,500 payment. Indeed, for Postman, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce, Cain received less than $30,000, not an insignificant sum in itself, but small change compared to the millions in profits earned by the films. In dealing with the film industry, Cain concluded, the writer was "probably worst off of all."48 Radio. In fact, the predicament for the writer in radio, if anything, was even more desperate. Neither salaried nor free-lance radio writers enjoyed much standing or protection. Radio writers worked anonymously, their work uncredited on broadcasts, thereby making it impossible for them to build a following among listeners. Radio producers bought broadcast rights from important authors at prices that bore little relation to those paid by publishers, magazine editors, theatrical managers, and newspaper syndicates for the same material. Even the radio rights to best-sellers like Gone with the Wind or Mrs. Miniver brought only a few hundred dollars, and

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most novels or popular short stories sold for m u c h less. Original radio scripts rarely sold for more than fifty dollars, and advertising agencies, networks, and independent packagers who produced radio shows paid their salaried writing staffs poorly and offered t h e m few benefits. 49 Writing on speculation was commonplace. One particular annoyance for radio writers was the audition script. Every successful series began with such a script, which established the basic situation and created the main characters. Series were sold to the networks on the basis of such scripts, supplemented by an outline of the story line of following episodes, also supplied by the writer. In the thirties, audition scripts were written on speculation, and even in 1946, rarely did writers profit greatly when their scripts launched popular, longrunning series. One veteran radio writer reported that he had written many such audition scripts, including one for a series that subsequently ran for six seasons, and was then sold to Hollywood for forty thousand dollars. The studio then made six profitable movies based on the radio show. The writer's pay for his original script and story outline for the series was twenty-five dollars. He received not a penny more. 50 The general situation for writers had improved somewhat after radio emerged from the war as the dominant mass medium in the country. Speculative writing all but disappeared; original scripts brought five times the price they had fifteen years earlier, yet the median weekly wage for radio staff writers remained low, less than fifty dollars. More important, as in motion pictures, staff writers still signed release contracts assigning to their employers all rights to their work on the job; many signed away all rights to what they wrote after hours as well. Radio producers also insisted on the outright purchase of scripts from free-lance writers, leaving the author with no right, share, or further interest in a script. 51 Once again, as in motion pictures, even though radio producers only needed one specific right to an original script, they obtained all rights to the material. This led Cain to single out one additional "crying evil" in radio, the "unexploited right." Producers often made little effort to sell the subsidiary rights they owned; in the rare cases in which writers did retain some participation in the profits from rights sales, they still reaped little or no reward, since the producers often parted with such rights, according to Cain, "on a gratis basis simply because it never occurred to anybody concerned with t h e m that the writer was entitled to anything." 5 2 Cain himself, in 1946, had less first-hand experience with radio than with other major markets. He had never worked as a salaried

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radio writer, and indeed only 15 percent of all radio programming was written in-house. He had not made very many rights' sales to radio, precisely because the motion picture companies insisted, when they bought a Cain property for the movies, on obtaining the radio rights as well and then they did the selling. Thus, while radio producers were paying the studios increasingly hefty sums for the properties they owned, the authors themselves were most often cut out of the transaction completely. The motion picture studios, more than the writing community, then, profited from radio's deep pockets after the war. Corporate ownership of copyright prevailed in radio as in the movies. In theory, radio should have been a lucrative market for writers; in practice, it proved something m u c h less. Taxation and Plagiarism. To this catalog of grievances Cain added one other: despite the injustices the writer suffered at the hands of all of these predatory corporate interests, Cain asserted that the United States government remained "his worst persecutor. " 5 3 Cain explained that a recent court of appeals decision upheld the Treasury Department's position that all the profits from the sales of subsidiary rights should be taxed as ordinary income rather than at the lower capital gains rate. The point of law in the Goldsmith case was murky, with the court ruling that copyright was not separable for the purpose of taxation; thus, a licensing, rather than the outright sale of, in this case, motion picture rights, had actually taken place. Since there was no sale of a capital asset, the capital gains tax could not apply. The net effect to the writer of this ruling, to Cain's mind, was that "the United States courts abolished his claim to any ponderable interest in his property, and left h i m the one man in the country not permitted to keep anything except a bare fraction of what he gets for it, although God knows it takes h i m just as much work to produce it as it takes anyone else, and at least as much talent." 5 4 To add insult to injury, while the courts had been "abolishing all but a fraction of the writer's property" by such unfavorable rulings, they had also been "extinguishing his title to even the small remn a n t " remaining by making it virtually impossible to win a copyright infringement case in court. Cain explained that, since most such cases involved the motion picture industry, they were heard before the district court in Los Angeles. There they were normally assigned to Leon Yankwich, a well-known liberal judge and an authority on libel law. According to Cain, Yankwich held to such a narrow definition of plagiarism that he had "never, as a matter of

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actual record, given a verdict for the plaintiff. " 55 Cain had had his own unhappy experience in Judge Yankwich's court, when he unsuccessfully sued Universal over the church scene from Serenade. "For all practical purposes there is no federal copyright in Los Angeles/7 Cain could only conclude. "Literary works may be stolen with perfect impunity, and in fact are stolen oftener than is commonly realized, for the picture companies make it a practice not to sue each other."56 Perversely, Cain had been one of the defendants in a plagiarism suit while under contract himself at Universal in 1943. A writer sued Cain and Universal, claiming that the studio's recently released Gypsy Wildcat, to which Cain had contributed, plagiarized his story. Cain could not help but feel sorry for the writer, who, predictably, lost the case, battling powerful Universal all alone; at the time he suggested that the Screen Writers Guild discourage writers from pursuing weak infringement cases, but actively support writers who had legitimate and demonstrable grievances. As long as individual authors bore the entire brunt of costly litigation against powerful and wealthy corporations, there could be little chance of better enforcement. In his article for the Screen Writer, Cain also said much about writers7 own culpability for the muddle they were in, about the ineffectiveness of existing writers' organizations, and especially about his plan to restructure the literary marketplace to the writers' considerable advantage. It was clear to Cain, if not to all other writers, that the modernization of the literary marketplace begun during the Progressive Era had bulldozed the landscape of professional authorship. The sedate, insular world of small, independently owned Victorian publishing houses had given way to a bewildering array of markets and media, most serving an enormous national audience and most controlled by competitive and profit-conscious corporations. As he considered his profession in 1946, Cain could only conclude that writers had failed miserably to cope with the astonishing transformation technology and modern business practice had brought about in literary economics. Commercial demand for the writer's work had never been greater, yet more of this work was performed while on salary, as service writing. Further, these same corporate interests had succeeded in hiving off many of the most valuable subsidiary rights from those copyrights that authors still retained. For most of Cain's career, he had remained largely ignorant of the intricacies of copyright law and its implications for writers' livelihoods. By 1946, though, he finally understood, often only

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too well, just how the complicated mechanics of the marketplace worked to the disadvantage of even the commercially successful writer. I have been concerned with illuminating two matters in this chapter—writers' actual position in the modern literary marketplace, and their self-image, the identity they assumed as writers within that marketplace. As Cain surveyed his trade in 1946, he could discern a hierarchy of five clear if overlapping categories of writers in America: the independent, free-lance writer stood at the top of his profession; another group of writers supplemented their free-lance earnings with occasional stints of salaried work; a third group relied exclusively on service writing to pay their bills; a fourth group relied on another occupation for their main financial support while occasionally selling a story, novel, or poem ; finally, a vast pool of amateur writers rarely if ever sold their work. Over the course of his career, Cain had begun as an amateur, first tested the waters of the literary marketplace while teaching, drawn a salary as a reporter, then began to build a career as a free-lance journalist. After years of mixing free-lance work with studio employment, he had finally in the 1940s achieved full-fledged independent free-lance status. For the genteel author, only the independent writer truly qualified for professional status. For Cain and other writers of his generation, on the other hand, authorial professionalism allowed h i m to accept salaried work from newspapers and Hollywood, without any great enthusiasm, but without feeling that he had violated his personal and artistic integrity. "I work a few weeks a year, and collect the main part of my living expenses/' Cain wrote to Wolcott Gibbs in 1938, "which leaves me free to do my other work without having to worry about the rent. I don't go nuts." 5 7 In other words, he could be a worker, and still remain a writer. He may not have liked it, and certainly he preferred the independence of free-lance status, but he disagreed with William Dean Howells that writers should feel shamed by taking money for their work. Other writers were not convinced, and many still owed essential allegiance to Howells's vision of the writer's identity and to genteel authorship. Hollywood had provided the litmus test for writers in the 1930s. Those writers who stubbornly clung to the genteel, traditional definition of their profession agreed with Edmund Wilson that Hollywood was a scourge, a destroyer of literary talent. A Hollywood contract signified not professionalism, but prostitution. Other writers, like Cain, accepted salaried writing as the inevitable result of changes in the marketplace and expanded their definition of professional authorship to include it. Nathanael West, for one,

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explained the distinction he and others of like mind drew between his movie work and his other writing: "I don't mind doing those C movies at Republic. I watch my friends struggling to get their social messages into their million-dollar situation comedies and it seems to me it takes too m u c h out of them—that is, if they hope to have anything left for their own work. The higher you get on the screenwriting ladder the more they expect of you. This way I can write, Tardner, when you say that, smile/ and 'You dot dot dot mean?' and it's relatively painless. . . . This way I give t h e m a fair day's work and can still concentrate on what I want to write for myself." 58 William Faulkner was another who believed he could hire himself out to Hollywood without damaging his artistic integrity: There's some people who are writers who believed they had talent, they believed in the dream of perfection, they get offers to go to Hollywood where they can make a lot of money, and they can't quit their jobs because they have got to continue to own that swimming pool and the imported cars. There are others with the same dream of perfection, the same belief that they can match it, that go there and resist the money without becoming a slave to it. . . . It is going to be difficult to go completely against the grain or current of a culture. But you can compromise without selling your individuality completely to it. You've got to compromise because it makes things easier. 59 West, Faulkner, Cain, and other like-minded American authors accepted this compromise as necessary in the modern literary marketplace. Yet, as writers' attempts to organize their profession in the twentieth century amply indicate, few were ready to abandon the Victorian legacy of genteel authorship. More than fifty years after Pulitzer, McClure, Doubleday, and others had wrought their revolution, writers remained unsure of their status and role in the modern literary marketplace.

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3. Writers Organize (1883-1946) I am quite certain that there cannot be any body of men worse over their own affairs than literary men. —WALTER BESANT

OF COURSE, Cain was not the first writer to articulate the grievances he expressed so forcefully in the Screen Writer, nor even the first to try to convince writers to fight for a better deal in the marketplace; but he dismissed all previous attempts to organize writers as failures, and all writers' professional societies as weak and poorly run. The very notion of writers organizing to promote their professional interests was itself yet another result of the modernization of the literary marketplace that had begun in the late nineteenth century. American writers had first stirred to collective action over international copyright; the success of their campaign for the passage of Piatt-Simonds led them to contemplate establishing some morepermanent body to push for further reforms.

The British Society of Authors In searching for a precedent for such an organization, American writers looked to England, where in 1883 Walter Besant had founded the Society of Authors. The 1870s and 1880s had witnessed the emergence in England of a literary marketplace palpably modern in structure and practice, and one that placed the writer in a more favorable position than ever before. Author-publisher relations in Britain, always frostier than in America, grew even more hostile as commercially successful writers came to view their publishers, in Besant's phrase, as "purely and simply men of business/' rather than kindred spirits, fellow guardians of Victorian morality and the sacred Muse. In fact, British publishing was "infested and brought into disrepute by persons who prey upon the ignorance and inexperience of authors/' according to Besant, "plundering them in their agreements and cheating them in their returns." 1 Besant's assertion that publishers were cooking their books to underreport authors' royal-

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ties helped to galvanize opinion among British authors against their publishers, and in 1883, he convinced a small group of noted writers to incorporate as the Society of Authors, with three broad objectives: to maintain and defend authors' rights to their literary property; to amend domestic British copyright law where needed; and to push for international copyright protection. Lord Tennyson lent the new organization immediate credibility by serving as its first president. By 1892, when Besant addressed the society's tenth annual meeting, he looked back with some satisfaction at the decade's achievements: the Society of Authors now counted almost one thousand members; the worst abuses in the publishing industry had been brought to light and in some cases rectified; domestic copyright legislation had been revised in ways beneficial to authors; and the society had contributed measurably to the public perception of authorship as respectable, honorable, and even lucrative. He looked forward to the Society of Authors further increasing its membership, arranging a national pension fund for writers, and lobbying for recognition as the official headquarters of the writing profession, placing it on a par with such institutions as the Royal Academy of the Arts, the College of Physicians, and the Institute of Civil Engineers.2 However much the Society of Authors concentrated on economic matters, and however much Besant claimed that it was no longer beneath the dignity of the writer to speak of money, his organization still embodied the genteel view of authorship. The Society of Authors meant to function within the existing structure of the marketplace and the greater world of letters. It was reformist, but not revolutionary. The society, for example, rejected calls that it set up its own publishing house. It also consistently resisted proposals that it act as a literary agency. As mentioned in the first chapter, Besant's professionalism was distinctly of a genteel type: not only the income but the social position of the author concerned him, and what elevated writers above the grubby fray of the marketplace to join other esteemed professionals, worthy of "as much social consideration as a Bishop/' was precisely their allegiance to literature as a sacred calling. Thus Besant expected the Society of Authors to unite writers, not into a disciplined trade union, but rather into a voluntary association of comfortable Victorian professionals, dedicated to the privileged position of literature and its creation and wary of the marketplace and commercial values.

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American writers readily admitted that American publishers, whatever their sins, were more honest and honorable than their British counterparts. Yet American writers, too, increasingly doubted publishers' cries of poverty; that some publishers still refused to sign written contracts, offering the handshake instead, only fueled writers7 suspicions. Publishers 7 continued insistence that a gentlemanlike trust should exist in the industry, writers feared, simply disguised creative bookkeeping. In any case, at the turn of the century, many in the literary community believed that authors were not receiving their fair share of the newfound prosperity in publishing. Several rival writers 7 groups formed in the 1890s, successors to the groups that had promoted the cause of international copyright, but the rivalries and factionalism that resulted from so many competing organizations guaranteed their failure, especially since all faced the unanimous hostility of publishers, magazine editors, and the press. Writers won at least one battle, though, when in 1896 the courts ruled, in Savage v. Neely, that authors with royalty contracts had the right to inspect their publishers 7 accounts in order to verify the accuracy of sales figures.3 However, fifteen years after this decision, writers still lacked an effective national organization devoted to their professional interests. Lawyer and writer Arthur Train changed this when, in 1912, he founded the Authors League of America (AL). Rex Beach, Rupert Hughes, George Barr McCutcheon, Ida Tarbell, and the others who joined Train to found the Authors League pursued the same agenda as the British Society of Authors: more satisfactory domestic and international copyright provisions, greater protection of the rights and properties of authors, and the establishment of a bureau to advise writers about legal matters and market conditions. Unlike Besant and the Society of Authors, however, the founders of the Authors League had no desire for their organization to serve as a kind of American academy or institute, bestowing honors and awards. "We were merely hard-working young writers 77 with no thought of "the literary Parnassus, 77 Train insisted; they merely "wanted an equitable share in the proceeds of our labor. We were a business organization and pretended to be nothing else.774 The Authors League rented offices in Greenwich Village and focused its energies initially on the magazine market, then the most lucrative for writers, but also subject to any number of abuses. The first few volumes of the Authors League Bulletin featured more than a dozen articles about serial rights, all warning that magazines

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often claimed all rights to a story or article even though they paid only for first serialization; some articles argued for royalties rather than the still-standard lump-sum payment for the serialization of novels, and others complained that a magazine's circulation rarely correlated with what it paid its authors. 5 The Authors League also joined with magazine publishers and the relevant print unions to protest proposed hikes in second-class postal rates, which would have dealt subscription-based magazines a severe blow. This first taste of cooperation with the unions led the Authors League to contemplate closer ties with organized labor, particularly since the league aimed to correct many of the abuses in the motion picture industry, still in its wildcat stage but destined soon to rival and then dwarf the magazine market in importance for writers. Contract conditions for writers were at best chaotic: the aspiring movie tycoons stole shamelessly from current best-sellers in their search for story material with box office value; since plagiarism was all but impossible to prove in court, the author stood at the complete mercy of unscrupulous and dishonest producers. The trade unions, which were anxious to organize workers and artisans employed by the motion picture tyros before they grew too well heeled and entrenched, proposed themselves as a natural ally of writers in the Authors League. In April 1916, the Authors League executive committee created a working party to consider formal links with the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Thompson Buchanan chaired this Affiliation Committee, which in May submitted a report strongly favoring affiliation. The AFL could help the League gain all of its original objectives concerning copyright reform and greater equity, Buchanan argued. Affiliation with the AFL would help writers in their struggles with management on Broadway, on Publisher's Row, and especially in the emerging movie industry. The 2.5 million AFL members would support whatever legitimate grievances writers raised in each of these markets, and would even strike on their behalf. The Authors League would lose none of its autonomy, nor would such a course in any way interfere with the freedom of speech or action of its members. There would be no imposition of any union rules on the League itself.6 The Affiliation Committee argued that, since the Authors League had been founded as a "business organization of working producers of copyrightable material" who had "banded together to secure their rights and improve their conditions by mutual aid," the AL was "already a union in the widest definition of the word." Thus affiliation with the AFL would advance, not compromise, its original objec-

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tives. The committee went to great pains to explain why it saw no conflict between joining the AFL and maintaining professional independence: Individuals with similar interests can more readily secure their rights if they act in unison than if each worked alone. . . . Possibly it may occur to some that affiliation with the American Federation of Labor might not be in keeping with their dignity as artists. The signers of this report believe that if they as individuals have dignity, it comes from their work and their personal characters. If they do not have it they have forfeited it because of their work or their personal character; and being affiliated with the American Federation of Labor will not harm nor help their dignity. Your committee feels that dignity in any true meaning of the word depends upon one's sense of self-respect; and that selfrespect, in turn, depends very largely upon whether one is working under fair conditions for fair payment. Since your committee also believes that affiliation will help improve the conditions of authorship, your committee also believes that it will help increase dignity of the highest and truest sort.7 In short, the detailed report submitted by Buchanan argued that the Authors League had everything to gain and nothing to lose by such a move. The Authors League Council itself decided that writers should debate the issue for six months, after which the League would poll the entire membership. The Authors League was soon inundated with letters from concerned writers nationwide. Many of these correspondents supported the reasoning and conclusions of the Affiliation Committee. More than seventy writers, including Rex Beach, George Barr McCutcheon, Mary Roberts Rinehart, and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, so believed in affiliation's advantages that they cosigned Buchanan's report. Freeman, for one, hoped to convince writers that "authorship is labor," and many of the letters received by the Authors League echoed her sentiment.8 Harvey O'Higgins commented that the author might be as "professional and artistic as he pleases in his relations with his art," but "his relations with his publisher of that art will, nevertheless, be the relations of labor with capital." O'Higgins supported affiliation wholeheartedly, since to his mind the "Authors League was organized to be a labor union." 9 Most of the letters favoring affiliation expressed much this same conception of the Authors League as a trade union, and of authors

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as workers, needing protection in the modern industrial marketplace. That marketplace was changing rapidly, these writers said, and writers would either adapt or suffer increasing exploitation. Gone were the days when publishing was a minor industry, the province of affluent and educated gentlemen who treated their authors with honesty, civility, and deference. Charles Johnson Post, for example, termed affiliation the only step the Authors League could take that could "break down the absurd superstitions that set artists and writers in a class separate from the rest of the workers of the world." Publishers used the "cheap flattery of caste distinction" (in other words, exploiting the class-biased notion of genteel authorship lingering from the Victorian era), so that writers were "at the mercy of every artifice of a self-exalted commercial class to choke off the decent rewards of labor." Post wanted no more paternalistic talk of publishers shielding authors from the tawdry and meretricious marketplace,- "labor is labor," he reminded his colleagues, and only "the cheap garnishments of flattery" kept writers in an "uneffective, unco-ordinated condition, to the profit of the flatterers."10 For all the enthusiasm expressed for Buchanan's report, it generated far more dismay. Most writers were convinced that affiliation spelled disaster for the Authors League and rejected Buchanan's analysis out-of-hand. The strength of this opposition became clear when some eighty League members, including its president, Winston Churchill, and nearly half the sitting AL Council, signed an open letter opposing affiliation as "inappropriate, disadvantageous, and dangerous." They criticized Buchanan's report as suspiciously onesided: What, they asked, would the AFL demand in return for its support of the League? Buchanan had mentioned no quid pro quo, but the protesters insisted that the Authors League, if only out of fairness, would be obligated to support other AFL unions in their own industrial disputes, forcing the League to debate "burning questions remote from its specific interest," with disastrous consequence for its unity.11 "How would it be possible for us to affiliate with the American Federation of Labor," asked well-known columnist and AL member Don Marquis in a separate letter, "without accepting certain obligations?" The Authors League, Marquis insisted, would invariably become mired in labor controversies not of its concern, distracting it from its own objectives.12 Many of those who looked with horror on affiliation rejected the fundamental premise of Buchanan's report: that authorship was an industrial vocation in need of union protection. "Authorship is an art, not merely an industry," one correspondent informed the Authors League Bulletin.13 "No American Federation of Labor for me!

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Emphatically N O ! " another exclaimed, reasoning that those in favor of affiliation were mostly "disgruntled scenario writers, with w h o m I have no sympathy. The average motion-picture story is simply prostitution of a writer's ability, anyhow." 14 Hamlin Garland, a founding member and influential figure in the League, while sympathetic to organized labor, eventually succumbed to the arguments of the opponents: "I like to think that my writing is an attempt at expressing something in terms of an art, not in terms of a trade," he concluded. 15 By the end of the summer, it was clear to all that the majority of League members resisted the suggestion that writers adopt the mantle of industrial workers. When Churchill, the other signatories of the protest letter, and more than three hundred others threatened to quit the Authors League if it joined the AFL, Thompson Buchanan resigned as chairman of the Affiliation Committee. His successor, Ellis Parker Butler, submitted a second report to the executive committee in October effectively reversing the first. The Affiliation Committee had proposed to join the AFL, Butler now claimed, only if the League membership overwhelmingly agreed. Since it clearly did not, Butler now revoked the request for a general vote on the issue. The executive committee, for its part, abruptly called off the referendum and dropped the matter entirely. 16 This executive committee decision did not end debate over the writer's status and role in the modern marketplace, but the rejection of affiliation effectively and significantly assured that the Authors League would operate as a voluntary society of independent professionals rather than as a trade union, militant or otherwise. It committed the League to the traditionalist's view of its function. The League's main purpose, its new president Rex Beach declared in 1918, had always been as a "safe and sane business organization without frills and furbelows," devoted to "establishing a cleaner, fairer, more open business relationship between authors and artists and the various interests with which they come in contact." Under Beach's leadership, the League steered even more closely to the course set originally by the British Society of Authors: having dispensed with the irritating affiliation controversy, the League would concern itself with correcting abuses in the marketplace and informing writers of existing trade conditions; it would not immediately seek to organize writers into a union, or anything resembling one. The Authors League's Program Committee in 1919 submitted a plan for action both ambitious and hopelessly unrealistic, including the recommendation that the League serve the literary community by "raising the standards of literary criticism and securing for American books the

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attention undoubtedly due them/ 7 The Program Committee also suggested that "admission to the League itself should be in the nature of an honor conferred on those who have 'arrived 7 or who have done notable and prideworthy work in literature or art.77 This conception of the League as a restrictive, prestigious academy of literature flew in the face of even its founders 7 expressed desire that the organization welcome virtually anyone who wished to join. Nothing came of the Program Committee's idea; that it was even suggested indicates the retrograde thinking within the League in the immediate aftermath of its flirtation with the AFL. That fight, then, left the Authors League firmly in the hands of a small band of well-intentioned and conscientious writers, mostly successful free-lance authors and playwrights in New York, with an expressed allegiance to authorship as an art and an expressed hostility to defining the profession of authorship in collective or militant terms. In the years after 1916, the League concentrated its energies on general copyright and contract issues and first turned to the quest for a standard book contract agreeable to both authors and publishers. The Authors League Bulletin criticized the average contract as grossly unfair to the author: publishers controlled all subsidiary rights except translation rights as a matter of course; they could change the title of a book, and even trademark it in their own name; they need specify no date for publication in the contract, and they issued royalty statements only on the author's request. Subsidiary rights, most of which had been gobbled up by publishers, belonged rightfully to the author, the League asserted, and at best publishers should only be entitled to an agent's commission for their sale. 17 The League proposed a model book contract built around three key correctives: copyright in the author 7 s name, specific dates of publication and reversion of rights to the author, and remuneration by royalty at an agreed-on m i n i m u m rate. Most of the largest commercial publishers in New York already wrote such terms into their contracts for most fiction and general nonfiction, but the industry presented a united front in refusing to consider adopting any such m i n i m u m basic contract on an official basis. Rex Beach conceded in 1918 that winning acceptance of the standard contract would be a "slow and tedious process, 77 and in fact authors would still be negotiating with publishers over this issue in 1946, one reason why Cain assessed the Authors League so harshly. The League, in its defense, faced daunting problems in achieving such an agreement with publishers: despite a membership of almost one thousand writers in 1916, and more than double that thirty years later, it still counted only a small proportion of the total number of American writers as

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members; thus in 1946 it was not, and never had been, in a position to shut off the flow of material to publishers and by so doing force t h e m to the bargaining table. The League was caught in a vicious circle: it was afraid to bargain aggressively without a larger membership, but it could not materially increase its membership so long as it did not achieve bargaining successes for authors. The Dramatists Guild's Minimum Basic Agreement In 1920, recognizing that playwrights faced different conditions in a different market, the Authors League created two membership branches: the Authors Guild for those who wrote books or for magazines; and the Dramatists Guild for those who worked in the theater, either as playwrights or lyricists. The League itself continued to address those problems (such as freedom of expression or copyright) shared by all writers, while the guilds tackled those of their particular craft and market. Few playwrights in 1920 suffered the exploitation rampant in the theater in the nineteenth century, but they still faced a welter of practices they resented. Theatrical managers held scripts for months and even years before deciding whether to option, let alone produce, them, yet they nonetheless insisted on exclusive submissions. Production conditions, the number of performances allowed, and the contract's duration differed from contract to contract. Royalty rates varied widely and playwrights often had difficulty collecting sums owed them; scripts were changed arbitrarily by managers who also controlled the leasing of stock (road show) rights to a play, awarding themselves a healthy commission for placing t h e m with booking agents. Managers enjoyed at least a 50 percent participation in and usually control over all other subsidiary rights. George Middleton, a popular playwright and Dramatists Guild activist recalled that "there was, in fact, no way to protect authors against chicanery, assignments and bankruptcy; no arbitration provisions to settle disputes or to enforce rights, except through expensive personal lawsuits. To get production, new authors often had to take what terms were offered them." 1 8 Actors faced if anything even worse employment conditions, and dramatists had taken notice of their success in dealing with theatrical managers in New York. A bitter strike in 1919 had closed many Broadway productions, but won for Actors Equity yts first MBA with the Managers Protective Association (MPA), the trade association of theatrical producers in New York. A second, shorter strike in 1924 finally established the actors' right to a closed shop, the one demand

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that the producers had successfully resisted to that point. The example of Actors Equity provided the Dramatists Guild with the organizational tools and obvious approach for gaining an effective labor agreement with the MPA. A standard contract was negotiated as early as 1920, but from the playwrights 7 perspective it contained fatal flaws: its use was not mandatory and its terms were unenforceable. In other words, it provided no closed shop. The collusion of Broadway managers and the Hollywood studios in the mid-twenties forced the Dramatists Guild to contemplate more drastic action. In 1925, the Fox Film Corporation revealed that it had secretly agreed with seven of the major theatrical managers in New York to underwrite their productions. The managers, in turn, agreed to offer Fox the film rights to these productions without competitive bidding; moreover, the managers would receive further compensation from Fox in the form of a weekly salary. Playwrights cried foul, claiming that such agreements not only lowered rights' payments but also inevitably meant that only plays with motion picture potential would be produced. Previously, with the value of screen rights increasing as the motion picture industry grew, some managers had refused to produce plays unless they were given as much as three-quarters of the profits from motion picture rights 7 sales. Other managers demanded options to buy such rights after production and exercised this option only with successful plays, thus keeping all of the movie money. 19 The Fox foray into theatrical production alarmed the Dramatists Guild, strengthening its resolve to obtain an enforceable contract that would abolish such practices. A small group of playwrights under Arthur Richman's leadership and including George Kelly, Sidney Howard, Vincent Lawrence, Owen Davis, George S. Kaufman, and some thirty others met secretly in late 1925 and determined to take whatever action necessary to force the MPA's hand. By early 1926, when the group went public, it had recruited almost a hundred playwrights pledged to confront the managers. Within a month, a committee had devised a standard contract to present to the managers; crucially, the playwrights agreed to withdraw all of their plays under consideration by producers, to submit no new ones, and to sign no contracts with managers who had not agreed to the Guild's proposals. This united front effectively drove the MPA to the bargaining table. A joint committee of playwrights and managers negotiated over several months, and in late April 1926 it approved a five-year MBA. All of the major managers, except the formidable Shubert organization, soon signed the agreement, and even the recalcitrant Shuberts relented within the year. 20

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What had the playwrights won? The standard contract set minim u m royalty scales and limited the amount of time a manager could hold an option on a play without actually producing it; it guaranteed that royalties would be reported weekly and held in trust for the playwright; it limited the manager's interest in subsidiary rights to a m a x i m u m of 50 percent; and it stated that managers could make "no additions, omissions, or any alterations whatsoever" in the script "without the consent of the Author." It solved the problems surrounding screen rights by creating an arbitrator to ensure that such rights would be bid for competitively by the movie studios. Most important, the MBA called for a closed shop: no member of the Dramatists Guild could contract with a manager who was not a signatory of the MBA; no manager who had signed could produce a play written by an author who was not a member of the Dramatists Guild. 21 Why had the Dramatists Guild succeeded where the Authors Guild had failed? To start, the professional playwrights had the advantage of cohesion, as their numbers were smaller and many lived in or near New York. Also, Actors Equity had provided the playwrights with a successful model to follow, and one that stressed the importance of achieving a closed shop. Finally, as Cain himself later observed, the managers were often individualistic entrepreneurs rather than powerful corporations, and they had found it difficult to maintain their own unity when confronting the playwrights. In the event, the playwrights exploited skillfully the rivalries and factionalism among the managers, which had so recently been exacerbated by the Actors Equity strikes. The M i n i m u m Basic Agreement did not solve all of the marketplace problems of American playwrights. The motion picture companies remained particularly tenacious in their hunt for cheap sources of new material. Managers and playwrights negotiated a second five-year renewal of the MBA in 1936, which included additional protections for the writer in its motion picture clause, affirming the playwright's sole title to those rights, strengthening the film arbitrator's hand by creating the office of the film rights negotiator to act as the author's representative in all screen rights' sales, and setting up a joint manager-playwright committee to deal with stagescreen relations. The motion picture industry opposed all three changes and again threatened to withdraw its backing for theatrical production. Since Hollywood supplied roughly a third of all the financing for Broadway, itself already suffering acutely in the middle of the depression, the studios gambled that both the MPA and the DG would cave in to their demands. Both remained firm, though,

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and eventually Hollywood, without any real option, acquiesced. However, as Sidney Howard, then the president of the Dramatists Guild, warned in 1936, "the studios are still unfriendly to the Guild and its contract." 2 2 Well they should have been, for the Dramatists Guild's MBA remains the most significant improvement in professional situation writers have achieved through collective action. Organizing the Screen Writers Guild in the 1930s If theatrical producers had shown themselves vulnerable to concerted pressure from playwrights, writers quickly discovered that motion picture producers would prove a tougher nut altogether. In Hollywood, writers faced a radically different set of professional problems, since so m u c h screenwriting was done under contract to a studio or independent producer. Although the production companies in Hollywood had reached collective bargaining agreements with most of the traditional craft unions—the carpenters, electricians, painters, stagehands, and the like—they had resisted all attempts by the "talent" groups—actors, directors, and writers—to organize, fearing that such groups would wrest creative control of the movie-making process from the front office.23 From 1927 to 1933, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), with separate divisions for actors, directors, and writers, served as the official forum for labor negotiations between writers and producers; since AMPAS was dominated by the studios, it accomplished very little for any of the talent groups. Not that screenwriters lacked for grievances, for they faced an array of unfair employment practices: there was no m i n i m u m wage or period of employment; most screenwriters at the smaller studios worked without contracts of any kind; the studios colluded to keep salaries low; and even the most successful screenwriters complained about producers' unfair assignment of career-sustaining screen credits. Several writers were often set to work on the same story idea or adaptation, unknown to each other. Writers under contract were lent from studio to studio without their consent; they were often furloughed for weeks or even months, then pressured to write on speculation; and they could be suspended without notice, pay, or appeal. The large pool of unemployed or underemployed writers in Hollywood desperate for work ensured that as a class screenwriters found it difficult if not impossible to resist the demands of the studios. Balky writers found themselves replaced quickly. 24 The influx of eastern novelists, journalists, and playwrights into the studios in the early 1930s, prompted by the rapid conversion to

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sound production and the depression's impact on the literary marketplace in New York, actually stimulated labor agitation among Hollywood writers, since many of those imported from New York were veterans of the Dramatists Guild's MBA campaign. The writers' branch of AMPAS lost its last claim to impartiality or independence when it agreed without complaint to accept drastic pay cuts demanded by the producers at the time of the March bank holiday in 1933. Many writers were convinced that the cuts were not necessary for the survival of the industry, as the producers had claimed, but rather were instituted merely to ensure that profit margins and executive compensation remain at their extraordinarily high levels. 25 In April 1933, more than a hundred screenwriters, including Samuel Ornitz, S. N. Behrman, Edwin Justice Mayer, Joseph Mankiewicz, Samson Raphaelson, and Robert Riskin, revived the moribund Screen Writers Guild (SWG) and elected John Howard Lawson its new president. Within the year its ranks had swelled to 640 writers; by 1936, it claimed almost 1,000 members and had winnowed the rival AMPAS writers' branch to a mere 35. 26 Screenwriters overwhelmingly supported the initial goals of the Guild—a standard contract guaranteeing a m i n i m u m wage and term of employment, a fair system of credit allocation, and the creation of a closed guild shop to enforce the collective bargaining agreement. Many writers hoped in the longer term to win producer acceptance of royalty payments rather than salaries or flat fees, but they understood full well that the industry would fight such a move ferociously Unlike the Dramatists Guild, however, the SWG from the first was hamstrung by severe dissension. A vocal minority of the Guild's members, including some of its more successful and experienced writers, such as Rupert Hughes and Robert Riskin, did not conceive of the SWG as a full-blown trade union, but rather thought of it merely as an organization that would protect the less-powerful screenwriters without jeopardizing their own close working relationships with producers in the studios. Many of the more recent immigrants to Hollywood, however, did conceive of the SWG precisely in trade union terms; they regarded writers purely as workers and producers not as colleagues (as did Hughes, Riskin, and the like) but as management. They were far more comfortable with an adversarial relationship between the Guild and the industry. The SWG also discovered just how formidable its task would be when, as mandated by the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), writers met with producers to set up an industrywide employment code. The first code accepted by Washington so openly favored management in its dealings with all of the talent guilds that, prompted

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by Eddie Cantor and other show business celebrities he knew, President Franklin D. Roosevelt suspended it and ordered both sides back to the table. The producers successfully stonewalled in this second round of negotiations until the Supreme Court declared the NIRA unconstitutional in 19 3 5.27 Meanwhile, fully aware that the studios would not knuckle under to such gentle arm twisting, activist members of the SWG plotted a more militant strategy. The Guild leadership realized that its position would remain weak as long as the studios could turn to material from other sources, and as long as they could find non-SWG writers willing to work for them; the support of other writers7 organizations would be essential in order to prevent such scabbing. In March 1935, Lawson announced that, after secret discussions, the SWG leadership had agreed to form a national confederation of writers with the Authors League and the recently established Newspaper Guild. The issue of the "amalgamation" of the SWG with the other writers' guilds, which some claimed wouldplace 90 percent of the creative writers in America within the Authors League, was to be voted on by the SWG's membership. Moreover, Lawson and his supporters proposed an amendment to the SWG's bylaws, referred to as Article XII, calling for no screenwriter to sign a contract with the studios extending past 2 May 1938, so that the Guild could legally strike the industry after that date. The studios and the conservative faction within the SWG itself joined to denounce both amalgamation and Article XII. According to Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, opponents within the Guild "could not tolerate the amalgamation: in their eyes it threatened derogation of status, from professional to laborer, and loss of autonomy to an 'unrepresentative' umbrella group [the Authors League] . . . The SWG Right feared that the numerical superiority of New York writers and their different needs would combine to control the proposed confederation and orient its policy in a manner detrimental to the interests of screenwriters in Hollywood."28 In addition, the conservatives in the SWG correctly perceived that Article XII was a manifestation of the trade unionism they opposed on principle. The producers, for their part, vowed never to recognize the SWG and followed the lead of the Hearst newspapers and some of the conservatives within the Guild itself in charging that amalgamation was a "device of communist radicals" leading the SWG.29 The Guild leadership, desperate to hold ranks, compromised on a number of points, most importantly by backing away from amalgamation; the SWG subsequently merely "affiliated" with the Authors League, without representation on the powerful Authors League

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Council, and both legally and financially independent of the New York organization. This mollified neither the conservatives within the SWG nor the producers. Led by James Kevin McGuinness, John Lee Mahin, Grover Jones, and Robert Riskin, the conservatives formed a rival organization, Screen Playwrights, Inc., in April 1936, which the producers at once recognized as the exclusive bargaining agent for studio screenwriters. The producers then set out to destroy the SWG by enticing writers to sign lucrative long-term contracts in defiance of Article XII, or by threatening to fire those writers who refused to resign from the SWG. Some studios even presented writers with mimeographed letters of resignation from the SWG to be signed as a condition of continued employment. The producers 7 campaign of intimidation proved effective: while screenwriters remained cool toward Screen Playwrights, most resigned from the SWG. 30 In 1937, Screen Playwrights did sign a collective bargaining agreement with the producers, granting writers several of the concessions originally called for by the SWG in 1933. Even with this success, though, Screen Playwrights, Inc., could not shake its reputation as a company union. The few remaining activists of the SWG, driven to meeting clandestinely, turned in desperation to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), created by the Wagner Act in 1935 and ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court in 1937. The SWG petitioned the NLRB to certify it rather than Screen Playwrights as the legitimate bargaining agent for screenwriters. After hearings in both Hollywood and Washington, the NLRB ordered an election to resolve the question of representation. This election was held in June 1938 by a secret ballot of all contract writers, and the SWG steamrolled Screen Playwrights by a margin of five-to-one. In August, the NLRB formally certified the SWG as the authorized collective bargaining agent, and in September management and the SWG negotiators met for the first time, a signal achievement in itself for the screenwriters. Yet success for the SWG still proved elusive. The studios continued to recognize their contract with Screen Playwrights and in other ways resisted dealing with the SWG. Negotiations dragged on even after the NLRB twice cited the studios for unfair labor practices and voided their contract with Screen Playwrights. In 1941, with writers threatening to strike and the studios anxious to clear the decks as war approached, producers finally agreed to meet with the SWG, and they signed a contract the next year. Even then, many writers complained about the agreement, which, if it did set m i n i m u m pay scales, abolish speculative writing, and improve their situation gen-

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erally, also contained a crippling no-strike clause and a divisive procedure for settling credit disputes. However, after an eight-year struggle, screenwriters had finally succeeded in wresting from the film industry recognition and an industrywide standard employment contract. The Dramatists Guild's M i n i m u m Basic Agreement in the 1920s proved the cardinal success in organizing independent American writers; the SWG's MBA proved what perseverance could accomplish in organizing service writers, even in a powerful and tightly knit industry. The Radio Writers Guild The last of the major guilds, the Radio Writers Guild (RWG), faced dilemmas in the marketplace very similar to those the SWG faced, but it had made virtually no progress by 1946 in resolving them. By the mid-thirties, given the giant strides radio had made, there was finally a critical mass of writers whose chief livelihood was bound up with the medium, or who occasionally sold to or wrote for the industry. Conditions for the writer, however, remained grim: staff writers were denied credit, paid little, stripped of their copyrights, and refused job security; free lancers faced a confusing welter of business practices, as each network, advertising agency, and independent producer dealt with writers differently. When several competing groups emerged claiming to represent radio writers, the Authors League stepped in and, in the spring of 1937, asked Kenneth Webb to assemble the nucleus of a Radio Writers Guild, which could then petition to join the League. A group of radio writers met in July to draft a constitution for their organization, and in December the Radio Writers Guild was admitted as another constituent guild of the Authors League. 31 The RWG held its first annual meeting in February 1938, with Webb as its president, and focused on increasing its own membership, a difficult task, given that radio writers were scattered across the country, although most were clustered in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, the three principal broadcasting centers. By the late thirties, the RWG's membership had grown large enough for the Guild to call for an industrywide agreement to cover both free-lance and salaried writers. This model contract included a number of ambitious provisions: the lease rather than the sale of material by free-lance writers; the retention of all subsidiary rights by free lancers; a more equitable release form for contract writers; onair credit for all writers; a more equitable arrangement for the payment of audition scripts; a schedule of m i n i m u m fees; and a Guild shop for the industry.

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In 1940, the RWG negotiated a Code of Fair Practice with the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) that incorporated much of this program. However, this code was purely voluntary and contained no sanctions. As a result, few writers were surprised when "it was printed and framed to be hung on the walls of executive offices throughout the industry/' the RWG later reported, "and was never observed." 32 Further progress would require unified national action, but the RWG's original decentralized structure made this very difficult: the national RWG existed only as a federation of its three regional chapters, with no independent board, headquarters, or staff. In 1944, to rectify this problem, its regional leaders petitioned the AL Council for a loan with which to establish a national office, hire a full-time administrative secretary, and elect a national president and national executive committee drawn from each of the regional councils. Three vice-presidents would head the regions. Having accomplished this reorganization, the RWG set about preparing writers industrywide to fight for standard contracts and m i n i m u m terms. The Guild decided to tackle the networks first, before taking on the advertising agencies and independent packagers. In 1946, however, even though the RWG counted more than a thousand members, negotiations with the networks remained stalled. While the RWG had enjoyed some success in cleaning up many of the worst abuses in the industry on a case-by-case basis, it had yet to convince even its own members that it would ultimately prevail in the battle for an overall standard contract. Salaried writers remained poorly paid and shackled by release contracts; free-lance writers settled for minimal compensation in selling radio scripts outright. Few would quarrel with Cain's judgment that the RWG was the weakest and least effective of the four guilds. Cain was a member of three guilds—the SWG, the DG, and the AG—and knew well their brief histories. While he applauded the success of the SWG in forcing the producers to the bargaining table, he also understood the limitations of the agreement reached there. The 1941 standard contract dealt only with the terms and conditions of studio employment, for example, and the SWG had made absolutely no progress regarding the sale of original material not written under contract—the studios still demanded all rights to such material in perpetuity. Cain believed that whatever gains the guilds of the Authors League had accomplished, they had proved unequal to the task of redressing the essential injustices plaguing writers in the literay marketplace. "Writers," he asserted, "have yet to develop anything describable as force." The guilds "maintain cor-

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respondence, but there is no body to steer their activities. They are still under the delusion that some over-worked 'executive secretary' can attend to everything that needs attention, and that an unpaid president, elected on the basis of personal popularity, is all that is needed in the way of direction from the top." Cain could not help but conclude that "the total score, after years of meeting, palavering, passing resolutions," was extremely disappointing, "about as small as it would be possible to imagine."33 The failings of the Authors League, the harassment writers encountered in the marketplace, and the indifference of the courts notwithstanding, Cain was convinced that "the writer has but one formidable enemy, and that is himself; like Jurgen, he lives in a hell of his own creation." Writers liked to think of themselves as "very, very special beings," godlike artists who held "all other gods to be phoney" and thus were incapable of concerted collective action in their own behalf. "A gang of plumbers can sew up a city with extortionist regulations and hang together like wolves," Cain ruefully reminded other writers, "but anybody who tried to get three writers to act as a unit on the simplest matter knows what the difficulties are." This was the real reason the guilds had achieved only the "sketchiest cohesion." Moreover, thinking themselves gods, writers also thought of themselves as infallible and hated displaying their ignorance on any subject: "We feel we know everything, and when a publisher, explaining some monstrous [contract] swindle, says 'it is customary,' rather than go to a lawyer, or another writer, or in any way admit that we don't know whether it's 'customary' or not, we abjectly surrender whatever he wants, rarely ever taking so much trouble about it as our own wives would take over a questionable item in the monthly grocery bill."34 In short, writers by their own illusions had made it "grotesquely easy to pull the wool over our eyes, to flatter us, to cajole us, to organize against us, and then deal with us separately."35 In claiming that writers were their own worst enemies in this way, Cain in essence argued that writers remained wedded to the anachronistic concept of genteel authorship; moreover, publishers and others with whom the writer dealt in the marketplace exploited that fact at every turn. The time had come, Cain determined, for writers finally to shed their illusion that writing was a calling, sullied by the mere mention of commerce or money, and claim for themselves what was rightfully theirs. He offered the AAA as a means, perhaps the only means, to this end.

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4. The Genesis of the American Authors7 Authority (January 1945-July 1946) A massively powerful organization is possible in a very short time, with a $1,000,000 kitty and a full-time tough mugg at the head of it. —JAMES M. CAIN

11 came to an end, Cain was not alone in believing that writers faced a crucial watershed in the marketplace. His expressed doubts about their effectiveness notwithstanding, most of the existing writers7 organizations understood full well that all of the industries with which they dealt, unshackled from wartime restrictions and shortages, expected unprecedented growth in the coming years. Thus in 1945 and 1946, activity increased among writers' professional groups generally. With virtually everyone connected with the industry predicting explosive growth in mass market publishing, the Authors Guild determined to press reprint publishers for a more equitable division of their estimated seven million dollar annual profit.1 Outside the Guild, the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) organized in March 1945 under the slogan "Crime Does Not Pay Enough" and focused on this same issue of reprint royalties.2 The Dramatists Guild geared up to renegotiate its MBA with the Managers Protective Association when its five-year contract expired early in 1946, while the Radio Writers Guild, having recently reorganized, marshaled its forces to press for a minimum standard contract in an industry that—now the tenth largest in the country—could no longer cry poor.3 With production in Hollywood booming (it was to reach an all-time high in 1946), the Screen Writers Guild for the first time turned to the issue of free-lance scripts rather than simply the working conditions and wages of writers under studio contract. Additionally, a number of prescient writers, especially within the SWG and the RWG, warned that authors must act quickly to establish their prerogatives in a new medium, television, while it was still in its infancy. AS WORLD WAR

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The Committee for the Sale of Original Material Unknown to Cain, the Screen Writers Guild had been developing an analysis very similar to his of the problems that confronted writers. The specific issue of concern to the SWG was the sale of original material to the film industry. Throughout the war, various members had been urging the Guild to lock horns with the studios over freelance scripts. In October 1944, for example, Albert Mannheimer wrote to the SWG's executive committee, prompted by his concern that the Guild had yet to focus on how the growth of television in the coming years would affect writers. He began by sounding the familiar complaint that the movie studios conditioned their purchase of original scripts "upon an all-inclusive ownership of every form which the combined minds of the several legal departments could visualize as a possible or probable metamorphosis"; further, while authors and dramatists retained at least a share of their subsidiary rights, the motion picture companies "filched" from writers "all subsidiary rights: radio, publishing, any and all forms of production . . . i o o % . " 4 They were able to do this, Mannheimer suggested, in part because writers "abide by it and do nothing to correct it." He admitted that the movie companies might have a reasonable claim to a limited participation in such subsidiary rights if the production of the picture demonstrably enhanced the value of those rights, but producers could not argue logically that they deserved 100 percent of all subsidiary rights, "since that would eliminate the very existence of the material. Now, however, that is the premise upon which we sell our material." 5 Only the concerted action of all writers in the Authors League could possibly overcome the producers on this issue, but Mannheimer argued that, since this particular abuse concerned the motion picture industry, it was the Screen Writers Guild's responsibility to bring it to light. The question was "very pressing" because "the advent of commercial television offers us an opportunity of airing the entire issue the like of which we have never before had, nor, probably ever will get again. Television is still in the plastic state so far as writers' rights are concerned, but it is fast solidifying and if we mold it to a form which pleases us, we must do so now—before it solidifies under the imprint of the producers' dictum." Mannheimer termed the television rights issue a "can opener" writers could then apply to other fields, and he hoped the board would raise the issue at the SWG's annual meeting the next month. 6 This the board did not do, as the annual election of officers took

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up the entire membership meeting on November 8. However, Emmet Lavery, the playwright and screenwriter elected president of the Guild that night, soon appointed a small committee to look into the abuses surrounding the sale of original material. Although James M. Cain rightly deserves the credit for devising the AAA plan that eventually surfaced, the SWG Committee on the Sale of Original Material (CSOM), which met irregularly over the next eighteen months and on which Cain himself served in its later stages, laid m u c h of the conceptual groundwork for the AAA. It fixed firmly and from the start on the leasing, or licensing, of motion picture rights as the key to solving the problems with the sale of original material. The CSOM also began to work out the ramifications of such a radical change in the way writers conducted business with the studios. Lavery directed Morris Cohn, the SWG's attorney, to attend the CSOM's meetings and help it through the legal thicket it had been asked to explore. Cohn, an expert on censorship and literary property, quickly became a key player in the CSOM's deliberations. In January 1945, Cohn prepared a short note for the CSOM outlining how licensing could work: ideally, an author would transfer only the license to produce a single motion picture to be made within a specified period of time (Cohn suggested eighteen months). Certain incidental rights, such as the right to use quotations or condensations in publicity, might also be transferred, but the producer under no circumstance could license other production or publication rights at the same time that he or she leased the motion picture rights. In consideration for the transfer, the writer would receive an option payment on signing the contract: if the producer did not make the movie during the specified period, the author kept the option money; if the picture was produced, the initial payment became an advance against future royalties, such royalties to be computed against the gross earnings of the film. In sum, Cohn's m e m o identified three basic principles that should guide any new agreement with producers: the licensing of screen rights rather than their outright sale; the separation of subsidiary rights, that is, each to be contracted individually; and royalty payment to the author computed on gross receipts. This stipulation of a percentage of the gross, or monies collected at the box office, rather than net receipts, or profits after expenses, was particularly important, since writers knew that all manner of inflated overhead expenses were usually charged to a picture by the studio making it, so that the net profit on even a successful movie often proved negligible. As Joan Didion, who has herself been victimized by such practices in her screenwriting career, wryly observes, "the ideal picture from the studio's point of

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view is often said to be the picture that makes one dollar less than break-even. More perfect survival bookkeeping has been devised, but mainly in Chicago and Las Vegas." 7 Thus Cohn recommended that royalties be calculated on gross rather than net receipts. The lawyer also set out several possible approaches for implementing such a licensing arrangement. Screenwriters could negotiate such an agreement with producers as part of the SWG's Minim u m Basic Agreement. Alternately, the SWG could reach a formal understanding with literary agents that they would negotiate the sale of original material only on the basis of the licensing principle. Otherwise, Cohn suggested that the SWG could cooperate with the Authors League on licensing in several ways, either by framing the licensing principle as a bylaw of the SWG, or by employing an official negotiator for screen rights, as did the Dramatists Guild, or by League writers agreeing to abide by the licensing principle in all their contracts with the studios. 8 Cohn's m e m o structured the discussions of the CSOM during the spring of 1945. By May, the CSOM had concentrated on hammering out the specific provisions of a model licensing agreement and was mulling over how it could best be implemented. After some resignations and new appointments, the CSOM now numbered seven: Howard Estabrook, Everett Freeman, Al Mannheimer, Boris Ingstrom, Arthur Schwartz, Morris Cohn, and Ring Lardner, Jr., a SWG vice-president who chaired the committee. All save Mannheimer were Guild stalwarts, one indication of the importance Lavery placed on their work. On May 18, the committee held a long meeting at the SWG's offices on North Cherokee Avenue in Hollywood. Lardner reviewed its progress to date and reminded everyone of their charge to present to the SWG's executive board recommendations about how to improve the writer's position regarding the sale of original scripts and stories; the executive board then expected to coordinate any action it would take with the other guilds. The committee discussed Cohn's original formulation of a licensing provision, agreeing that motion picture rights should be licensed for a limited amount of time and then automatically revert to the author. However, it feared that if licensing and royalty arrangements were linked as Cohn had done, producers 7 absolute intransigence about the latter might make it impossible to reach agreement on the former. They also feared that Cohn ; s draft was far too complex for writers to digest easily. Morris Cohn warned that if they thought his basic explanation of the licensing principle too complicated, there were myriad other clauses and qualifications that would have to be included in any

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actual licensing contract. For example, would writers have to wait the full option period for their rights to revert to them, even if the producer decided early on not to make the picture? Did producers have the right to modify scripts they optioned? Who would determine screen credit? How would writers be paid? What would be the method of accounting? Who would be liable in case of plagiarism suits—the author or the producer? What provisions for arbitration of disputes between the two parties would be included? In short, Cohn reminded his colleagues of the contractual complexity of so seemingly simple a transaction as the lease of rights to a literary property. 9 The CSOM met two weeks later, on June i, at which time Lardner repeated his belief that the licensing principle and the issue of royalties should be discussed separately. Further, he proposed that the SWG should collaborate with the Authors League on the question of licensing, but that the royalty issue should be handled by the screenwriters alone. However, Arthur Schwartz, for one, remained convinced that they needed to sound out the other guilds regarding royalties as well as licensing. If they were going to fire one barrel, he argued, they might as well fire both. Lardner agreed to draft a letter to the three other guilds informing them of the committee's work, and Morris Cohn was asked to draw up a model contract incorporating licensing to be discussed at the CSOM's next meeting. 10 When the committee reconvened a week later, Lardner submitted his draft letter. Addressed to Russel Crouse, the playwright who was then the president of the Authors League, the letter explained that the guilds needed to deal with licensing in unison, since if only one of t h e m acted, the studios could and certainly would retaliate by purchasing material from members of the three other guilds and so defeat the guild trying to win new terms. Lardner detailed the three basic inequities the CSOM had identified in the present system: that the studios acquired motion picture rights permanently and could therefore make several versions of the same story without additional payment to the author; that the studios acquired with the motion picture rights any number of subsidiary rights, "including those in the increasingly important field of television"; and that the author not only ceded creative control over material but also failed "to retain royalty rights in the motion picture profits." 11 Lardner urged that the four guilds discuss the best means to codify and implement five general reforms. Above all else, motion picture rights should be leased rather than sold, and the lease should apply to only one production, with all rights reverting to the author after that production. The license should also depend on the picture's be-

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ing produced within a reasonable amount of time; if it was not, all rights should revert immediately to the author. Moreover, the license should include only motion picture rights and the few other rights "as may be necessary to exploit the film." Additionally, "the producer's right to use the name of the author for exploitation [publicity] purposes would depend on the picture being a reasonably faithful adaptation of the original work." Finally, Lardner suggested that the guilds needed to discuss whether royalties should be mandated in all screen contracts. The letter concluded with the request that the AL Council promote discussion of these reforms; in particular, the SWG was interested to learn of any special problems relating to screen rights' sales that authors in the other fields faced but that the screenwriters had overlooked. 12 The CSOM approved Lardner's draft as a fair summary of their current thinking, then turned to the model contract drawn up by Morris Cohn. Cohn's draft represented a virtual wish list for writers. Not only did it include provisions for licensing, the reversion of rights, and royalties, but it also specified that the producer's books would be open to inspection by the writer in order to verify that the proper royalty was being paid, that no changes could be made in the script without the writer's approval, that the producer could not change even the title of the script without the writer's permission, and that the licensee could not sell or assign the license to a third party. Any film based on the licensed material would be copyrighted by the author, not the studio. 13 Everett Freeman questioned the wisdom of including both reversion of rights and royalty provisions, but the majority of the committee believed that, since this contract would "lay the basis for future relations with producers," it should cover as m u c h ground as possible. 14 If the studios could be forced to accept such a contract, or anything close to it, the effect on the writers' situation in movies would be nothing short of revolutionary, for it would not only grant to them a far greater financial reward for their work, but also would grant them, for the first time, creative control over their material. The CSOM understood completely that the industry would fight such an agreement tooth-and-nail, thus the importance of enlisting the support of the other three guilds, and thus the committee's desire to maintain a low profile until the other guilds were on board. In this regard, when Lardner asked whether the CSOM should recommend to the executive board that his letter and Cohn's contract be made public, the committee decided that both documents should be kept confidential until they had heard from the other guilds and had fixed on a full strategy to implement licensing. 15

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The Screen Writers Guild executive board quickly approved the CSOM's recommendations, and Lardner's letter was sent to the Authors League on June 13 over Emmet Lavery's signature. Copies were also sent to the other guild presidents—Rex Stout of the Authors Guild, Richard Rodgers of the Dramatists Guild, and Peter Lyon of the Radio Writers Guild. Lardner emphasized the urgency of the committee's request for quick feedback by reminding the writers in the East that "such a program as the one outlined above is long overdue" and that the SWG "had an active committee working on it." 1 6 The initial response of the guilds heartened the members of the CSOM. "While there is some variance as to details," Rex Stout wrote to Lavery, after informing him he had distributed copies of Lavery's letter to the Authors Guild Council, "the replies are unanimously favorable to your suggestions on the whole." However, the SWG's hope for prompt action from the eastern guilds was soon disappointed. Stout, for one, agreed wholeheartedly that all of the guilds needed to act together in regard to motion picture sales, but he was less sure that the eastern guilds could act as quickly as the SWG wanted. He reminded Lavery that the League and the eastern guilds normally came to a standstill during the summer, when most of the writers active in them left the city. Moreover, the Authors Guild was at that very m o m e n t engaged in a "hot skirmish" with the reprint houses, a battle that he felt took precedence over motion picture licensing. Stout proposed that the guilds could at least begin discussing the terms of a new agreement on motion picture sales; perhaps each guild could prepare a statement, compare notes, and then arrive at a common position. He shared Lavery's conviction that "we stand little chance of getting anywhere" unless the four guilds could agree on one licensing program, which could win majority approval in each of them, and such an agreement in itself would be only the first step, warned Stout. Implementing any action against the studios would be even more difficult.17 Such sentiments were welcomed in Hollywood by the CSOM, but members recognized that the creaky machinery of the eastern guilds would, at least for the moment, slow the m o m e n t u m the CSOM had built up over the first half of 1945. In fact, the CSOM's proposal would be lost in the administrations of the other guilds for the next six months. Nonetheless, by the summer of 1945, the CSOM had already diagnosed the ills writers suffered in selling original material to the studios, determined a general cure, and decided on the best means—joint action by the guilds—of effecting that cure. This was a considerable accomplishment in its own right, and indeed the committee's thinking was far ahead of Cain's at that moment, since

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he only began to consider such issues seriously during contract talks with Alfred Knopf during the summer of 1945. Only then, he confessed later, did he begin "to have some comprehension of the rationale of book contracts, copyrights, rights, etc., as distinguished from shares, percentages, and royalties/ 7 1 8 The Television Writers Organizing Committee As the CSOM waited for further word from the East, the SWG went into action on a related front. Writers' future dealings with the television industry, raised by Mannheimer nine months earlier and discussed from time to time by the CSOM, seemed sufficiently urgent to warrant separate consideration. At first glance, the obsession many writers had with television just after the war is difficult to fathom. Television transmission had been feasible for years, but its commercial application remained virtually untested. Because of wartime regulations, there were only six broadcasting stations in the entire country, all of t h e m in the East. Fewer than eight thousand receiver sets had been sold, mostly in New York City. Receivers were inordinately expensive, their screens the size of a postcard, and their reception poor. The movie studios and radio networks, for their part, remained surprisingly unconcerned with this potential rival. Nonetheless, writers remembered all too well that a smallscale and struggling radio industry had grown in the space of fifteen years into one of the largest in the country. The concessions writers had made when radio was getting off the ground—accepting small salaries and virtually giving away the broadcast rights to their work— continued to haunt them. Ever since, writers had found it all but impossible to pressure the advertising agencies and networks into raising writers' compensation to a level commensurate with the profitability of the medium. Writers with knowledge of the difficulties encountered in radio vowed not to repeat the mistake with television. They were convinced that once the wartime restrictions on commercial electronic components ended, television would develop at least as quickly as had radio. Thus, in late June the executive boards of the SWG and the RWG's Western Regional Council, based in Hollywood, formed a joint committee to map out a unified approach to television. This Television Writers Organizing Committee (TWOC), at its first meeting on 19 July 1945, resolved to draw up a code dealing with the sale and licensing of material for telecasting and also to convince as many writers as possible to join the TWOC, which would then be-

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come a full-blown, separate television writers guild within the Authors League.19 Russel Crouse, the serving president of the Authors League, was alarmed when he heard of these events in Hollywood, and he wired the leaders of the TWOC inquiring about both their urgency and why a new guild was needed, given that there were few if any salaried television writers yet to organize. Screenwriter George Corey responded to Crouse's questions on behalf of the TWOC with a detailed analysis of the problems that would confront writers if television developed along the lines of radio. Writers in Los Angeles expected the first telecasting stations on the West Coast to begin transmission within four months, Corey informed Crouse, and, based on the actions of the handful of eastern stations then in operation, they feared that such stations were "fully prepared to repeat the grand larceny perpetrated upon writers by the radio industry some fifteen years ago." The prices currently offered for teleplays were "shameful," with television stations and advertising agencies already crying poor, claiming they had little or no money to pay for scripts. In light of this, the SWG and the RWG wanted to organize at once to "protect their memberships against the danger of television being invaded by an irresponsive or hostile group which would establish jurisdiction at the invitation of the operators, for the express purpose of holding compensation levels down." In other words, the two Hollywood guilds feared that if they did not act at once, the television owners would co-opt them by forming a company union, much as the film studios had done with Screen Playwrights less than a decade before.20 Television would need to acquire a tremendous amount of written material, Corey reminded Crouse, and after summarizing the difficulties writers faced in the early days of radio, he stressed that "the ridiculously low prices" paid at the beginning of radio broadcasting had depressed the levels of compensation ever since. Similarly, the "coolie level of wages for those writers employed specifically to prepare radio programs" had resulted from a lack of vigilance on the part of the guilds fifteen years earlier. For all these reasons, Corey emphasized, writers had little time to lose. He then turned to Crouse's question about the need to create a separate guild for television writers. Corey informed Crouse that they had discussed this point thoroughly at the joint meeting of the boards of the SWG and the western region of the RWG. Both guilds had reason to claim jurisdiction over television writers—the RWG because it believed its members would be the first to shift to televi-

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sion, and the SWG because a considerable amount of television programming was being produced on film. All agreed, however, that within a very short time television would employ "all of the writing crafts: screen writing, radio writing, newsmen, dramatists, novelists and even cartoonists." Thus, jurisdictional disputes among the guilds already representing these crafts appeared inevitable. All of the guilds should help organize in the television field, since all of t h e m were directly concerned, but the SWG and the RWG favored creating a separate television guild once such organizing had been accomplished. Corey closed by reassuring Crouse "that no one here has a closed mind on this aspect of the job," and that it might well turn out that the existing guilds might be able to represent television writers effectively. Those in Los Angeles were nonetheless convinced that "the field m u s t be preempted at once and that the dangerous practice of buying writers and material at low prices must be met with determined resistance by all writers." Corey realized that the TWOC had already erred tactically when Crouse's response arrived two weeks later. In it he bluntly pointed out a "serious flaw" in the TWOC's plan: "When your group assumes to set m i n i m u m prices and conditions under which members of the Dramatists Guild and the Authors Guild are to lease the rights in their own material without consulting t h e m and giving t h e m a chance to vote on those terms I, as President of the Authors League, with all the guilds and their members to answer to, simply cannot sanction it. On that point I m u s t be completely outspoken." 2 1 To proceed as the TWOC had been doing would make unified national action impossible. "I think at the m o m e n t you are doing it regionally," Crouse insisted, and he feared the result would be factionalism rather than the unity the TWOC professed to seek. "You m u s t include all writers in all branches and all guilds in your thinking, or it is not national thinking or unified thinking." Crouse then suggested an alternative course of action, which he had already discussed with the Authors League Council: Crouse offered to appoint representatives from both the Authors Guild and the Dramatists Guild to the TWOC, then reconstitute it as an official committee of the Authors League, reporting directly to the AL Council, and so doing before making any of its deliberations public. Despite Crouse's tempered language and his professed "thanks to all of you for the thought and work you are putting into these problems," the AL president unmistakably rebuked the TWOC for acting outside the framework of the League, and without the knowledge or representation of the two eastern guilds. In its haste, the

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TWOC had failed to consider the inherent tension between the Authors and Dramatists guilds in the East, and the Screen Writers and Radio Writers guilds in the West. The western guilds represented for the most part service writers who worked for large corporations; the members of the eastern guilds most often acted as free lancers, dealing with smaller, individually owned publishing houses and theatrical production companies. The western guilds had been preoccupied with traditional labor issues—wages, working conditions, hiring and firing practices; the eastern guilds dealt with establishing industry-wide standard contracts. The Authors League itself, representing all four guilds, recognized the need to persuade rather than to compel writers to act in their own best interests and valued unity above all else. It also had a strongly eastern bias, though, given that it shared offices and administrative staff in New York with the Authors and the Dramatists guilds. Moreover, as a result of the amalgamation controversy in the 1930s, the SWG was only "affiliated" with the AL and elected no members to the governing AL Council. The TWOC, by not sufficiently recognizing these realities, had only increased the suspicion between East and West. This is precisely what Lardner and the CSOM had taken such pains to avoid, even at the cost of slowing the process of reaching agreement on the sale of original material. Indeed, in a second letter he sent to Corey later that same day, Crouse commended the example of the CSOM's "emphasis on unity and their eagerness to consult the other guilds."22 The TWOC may have been operating without the direct supervision or knowledge of Emmet Lavery, who was distracted from SWG affairs as he finished a play, The Magnificent Yankee, scheduled to open on Broadway in January. Lavery was also gearing up to run (unsuccessfully, in the event) in a Democratic congressional primary. Had he known how quickly Corey and his colleagues were proceeding, the politically astute Lavery, for whom League unity was something of an obsession, might have warned the committee of Crouse's predictable reaction to unilateral moves made in Hollywood. In his position as president of the SWG, Lavery became one of the key players in the political battles waged in Hollywood in the late forties. By his own description, he had been a stage-struck, smalltown lawyer and alderman in Poughkeepsie when he had met Hallie Flanagan in 1934, then running the Experimental Theater at Vassar. His initial success as a playwright, The First Legion, about the founding of the Society of Jesus, had proved no big hit on Broadway, but it had provided Lavery with a considerable income from foreign productions for several years. It also brought his first screenwriting

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contract, and after 1935 Lavery moved between Broadway and Hollywood, with a short stint in 1937 as director of the play department of the Federal Theater Project. 23 Lavery's legal knowledge and political skills were put to the test often during his tenure as president of the SWG. A New Deal liberal whose Catholicism made h i m wary of strict Marxism-Leninism, he was tireless on behalf of the SWG and worked to keep ideology out of the Guild's affairs as much as humanly possible. In any case, a committee along the lines Crouse suggested was formed in September; significantly, Lavery appointed himself to it, perhaps to watch George Corey, the other member from the SWG, a bit more closely. Others named to the Authors League Television Committee (ALTC) included Albert Maltz for the Authors Guild, Arthur Schwartz and Robert Ardrey for the Dramatists Guild, and Paul Franklin and Milton Merlin representing the Radio Writers Guild. Corey wrote again to Crouse after the ALTC first met in early October. In the course of their discussions, the seven members of the committee had unearthed ''shockingly revelatory" examples of the "extent to which writers were being cheated by neglecting to separate rights at the time of sale." Authors often netted small fortunes in the few cases in which they had negotiated contracts calling for such separation. Corey cited several examples, including that of Dashiell Hammett's sale of the screen rights for The Thin Man to MGM. H a m m e t t had retained the radio rights, which he was later able to sell to a radio producer after M G M had made several popular movies based on the characters in his novel. Corey reported that the money H a m m e t t had received for the radio rights was "equal to, if not greater than the income received from all other sources." 2 4 Corey insisted, however, that Don Quinn's case was far more typical, in that Quinn had ceded all of his rights to a script titled "Fibber McGee & Molly" when he sold it to a Chicago advertising agency. It then became one of the most popular series in radio history, spawning two spin-off series, each of which enjoyed long runs, and for both of which Quinn received not a cent. The members of the Television Committee were concerned that there were scores of other, less-dramatic, cases, but they found it "difficult to ferret out specific evidence, for like victims of a crooked dice table, the writers most cheated are not prone to talk." 2 5 The ALTC had no doubt that current practice in radio would become the pattern for television unless writers themselves prevented it. Since television would most likely be dominated by the same companies that controlled radio, and since even new companies en-

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tering the field would employ personnel from radio, all television producers would "insist upon and make desperate attempts to write the kind of contracts in television now being handed to radio writers/' 26 Such considerations led the ALTC to embrace both the licensing and the separation of television rights in all cases. By considering the separation of rights, the Television Committee had strayed from its narrow mandate to deal with issues strictly related to television. Essentially, the ALTC's discussions had led it to the same conclusion the SWG's Committee on the Sale of Original Material had reached: licensing was in itself crucial, but would be vitiated if the separation of subsidiary rights was not achieved simultaneously. In other words, writers would only have won half the battle had they achieved a licensing agreement that did not allow them to market each right individually. To this end, the Television Committee made three concrete proposals to the Authors League Council: that the memberships of the fo\ir guilds vote on a new bylaw requiring all members to separate rights in any sale of material; that there be a second vote on a rule requiring the leasing of television rights; and that the AL and the guilds educate writers prior to the vote about the benefits to be gained by the two constitutional changes. These proposals marked a departure from the thinking of the defunct TWOC, which had merely suggested that the AL develop a code of practices advising writers about the contract provisions the League considered fair, a code much like the toothless Code of Fair Practice that radio writers had negotiated in the early forties. Such a code, the Television Committee had decided, while it might provide a blueprint for writers to follow in negotiating television rights, would be "meaningless unless the By-Laws are enacted." Once approved by the guilds, bylaws would be binding on all members of the League; a code of practices or other such recommendation would not. Thus, the Television Committee had taken a decisive step in recommending compulsory action, arguing that anything short of this "would cripple our program to protect authors" by throwing the burden of fighting for licensing and rights separation "on individual writers as they bargain on individual deals." This would play directly into the hands of the radio and television operators, who had "no qualms about locking horns with any individual writer, and if necessary will reject a piece of material . . . rather than yield equitable terms that might establish a precedent." The Dramatists Guild's successful fight in the 1920s proved that writers' demands would be met if they closed ranks, and the mem-

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bers of the ALTC confidently predicted that the television industry would back down if faced with a united Authors League, "embracing the majority of the successful creators of original material/ 7 2 7 Corey emphasized the importance of the committee's third recommendation—that the League mount an extensive educational campaign prior to any vote on bylaw changes—because he feared that writers as a group had "little or no knowledge of the injustices being practiced upon them." The ALTC predicted that no writer presented with these facts would oppose the recommended changes, for "the evidence that the prevailing custom—selling all rights and making outright sales—is working against his financial interests is too convincing for any writer to dismiss." Corey concluded by urging Crouse to bring these recommendations before the Authors League Council quickly, "taking the farthest possible action" on them. 2 8 By October 1945, then, the Authors League Television Committee had significantly advanced the thinking of the defunct Television Writers Organizing Committee. It recognized the futility of the League's making nonbinding recommendations to its members regarding television and thus pressed for the strongest collective action of which the League was capable—making constitutional changes to compel adherence to the leasing and separation of rights. Even this, though, might not have forced the television and radio industries to accept the guild position, for there were simply too many non-League writers willing to sell material outright. The guilds had faced this dilemma before: only the most principled or prosperous writers could resist a lucrative contract dangled before their eyes, even if the contract contained flagrantly unfair provisions. The League would have needed a closed-shop provision in order to contend with the television operators, a fact that Corey emphasized repeatedly. Additionally, the two West Coast committees, the ALTC and the CSOM, had converged in identifying the separation of rights in all sales of literary material as a principle as important as licensing itself. The two committees, although concerned with two different markets, had reached the same conclusions about the inequities confronting writers. Within the existing structure of the Authors League, both committees were advocating what were ambitious, even radical, proposals, ones that would provide all League members the kind of protection enjoyed at the time only by the more established members of the Authors and the Dramatists guilds. In the late a u t u m n of 1945, the guilds again were distracted by the annual election of officers and did not address the recommendations

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of the two committees. The SWG elected Lavery to a second term; Elmer Rice, the distinguished playwright, replaced Russel Crouse as president of the Authors League. Thus it was not until mid-January that Lavery informed the SWG's executive secretary, William Pomerance, that the AL Council had finally discussed the television proposals and had unanimously agreed to establish the ALTC's television policy. The League would conduct a survey of television employment practices in New York immediately in order to document the case against the industry. Lavery also reported that Elmer Rice "seems keen to push the formula for the sale of original picture material as soon as all guilds have a chance to exchange detailed memos on the subject/' Lavery thought that the chances for a "strong four guild League" looked good.29 While the League office creaked into action on the television front, a group of writers in the SWG began conceiving an even more ambitious plan. Once again, the Committee on the Sale of Original Material provided the impetus. Throughout the spring its deliberations led it further and further afield from the sale of screen rights. On January 30, the CSOM convened after several m o n t h s ' hiatus. Lardner reviewed the recent correspondence with N e w York as well as the telegram Lavery had sent the previous June urging that the League proceed on some form of licensing. The committee then considered whether the SWG should discuss the issue of the sale of original material at a general meeting, but it decided against such a move before it had received detailed reports from the other guilds. Morris Cohn wanted to act more quickly than anyone else. He suggested that the committee draft a resolution on licensing and reversion of rights for the Authors League's agreement, but immediately start negotiations with the studios, before the League replied. Lardner counseled caution, though, maintaining that they needed to obtain the agreement of all four guilds. He was not in favor of negotiating with the producers until the SWG could count on the absolute support of other writers. The rest of the committee backed Lardner, and they directed Cohn to draft a general resolution on licensing and reversion before the next fortnight's meeting. 30 Just prior to that meeting, James M. Cain joined the CSOM. I could find no record of the precise circumstances of his appointment; he may have been asked, or volunteered, to join because of his well-known anger at having parted with all the rights to The Postman Always Rings Twice for such a small sum ten years earlier. Hoopes merely suggests that Cain was known as a "leading advocate of licensing" and because of this was asked to join the committee. 3 1 For whatever reason, Cain joined the CSOM in time for its February

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13 meeting, which considered Cohn ; s draft of the memorandum to be sent to the other guilds and the AL Council. In it, Cohn explained that the CSOM had been trying to work out some form of MBA covering the sale of original material written for the screen, as well as the sale of screen rights before material was published or appeared in another medium. While the specifics of such a plan had not yet been decided, the principle behind any such agreement would be that contracts for original material would grant "only the right to produce and exhibit, within a stated period, a motion picture on 35 m m film in the English language, together with the customary provisions relating to the use of sound, dialogue and music." These rights "shall be fixed in the form of a license . . . which shall cease on the expiration of a time period to be fixed more specifically." Before the committee began to flesh out a more detailed plan, the memorandum concluded, it wanted the response of the other guilds on this all-important licensing principle. 32 Cohn had been way out in front of the committee in its previous meeting when he urged immediate negotiations with the producers, but his m e m o struck some as too cautious. Lardner asked Cohn to recast the memo in the form of a resolution, to be passed by the AL and each of the guilds, that would cover all literary material sold to Hollywood, including plays and published books. Lardner would then write a cover letter to the resolution explaining "the problem fully and dramatically." 33 Cain later wrote to H. L. Mencken that he first conceived of the American Authors 7 Authority at this particular meeting of the CSOM, when he overheard Cohn and Lardner talking: "I got aboard the conversation somewhere in the middle, and I don't know how it started. Cohn was trying to make a distinction, for Lardner, between forbidding a member to make a certain deal of a certain kind, and making it 'impossible' for h i m to make such a deal, by putting the material in some kind of 'repository/ as it was called that night. 'There is a profound difference/ said Cohn, 'between what a man is forbidden to do, but may do, if enough money is shaken in his face, and what does not lie within his power to d o / " 3 4 The minutes of this meeting confirm Cain's recollection, for they note that the committee discussed at some length the possibility of members assigning literary rights to the SWG, the Authors League, or the four guilds jointly. The CSOM decided not to pursue the idea itself, however, and merely suggested that the AL could appoint another committee to investigate how such a repository for literary rights might work. 35 Cain, though, was excited by the concept. As he wrote to Mencken: "Cohn's remarks jelled together a lot of disconnected

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hunches I had got from the conversations with Alfred [Knopf], and suddenly one night I saw, or thought I saw, the trouble with all writers' organizations/ 7 He had realized that "their fallacy lay in their effort to organize writers rather than properties, and that Cohn's idea, evidently regarded by him as a remote eventuality, might furnish the key to an effective organization—a repository of properties, by assignment of copyright, so that the various abuses growing out of present forms of contract would become impossible, since the repository would execute deals only of a kind which reserved all rights intact to the writer, and would never let any part of his copyright to get away from him—that is, it would lease but not sell."36 Thus, Cain hit on what was to become the essential—as well as the most controversial—element of his AAA scheme, the concept of a legal repository for copyright, which would protect not only motion picture or television rights, but all rights to all kinds of literary material. During the winter of 1945-1946, then, writers were fighting on a wide front, but for the most part with narrow strategic objectives. Negotiations on the question of television rights continued within the guilds. The Authors League, prompted by the SWG, was itself beginning to focus on the sale of original material to the film industry. The Radio Writers Guild was still trying to engage the networks and the advertising agencies concerning a m i n i m u m basic agreement. The Authors Guild proposed to Pocket Books a 12 percent author's royalty on all $.25 reprint editions and was about to urge its members to swear pledges agreeing to refuse any contract calling for less than a 10 percent royalty on any book retailing for less than $i.50. 3 7 Members of the Dramatists Guild lobbied the DG Council to include a licensing provision for screen rights sales in its list of demands when negotiating a new MBA with theatrical managers. 38 At the time, though, only Cain had focused on a global strategy, action that would at a stroke solve many of the chronic problems that the craft guilds were tackling piecemeal. On March 4, the SWG executive board held an open meeting at the Masonic Temple to discuss the report of the CSOM. In closed session beforehand, Lardner read the CSOM's letter to the AL Council and the other guilds. It stated that the SWG, encouraged by the response from the other guilds, was now convinced the time had arrived "to work out a concrete program on which the entire League can stand united." The SWG had identified the fundamental change needed—to substitute licensing for outright sale—and all other questions, such as royalty compensation, flowed naturally from this one revision. Such a change "would be one of the major landmarks

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in the history of the League," since it would finally win for writers in the motion picture field rights that had been gained by other authors in the previous three decades. The movie studios, Lardner reminded the AL Council, "remain alone in the extremes of ownership and control which they demand in their purchases." Lardner urged that the four guilds meet jointly to discuss the subject, offering Cohn's resolution on licensing as a good starting point for such deliberations. The SWG board approved this letter, but added a clause indicating that the full membership of each guild should discuss whatever conclusions the joint committee reached. It agreed to submit the revised version to the subsequent open meeting for the approval of the SWG membership. The open meeting of more than three hundred screenwriters began with Ring Lardner, Jr., reporting for the CSOM. He outlined some of the proposed measures that the SWG could adopt regarding the sale of original material and explained at some length the licensing principle. Someone pointed out, correctly, that the licensing principle was not without precedent; in some foreign countries, France, for example, creative material could not be sold outright under any circumstances. The example was cited of a French writer who knew so little English when he arrived in Hollywood that he insisted on a contract according to French custom, and thus had relicensed the same material to the same major studio for three consecutive seven-year periods. 39 After several such precedents were discussed, the membership approved a motion that Lardner's letter be sent to the AL Council and the other guilds and instructed the CSOM to pursue licensing with all speed. 40 Accordingly, Lardner's letter was sent on March 8, and Lavery wrote a short article for the Authors League Bulletin setting out the SWG's position. He began by noting that the AL Council had already accepted the proposition that licensing was preferable to sale in the field of television and indicated that the SWG wanted merely to apply the same principle to the sale of material to motion pictures. Lavery reminded writers that, as matters then stood, "the seller of material for the screen is as unprotected as the dramatist was in the theatre before the advent of the Dramatists Guild and the M i n i m u m Basic Agreement." Screenwriters had no creative control over their work; they could not separate their rights and thus usually had to sell television and radio rights along with film rights; they did not profit from reissues or remakes of films; and they could not copyright in their own name the scripts they wrote. While a few writers had been able to bargain for slightly better terms, such deals did nothing "to lay down basic principles." Consequently, the SWG had

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endorsed a resolution calling for the leasing of motion picture rights and was appealing to the other guilds to do the same, since the sale of original material or film rights to other properties affected not only screenwriters, but all writers. Given that the studios could be counted on to oppose licensing, "it would be sheer folly for any one guild to act alone/' If the guilds acted quickly and in concert, however, the battle could be won "with a m i n i m u m of difficulty." Lavery thought that the advantages of licensing were self-evident: "What authors in their right minds are going to oppose such a rule? . . . Who is it that ever willingly sells ALL his rights to anything? What author alive would not prefer to license rather than sell, if he thought a fair share of his brother authors were ready to stand with h i m ? " Finally, Lavery urged that "every dictate of good business and good conscience" argued in favor of licensing. 41 On March 16, Rice promised Lavery that he would raise the licensing resolution at the next AL Council meeting and said that he was "reasonably sure" they would approve it. However, Rice still doubted that it would be as easy to implement licensing as Lavery had implied in the Authors League Bulletin. He pointed to three main difficulties. He thought the issue entirely hypothetical for the Radio Writers Guild, since "radio material, as such, is seldom sold for the screen." A more formidable obstacle was Rice's belief that the Authors Guild would find it difficult to enforce the resolution, since the Guild itself was "quite loosely organized" and possessed "no effective machinery for compelling any of its members to do anything." The AG would need to get pledges from individual members to abide by the terms of the resolution, and Rice warned that few members "would voluntarily forego a motion picture sale, in the event that the prospective purchaser refused to buy anything but unlimited rights." Finally, Rice thought that the chief problem concerned the Dramatists Guild. Under the MBA in force at the time, managers participated in the proceeds of a motion picture sale; since the licensing resolution might "result in the loss of a sale and a consequent loss of revenue for the manager," it might possibly violate the agreement. The only possible solution that Rice could see would be to get managers to assent to licensing in the new MBA being negotiated, but he doubted they would do so, since there was a time limit on the manager's right to a share of motion picture sales; thus, they would have "little or nothing to gain in the event of resale of rights." In general, Rice warned that "the whole thing is not as easy as it looks." 4 2 Lavery replied as soon as he received Rice's letter. While he appreciated "the very real difficulties" Rice had outlined, he was con-

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vinced they could be overcome. He pointed out that sales of radio material to the movies were "increasing rapidly" and noted that Arch Oboler had just sold three such radio scripts to the movie studios. He agreed that the Authors Guild was "not strong yet," but insisted that the licensing issue, if properly handled, would win it many converts. As to the Dramatists Guild's MBA, he proposed that if the time limit on managers' participation was extended, managers as well as playwrights could eventually make more money from motion picture rights. Lavery conceded that he might have made implementation of licensing sound too straightforward and painless, but he remained "keen to get the ball rolling."43 The Authors League Council, however, did not meet until the end of April, at which time, true to Rice's prediction, it approved the licensing resolution in principle and passed it on to the guilds for consideration. The League asked the guilds to report back to the AL Council once they had dealt with the resolution, but gave them no deadline.44 While the leaders of the AL and the guilds focused on the sale of original material during the spring, Cain continued to explore the idea of a more radical change in the marketplace. He invited Cohn to lunch several times to learn more of the legal ramifications of a repository for literary rights. He also sought the advice of Martin Gang, Norman Tyre, and Robert Copp, three Los Angeles lawyers who specialized in writers' problems, and talked to Emmet Lavery, George S. Kaufman, Howard Lindsay, Russel Crouse, Sam Moore, and other leaders of the SWG and the RWG, who were intrigued by the repository concept. Searching for a precedent that might help him explain the organization he was now referring to as "the American Authors' Authority," Cain found one in the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), and he would use the ASCAP analogy frequently as he explained how the AAA would function. ASCAP existed to protect composers and authors of songs and lyrics, as well as the publishers of sheet music, against infringement of their copyrights, specifically the performance of their works without payment. The Copyright Act of 1909 stipulated that protected songs and music could not be performed for profit without compensation to the copyright holder. In theory, a royalty was due every time a copyrighted song was publicly performed. As a practical matter, though, it was impossible for the copyright holders to track down every performance of their material in the more than thirty thousand dance halls, theaters, vaudeville houses, and cabarets nationwide, and it was equally difficult for the performers of copyrighted music to locate and pay the hundreds of composers and lyri-

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cists whose songs they used; thus, before the early 1900s, no such royalties had been paid. Victor Herbert arrived at the solution to this problem. In 1913, he walked into Shanley's Restaurant off Times Square just as the band began to play songs from his hit musical Sweethearts. Incensed, he confronted the restaurateur and demanded the performance royalties owed h i m under copyright law. The proprietor scoffed. Herbert sued. In 1917, the Supreme Court upheld Herbert's claim and established the composers' right to collect fees for the performance of their work. Meanwhile, in 1914, Herbert had assembled nine successful composers of popular songs to form ASCAP as a voluntary, nonprofit association that would act as a central clearinghouse for the performance rights to their music. ASCAP meant to protect the rights its individual members could not, and it would also provide the users with a convenient means to obtain licenses for performance rights in order to comply with the law. ASCAP met with bitter opposition from licensees, and indeed its history up to 1946 was filled with legal wranglings of all sorts, first with users and then with the AntiTrust Division of the Justice Department. However, it made steady progress in attracting new members, who numbered well over a thousand by the end of the Second World War. Initially, ASCAP concerned itself with live performances in burlesque halls, restaurants, and the like, but it quickly moved to include motion picture theaters as well; after 1923, it also drew fees from radio broadcasts. Members assigned their copyrights to ASCAP, which then licensed performance rights, collected and distributed royalties, and guarded against copyright infringement. It conceived a novel system for collecting and distributing royalties: since it could not collect a specific fee for each piece of music reproduced, given the millions of such performances each year, it instead licensed each establishment likely to play music, charging on the basis of the size and type of venue. Similarly, ASCAP could not pay each member the precise amount due; therefore, it divided its membership into various categories, based on current popularity, and distributed its net income to each member on a pro rata basis. 45 ASCAP's success in holding its own in legal and economic battles with a formidable array of business interests and governmental agencies only confirmed Cain's view that copyright was the key to writers' problems. If only a writer, like a member of ASCAP, could let one central office "take over this whole matter, become the repository of his copyright, lease the various 'rights' arising from it for his benefit, and never let one right get away from him for per-

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manent possession/' he or she would have achieved a substantial improvement in economic status. Again, following the AS CAP example, Cain initially envisioned a small number of writers independently establishing the AAA, writers whose work was so in demand that prospective purchasers would have to deal through the central authority. However, his conversations with various writers and lawyers in Hollywood persuaded h i m that the AAA would stand an increased chance of success if it were organized as a closed shop by the established guilds: the AAA would not deal with writers who were not guild members, nor lease material to anyone who did not comply with the basic agreements of the guilds. If the SWG and the RWG then refused to permit its members to work on non-AAA material, this would "compel every writer in the country hoping for picture or magazine sale to send his work to the Authority/ 7 Cain realized that if "the Guilds only stick together and act tough," such a scheme would be a "potential source of incalculable strength." 4 6 Now conceiving of the AAA as an instrument of the Authors League, Cain wrote a brief description of how the AAA would work and distributed it to those he thought might be interested. The AAA would be a nonprofit corporation, Cain's pamphlet explained, run by the four guilds. It would copyright, in its own name but acting as trustee for the writer, all material written for stage, screen, book, magazine, or radio, with the significant exception of writing done on release contract (and thus not subject to copyright by the author). Authors or their agents would still negotiate all deals for material held in trust, although the AAA would execute only those deals that called for the lease, but never the sale, of the rights under copyright. In return for this service, the AAA would charge a small commission payable by the lessor. This would provide the AAA with an operating budget sufficient to administer the licenses and enable it to provide writers with a host of other essential services. For example, the AAA would advise writers about their contracts, pointing out "provisions contrary to accepted trade practice, or evidence of fraud." It would also keep accurate accounts of all transactions it made and up-to-date records of the status of all the rights it controlled; in this way, "the writer will never have to depend on memory for the status of his work, or suffer the consequences of a mislaid contract." Moreover, the AAA would establish a network of field offices to deal with publishers, movie studios, and other corporate interests in cases in which writers 7 rights had been infringed. It would be able to prosecute copyright violations in court. As legal trustee of copyright, the AAA would enjoy standing as plaintiff in such cases; the guilds themselves could act only as friends of the

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court in plagiarism suits, and individual writers—as Cain's own experience had demonstrated—rarely had the financial resources to fight such difficult cases on their own. Finally, the AAA would maintain a well-financed lobby in Washington and in important state capitals to work for improved copyright legislation and tax codes more favorable to the writer than the "monstrous, discriminating, indefensible taxes that now afflict him." The AAA would "fight, on all fronts and in every way, to promote, not the writer's financial advantage, or his repute, or the conditions under which he works, matters at present the concern of existing organizations, but his RIGHTS/' 4 7 Cain explained that the AAA would be governed by a board of directors, one director elected from each of the guilds, plus a fifth elected by the other four to serve as chair of the board and president of the AAA. This president would then appoint attorneys, field representatives, lobbyists, and recordkeepers to fulfill the outlined functions. The AAA would maintain regional offices in N e w York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington and monitor closely activities in Albany, Sacramento, and Springfield. Cain was certain that the AAA plan would all but sell itself to writers. Others were not so sure. H. L. Mencken, for one, wrote to Cain that he had read his pamphlet "with the greatest diligence" and, while he agreed that it offered writers "a way out of mounting and illimitable difficulties," he reckoned the chances small that "it would ever be possible to induce more than a small percentage of American authors to join in." The problem, as Mencken saw it, had to do with the writer's self-image: "Every one of t h e m believes that he is able, single-handed and alone, to beat the whole hierarchy of Satan. I myself believe that I can do it in my own case. Thus the brethren are bad prospects, and you'll have to put in 99 per cent, of your time convincing them. However, it is conceivable, if not probable, that you'll succeed, and I offer my earnest prayers." 48 Thus Mencken warned Cain that, before he even tackled the formidable corporate interests sure to be arrayed against the AAA, he would have to face the reality that writers themselves seemed constitutionally opposed to concerted collective action. Cain himself had often expressed just such a view in the past, but the interest and enthusiasm the AAA was generating among writers in Hollywood led h i m to believe that, with so m u c h obviously at stake, writers could not help but embrace his plan. Dalton Trumbo, then editing the SWG's monthly magazine, the Screen Writer, was so impressed when he read Cain's brochure that he convinced Cain to allow h i m to run it as the featured article in

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the July issue. Later Cain would come to regret the close identification of his AAA plan with the SWG, and particularly with the editorial board of the Screen Writer; at the time, however, he was flattered by all the attention he was receiving and happy for the encouragement and publicity Trumbo offered. His colleagues on the CSOM also saw in the AAA an effective mechanism for putting into effect the principles of rights licensing and separation, not only for original movie scripts but for all literary material. As early as March 22, Morris Cohn revealed to Sidney Fleisher, the D C s film rights negotiator, that the CSOM had been "exceedingly active recently, stimulated in part by James M. Cain, who is a very dynamic person and who, I believe, has himself suffered from injustices of individual bargaining in the past. Various proposals have been made, including an Authors' Authority which would operate something like ASCAP." 49 By June, the CSOM had embraced the AAA after Cain formally proposed it as the best means to achieve their goals. On June 24, the CSOM took the AAA to the SWG executive board, which also endorsed it in principle and placed it at the top of the agenda for the next general membership meeting, scheduled for the end of July.50 Cain then set about revising his brochure for publication, hoping to make the strongest case possible to other screenwriters. He marshaled all of his considerable rhetorical skills in fashioning this polemic, for rather than a dispassionate assessment of the literary marketplace and a factual description of how the AAA would work, he decided that what was needed most was an indictment of the abuses writers suffered in the marketplace sufficiently slashing to motivate writers to act. Thus, he began by etching in acid the calumnies perpetrated on writers by greedy publishers, theatrical managers, movie producers, radio networks, and an indifferent government. Cain then explained the structure and functions of the AAA, much as he had in his brochure, before trying to anticipate some of the questions writers might raise about the organization. Regarding finances, Cain explained that small loans from the four guilds would be used to fund the Authority at the start. Once in operation, it would be financed by a 1 percent commission levied against the lessors of material. Cain insisted that the AAA would not encroach on the territories of the existing guilds, since the guilds, like labor unions, dealt primarily with wages, hours, and working conditions. The guilds, Cain repeated, organized writers; the AAA would organize literary properties. What is more, the guilds stood to gain by the AAA, for the Authority would copyright only material it received from guild members. Thus, writers who

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wished the protection of the AAA would have "to join up and pay up." 5 1 The AAA possessed specific advantages for each of the four guilds. Script writers, for example, would in time be able to "break the iron collar which the studios have riveted on their necks, which is the backlog of properties the studios have acquired all these years." This backlog had made it difficult for writers to pressure the studios by threatening to withhold material until the studios agreed to bargain collectively, but eventually the licensing provision would dry up the studio's stock of such material. Indeed, Cain claimed that the AAA might possibly force the studios to make even their backlog of purchased scripts subject to licensing, if screenwriters refused to work on any material not copyrighted by the Authority. In this way, members of the Authors and Dramatists guilds might recapture rights to old material as well as end the "vicious trade practices" in force at the time. Radio writers would be able to profit from rights that the advertising agencies and networks failed to exploit, as well as "own material now claimed by corporations for no reason except that they have lawyers." 5 2 Moreover, the AAA would prove invaluable to writers if it merely kept track of writers' properties in an orderly way, given that the average writer found it impossible to ascertain at any given time the exact status of various rights. "His book Wine, Women and Weehauken," Cain supposed, "has been published and reprinted three times; it has been translated into Danish and Portuguese; it has been made the basis of a picture and has run serially in three newspapers. Does he own the radio rights? The French rights, or were these sold as part of the 'foreign rights'? Were any of the reprint rights exclusive for a limited time? Does he still own the first serial rights? He doesn't know, and would have to search ten contracts to find out. And the worst of it is that some of his reprint authorizations were given in the form of a letter, filed separately, and he has to depend on his memory to be sure he has accounted for these various documents." The AAA, Cain promised, would relieve the writer of this burdensome bookkeeping, as well as "that vague, secret, but just the same sickening feeling that he is a sap, that he is doing nothing on his own behalf, that he deserves about what he gets." 5 3 Cain also insisted that there was nothing in the AAA that would threaten literary agents, since it would in no way negotiate for writers. In fact, the AAA would be of great help to agents, for it would relieve t h e m of functions they "should never have been expected to discharge in the first place." For example, they would no longer be in the unenviable position of having to fight the studios over the

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outright sale of picture rights in each negotiation, since the AAA would prohibit this practice once and for all. Finally, Cain imagined that the AAA might in the future expand to include other copyright owners. Songwriters, painters, designers, and others would be free to enter the AAA, forming separate divisions and electing their own directors. Copyright was "all one problem, " and if others wanted in on the AAA's protection, there was nothing in the plan to prevent them from joining. Cain admitted that formidable corporate interests would be hostile to the AAA, but he insisted that, "if the four guilds will take the power that awaits them, a massively powerful organization is possible in a very short time, with a $1,000,000 kitty and a full-time tough mugg at the head of it." 5 4 Cain's rousing appeal appeared in the Screen Writer just a few days before the SWG's general meeting on July 29. An editorial note asked all screenwriters to study the AAA carefully and come prepared "to help, with their suggestions, to make it the collective program of the organized writers of America." On the day of this meeting, the Hollywood Reporter, the trade paper published by W. R. Wilkinson, proclaimed in twelve-point type that support for the AAA amounted to nothing less than "A Vote for Joe Stalin." Wilkinson, w h o m writers for years had labeled a mere mouthpiece for the studios, which financed the Reporter with their advertising, claimed that the plan had been cleverly devised to emphasize the economic advantages it would bring to writers, but that this was merely a smoke screen to hide its real intent, which was to inflict "a thoughtpolice (under a system similar to that of Dr. Goebbels) upon the believers of American democracy." He urged writers to reject a system that would "give ONE M A N the totalitarian power to control all . . . literary material." Cain's proposal smacked of a "'Commie 7 party line maneuver for the control of all writers and their writings," and it was nothing more than a "stinking bit of regimentation, a serious blow to the freedom of writing, a menace to production of motion pictures and to our whole government." Given that the SWG was "controlled and dominated" by leftists and "sympathizers of the Party line," Wilkinson had little doubt it would be approved. 55 Wilkinson's opposition was predictable. In fact, he had written another editorial earlier that same week advocating an all-out purge of Communists in the film industry. 56 He had opposed virtually every attempt by screenwriters to organize, but the fury of this attack startled even the most thick-skinned of the SWG's leaders. It was merely a harbinger, however, of the vitriol poured over the AAA in the year to come.

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The HUAC hearings, which led to the convictions of the Hollywood Ten and the subsequent widespread blacklisting of suspected radicals, did not begin until the next year, but at the time Cain went public with his plan the political atmosphere in Hollywood was already heating up. As conservatives nationwide began to mount a campaign against Communist subversion, they quickly set their sights on Hollywood. Just three days before the SWG was scheduled to discuss the AAA, state senator Jack Tenney, longtime scourge of film industry radicals, told a receptive audience of International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) conventioneers in Chicago that "Communists have chosen, as their most fertile field, California, and particularly Hollywood, which is the best territory for their devastating activities and the most lucrative spot from which they can spread their poisonous propaganda/' He named Helen Gahagan Douglas and Orson Welles as among two or three hundred actors who were either Communist Party members or fellow travelers. 57 The Screen Writers Guild proved another ready target. Since its founding in the mid-thirties, conservatives in and out of the writing community had complained of undue Communist influence within the SWG. The conservative screenwriters who formed Screen Playwrights had, as early as 1934, denounced such Guild activists as Samuel Ornitz and John Howard Lawson for their links with the Communist Party; after the aborted SWG-AL amalgamation in 1936, which had raised the specter of a closed shop, m u c h of the right-wing press in America followed the lead of the Hearst papers, all of which were convinced that the SWG was in the hands of dangerous "communist radicals." 58 Of course, many anti-Communists detected the hand of Moscow in literally every attempt to organize workers in America; however, the accusations leveled against the SWG in the 1930s did not materialize out of thin air, since there were more than a few Communist Party members in the Screen Writers Guild. Screenwriters as a group were among the most engage and radicalized members of the increasingly politicized film community. The heavy-handed tactics their studio bosses employed to defeat Upton Sinclair's End Poverty in California (EPIC) campaign in 1934 had first enlightened film artists and trade workers about political reality in Hollywood. When Sinclair won the Democratic gubernatorial primary on a vaguely socialistic platform calling for higher taxes on wealth and corporate profit, the high-salaried producers in the highly profitable studios had used every trick at their disposal to defeat h i m in the general election, including strong-arming their

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employees to contribute 10 percent of their earnings to Sinclair's opponent. Some who refused were threatened with dismissal; others found the studios simply deducting a tenth of their pay.59 Sinclair lost the election after this notorious campaign, but not before the studios had inadvertently galvanized many outraged actors, directors, and writers to support a number of progressive causes. Alarmed by the threats of domestic reaction and international fascism—and particularly drawn to the republican cause during the Spanish Civil War—many in the movie community joined the host of progressive and radical organizations that formed the loose coalition known as the Popular Front in the 1930s: the Hollywood AntiNazi League, the Motion Picture Artists Committee to Aid Republican Spain, and the Motion Picture Democratic Committee were but three of more than a dozen such groups. 60 Screenwriters often marched at the front of such organizations, as indeed they did of the Hollywood branch of the Communist Party itself. John Howard Lawson, the SWG's first president, was perhaps the most prominent Communist in Hollywood, although he did not actually become a member of the Party until 1934, after his term of office had expired. Yet it does not follow that because a considerable number of SWG activists were members of the Communist Party, the Guild itself was controlled by them, m u c h less that the SWG was the cats-paw of international Communism. In the first place, while several members or future members of the Communist Party served on the executive board or as officers of the SWG in the 1930s (Lawson, Sidney Buchman, Ring Lardner, Jr., Lester Cole, Donald Ogden Stewart, and a few others), so too did many political conservatives, including Grover Jones, Rupert Hughes, Charles Brackett, and Robert Riskin. Moreover, the balance of power in the SWG always rested in the hands of political moderates and liberals such as Dudley Nichols, Mary McCall, Jr., Philip Dunne, Ralph Block, and Oliver H. P. Garrett. All the Guild needed to do in the 1930s to refute the charge that it was a hotbed of Communist subversion was to trot out Charles Brackett, a conservative Republican from a New York banking family, who served as the SWG's president in 1938 and 1939. Moreover, even those screenwriters who were CP members were anything but ideological zealots rigidly in the sway of the commissars. Most screenwriters who entered the Communist Party did so during the time of the Popular Front, when the Party's stance was more open and less ideologically rigid. The Communist Party itself had never focused m u c h on actual labor organizing in Hollywood; rather, according to Ceplair and Englund, C o m m u n i s m became "for

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a large and influential minority of screen artists, both the principal symbol of social idealism and the primary means of living out those ideals." Simply put, the CP was seen as the one organization effectively opposing injustice at home and Fascism abroad. Screenwriters who joined the CP were less likely to be Marxist-Leninist ideologues than "American radicals in the Jeffersonian or abolitionist traditions." 6 1 Robert Sklar comes to the same conclusion: "In the Popular Front period of the mid-1930s, it was neither sinister or unusual for a man or woman of intelligence, seeking knowledge of the forces of power in the world, to turn to Marxism for understanding, or to conclude that C o m m u n i s m was the political affiliation that best expressed solidarity with the beleaguered loyalists in Spain and the struggle against fascist oppression in Europe and Asia." 62 Committed anti- Communists, however, did not see it that way, and as early as 1938 Cong. Martin Dies (D-Texas) had charged that those who had joined the Anti-Nazi League, the most important of the Popular Front coalitions in Hollywood (and which even included such conservative executives as Carl Laemmle and Jack Warner), were, if not actually Communists themselves, then "dupes" of the CP. The Nazi-Soviet Pact signed in August 1939 all but destroyed the Popular Front, as liberals and progressives were outraged by the CPUSA's defense of Stalin's alliance with Hitler. The moderate Left never really trusted the CP thereafter, and the breakdown of the Popular Front paved the way for conservatives to attack the American Left. In 1938, Dies, who chaired the newly created House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, having just called the WPA Federal Theater Project a Communist propaganda mill, trained his sights on Hollywood. In statements to the press and on the floor of the House, Dies declared the film industry to be a hotbed of Communist subversion. In 1939, he claimed that HUAC had compiled a list of "subversives" in the industry and announced that he was going to Hollywood to root them out. At the same time, Jack Tenney announced his own inquiry into "Reds in the movies." 6 3 Both Dies and Tenney grabbed headlines, but the studios themselves—fearing any effort by outsiders to influence their operations—effectively defused such Redbaiting. As long as the industry presented a united front, as it did in the late thirties and early forties, and as long as extreme antiC o m m u n i s m remained near the margins of American political life, Dies, Tenney, and others made little progress in purging the film industry of radicals. Indeed, with Hitler's invasion of Russia and then the Japanese at-

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tack on Pearl Harbor, anti-Communism faded from the national political scene, as ranks closed to support the war effort and the SovietAmerican alliance. For a few short years, harmony between Left and Right prevailed in Hollywood. Many film workers, including writers, joined the CP not out of intense ideological conviction, but simply because Russia was now an ally. The war, Ceplair and Englund contend, "allowed the CPUSA to reverse itself and proclaim a patriotism and an anti-fascism acceptable to a broad current of Americans. Once again, and to even a greater extent than in the thirties, being a Communist did not automatically insulate one from the center ring of American political activity/' 6 4 During the election campaign of 1944, however, conservative Republicans attacked Roosevelt as suspiciously tolerant of Communism and again focused on the perceived Red Menace. In Hollywood, the solidarity that the industry had always summoned when faced with the threat of governmental intervention or other outside interference began to dissolve with the founding of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPA) in 1944, the brainchild of director Sam Wood, who assembled a group of Hollywood conservatives to defend the industry against Communist infiltration. Moreover, the MPA invited HUAC to return to Hollywood and offered to provide the committee with testimony against suspected radicals. 65 Another chink appeared in Hollywood's armor with the bitterly divisive and extremely politicized battle between the two major labor federations in Hollywood. What began as a simple jurisdictional dispute between the conservative International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and the progressive Conference of Studio Unions (CSU) quickly grew into a major row that enervated the film community for m u c h of 1945 and focused attention on the Communist issue as never before. IATSE, an industrywide affiliation of unions, had often been accused of signing sweetheart contracts with the studios, of being more sensitive to the demands of the industry than to the needs of its own membership. In 1941, several of the more progressive craft unions had broken away from IATSE and, under the leadership of Herbert Sorrell of the painters local, formed the Conference of Studio Unions. In 1944, alarmed by the increasing clout of the CSU, the studios refused to recognize the set decorators' union's change in affiliation from IATSE to the CSU. Eventually, the NLRB ruled in favor of the CSU, but not before a nasty eight-month strike, beginning in March 1945, had thrown the industry into turmoil. Roy Brewer, the recently appointed IATSE president, attacked the CSU as riddled with Communists; Sam Wood and the Motion

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Picture Alliance agreed. Ironically, the CP had initially opposed the strike as a threat to the war effort. The studios, meanwhile, hired IATSE members to replace CSU strikers. In October, the strike turned bloody when Sorrell changed tactics and focused on one studio, Warner Brothers, hoping to divide and conquer the producers. On October 8, Warner Brothers 7 private police and fire departments joined a large contingent of strikebreakers from IATSE to attack the picket line with fire hoses, tear gas, and clubs. Undaunted, picketers returned in subsequent weeks; faced with the NLRB decree, the studios relented and recognized the new CSU-affiliated union. One indication that the SWG was not in the thrall of its more radical left-wing members was its refusal to get deeply involved in the CSU strike. After an acrimonious debate, moderate and conservative members of the executive board defeated a motion calling for screenwriters to honor the picket lines at Warner Brothers because they believed such action might violate the no-strike clause in its MBA; the board even rejected a proposal to pay the legal fees of those screenwriters who did join the pickets at Warners. 66 Neither were the decisions expected of a Communist-led organization. The IATSE-CSU struggle took place in the context of a rash of industrial actions in the year following V-J Day, when American labor determined to make up some of the ground it had lost during the period of wartime wage-and-price controls. In the year after August 1945, there were no fewer than forty-six hundred strikes nationally. Such strikes fed the antilabor animus of the right wing in America, which in turn encouraged anti-Communist sentiment. Hollywood became merely the most visible and sensational target at the precise m o m e n t when, in Ceplair and Englund 7 s phrase, "anticommunism became a full-time business/ 7 The crucial link in taking an ti-Communism from the wings to center stage of American life in the postwar period, they assert, was "the linking of all expressions of liberalism and radicalism to communism. Here the right wing relied upon Americans 7 characteristic nationalism. Communism was 'un-American 7 because it was atheistic, collectivistic and international. This linking of Americanism to a highly specific set of values—organized religion, private property, and nationalism— made it unAmerican, hence, Communistic, to be critical of, or wish to change or challenge, those values, and the institutions and policies which reflected them. 7767 The SWG was quickly caught up in this net. In 1945, for example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce published a pamphlet, Communist Infiltration in the United States, warning that Communists were

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conspiring to gain control of the entertainment and information media and singling out the SWG as an organization already dominated by Communists. Thus, it came as little surprise to the SWG that the press greeted the AAA with a chorus of cries that it was a plot hatched in Moscow to "control" American thought. Despite—or perhaps because of—the hostility of the Hollywood Reporter, echoed in other local and trade papers over the weekend preceding the meeting, well over six hundred screenwriters appeared at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on July 29 to hear more about the AAA. In the days just before the meeting, Fred Niblo, Jr., a leader of the Motion Picture Alliance, had hastily convened a number of the more conservative members of the SWG in order to attack Cain's plan and to plot strategy to derail it on the Monday night. However, two of the more influential conservatives, Charles Brackett and Hearst correspondent Adela Rogers St. John, told Niblo bluntly that he could expect no help from them; Brackett and St. John thought the AAA made sense and they wanted to hear more about it. 68 Thus, they too were at the Roosevelt when Emmet Lavery opened the meeting by noting the recent scare headlines, which condemned the "tough mugg" Cain envisioned at the head of the AAA as an autocratic literary "czar," yet also branded the sponsors of the plan and the leadership of the Guild as Communists. It was the first time, Lavery quipped, that he had ever heard of Reds being accused of wanting a czar. Lavery recalled that similar headlines had greeted the SWG's request for a closed shop in the 1930s; on that occasion and despite the headlines, Lavery reminded his audience, the Guild had ultimately prevailed. Ring Lardner then summarized the work of the CSOM, stressing its conclusion that the AAA provided the best solution to the intractable problem of the outright sale of motion picture rights. He emphasized that the plan was complex and that it would take time for the League and the guilds to work out its final details. Writers should expect "a terrific fight" from producers and publishers. 69 That said, Lardner introduced a resolution calling for the SWG to endorse "the working out with the other Guilds of the Authors League of America a plan for the establishment of an American Authors 7 Authority along the general lines prepared by James M. Cain." In this way, Lardner suggested that the proposals Cain had made were not carved in stone; the "specific program" would be developed in conjunction with the other guilds and "subject to ratification" by all the members of the guilds. Lardner's resolution, therefore, merely endorsed the AAA "in principle." 70 Morris Cohn then took the floor to explain several legal aspects

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of the plan. He emphasized that, although the author transferred copyright to the AAA and thus the Authority would hold title, the author would remain the legal proprietor of the work. This legal fine point would prove to be the source of much debate, as well as misunderstanding, within the literary community in the m o n t h s to come. Cohn stressed that the plan would involve no change in the manner in which authors dealt with literary agents, with the basic exception that agents could arrange only for the license—and never the sale—of literary material. Cohn also warned that writers m u s t be prepared for opponents of the AAA who might attempt to circumvent it by setting up a rival organization, but he reminded t h e m that the Dramatists Guild, the SWG itself, and ASCAP had successfully met challenges from similar groups of outlaw contributors. Finally, Cohn pointed out that the AAA did not cover writing done on salary, and that such work would continue to be addressed by the M i n i m u m Basic Agreements in force in the specific craft fields. Cain himself then addressed the audience, stressing his conviction that literary material should be defined as property. He conceded that the motion picture companies were bound to fight the AAA "with every resource at their command" and pointed out that "the fact that the producers are so concerned over ownership should prove the importance of ownership of copyright." 71 Rumor had it, Cain claimed, that Louis B. Mayer had boasted that the studios already owned enough stories and scripts to make films for another twenty years without needing to deal with the AAA; if that were true, Cain advised, screenwriters must be prepared to refuse to work on any material not licensed through the AAA. After these preliminaries, Lavery asked for comment from the floor. Several writers spoke in favor of the plan, although Richard Macaulay, for one, indicated that it needed a provision making it impossible for the AAA to take notice of the content of the material it held in trust. He argued that this would effectively answer any charges that the AAA was engaged in "thought control." Macaulay's overall support for the plan surprised and delighted Cain, though, for he was usually counted among the right-wing faction of the SWG. Arch Oboler then raised two pertinent questions. Would the transfer of copyright to the AAA be irrevocable? Had the CSOM considered the possibility that the AAA might be in violation of the antitrust laws? Cohn answered that the committee had not yet considered the matter of revocability; as drawn up by Cain, the author's deposit of copyright was irrevocable, but Cohn recognized the pertinence of Oboler's point and he suggested that this was just the kind of issue that the guilds needed to thrash out before deciding on a

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final version of the AAA. He added that, from a legal standpoint, it would be possible for authors to retrieve their copyrights from the AAA without significantly damaging the Authority. As to the antitrust considerations, Cohn said that he had studied this question carefully and was convinced that the courts would uphold the AAA's legality. The screenwriters questioned Cain, Cohn, and the other members of the CSOM for more than two hours. Richard Wormser, for one, worried over the weakness of the Authors League itself; like Elmer Rice some months before, he feared that the Authors Guild in particular could not deliver the book and magazine writers. Francis Swann, for another, asked why the SWG did not merely appoint a film rights negotiator similar to the Dramatists Guild's. Fred Niblo lit into the plan, charging that the AAA would likely be administered "by people who tend to be dictators since . . . C o m m u n i s m is always present in the control of the Guild." He denounced Dalton Trumbo and John Howard Lawson by name as Communists, SWG officers he considered to be "agents of a foreign country." The AAA was a Communist plot pure and simple, and Niblo even linked it to a scheme to betray the country's atomic secrets. As Cain later reported: Hisses broke out, and perhaps as a result of a remark by Lavery, the president, the meeting twigged it that to be booed out was what Niblo secretly wanted, so he could march off with a lusty "that's all I wanted to know," and make something of it. The hisses stopped and the boos stopped, and when Lavery insisted that he continue, and assured h i m it was the sense of the meeting that he be heard, he had no choice but to continue, and it turned out that he hadn't prepared anything much beyond the point he had expected to bring the razzberry. So he had to start over again, and even his own crowd saw it made no sense. 72 When the dust settled and a vote was taken, Cain had won a singular triumph. Lardner's resolution was approved by 343 members of the SWG while only 7 opposed it. Rarely had the SWG been in such agreement on any issue, large or small. Edwin Blum immediately moved an amendment stating that "there be no discrimination in the rights or treatment accorded any written material by reason of its content." It carried unanimously. Robert Arthur then seized the floor to denounce the AAA as "absolutely totalitarian." He doubted that a writer who disagreed with the Authority would be able to continue working in the United States.

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Richard Macaulay again asked to be heard and suggested that Arthur's fears might be assuaged if the Guild also agreed that an author had the right to copyright work through the AAA regardless of membership or standing in any other organization. The CSOM members at the meeting all opposed this idea, given that they envisioned the AAA as a closed shop requiring guild affiliation to join, and Macaulay's motion was defeated 331 to 24. 73 With this ringing endorsement by the screenwriters, the American Authors' Authority was well and truly launched. Even Adela Rogers St. John reportedly urged Hearst himself to get behind Cain's plan "as a simple matter of right." 74 As the shrill attacks of the Hollywood Reporter and the angry criticisms of Niblo and Arthur might have suggested, though, it was going to be a rocky ride. The first obstacle for Cain and the AAA would not be to convince movie studios, publishing houses, and advertising agencies to accept a completely new way of business; the first hurdle was going to be convincing writers that the AAA was well worth the fight. Cain took heart from the SWG vote, however, calling it "the greatest burst of enthusiasm I ever saw in a writers' meeting." 7 5

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5. A War of Words (August-October 1946) Your way we shall out-DuPont

the

DuPonts.

— R U T H GOODMAN GOETZ TO JAMES M. CAIN

the AAA plan in the spring of 1946, James M. Cain's personal fortunes hit another patch of black ice. His contract with RKO expired, leaving h i m with no steady income. His own writing was not going well, and his marriage to actress Aileen Pringle ended in acrimony, largely because Cain was again drinking heavily. In July, however, he met Florence MacBeth, a retired diva, who would become Cain's fourth and last wife. MacBeth 7 s no-nonsense Scots temperament was just what the careening author needed to right himself. With MacBeth 7 s encouragement, he soon completed two novels that had languished for several years. The SWG's enthusiastic endorsement of the AAA buoyed his spirits further. A letter Cain wrote to Christopher LaFarge, the president of the Authors Guild, two days after the SWG meeting reveals none of the somber, cramp-souled quality of his correspondence earlier in the year. Indeed, it suggests a confident Cain, unusually full of himself. He admitted that he had not expected m u c h to come of the meeting other than a mild interest in the AAA, because he had little confidence in writers 7 capacity to do anything in their own interests and had little respect for "their feeble leagues and guilds and societies of one kind or another/ 7 He had been forced to revise his opinion, though, "for to my utter amazement, there was none of the petty silliness so often heard in these meetings, but a full, adult, resolute understanding of what I was trying to get them to do, and a solidarity that had mass in it, and went far beyond mere amiable unanimity. 77 Using a metaphor he employed repeatedly over the next year, Cain explained to LaFarge that if a writer was given a "pea shooter 77 like the ineffective guilds, he could not be expected to do m u c h more than lie low and plot strategy; but if given a rifle, he just might go out to h u n t tigers "or whatever else he has to do.77 Cain had asked in the past, "How can these mice be dressed up to look WHILE HE WAS PUTTING TOGETHER

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like cavalry?" After the SWG meeting he had his answer: "They're not mice, and they'll be cavalry if you let them." 1 Cain then told of Niblo's attack on the AAA as a Communist plot and advised that his own political background might help refute the "inevitable" criticism of the AAA as a "Red scheme, led by Hollywood leftists." Although he was a registered Democrat, Cain had worked publicly for Thomas Dewey in the 1944 campaign and for several local Republicans,- many of the screenwriters at the membership meeting on }uly 29 had known this, so Niblo's accusations had looked quite foolish. Cain emphasized that he wanted all of the guilds involved in the AAA from the start and he urged writers in New York to examine the AAA as quickly as possible. "A hot iron should get prompt beating," he suggested. 2 Cain encouraged LaFarge to circulate his letter to others in the New York guilds, since, in the wake of the SWG's endorsement of the AAA, he had determined that the Authors League offered the best hope for its success. Emmet Lavery's dogged insistence on promoting League unity had made its impression; whatever Cain's own doubts, he did his part to convince those in New York that the AAA posed no threat to the existing League structure. Meanwhile, press reports confirmed Cain's prediction that the industries that acquired writers' work would be none too pleased by the prospect of an AAA. Even before the July 29 endorsement, the largest theatrical production company in the country, the Shubert organization, had taken a hard line against Cain's plan. The plan "would deprive producers and publishers, who gamble huge sums financing these writings, from a share in subsequent production or publication," a Shubert representative complained. "Our organization, under the Cain plan, could not continue to produce for the coming or any other season." 3 A couple of days after the SWG met, the motion picture companies, while professing to be "unexcited" by the prospect of the AAA's "big stick," nonetheless termed it "unworkable, untenable and unconstitutional" and warned that its implementation would only result in antitrust prosecution. The studios insisted that they already owned enough story material on file and had enough writerproducers under contract to win any fight against the AAA. Asked to comment on Cain's tough talk at the SWG meeting, one studio executive jibed: "Cain's been reading his own books." 4 Undaunted, Lavery acted quickly within the Guild, convening the executive board on August 5 to create a special American Authors' Authority Committee. Lavery wanted broad representation from the other guilds on this committee, to take into account the particular

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requirements of the other fields in redrafting the AAA as well as to build widespread support for the plan. The executive board also agreed that Sam Moore, the president of the Radio Writers Guild, should also be invited to serve on the AAA Committee. Morris Cohn and Robert Morris, Jr., would act as its attorneys. Howard Estabrook, a SWG vice-president, contacted potential members, and it is a measure of the interest Cain's plan prompted that all but two of the screenwriters he approached agreed to serve. 5 In all, twenty-three writers joined this original AAA Committee, sometimes referred to as the Overall AAA Committee: Art Arthur, Edmund Beloin, Philip Dunne, Everett Freeman, Boris Ingster, Ring Lardner, Jr., Allen Rivkin, Louise Rousseau, and Adela Rogers St. John were all members of the SWG only; Robert Ardrey, Joseph Fields, Francis Goodrich, Albert Hackett, F. Hugh Herbert, Lavery himself, Henry Myers, and Arthur Schwartz were also members of the Dramatists Guild; Alvah Bessie, Albert Maltz, and Mary McCall, Jr., were members of the Authors Guild as well as the SWG; and True Boardman and Arch Oboler belonged to both the SWG and the Radio Writers Guild. Cain himself belonged to all but the RWG, and was also appointed to this AAA Committee. 6 Lavery promised to convene a meeting before the end of the month. As the SWG quickly realized, only the Radio Writers Guild—and particularly its West Coast branch—shared the screenwriters 7 enthusiasm and urgency. The correspondence during August between the RWG's Sam Moore on the West Coast and Dorothy Bryant, who ran its office in New York, reveals a great deal about the opening round in the AAA fight as well as about the inner workings of the guilds. It also reveals the growing rift between writers on the two coasts. On July 30, Moore wrote to Bryant to report on the SWG meeting held the previous night, at which someone had forecast that it would be at least two years before the AAA could get off the ground. Cain himself more optimistically estimated that it would take a year before writers could "step into the ring weighted evenly against the producers/ 7 7 Moore, however, was keen for the RWG to act immediately. The Western Regional Council of the RWG had already endorsed Cain7s plan in principle, and Moore wanted the entire regional membership to vote on the plan at a meeting on August 8, which Cain had agreed to attend. The Midwestern Regional Council was to discuss the AAA at a meeting in Chicago, and Moore hoped that Bryant could call a meeting of the Eastern Council in New York by August 8. If at that meeting the radio writers in New York also endorsed the AAA, Moore was convinced that this would

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build m o m e n t u m for the Authority and favorably influence the other guilds. 8 Bryant replied to Moore that, although she had not yet studied the AAA in close detail, she had been impressed by the vote of the SWG; in fact, she revealed, "I haven't been as excited or as enthusiastic about anything since I became part of the Guild/' Newly appointed the executive secretary of the RWG, Bryant was a respected veteran of the guild movement. She had been the guiding light of the Chorus Equity Association, the chorus girls7 guild, from its inception in 1919 until 1937, and she had been lured out of retirement by the RWG in 1944, when it opened its first national office. She was an experienced negotiator, a competent administrator, and only her efficient handling of the RWG's office allowed Moore to preside over the Guild's affairs from the West Coast. 9 Although on first reading she had liked Cain's conception of the AAA, she had questions about several points and so counseled caution: "I'd rather have a little delay and get the thing well ironed out than, just for the sake of speed, go off half cocked and have a nice failure." If writers thought that the AAA could in any conceivable way censor material, she warned, the plan would be "shot," so she advised that the AAA's constitution or charter be written so that it would clearly and irrevocably prohibit such censorship. She brought this to Moore's attention because occasionally some of the "more earnest little dears" in the RWG had tried to censor or suspend a member "because they didn't like the political implication of what he wrote," creating a "most unpleasant stir" each time. Bryant granted that the SWG had passed such an anti-censorship resolution on July 29, but "any meeting can revoke a resolution unless it is well protected." 1 0 Bryant agreed to try to arrange a meeting of the Eastern Regional Council, but she warned that it would not be easy, since so few members stayed in New York during the summer. She preferred to wait until members returned to town rather than ballot t h e m by mail, for, while she liked Cain's plan for the AAA, she did not particularly like his presentation of it in the Screen Writer and she hesitated to have the Council make its decision based simply on Cain's explanation of it. To her mind, Cain's piece was "too verbose for easy reading" and certain minor points were "literally incorrect." For example, Cain's assertion that the Authors League was "primarily concerned with wages and hours," Bryant was certain, "would set a large part of the League membership up on their hind legs howling." Both the Authors and the Dramatists guilds, in fact, had very little

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to do with the employment conditions of salaried writers, but, rather, dealt with the terms and conditions under which free lancers marketed their work. While the inaccuracies were not important to the essence of the plan, Bryant cautioned that "when you find one you are apt to doubt a lot more." She concluded by emphasizing her conviction that Cain's description of the AAA "should be boiled down, ironed out and be a little clearer" before the Eastern Regional Council was asked to vote on it. 11 Bryant's opinion of Cain's article was shared by several others who were sympathetic to his aims; they thought the AAA a worthy idea, but did not like the way he had presented it. While some writers undoubtedly were stirred to action by Cain's description of the "plight" of the American writer, these others—especially those who knew a great deal about the literary marketplace—found his rhetoric exaggerated and his understanding incomplete. The AAA, they argued, would be better served by a more detailed and objective description. The SWG's AAA Committee soon placed such a description high on its list of priorities, but it would take until the spring of 1947 for it to be completed, a delay that seriously hampered the cause. On August 2, Moore again wrote to Bryant, asking about the press response in the East to Cain's proposal. She replied that there had been very little coverage in the papers, and that no one in New York seemed to be working actively for it. She had scheduled a RWG Eastern Regional Council meeting for August 7, but was somewhat at a loss as to how to handle it: "Were I to read the entire article of Cain's in T h e Screen Writer,' half of t h e m would leave before I had finished and the other half would spend the next two weeks arguing over each point." Given that the Cain plan did not explicitly prohibit censorship, she thought it best not to distribute reprints; the Council could merely approve the plan in principle and call for an allguilds committee to study it further. For her part, Bryant thought the AAA plan so important that the Authors League should set up working committees on both coasts. 12 On August 8, Bryant reported to Moore that the Eastern Regional Council had indeed met the previous day and had unanimously endorsed the licensing principle. It had not approved the Cain plan specifically because those in the East felt it was too complicated to judge on such short notice. The council also asked the Authors League to set up a committee "immediately" to study the AAA "with the view of establishing this principle as common practice." On August 15, Moore wrote to Elmer Rice requesting that he appoint just such a committee. 1 3 Moore also informed Rice that the

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RWG had itself set up regional committees to investigate the Cain plan. In an interview with Variety later that week, Moore decried a Chicago Tribune editorial attacking the AAA as "communist inspired/ 7 an editorial that Variety had reprinted. 14 Such criticism was "ridiculous/ 7 since it was well known that the AAA had been developed by "conservative elements 77 in the SWG. He insisted that the essence of the plan was simply to set up a trust "to benefit all writers/ 7 and that the trust would have no discretionary powers. "All developments of the plan beyond this simple concept are in the discussion stage/ 7 and Moore was certain that whatever details finally emerged would effectively prohibit either censorship or monopolistic control. 15 In mid-August, Bryant kept urging greater effort to promote the AAA on the East Coast. The real strength and novelty of Cain 7 s plan, to her mind, was that it dealt with "ALL writers in ALL fields.77 Thus, writers on both coasts needed to be involved, and to date Bryant had heard nothing from either the Dramatists or the Authors guilds. 16 "Literally no one in any Guild ever heard of it until the July 31 Variety article 77 reporting the SWG7s endorsement. "So far as I know, only the RWG Council members and one or two other people I7ve been able to button hole know anything about it now.77 For this reason, she was concerned that the Tribune editorial would be particularly damaging, since Variety was read by so many writers in New York. "The authority is patently designed to establish an ideological regimentation in the United States/ 7 the Tribune had intoned. "It cannot possibly have anything to do with getting a fair price for the work of writers or it would not have originated in Hollywood where writers are paid at a higher rate for drivel than in any market under the sun. . . . This scheme has the appearance of being communist inspired. It is an attempt by private individuals to establish the same smothering control of expression that was developed by Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese war lords, and which has achieved such pernicious perfection in Russia.7717 She feared that, on reading this piece, members of all of the guilds would become so alarmed that they would bombard the guilds "with letters to save t h e m from a stifling censorship. 7718 Even though she believed "the most ardent reactionary doesn 7 t read or believe the Chicago Tribune," Bryant still thought it wise to enlist a prominent member of the RWG to respond to its charges. 19 Her contacts at Variety had suggested Orson Welles, but she warned that "Orson never answers letters 77 and "he won't answer the phone/ 7 so she was somewhat at a loss as to how to proceed. She hoped that Moore would be able to "get a snappy letter with a name attached

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to it that Variety can't ignore." 20 Bryant still thought some of the AAA plan "impractical" and perhaps too ambitious. She feared that "it is taking too big a bite which may result in choking instead of swallowing"; but she still believed the basic idea of a rights repository was "damned good," and she didn't want to see it "die out as so many things in the League have that have started with m u c h enthusiasm and then haven't been followed up." Bryant had cause for concern, since the Authors Guild, the Dramatists Guild, and the Authors League all responded slowly to the initiative of the SWG and the RWG. In hindsight, the drive to establish the AAA could not have begun at a worse season to galvanize support in the East, since, as Bryant indicated, most writers left the city during July and August if they could, and writers' organizations all but shut down as a result. Christopher LaFarge, though, did respond on August 13 regarding the AAA, thanking Cain for his "admirable" suggestions, but remaining politely vague. "Something like this plan of yours is bound to come," LaFarge predicted, but he asked for "a little t i m e " to consider it so that "we don't run into some awful legal snag merely by trying to go too fast." He promised to be in touch "pretty soon." 21 In fact, the Authors Guild Council did not meet until September 10, and even then postponed discussion of the AAA until October. The Dramatists Guild, for its part, focused as it was on its continuing negotiation with theatrical managers over renewal of the MBA, did not address the AAA proposal at all during August, nor did the Authors League Council. Thus, while Cain's plan was a hot topic of conversation among writers on the West Coast in August, even League and guild officers in New York, with the exception of Bryant, were only vaguely aware of the AAA proposal. Most were on vacation, or distracted by other matters. The leaders of the Authors Guild, in particular, were too preoccupied with a revolt brewing in its rank and file to pay m u c h heed to the AAA, for Cain was hardly the only member of the Authors Guild with doubts about its effectiveness; as we have seen, even Elmer Rice and Emmet Lavery, two guild stalwarts, considered it to be the weakest of the four guilds. Indeed, during the summer of 1946, more than sixty of its own members, displeased with the structure and leadership of the Authors Guild, formed the Committee for Action (CFA) to push for reforms that would "streamline, modernize and vitalize" it. In its manifesto, the Committee for Action listed as its most urgent objectives a basic, uniform book contract; adoption of licensing for all published properties; a standard reprint contract; establishment of m i n i m u m terms in the magazine

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field; and the establishment of the practice of simultaneous submissions to publishing houses and magazine editors. 22 The CFA was clearly troubled that the Guild's leadership had made so little progress on these issues. It believed the Authors Guild's officers, and especially its executive secretary, Luise Sillcox, acted too often without consulting the membership, and that the AG Council was intrinsically undemocratic and traditionally moribund. As a spokesperson for the CFA explained: "Council minutes are secret as are their meetings. Motions passed and petitions signed are delayed, it would seem deliberately, far beyond the normal time for action. Council rulings are made affecting the 'good standing' of Guild members, but we are not told when nor given the wording of such rulings in writing." 2 3 Many of the changes advocated by the Committee for Action were meant to democratize the organization: it believed there should be at least four general membership meetings each year, rather than one; it wanted regional chapters of the Authors Guild established in major cities, each chapter to elect representatives to a National Council; it wanted replacements for the AG Council to be chosen by election of the membership and not by appointment of the council itself; and most important, it demanded that council meetings be open to the membership, that minutes be published in the Authors League Bulletin, and that the votes of individual Council members be recorded. 24 Only by taking such steps, the CFA argued, could the Authors Guild, and particularly the Council, which conducted most of its business, become truly effective in promoting the economic welfare of writers. While the Committee for Action pledged to wage its fight within the Guild itself, nonetheless, it publicly challenged the leadership of the Authors Guild. It clearly meant a fight. The CFA leaders quickly seized on Cain's plan as a means to achieve their stated goals in the marketplace and also to pressure the Authors Guild leaders. On August 9, Nancy Davids wrote to the Screen Writers Guild on behalf of the Committee for Action, praising the AAA plan as "the most significant step forward for writers since the founding of the Authors League thirty years ago," and requesting more information. While the Committee for Action pledged to support the AAA within the Authors Guild, it also sought the SWG's assistance in its own fight "to democratize" the AG. "Will you aid us in what m u s t surely be action with which you sympathize?" asked Davids. 25 Lavery, Lardner, and the other leaders of the SWG were of two minds about the Committee for Action. On the one hand, they wel-

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corned its support for the AAA and agreed that the Authors Guild needed reform; on the other, they were committed to implementing the AAA through the guilds, and the last thing they needed was to alienate LaFarge, Rex Stout, and the other leaders of the Authors Guild. Whatever their sympathies with the Committee for Action, a factional struggle within the Authors Guild did not serve the interests of the AAA. Thus, the SWG sent Davids a reprint of Cain's article and, while agreeing that a strong Authors Guild would be in all writers' best interests, it finessed the question of public support for the Committee for Action by drawing its attention to the July 29 resolution calling for the guilds to work together to implement the plan. The minutes of the first meeting of the Overall AAA Committee confirm the SWG's determination to work through the Authors League. Lavery convened the group on August 29, and explained that he had decided to chair the committee himself, since so much of its charge involved working with the League and the other guilds; as president of the SWG, he believed that he was in the best position to get and hold their attention. Lavery appointed Ring Lardner, Jr., vice-chair, since as head of the previous Committee on the Sale of Original Material he was thoroughly familiar with the issues the AAA Committee would address. Morris Cohn, the firebrand on this committee, as he had been on the CSOM, again argued that the SWG should act unilaterally, in this case, by establishing at once a temporary AAA, which the other guilds could join as they formally approved the Authority. The committee rejected Cohn's idea, though, determined to have the entire Authors League on board from the beginning; otherwise, it would look like the SWG was trying to force its plan on the other guilds. Moreover, the committee wanted to distribute Cain's Screen Writer article to as many members of the two eastern guilds as possible. It suggested that the AG and the D G be invited to join in the AAA Committee's work in Los Angeles, and it carried a motion that "every effort be made" to convince the councils of the Authors League, the Dramatists Guild, and the Authors Guild to discuss the AAA at their September meetings. The AAA Committee hoped that Cain himself would attend each of these meetings to explain the plan in detail. Finally, the AAA Committee created three working groups: one was to draft a constitution and bylaws for the AAA; another was to determine how best to obtain the cooperation of the other guilds; and a third would publicize the plan among writers and respond to any negative press the plan received. Lavery immediately wired Elmer Rice, Christopher LaFarge, and

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Richard Rodgers with the committee's request that their respective councils take up the AAA in September. 26 Lavery, in a second telegram to Rodgers, the president of the Dramatists Guild, sent the next day, reported that Rice had already agreed to discuss the AAA at the AL Council meeting scheduled for September 18. Rice's readiness to deal promptly with the AAA encouraged its supporters; less welcome was the publication by the King Features Service of George Sokolsky's attack on the AAA. Sokolsky, hailed by some and disparaged by others as the high priest of anti-Communism, charged that Cain's intention was "to police and regiment American thought by one m a n / ' the powerful administrator Cain had described as a "tough mugg." 2 7 Cain deemed this necessary, according to the columnist, because of the "desperate plight" of American writers, but Sokolsky could not see the desperation in the situation of screenwriters earning five thousand dollars a week in Hollywood, or magazine writers selling serial rights for "tens of thousands of dollars." If Cain often likened the AAA to ASCAP, the closed-shop feature of Cain's original AAA plan brought to Sokolsky's mind another analogy from the musical field: he compared Cain's tough mugg to James Caesar Petrillo, the controversial president of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), who in the early 1940s had sent teenagers into shock by striking the record industry and banning live music from the radio at the height of the jitterbug craze. Petrillo had argued that cheap records were costing musicians jobs: "We are not going to play at our own funeral," he quipped at the time. The recording strike had only ended in 1944, when the record companies agreed to pay a royalty to the AFM pension fund for every record sold.28 "What Caesar Petrillo has done to music," Sokolsky predicted, "Cain would do to thought and its expression." However, popular music and literature crucially differed: "Civilization might survive a strike of saxophone players, but could civilization survive if Mr. Cain refused to permit a writer to be published because he personally disagreed with the ideas and their expression?" 29 Sokolsky then attacked on another front. Writers would only betray themselves if they supported Cain's plan, because "a writer is not a drummer." By a drummer, Sokolsky could have meant either a percussionist (continuing the musical analogy), or a peddler. "He is a creative person with something in his mind and heart, as willing to accept the garret as to accept the emoluments and plaudits that come to him for his work." Cain's AAA was typical of the current "preoccupation with rights and deals" among the literary community, which had "reduced American literature to its current vul-

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garity." Unlike contemporary money-grubbing writers, the giants of America's literary past—Sokolsky named Poe, Hawthorne, and Twain, specifically—"did not recognize any Authority They wrote and took their chances." Sokolsky's analysis was willfully muddled, casting Cain's plan in the worst possible light. His charge that the AAA was "a device to get around the Constitution" and its guarantee of free speech, for example, misread both Cain's intentions and the plan itself. There was no outright prohibition against the AAA censoring the material in its trust because Cain had simply never envisioned the Authority in those terms. Moreover, Cain agreed wholeheartedly with the July 29 SWG resolution, stating that the content of a literary work was not the business of the AAA. The AAA meant to regulate properties, not thought. Even Dorothy Bryant, who thought the prohibition against censorship needed to be made more explicit, understood that the AAA was so constructed that, should Sokolsky's own column be assigned to it, "it would have to accept the assignment with thanks— who could want more freedom than that?" 3 0 While Cain believed it necessary for the AAA to act as a closed shop, compelling authors to assign their copyrights to it, this feature had little if any connection with censorship; indeed, by Sokolsky's weird logic, even basic copyright law could be seen as an instrument of censorship, an encroachment on the author's untrammeled freedom of speech. Sokolsky's insistence that writers, as "creative artists," should be completely unconcerned with commerce infuriated Cain, for he believed that in the modern world the writer had to be both a "creative artist" and a "drummer," or risk extraordinary exploitation. Sokolsky's choice of examples of great writers who refused to be "drummers" was singularly unfortunate for his own case: Poe, although he may have "starved in a garret," did not do so willingly,Hawthorne focused his energies on the novel rather than the short story, at which he was arguably more adept, in order to meet popular demand; and Twain was a keen observer of the literary marketplace and a leading light in the late-nineteenth-century fight for international copyright. Sokolsky contended that writers, as "artists," could not serve both God and Mammon; Cain believed that such a conception of writing did not further the interests of writers themselves, but, rather, benefited those who purchased their work in the marketplace. Sokolsky's argument, although rhetorically grand and seemingly idealistic, in fact only served the corporate interests of publisher, manager, and movie producer. Nonetheless, the next few

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months would find columnists, editorialists and even writers themselves repeating many of Sokolsky's more dubious assertions, often using the same words. Despite Sokolsky's diatribe, which most AAA supporters could dismiss as mere reactionary palaver, the events of August must have bolstered the hopes of those working in Hollywood for the AAA. Two guilds had endorsed the plan in principle, and there was reason to believe that the Authors League, the Authors Guild, and the Dramatists Guild would follow suit in the near future. At least one Guild veteran and AAA supporter, though, cautioned against undue optimism. Howard Lindsay was a longtime and much-respected member of both the Dramatists Guild and the Screen Writers Guild. With his partner Russel Crouse, he had written The State of the Union, Life with Father, and many more hit plays in the 1930s and 1940s. He had attended the July 29 meeting and had voted in favor of the AAA. He feared, though, that Cain and the others who had spoken for the AAA at that meeting had made its implementation "look too easy and simple." He reminded Ring Lardner on August 10 that the success of the plan would depend on the united action of writers and that, as Cain himself had lamented, the Authors Guild in particular had never enjoyed much success in that regard. The campaign for such an organization as Cain had described would be enormously expensive to mount and the guilds were chronically cash-poor. Any such effort by writers would be met "with a counter-lobby, financed by the millions—in fact, billions—behind the motion picture industry, the radio industry, and the publishing industry." Lindsay, while pledging his support, warned Lardner that writers would have to expect "one hell of a fight" before the AAA, or any similar association, might prove viable.31 Sobered by Lindsay's caveat, the AAA Committee asked the Screen Writer to publish it in September. The deliberations of the AAA Committee and its subcommittees in early September suggest that however much they might scorn the notion that the AAA could dictatorially "control" or censor material, they were at least sensitive to the charge. Their immediate actions and decisions aimed to quell just such fears, particularly within the writing community itself. When Cain and Morris Cohn submitted a draft of the AAA's articles of incorporation to the Sub-Committee on Organization on September 6, for example, it decided to add a preamble to the text explicitly stating the AAA would "promote, facilitate, and assist the trade, traffic and business in literary properties no matter by whom

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owned" and "promote and encourage the unrestricted traffic in literary properties and the widest possible opportunity for writers of all kinds and descriptions of literature" (my emphasis). 32 In addition, the subcommittee inserted a phrase in Cain's first article to the effect that the Authority would accept material from all writers, whether they were guild members or not. This represented the first major revision in Cain's initial conception, as it effectively negated its closed-shop provision. While Cain had believed that he could more easily sell the Authority to the guilds by making guild membership a prerequisite to joining the AAA, even he now conceded that this closed-shop feature left the AAA open to the criticism that it was dangerously restrictive, and might actually lose it more support than it gained, even among guild members. In a third change designed to make the AAA more open and democratic, the subcommittee also increased the size of the board of directors from four to sixteen. 33 Thus, in response to the criticism that the Authority posed a threat to free speech, its advocates had revised some of its more objectionable features scarcely a m o n t h after Cain's plan had been publicly announced. At the second meeting of the Overall AAA Committee, on September 12, the Sub-Committee on Strategy reported that it had sent telegrams to the Authors League, the Dramatists Guild, and the Authors Guild informing them of the AAA Committee's existence, and that Emmet Lavery had asked Elmer Rice and Richard Rodgers to convene Authors League and Dramatists Guild Council meetings during Cain's trip east, now scheduled for early October. Everett Freeman, the head of the Sub-Committee on Public Relations, reported that the group believed four steps needed to be taken immediately: the "no discrimination" resolution passed at the SWG meeting on July 29 should be publicized; the AAA Committee needed to counter "the red label the press has tried to pin on the Authority"; letters should be sent at once to the more vocal critics of the AAA "giving the true facts" of the case; and most important, the AAA should be explained clearly and in detail to the memberships of the other three guilds. Freeman recommended that the SWG hire a publicity agent to help in its effort and that Cain's Screen Writer article be rewritten before it was more widely distributed. The AAA Committee as a whole agreed with Freeman's recommendations, especially his emphasis on informing writers nationally about the Authority. The committee then agreed to wait to reconvene until after the September 18 Authors League Council meeting. 34 Having thus reshaped the AAA proposal to assuage the fears of those who found it restrictive, and having taken measures to reas-

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sure writers that the most hysterical press criticism of the Authority was ill-informed, the AAA's advocates within the SWG anticipated that the eastern guilds and the Authors League itself might accept Cain's plan with a m i n i m u m of delay and controversy. The announcement that fifty writers had organized expressly to oppose the AAA dashed such hopes. In early August, writers Rene and Irene Kuhn, both arch antiCommunists, had first read press accounts of the SWG's endorsement of Cain's plan. They contacted conservative columnist John O'Connor, who had already attacked the plan; on August 28 these three, together with Eugene Lyons, Patsy Ruth Miller, and Benjamin Stolberg, quietly convened some thirty of their acquaintances in New York who they assumed would be similarly alarmed by the AAA. Having recruited another score of writers, the group incorporated as the American Writers Association (AWA). Its charter members were mostly politically conservative and financially successful writers, and included Bruce Barton, Louis Bromfield, Clare Booth Luce, Sokolsky, Ayn Rand, plus many of the conservative faction of the SWG—James Kevin McGuinness, Howard Emmett Rogers, John Erskine, John Lee Mahin, Rupert Hughes, and Fred Niblo, Jr. Sprinkled among these predictable opponents of the AAA, though, were a few surprising names, including Norman Thomas, the leader of the Socialist Party, Zora Neale Hurston, and Oswald Garrison Villard. If anything, the founders of the AWA were even more suspicious of the AAA than were its press critics. In an open letter dated September 11 and sent to several hundred writers, the AWA labeled the Authority a "sudden new danger to American writers," which had "sprung out of the ceaseless plotting of certain elements to get control of the instruments of opinion" in the United States. The stated goal of the AWA was to persuade the guilds to reject Cain's plan and, failing that, "to take whatever means can be contrived to defeat this scheme." 3 5 The AWA's founders invited all writers to join them, regardless of guild affiliation, and asked them to read carefully an enclosed eight-page memorandum on the AAA, which had also been released to the press. In the memorandum, the AWA charged that Cain's plan was nothing less than a "sinister movement to establish a dictatorship over the films, the radio, and the publishing of books and magazines" in America. While the advocates of the AAA claimed that it was meant merely to correct injustices and disadvantages suffered in the marketplace, the AWA believed that this was simply a pretext "to hurry the entire writing profession in America under the dominion of an

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authoritarian monopoly/' which would be a far worse evil than those it professed to want to correct. Moreover, while this plot might appear "incredible/ 7 it was already dangerously close to being an accomplished fact. The statement warned (erroneously) that the AAA had already been "adopted" by two of the four guilds (the SWG and the RWG had merely endorsed it in principle), and that the "political composition" of the councils of the Authors League and the two other guilds suggested that they would quickly rubber-stamp it. 36 This statement then described Cain's plan, emphasizing as its most objectionable and dangerous features the "surrender" of copyright to the Authority and the creation of a closed shop (which the AAA Committee had just agreed to abandon). These features, taken together, would compel every author to sign away "precious" copyright to a left-wing Authority, which, the AWA insisted again and again, in spite of the no-discrimination resolution of the SWG, would suppress writing that its members found politically objectionable. At the end of its memorandum, the AWA changed course to suggest that not only American writers—"the free-est in the world— and let us add, the most prosperous"—had a stake in defeating the AAA. The media, which the AAA sought to control, comprised "a great forum of free discussion which is not the property of the writer." It was "unthinkable" that writers would be allowed to corner the literary marketplace because that marketplace was "an institution of society itself. In a free society it is essential to freedom itself." For this reason "the public has a greater stake in this than the writers. The writers themselves have a greater stake as citizens than as writers." 3 7 However lofty such appeals, they did not disguise the fact that the AWA meant to fight the AAA with the most powerful weapon in its arsenal—the charge that the Authority was part of a Communist plot to abolish freedom of speech and thought. Although the AWA protested that it was "making no attacks on the guilds as such," it had addressed a letter to Elmer Rice setting out its objections and urging the AL Council to reject the plan. Rice, while harboring doubts of his own about Cain's proposal, felt compelled to defend the motives of those who had framed it against the wilder accusations of the AWA. In an interview with reporters held in the League's offices, Rice also rejected the charge that Communists were behind the AAA plan, ridiculing that charge as "a lot of moonshine" more befitting "certain of our Southern Congressmen" than established authors. The real question for the Authors League Council, Rice patiently explained, was not whether the SWG was pro-Communist, but whether the AAA would provide writers with greater financial protections than they currently enjoyed. Rice de-

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plored the injection of the Communist issue into the debate over the AAA, calling it "irrelevant," and he stressed that the Authors League was not a political organization: it had always been concerned only with protecting the rights of authors. For his own part, he thought that the assignment of copyrights to a central authority was "bad business," but that the leasing provisions of Cain's plan were very much in line with the Authors League's own goal of abolishing outright sales of motion picture rights. For this reason, the AL Council needed to learn more about the AAA. 38 Following the AWA's attack from the political Right came another and more surprising broadside from the Left. It arrived in the form of a letter to Rice on September 14 and simultaneously released to the press, written by one of the country's most prominent Trotskyites, James T. Farrell. Farrell urged the AL Council to reject the AAA, characterizing it as a "cartel plan" that would serve the interests of only the richer and more successful writers and do little to benefit the poorer and "more independent" ones. Cain's Screen Writer article "did not even contain one shred of principle" and, as far as Farrell could tell, the premise of the article was merely Cain's belief that "writers are such suckers" that they needed the Authority to protect t h e m from exploitation. If writers were suckers, as Cain had suggested, then it followed that "they can easily become a herd if they are placed under the control of an Authority such as this." Farrell thus implored the Council to consider carefully whether the AAA was "the best, the most democratic, the only means whereby the authors of America can be defended." Despite Cain's subsequent assurance to the New York Times that the newly drafted articles of incorporation effectively prevented the AAA from exercising monopolistic control, Cain's Screen Writer article had been written "in the unmistakeable language of threat and coercion." Cain's later remarks to the contrary, his original statement on the AAA "made no definite and clear cut provision for the exercise of any democratic control over this five man board of 'tough guys.' In other words, he called for a completely bureaucratic board. And he also publicly stated that he wanted this board to be able to coerce all American writers to submit to its authority/139 Farrell hoped that the AL Council would realize that the AAA's chief sponsors, the screenwriters and radio writers, were the most highly paid in America; they were also the "most unfree." While such writers had struggled over the years to defend their economic interests, they had done little to defend their own right of free expression. He feared that the AAA would be dominated by just such screen and radio writers, and "the conditions of their long servitude

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as hired writers" alarmed Farrell; the AAA "would absorb the ideas that prevail in these industries," and thus it would not "offer m u c h hope or promise for poorer and more independent writers." Most of the economic grievances Cain had cited in the Screen Writer concerned the motion picture industry and should be dealt with by the SWG directly rather than through this "bureaucratic and dangerous proposal." Farrell could support the SWG in this, but he asked whether it was "proper to risk the freedom of all American writers" when "not one grievance" Cain had described really called for "the establishment of the kind of board of 'mugs 7 " such as the AAA would entail. Finally, while Farrell had not joined the AWA and objected to parts of its manifesto, he too saw a hidden hand at work in the AAA plan. What the AWA referred to as Communist influence, Farrell—from his vantage point on the Trotskyite Left—branded as Stalinist, and he insisted that Rice should not dismiss such charges as cavalierly as he had done in his press conference the day before: "If you read The Daily Worker and New Masses, and if you will study the list of contributors and the masthead of the official organ of the Screen Writers Guild, you will notice one or more striking coincidences. It might also occur to you that there are some coincidences in policy between the Stalinist movements and the Screen Writers Guild. It is easier to influence a bureaucratically appointed and uncontrolled five man board of 'tough guys' than it is to influence a whole large body of writers." 4 0 Even if it should turn out that the SWG was not in the clutches of its Communist members, FarrelPs "Stalinists," it would still be dangerous "to appoint a board which will give such strategic importance to screen writers as against writers who can write more freely and independently than screen writers are allowed to." Thus, while the AWA had condemned the AAA as Communistic, Farrell branded it as cancerously "bureaucratic" and "reactionary to the core." 41 Buffeted from both political extremes, a bewildered Elmer Rice could only reply that "no one group in the League is to be dominant"; the SWG would not enjoy inordinate influence, since "the major membership" of the Authors League would decide the issue. He repeated his pledge of a "full and fair discussion" of the AAA by the Authors League Council. 42 With events moving quickly and seemingly out of hand, Rice wired Lavery on September 15: "Injection of political issue endangers consideration of Authority proposal on its merits—wish could have someone at Wednesday meeting to answer criticisms and dispel misapprehensions." 4 3 Cain himself had hoped to be at the meeting but was delayed in leaving Los Angeles; Henry Myers, a playwright and SWG activist soon to be appointed

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to the AAA Committee, agreed to attend in his place, and William Pomerance planned to fly to New York in time for the AL Council meeting. Lavery sent a memo to the members of the AAA Committee on September 16, informing them that press reports of the attacks on the AAA by the AWA and Farrell had "disturbed the League considerably. " Lavery urged members to allay the fears of anyone they might know on the AL Council. He explained that ordinarily it could be expected to agree wholeheartedly with the SWG's proposal that committees be set up on both coasts to examine the AAA proposal; however, he explained that "the League has never had the kind of red-baiting attacks with which we have been familiar over so many years, and it is just possible that some members of the Council may be sufficiently disturbed so that no action at all would be taken." Although Myers and Pomerance would attend the meeting, and Cain and Lavery himself expected to travel to New York in October or November to meet with the AL Council, "if anything misfires on Wednesday, it will be a great set-back to the whole project." While a deluge of telegrams from the SWG to the AL Council "might not achieve the effect we want," Lavery instructed the committee to contact informally as many members of the Council as it could.44 Few things attract the media as much as a good story about itself, and the row brewing over the September 18 Authors League Council meeting made virtually every edition of the major daily and trade papers in New York and Los Angeles in the run-up to it. On September 12, Rene Kuhn requested that Rice allow three AWA members to attend the Council meeting; Rice replied that although it was unusual for non-Council members to attend such meetings, one representative from the AWA who was also a member of the Authors League itself could participate in the Council's deliberations.45 For his part, Farrell had requested that the Council break another longstanding precedent and open the meeting to the press as well as the AWA, since "the issue here involved has become a public one." Rice rejected this proposal as well, explaining that "this is in a sense a labor controversy and a lot of things will be said about the grievances of authors"; thus, he did not want the discussion inhibited by the presence of reporters.46 Rene Kuhn again wrote to Rice on September 17, in a letter distributed to the press, informing him that the AWA was "at a loss to understand" Rice's refusal to allow its representatives to appear. Given the importance of the issue and the shortage of time, though, the AWA agreed to Rice's limitation. Kuhn herself would attend

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the meeting, accompanied by the AWA's attorney, Louis Waldman. Her organization was "deeply puzzled/ 7 Kuhn continued, by Rice's public complaints that the AWA had distorted the position of the Authors League. Similarly, the AWA was "amazed" at the Authors League's "heated objections" to discussion of the AAA in the press, for "such an issue is not a subject for merely private and secret negotiations." Kuhn could think of no concern more crucial to the American public than "untrammelled freedom of thought and expression," and thus it was every writer's duty, as well as that of the national press, to "turn on the searchlight of public attention" when that freedom was menaced by a "totalitarian scheme which has already been rushed into acceptance by two of the four guilds." Surely Rice did not dispute, Kuhn insisted, that the SWG had the reputation of being dominated by Communists. In any case, the criticisms of the American Writers Association for indulging in Red-baiting were irrelevant, for the AWA opposed the control of the dissemination of ideas by any group. 47 Late on the eve of the Council meeting, the Authors League and the AWA were still negotiating over who could attend the session, scheduled for mid-afternoon at the League's offices on East 39th Street. Kuhn wired Rice yet again demanding permission to bring the AWA's lawyer with her, since the AAA involved so many complicated legal issues. Rice firmly rejected this bid, arguing that the Council meeting was "not a legal matter" but simply a routine assembly of the Authors League's governing body.48 The AWA's executive committee met late into the night before deciding that, given Rice's attitude, it would send no representative at all. In Hollywood, Cain was alarmed by the press reports of this simmering confrontation, and on the morning of September 18 he wired Rice: "In view of the monstrous attacks based on fantastic misstatement on the proposed AAA I think some friendly vote by the Council today even if only to order further exploration would be most desirable." 49 On the morning of September 18, the Herald Tribune reported that the Cain proposal had already "aroused m u c h bitterness among writers, especially between the west coast screen and radio writers who favor it, and the Eastern fiction writers, who are largely opposed to it." 5 0 After all this preliminary jockeying, the AL Council meeting was itself something of an anticlimax. Twenty of the thirty-six Council members attended, a good turnout, Rice later told Lavery. Before discussing the AAA, Rice raised the troublesome matter of the Committee for Action's insurgency within the Authors Guild. At an Authors Guild Council meeting the week before, the CFA had com-

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plained of Luise Sillcox's refusal to give its representative the AG's membership list. The AG Council had already upheld her in this, stating that it was a long-standing policy adopted to prevent the indiscriminate use of the list. Additionally, the Committee for Action complained that Sillcox had refused to allow one of its members to inspect the minutes of Council meetings. The Council supported Sillcox's decision on this as well, reasoning that, although it was important for AG members to be informed about the Council's decisions and plans, it would not be wise for the details of its deliberations on sensitive matters, such as its current negotiations with reprint publishers, to become public knowledge, which undoubtedly would happen if the minutes were open to inspection. 51 Rice read letters from E. Louise Malley and Nancy Davids protesting the AG Council's decisions, but after listening to the explanation of a member of the AG Council, the League Council voted unanimously to inform Malley and Davids that, since the points at issue fell within the jurisdiction of the Authors Guild, the League would not act on the matter. 52 The Committee for Action clearly enjoyed little if any support on the AL Council, a fact that gave pause to the SWG representatives waiting their turn. Rice began the discussion of Cain's proposal by reading Lavery's initial telegram requesting the AL Council's endorsement of the AAA. He also read several letters and telegrams from members of the AWA opposing the Authority and said that although he had invited Rene Kuhn to the meeting, she had declined to attend. Rice requested and received the Council's support for his refusal to allow the AWA's attorney to accompany Kuhn. William Pomerance took fifteen minutes to recount the origin and development of the AAA plan, emphasizing that Cain's Screen Writer article was offered only as a springboard, that many changes had already been made in it, and that what the SWG wanted from the Council most of all was its support for the key principles of the leasing and separation of rights. Pomerance and Henry Myers were questioned closely about the Authority for several hours before the Council agreed that the issues involved were simply too far-reaching and complex for it to act definitively at the moment; instead, it unanimously moved "that the president [Rice] appoint a committee to study the American Authors' Authority plan and any other ways and means of reaching the desired objectives of the leasing of literary property instead of its outright sale, and the separation of rights. The committee shall confer with the Screen Writers Guild [AAA] Committee and shall investigate, report and make recommendations to this Council." 5 3

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Rice promptly suggested that, given the importance of the subject, this committee should consist of the presidents of the League, the Authors Guild, the Dramatists Guild, the Radio Writers Guild, and a representative from the SWG chosen by Lavery. This committee was instructed to organize a meeting at which any members of the AL who so wished could express their opinion regarding the AAA. In a statement to the press after the Council meeting adjourned, Rice reminded reporters that the day's actions only confirmed his previous assurance that the League would take no precipitate action on the AAA plan; referring directly to the charges of the AWA, Rice emphasized that in his own opinion the League, which had "always been vigilant in protecting the freedom of writers/ 7 would never "adopt any plan which would entail a surrender by authors of their copyrights, or the setting up of any administrative official or board who would have arbitrary or dictatorial powers, or that would tend to place any restrictions upon freedom of thought or of expression, or create a monopolistic control that would deprive any author of his means of livelihood." 54 The next day Rice wrote to Lavery in Los Angeles explaining the Council's decision and supplying a detailed account of its position. As he had stated to the press the previous day, he believed there was no chance the Council would approve any plan based on the transfer of copyrights, or even their assignment to a trust. "This is a basic fact you might as well be prepared to face," he warned. The question might not seem important to screenwriters and radio writers, who as service writers did not own the copyrights to their material, but Rice insisted that possession of copyright was of "paramount importance" to the members of the Authors and Dramatists guilds. "I am convinced they will be very firm about it." Rice also repeated his public assertion that the attempt to establish a board with arbitrary powers to deal with literary property would meet strong opposition as well, especially if it could conceivably coerce writers into accepting its dictates. These essential aspects of Cain's plan, Rice reported, had not only called down the wrath of the AWA, but also "caused great misgivings among a good many prominent and influential writers" who had nothing to do with the AWA. "There is a general feeling that Cain's article was unfortunately worded," Rice stated frankly, "and that a lot of work will have to be done to allay the fears of the setting up of a totalitarian regime which it has aroused." Whatever the perceived defects of Cain's plan, Rice assured Lavery that the AL Council was very much interested in achieving licensing and separation of rights, but he contended that a more practical way to implement these two principles would be a pledge system,

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patterned after the Dramatists Guild's successful fight for a basic agreement in the 1920s. He had hinted as m u c h in an earlier letter to Lavery, but now Rice was convinced that pledges were the correct approach: ' T h e Authors League has some 7,000 members, but if three or four hundred of the most prominent pledge themselves not to sell anything to Hollywood except on a licensing basis, I do not think that the motion picture companies would hold out for very long. The pledgers should of course include the screen writers whose original stories are most in demand by the motion picture producers. //55 Undeniably, Rice added, there might be other mechanisms to effect the licensing and separation of rights, and he committed the Authors League Licensing Committee, established the previous day, to examining the matter without preconceptions. He assured Lavery that the AL Council agreed with the objectives of the SWG and took issue only with its belief that the AAA offered the most effective way of achieving them. Rice remarked that the Council had weighed Cain's offer to address an open meeting of League members in New York on October 9, but it thought this a bad idea. Every one agreed to an open meeting, but they felt it should be postponed until the Licensing Committee had had a chance "to define the limits within which the proposed plan would operate/' If discussion at an open meeting focused on the Cain plan as it currently existed, Rice feared that it would only cause confusion and alienate many writers. Rice closed by asking Lavery to show his letter to Cain and explain that "nothing I have said is intended as a criticism of him"; he was simply trying to communicate the practical realities of the situation in New York. Thus, the SWG had managed a draw at this crucial AL Council meeting. If the Authors League had not endorsed the principle of the AAA, it had agreed to set up a high-level committee to study the plan and promised to do so with all good speed. However, Rice's letter and the careful wording of the Council resolution strongly suggest that, while support for licensing and separation had become apple pie and motherhood issues within the guilds, the Council had nonetheless all but rejected the specific approach to accomplish these objectives—copyright assignment to a central repository— which lay at the heart of the AAA plan. The singular appeal of the AAA for many writers, that it would organize at a stroke all writers in all fields, depended on copyright assignment, and Rice's preference for a pledge system, inherently a weaker approach, could not have heartened the AAA's supporters on either coast. By mid-September, the AAA controversy had generated enough publicity that letters about it poured into the SWG and AL offices,

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and to Cain himself. The National Writers Club, for example, wrote to Cain explaining that it served "unestablished writers" in the same way the Authors League served professional writers and was certain its three thousand members would be keenly interested in his plan. 56 For another, William Arthur Deacon, the president of the Canadian Authors Association, wired the Authors League on September 20, requesting details about the Authority controversy, which he had read about in the Toronto papers. 57 Cain even received an extraordinary letter in Spanish from Sara Maurino, who described herself as the Argentine author of "The Magnificent, Superior, Fusible Cosmic Ray," a treatise of "scientific and instructive character." She desired to join the AAA "so that m y book can be published in English, and so that this association may take charge of its distribution, contract, etc." 58 At such times, Cain must have lamented just what he had brought on himself; in the event, he patiently explained to Maurino that the AAA did not yet exist and, in any case, would act neither as agent nor publisher. 59 More significant, on the very day of the AL Council meeting, Stefan Heym, one of the leaders of the insurgent Committee for Action, wired Los Angeles to ask Cain whether he could address an open meeting of writers in New York that Heym and his committee were organizing for October 21. The passions aroused by Cain's plan had even caught the attention of elected officials in Washington. Sol Bloom, for example, a congressman from New York City who had helped ASCAP and other artists' organizations in the past, wrote to E. C. Mills, AS CAP's general manager, and directly to the Authors League, asking for any information about Cain's plan and the League's intentions. The AAA had become a full-blown national controversy 6 0 Despite the pounding he was taking in the press and the qualified reaction of the Authors League to the AAA, Cain was heartened by the support he and his plan received from scores of writers. By midSeptember, Clifford Odets, Samson Raphaelson, Arthur Kober, and dozens of others had sent letters to the Screen Writer endorsing the AAA. Many wrote to Cain directly; one of the most interesting letters came from Ruth Goodman Goetz, daughter of Cain's longtime friend Philip Goodman and herself a playwright. The AAA had been the chief topic of conversation among the many writers who lived near her in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Goetz revealed, and she applauded Cain for "devising the most original and defensible plan for converting ideas into property" that she had ever seen. "In a decent civilization it would not be necessary or disagreeable that a writer think of his finished work as an extension of his property,"

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but Goetz had concluded that in the absence of such a civilization, Cain's idea of "turning us all into super-Capitalists is probably the best answer of all." She understood even as some of the AAA's most ardent supporters did not that Cain's conception of the AAA was far removed from communism: "Your way we shall out-DuPont the DuPonts, for we will be holding onto the Means of Production of the written word, forever and ever. We will lease the product, but never sell, which makes us very classy entrepreneurs indeed. I wonder if h u m a n beings will ever live in a world where writing, bread and medicine are free, without royalties, to all. If I ever see that day coming I will secede from AAA, and quickly. But short of that you have my vote forever." 61 Not only Goetz's warm support for the AAA, but also her clear understanding of its nature, that it was meant to "out-DuPont the DuPonts," cheered Cain considerably. However, not all of the letters Cain received were so encouraging. For example, Morris Markey, a veteran magazine writer and novelist whom Cain had known well since his days on the New Yorker, wrote to Cain in early September expressing serious reservations about the AAA, many of which echoed those of the conservative press. Although Cain had maintained a confident and affable front in the face of public criticism, he lost his temper with his friend. "You poor, naive boob," Cain wrote back on September 23. Markey had accused the SWG of being totally dominated by the radical Left; "I think they are leftists," Cain conceded, "but they are the only ones out here making the fight you are pretending to make [on writer's issues], but actually are not making." As to the charge that he was being used by Communists, Cain could only reply that "the thing was not slipped to me in a dry martini, or mailed registered from Moscow, or anything of the kind." Cain blistered Markey for asserting that the AAA would deprive authors of their independence: "In this day and time, independence is like everything else. It has to be organized, and it can't be got by 1,000 independent operators, each leaning back and patting himself on the back for his independence, which turns out when you look at it to be largely imaginary." In this regard, Cain accused Markey of rank hypocrisy in challenging his integrity. "How the hell do you, who write on assignment for the most commercial, crass adridden bunch of publications on earth, have the goddam effrontery to give me any lectures on the subject of integrity?" Markey had complained that Cain's high salary in Hollywood had blinded h i m to the concerns of the average free-lance writer and thus disqualified h i m from leading the fight for authors' rights, but Cain would have none of it:

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How the hell do you get that way to make cracks about $2500 a week? What has that got to do with it? You were out here [in Hollywood], and I didn't notice you turning down their money, and I didn't notice you doing anything whatever to solve a single problem faced by a writer, whether in the screen writers guild, McGuinness's outfit [Screen Playwrights], or any of them. You seem to think there is some virtue in that. I don't. . . . You simply are in the clutches of a peculiar form of vanity, and you're perfectly willing to let me and a bunch of screen writers (most of w h o m make about $60 a week when they make anything) do the fighting, while taking any benefits we are able to obtain for you on the comfortable assumption "it was bound to come anyway." The hell it was. 62 Cain was also annoyed with Elmer Rice, "that fount of wisdom," for suggesting that a pledge system could ever effectively achieve the results Cain envisioned for the AAA. While Rice had implied to Lavery that thirty or forty dramatists had found it relatively simple to prevail in the 1920s by threatening to withhold their work from the market, Cain reminded Markey that the Dramatists Guild had received solid labor support in New York, ranging from Actors Equity to the American Federation of Labor itself, and still had faced a touch-and-go fight with the managers. Cain thought it ludicrous that Rice was "still trying to act as though all that is necessary" to achieve gains for writers was for "30 or 40 of them to have a little meeting . . . and anything in sight is already solved." Try as he might, this letter indicates, Cain simply could not shake his doubts about the effectiveness of the Authors League and the eastern guilds. 63 One senses throughout this extraordinary letter to a close friend that Cain was not so much angered by Markey's criticisms, which had been gently couched, as venting his frustration over the distortions of the AAA appearing continually in the press, and over the reluctance of writers like Markey to join any effort that threatened unpleasant or militant action. So an increasingly testy Cain lay low for several weeks and waited for his next opportunity to win over writers to the AAA, his scheduled trip East in October, which was to prove a riotous and often unseemly event, but also a public triu m p h of sorts for Cain and the AAA. In his September editorial for the Screen Writer, Dalton Trumbo had also lashed out at the critics of the AAA, particularly those in the motion picture industry. He dismissed out of hand the notion

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that the head of the AAA would be an authoritarian "czar," asserting to its opponents that "the President of the AAA would be a salaried executive, responsible at all times to a democraticallyelected board of directors representing the four Guilds of the Authors League/' He referred all those who voiced concern over the dictatorial potential of the AAA to the amendment passed at the July 29 SWG meeting, which expressly prohibited any censorship or control of thought. Trumbo charged that all such complaints were bogus: "The cries of 'Red' from the lick-spittle trade papers, gossip columnists, and Mr. Hearst's trained seals can be dismissed as beneath contempt. The American Authors' Authority is capitalism, naked and simple. But it is capitalism for writers, not for entrepreneurs. It envisages more ownership, more money for writers, and encourages enterprise for writers—enterprise, moreover of an intensely private and individual nature. If this is communism, Guild members have a right to feel that Mr. Marx has been seriously misquoted to them." 6 4 Trumbo, a CP member at the time, must have experienced a moment of confusion championing the AAA as a capitalistic enterprise, but he had penetrated the essence of the plan far more accurately than any of its critics. Indeed, although Trumbo and several other CP members served on the editorial board of the Screen Writer during the AAA controversy, they were never in the majority, and there is little in the content of the magazine to suggest that they were using their position to promote the foreign policy of the Soviet Union or the tenets of the Communist Party USA, except in the few cases in which those goals mirrored those of the SWG itself. The Screen Writer contained none of the leftist rhetoric and diction, none of the dialectical analyses of the Daily Worker or even the New Masses. It dealt exclusively with craft and employment issues and, as such, there was nothing in it that would offend even the most hard-headed Teamster today. Trumbo, Gordon Kahn, Ring Lardner, and the other radicals on the Screen Writer acted as professional screenwriters, then, not as Communist propagandists, in their work for the magazine. Thus, it was completely in character for Trumbo to chide the motion picture producers to stick to the real issue of immediate concern to them: under the Authority, the studios would no longer be able to make two or more pictures from one story purchase; they would no longer be able to demand "as a free gift" from the writer the subsidiary rights in any piece of material; and they would "be restrained from freezing a writer's material on their shelves for an indefinite period while he watches his chances for other sales go a glimmering." 6 5 These were the real rea-

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sons, Trumbo implied, that the motion picture industry feared the AAA; the C o m m u n i s m charge was merely a smoke screen. Media criticism of the AAA continued unabated, however. The newspaper and publishing industries weighed in against Cain's plan in late September. Editor e) Publisher, the trade journal of the newspaper industry, intoned against the AAA on September 28, repeating the erroneous claim that the AAA would be a "literary agent monopoly. " The AAA would not only subvert freedom of expression but also force into line any publisher who printed the works of nonAAA authors, and E et) P vowed to resist any such "monopoly control of literary output in this country." It urged newspapers and columnists to "take a stand against such an Authority and fight it for all they are worth." 6 6 Frederic C. Melcher, writing on the same day in Publishers Weekly, opposed the AAA, although with less ardor. He noted that nothing less than "a revolutionary change" in copyright was involved, and thus Cain's plan "needs much thinking over." He submitted, though, that authors had m u c h to gain from "preserving spontaneity and fresh initiative from publishers, rather than standardization of operation under one huge central authority. . . . Have authors been so badly treated that they need such guardianship?" 6 7 Cain knew when he was being patronized; he had answered just this question in the Screen Writer with an unequivocal yes. The AAA's supporters, Cain included, understood that opposition from the trade was inevitable, but a third editorial that appeared on September 28 was harder to rationalize. They had hoped that at least the literary magazines would lend the AAA a sympathetic ear, and thus they were dismayed when the Saturday Review of Literature featured Harrison Smith's page-long editorial opposing the AAA as "dangerous and unworkable." Smith observed the controversy "raging" in the country over Cain's Screen Writer article, which he characterized as "written with all the enthusiasm and confidence of a wildcat oil company's prospectus." It was a " 'blue sky' proposal with a vengeance," overpromising solutions to every imaginable problem faced by writers. Moreover, such a powerful organization "could without m u c h difficulty strangle free speech and free literary expression." He mentioned the charges that the AAA was the brainchild of the Communist Party and, while not endorsing them, argued that the AAA would be in a position to suppress any writing it disliked on political grounds. He imagined the day when the only recourse for writers who resisted the Authority's power would be for t h e m to "retire to their farms purchased with the ill-gotten profits of magazines and motion picture owners, turn their swimming

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pools into asparagus beds, and devote themselves to cows and agriculture, murmuring, 'Give me liberty or give me d e a t h / " 6 8 One cannot measure precisely the effect of Smith's words on opinion within the literary community, particularly in New York, but they hardly helped the AAA cause. They were especially damaging coming at just the time Cain was preparing for his trip east to convince writers there of his plan's good sense. Another flurry of letters crossed the continent in the aftermath of the first meeting of the Authors League Licensing Committee. Its members had convened over lunch on September 24. Rice chaired the group, which included Richard Rodgers, the president of the Dramatists Guild; Christopher LaFarge, president of the Authors Guild; Peter Lyon, vice-president of the RWG's Eastern Region and serving in the place of Sam Moore in Los Angeles; and playwright Marc Connelly, appointed by Lavery to represent the SWG. Connelly wrote to Lavery immediately after the meeting broke up to let h i m know that there would be almost unanimous resistance to the Authority's control of copyrights, the same point Rice had made several times previously. Given this fact, the committee had followed Rice's lead in concluding that a pledge system—under which as many guild and nonguild writers as possible would agree not to sell outright any original material to the studios after a certain date— would meet with more favor.69 Rice himself wrote to Lavery on September 28 to ensure that Lavery recognized the Licensing Committee's ''complete agreement" that a voluntary pledge campaign was the proper approach. He felt sure that the studios "could not hold out long against a seller's strike," unless they could hire a sufficient number of writers to rework material they already owned, or to write new scripts on salary. Thus, it was crucial to judge accurately just how many screenwriters not currently under contract could be counted on to refuse such new employment. 70 At a meeting of the SWG AAA Committee on September 25, Lavery, Henry Myers, and William Pomerance (the last two just back from New York) had all stressed that the leaders of the Authors League, and Rice in particular, were unalterably opposed to copyright assignment. Cain had repeated his argument in favor of this feature of the AAA: the Authority as copyright owner or trustee would enjoy much greater strength in court cases, allowing for more effective protection of copyright itself; and assignment could also provide another useful function for writers, since the AAA could keep accurate and up-to-date accounts of the exact status of each of the scores of rights involved. The AAA Committee had come to no conclusion on the issue, but Lavery, always searching for common

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ground, confided to Rice that in the end he thought the SWG would not hold out for copyright assignment. Although he stressed that he was still convinced that the movement toward licensing, reversion, and separation of rights needed to be channeled through "some vigorous over-all agency/ 7 Lavery conceded that pledges made some sense in the short term. This represented a strategic, not merely a tactical, retreat on the part of one of the AAA's most skilled and influential supporters and indicates both the moderation and the flexibility of the Guild under Lavery's leadership. Any characterization of the SWG as dominated or controlled by its left wing grossly distorted its political dynamic. Lavery's comment also reveals that the integrity of Cain's initial scheme was very m u c h in jeopardy, if not already compromised, as a result of pressure from the eastern guilds. Lavery concluded by stiffening Rice's spine in the face of the Red-baiting he now faced. "I suppose you realize that we are all in for a wave of character assassination," wrote Lavery. "We are getting some rather weird reports from widespread sections of the country, but it only intensifies our all-out efforts on behalf of the licensing program. I really believe it is the strongest policy that has ever been proposed to our Guild and the one which has unified our membership to the greatest degree." 71 Writers in the eastern organizations, though, remained anything but united. In the same letter informing Lavery about the Licensing Committee meeting, Rice also revealed his concern about the Committee for Action's plans for an open meeting to discuss the AAA, a meeting that Cain had already agreed to address. Rice characterized the Committee for Action as "either Communist or Communist lead [sic]," and feared that it might cause as m u c h trouble as the AWA: Of course there is no objection to the Communists or writers of any other political faith belonging to the League, nor does anyone wish to attempt to limit their freedom of speech and action, but the trouble with the Communists, as I have had ample opportunity to observe in other organizations to which I have belonged, is that they do not act as individuals but as a group, and in conformance with preconceived plans that often go far beyond the scope and purposes of the particular organization to which they belong. The result is that a small but compactly organized minority too often exert an influence that far exceeds its numerical strength and, what is worse, can create an entirely false impression about what is really going on. 72

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To prevent the Committee for Action from fanning the flames at just the time Rice believed he had "pretty effectually succeeded in abating the Red Scare/' the Licensing Committee had proposed to the CFA that the Authors League itself sponsor the meeting. The League had always planned, Rice reminded Lavery, to conduct such an open meeting. Since the Licensing Committee had agreed that "whatever the plan that is finally adopted may be, it should entail neither surrender of copyright nor the vesting of arbitrary power in anyone/' Rice now felt confident that discussion at an open meeting could be kept "within reasonable limits" and avoid political issues. Cain would be welcome to speak at this League-sponsored meeting, but Rice warned that "he will not want to say anything that will provide ammunition to either the extreme right wing or extreme left wing faction." 73 The Committee for Action agreed to Rice's proposition, but Rice's letter to Lavery, taken together with his previously stated opinions on the AAA, clearly indicate that such a meeting was a disaster in the making. While the SWG and the Committee for Action expected it to focus on Cain's AAA plan, Rice conceived a far more limited agenda—he operated on the assumption that the AL Licensing Committee had effectively killed off the more ambitious Cain plan and favored a pledge campaign to win industry recognition of the licensing of motion pictures. With the Authors League now in charge of the meeting and himself in the chair, Rice would be well placed to keep the meeting focused on the more limited objectives he had advocated from the first. Rice's own motives in all this are far from clear and were subject to m u c h debate at the time. He consistently claimed only to be concerned with League solidarity and feared that the political wrangling surrounding Cain's AAA proposal jeopardized the League, of which he was in charge. He confided to Lavery that "if worst comes to worst I think that the Dramatists' [Guild] would withdraw from the Authors League rather than see all their hard won gains be sacrificed in the course of a bitter political fight which would almost certainly wreck the League anyhow." 74 Moreover, there is little reason to question Rice's motives in opposing copyright assignment or his preference for a pledge campaign; he was, after all, a longtime member of the Dramatists Guild and had profited personally as m u c h as any playwright from the M i n i m u m Basic Agreement that playwrights had won through pledges. Yet it is easy to see why Rice's motives were questioned at the time, since from the first he was skeptical about the AAA, disliked

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the tone of Cain's Screen Writer article, and used his considerable influence to co-opt the AAA's repository feature. Based on the opinion of twenty members of the AL Council, he repeatedly asserted that there was virtually unanimous resistance to copyright assignment among eastern writers and did everything in his power to prevent discussion of this issue at an open meeting of writers. Despite his public defense of the AAA plan against charges that it was the work of Communists, his comments to Lavery about the Committee for Action reveal that he too was nervous about the motives and influence of the Communists in the SWG. In any case, October proved the most tumultuous m o n t h in the entire AAA debate, and Rice found himself at the center of the controversy. In Hollywood, the SWG AAA Committee continued to search for an effective defense against the torrent of negative comment in the press. The Sub-Committee on Public Relations, recognizing that Cain's Screen Writer article had been superseded and that, in any case, Cain's rhetoric alienated as many writers as it won to the cause, wanted to distribute a brochure updating the Guild's thinking on the AAA. It also arranged to meet with reporters at press conferences or luncheons, prepared a response to send to all of the newspapers that had opposed the AAA editorially, and urged that a radio debate between representatives of the SWG and the AWA could only help the AAA effort. Finally, to ensure that the AAA Committee maintained control of what was said publicly about the Authority by the SWG, the subcommittee asked that all articles or statements on the subject be cleared with it or the Guild's executive board. 75 In New York, Rice continued to hear from writers opposed to the AAA and, in some cases, he personally tried to allay their fears. In September, he wrote to Dorothy Thompson and others he knew in the AWA objecting to the attack on the Authors League implicit in its public statements. 7 6 He also contacted Norman Thomas, the veteran Socialist Party leader whose endorsement had done so m u c h to give the AWA the appearance of nonpartisanship. Rice gently rebuked his friend of long standing: "I am sure that if you had known fully what is behind all this you would not have lent your name to what is really a carefully devised plan by the big motion picture companies (particularly MGM) to split the Authors League wide open by raising the Red scare." Rice cited as proof for this charge the prominent presence within the AWA of so many Hollywood writers "who have been acting for years as stooges for the motion picture industry," a clear reference to Rupert Hughes, James Kevin McGuinness, Fred Niblo, Jr., John Lee Mahin, Morrie Ryskind, and the other conservative screenwriters who had formed Screen Play-

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wrights in the late 1930s. The NLRB election among screenwriters in Hollywood had exposed Screen Playwrights as a company union, and Rice noted that its leaders had been "identified since with every anti-labor movement in Hollywood"; now they were "attempting to sow dissension and confusion among the members of the Authors League by attempting to make a political issue of what is merely an effort on the part of the Authors League . . . to correct a number of flagrant abuses" concerned with the sale of motion picture rights. 77 Such folk, Rice implied, made strange bedfellows for a former Socialist Party presidential candidate. After exploring the reasoning behind the licensing provision, Rice was sure Thomas would "agree that there is nothing Communistic about this objective." Of course there were Communists in the Authors League, given that no applicant for membership was questioned about his political convictions. However, even if as many as 5 percent of League members were Communists, as Rice estimated to be the case, "however many of them there may be they are all subject to the democratic principle of one member, one vote, whether in the election of officers, the passage of amendments to the League constitution, or any other matter that vitally concerns their interests." This was a peculiar assurance from one who had just written to Lavery warning of the inordinate influence of the Communists. Thomas, for his part, replied that he had "known and worked with you too long to think you the stooge of anybody or to doubt your personal devotion to civil liberties." By the same token, Thomas did not take kindly to Rice's insinuation that he had been duped into joining the AWA. The people who had alerted h i m to the AAA had no connection whatever with Hollywood; "all sorts of people are in the Association," Thomas asserted, "just as all sorts of people are in the Authors League." AWA members merely shared a "devotion to freedom," which they believed to be "terribly jeopardized" by the AAA. "Cain's leftism," he complained, echoing the common misconception of Cain's political leanings, "would appear to exclude any consideration of anything else than the economic rewards for writers." Even if the AAA was not a Communist scheme, nothing had more frightened Thomas "for the future of genuine democracy and free thought in America than the Cain proposal and its enthusiastic welcome in Hollywood." 78 Rice responded that he knew they were both busy men, and he did not want to embark on a prolonged correspondence. The Authors League only wanted "to devise some machinery" that would "prevent authors from giving away valuable rights that they do now

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through ignorance or under pressure/' 7 9 Despite anything Cain may have written, the League would never be party to any interference with free speech. Rice insisted on the pernicious influence of certain Hollywood writers within the AWA who were "notorious for their reactionary policies and for their subservience to certain laborbaiting and anti-labor leaders" in the movie industry. Rice remained disturbed that Thomas had thrown in with them. In a final note to Rice on October 15, Thomas confessed his ignorance of "Hollywood politics/' but he believed nonetheless that the AAA was "dangerous, even if it should be modified in respect to copyright." 80 Although Rice assured Lavery that he had calmed the fears of Thomas and Thompson, both subsequently joined the AWA's board of directors. Cain had similarly failed to persuade his friend Morris Markey, who joined the AWA's national committee. Moreover, Rice's public statement that the Authors League would never endorse a bureaucratic or reactionary authority, provoked by James T. FarrelPs letter in September, only prompted a second, even sharper, Farrell letter, which repeated many of the criticisms of his first: the AAA was the brainchild of literary Stalinists, who now were claiming that all opposition to the AAA was itself reactionary; Cain's Screen Writer proposal had arrogantly denigrated writers as incompetent idiots; and the AAA had been conceived "in the interest of the hired writer, rather than of the free writer." Farrell also had some harsh words for the Authors League, calling it ineffective and biased toward well-to-do authors. Rice had publicly complained that authors like Farrell were turning the AAA into a "fractional issue," but Farrell warned that the Authors League itself, if it endorsed the AAA, would "create the greatest fractional issue of all." 8 1 The barrage of criticism from writers and in the press continued throughout the run-up to the League's open meeting planned for October 20. On or about October 10, dozens of papers from the Southwest Times in West Virginia and the Batesville Guard in Arkansas to the Dalhart Texan and the Humbolt Star and Silver State featured James Thrasher's Hearst-syndicated blast at the AAA. Terming Cain's plan "as hard-boiled as some of his literary characters," Thrasher maintained that whatever its intent, the AAA would in fact "certainly be an invitation for bold, high-handed censorship and dictatorship." The AAA should be "plowed under" as a "blow at independent writing and a free press." 8 2 Cincinnati's Writer's Digest, geared toward amateur and part-time writers, carried an article by Wesley Haynes in its October issue that accurately outlined the AAA proposal, followed by a short note in

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which the editors proclaimed that they would not, for the moment, judge the plan's merits, but that they viewed with incredulity highly paid screenwriters who were "ashamed" of their work and who were "fish for any 'ism' that seems to offer them an intellectual integrity they do not now have." Writer's Digest regarded the AAA either as a bold initiative "by people whose only motive is to help other writers," or else as an insidious plot "to control writers as part of a higher Communist strategy." In characterizing Hollywood as a "lush hunting ground for Communists," the Digest betrayed its own bias, and in the months to come it would make some of the wildest allegations against the AAA and its supporters. 83 On October 15, Norman Thomas had called Rice's attention to the recent issue of Commonweal containing an "admirable article" on the AAA by Harry Lorin Binsse. This piece far more than many others troubled the AAA's supporters, not only because Commonweal was read widely in New York but also because Binsse had challenged the basic assumption on which the AAA plan rested—that writers faced severe difficulties in the marketplace. What legitimate grievances authors harbored could better be addressed by following the example of the Dramatists Guild in negotiating its MBA in the 1920s rather than by creating a "potential of power frightening in its implications." Although Binsse stated that he wanted to dissassociate himself from the "red-baiters" like Farrell, he urged his readers to recall that "a number of the proponents of the AAA" were "Stalinists." As far as he was concerned, the AAA plan was a "lulu." 8 4 In a measure of the alarm with which the AAA's supporters viewed Binsse's critique, coming as it did on the eve of the scheduled League open meeting in New York, Emmet Lavery quickly responded to the Commonweal. In a letter to the editor, Lavery complained that "Mr. Binsse, for some reason or other, chooses to focus on the trivia of the situation." Lavery pointed out yet again that the Cain plan was "merely a suggestion," that the screenwriters had endorsed a no-discrimination resolution to accompany the AAA, and that screenwriters were not all privileged and highly paid and did have legitimate grievances. If Binsse wanted to know why the other guilds had not followed the lead of the Dramatists, "the answer is simple. Individual agreements in each of those fields would be eminently desirable but the opposition in each of these fields is so strongly entrenched that it will take the overall support of all writers in all fields to win the day in each particular field." Lavery wondered why "people get so excited every time writers get together," especially when writers united "in capitalistic enterprises clearly

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designed to put a bit more capital" in their own pockets. He noted that the collusions of "book publishers, radio chains and film studios" never caused as m u c h fuss, and wondered why. 85 In October, the Screen Writer published Cain's first written response to criticism of his plan, in which he recognized that his opponents had voiced two major concerns: that the Authority could be used to limit free expression, and that the plan itself was Communist-inspired. He observed that both fears had surfaced and been dispelled at the SWG meeting on July 29, and Cain confidently predicted that he could do the same when he met with eastern writers in New York. He admitted that the fear of monopoly was partly his own fault, since his original proposal had included the closedshop provision. He now agreed that this was unworkable and suggested that all writers could use the AAA; if they wanted a voice in its management, though, they would have to join one of the guilds. Cain urged on all writers his late friend Philip Goodman's memorable words to an inaccurate cashier in Paris: "Remember, it's not the principle of the thing, it's the money." Eventually, Cain concluded, Goodman's "view of things might make good Republicans of us all." 8 6 Throughout the first weeks of October, the Authors League in New York prepared nervously for the AAA meeting. It booked the Coronet Theater on West 49th Street for the afternoon of October 20, and invited all League members to attend, bearing in mind that "this is not a regular membership meeting but merely a discussion conference," and thus "no definite action binding on the membership can or will be taken." There was no mention of the AAA, merely that a committee had been formed to "study various plans for correcting certain flagrant abuses in connection with the disposition of literary works and for establishing new safeguards for writers in every field."87 The exchanges between East and West coasts, although amicable, reveal the complete lack of consensus about the agenda and format of the meeting. On October 8, and prompted by Cain, Lavery requested that Rice invite the press and all writers to Cain's meeting in New York.88 Cain himself cabled Rice a week later urging that the AWA, the press, and indeed anyone else be welcomed, "so we are ostentatiously out in the open about it," thereby defusing some of the criticism that the AL was being railroaded by a small faction into endorsing the AAA. 89 Lavery and Rice continued to parry, Rice arguing for a pledge campaign based on the Dramatists Guild model, and Lavery responding that pledges were a good start, but only a partial solution to the problems writers faced.90 Luise Sillcox wired

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Lavery on October 14, informing him that Marc Connelly, Lavery's representative on the Authors League Licensing Committee, would address the open meeting on behalf of the SWG, and he urgently requested the latest developments in the SWG's thinking. 9 1 Lavery then wrote directly to Connelly, alerting h i m that he still wished that the SWG would not rest its case "alone on pledges." He believed the League still needed "some machinery to carry it forward." 9 2 In a second letter to Connelly that same day, he reemphasized this point: "Nearly everyone here is pleased at the prospect of launching the licensing program with provisional pledges," but they also were certain that "some kind of Authority" was needed. "I don't think in the last analysis the boys here would hold out for assignment of copyright to the Authority," Lavery confided, as he had to Rice, "but they are convinced that provisional pledges alone will not be enough." 9 3 The SWG leadership waited impatiently in Hollywood. Lavery wired Connelly on October 17 asking for a quick report on the outcome of Sunday's meeting, since the SWG itself was to meet on Monday night. John Hutchens, in his weekly book column in The New York Times reported that the controversy over the AAA would peak at the Authors League meeting, since the Cain plan had provoked strong feelings on both sides. A large turnout was expected. Christopher LaFarge acknowledged that the Authors Guild had received scores of letters on the subject, some endorsing the AAA, but most of them critical. He personally was in favor of licensing but absolutely opposed copyright assignment in any shape or form. He insisted that Cain be heard, though, since he was "an interesting and honest man, and is no more a Communist than I am." 9 4 One of the letters LaFarge referred to came from two California writers, John Reese and Charles L. McNichols, who, like many other Authors Guild members, could not attend the New York meeting but still wanted to state their position. Although they had some unanswered questions about the legal issues raised by the AAA's position as trustee, they warned that "it would be a dirty shame if James Cain's brilliant and dynamic plan were to be talked to death by the people it was designed to help. A very dirty shame! If Cain were to die tomorrow, he would forever have the gratitude of authors." 9 5 Rice hoped for a narrowly focused, carefully controlled discussion of a pledge campaign to achieve licensing; Cain hoped for League endorsement of most if not all of the provisions of the AAA. Both were to be disappointed in the event. While Cain was en route east, Rice fell ill and Sillcox notified League members that the meeting would be postponed. Lavery, con-

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tacted in Los Angeles by Connelly, reluctantly agreed to the delay. Cain arrived in New York on October i 8 , and called a press conference for that very evening. As Morris Kaplan of The New York Times reported, "the sedate cocktail lounge of the Gotham Hotel was the scene of an ensuing oral free-for-all before a 5 o'clock group of mystified non-writers and somewhat puzzled newspapermen." 9 6 Cain had been explaining that his plan had been revised to make the author cotrustee of copyright with the Authority, as a compromise that he hoped would attract those writers who resisted outright copyright assignment. "Without control of copyrights," Cain insisted, "there can be no Authority," although he now favored the cotrusteeship under which writers would countersign AAA transactions. 97 Marc Connelly arrived on the scene unexpectedly, having learned of Cain's impromptu press conference. At once "the atmosphere became strained," wrote one reporter, "and the participants as distraught as any fictional characters devised by the author of 'Double Indemnity.'" Cain protested that he had traveled a long way in hopes of convincing writers in the East of the virtues of his plan. When someone in the crowd told him that the meeting had been postponed, he blew up. "I ain't amused," he fumed to the assembled reporters. Connelly stepped in to explain that he, not Cain, represented Lavery and the SWG, and argued that the open meeting could not be held immediately because Rice was ill "with a high fever" and had been rushed to Lenox Hill Hospital. "You're alibiing," Cain snorted. "I am alibiing nothing," Connelly shot back, claiming that Cain's actions were a "usurpation of authority." 9 8 A shouting match ensued, with Cain and Connelly each claiming to represent the SWG. Stefan Heym of the Committee for Action, also on the scene, supported Cain. Heym asserted that the AL's rank and file was eager to adopt the AAA, and that the League hierarchy was thwarting the will of the majority. On the surface at least, Heym and Cain had grounds for their suspicions: Rice first had convinced the Committee for Action to allow the League to take over its open meeting, then had done everything he could to limit the agenda to a discussion of the licensing principle rather than the AAA; when it was clear that Rice was too ill to chair the meeting and thus control the discussion, he and Sillcox had postponed the meeting, although even Lavery believed that Rice's presence was hardly crucial. It all smelled fishy to Cain and Heym. Heym then announced that the CFA itself would sponsor a meeting on Monday night and invited Cain to address it. "Clearly in an angry mood," according to Kaplan, Cain accepted on the spot. 99 This

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set-to at the Gotham, manifestly neither Cain nor Connelly's finest hour, proved merely the first act in what turned out to be a melodramatic and at times farcical four days. Ironically, the American Writers Association was also furious over the meeting's postponement. It had planned to send a sizable delegation to the meeting and had chosen the redoubtable Dorothy Thompson as its spokesperson. Thompson had come to fame in the 1930s as the New York Herald Tribune's European correspondent. Her column, "On the Record/' had been syndicated in over 150 newspapers, with a combined readership of over seven million. Outrage was her favorite rhetorical mood and had marked her coverage of the rise of Fascism. Expelled from Germany for her critical reporting on the Nazis, she caused a celebrated row at a German-American Bund meeting in New York by guffawing at each speaker. 100 She had also been married to Sinclair Lewis for much of that time. By 1946, Thompson was among the best-known journalists in America, still contributing to the Herald Tribune, the Ladies Home Journal, and other outlets, hosting a popular current affairs program for NBC Radio, and speaking out often on a range of issues. Thompson was self-confident, some said arrogant, but she backed up her beliefs with considerable experience and made an altogether formidable adversary. She had first locked horns with Elmer Rice in September, challenging his assertion that the AWA was reactionary. She suspected an ulterior motive behind the AAA, since, if it was merely a device to achieve licensing, then writers could just as easily go about it as the Dramatists Guild had done in the 1920s. "Trade unionism in the arts and sciences holds very grave dangers as well as advantages. I am acutely aware of these dangers," she wrote to Rice, referring to her experience in Europe. "I am also acutely aware of what communists the world over are up to in these fields," she continued, "and I do not see why awareness of the forces in the world and of communist machinations and maneuvers must always be called a 'red scare.'" 1 0 1 Not to be upstaged by Cain and the Committee for Action, the AWA decided to hold a meeting of its own, and on Sunday night some seventy-five writers gathered at the St. James Theater to hear Thompson denounce Cain's plan as a "racket" pure and simple. While she admitted that American authors had legitimate grievances in the marketplace, the threat that writers would be "coerced into joining an Authority" reminded her of the way "Goebbels forced all German writers into a single organization that throttled their freedom." Even worse, Thompson warned that the AAA could

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be packed with ideologues who were not actually professional writers, and thus could the seemingly democratic organization be bent to authoritarian purposes. Norman Thomas also attended the rally, and he agreed with Thompson's analysis, arguing that the AAA would have the effect of "monopolizing thought and ideas." Before adjourning, the AWA made public a recent letter from twenty-nine Hollywood writers, including Zoe Akins, Morrie Ryskind, and Raymond Chandler, blasting Cain's plan and asserting that it enjoyed anything but the wholehearted support of the screenwriting community. 102 Cain had now been attacked as both a Communist and a Fascist. Cain had been invited to debate Thompson at the AWA's rally; he chose instead to defend the AAA in a fifteen-minute radio interview, aired on WNYC just as the AWA was assembling at the St. James. Cain granted the sincerity of most of his opponents and said that he hoped to alleviate their anxieties about his plan while in N e w York. Some writers feared the AAA, he suggested, simply "because it is new," and because "writers resent all discussion of literature in its economic aspects and think it is completely below t h e m . " However, he asserted, it had not been beneath Verdi, or George Bernard Shaw (whom Cain called a "genius at literary business"), or many other authors and artists. Cain assured writers that everyone wanted to guarantee that the AAA would have no power whatsoever over the content of writing; it was "natural but silly" for writers to resist assigning their copyrights to such an agency. When asked whether he thought William Saroyan should willingly sign over the copyright to his current Broadway hit, The Time of Your Life, Cain countered that Saroyan held only a partial copyright, that many subsidiary rights belonged all or in part to others, and that such would never be the case under the AAA. 103 Cain's N e w York visit climaxed the next night, when more than six hundred writers gathered at the Henry Hudson Hotel for the CFA-sponsored meeting. There, according to The New York Times, "writers forgot their manners and gave sharp tongue to their particular views." Carl Carmer, the Committee for Action leader who chaired the meeting, scoffed at the notion that his group was in any way a Communist organization; he himself was an "Up-State Republican," who would have nothing to do with a left-wing maneuver. By this time, Cain was as peeved with the "present hierarchy" of the League and Authors Guild as were his hosts. "Fighting mad," according to one reporter, he lit into Rice, Sillcox, and Connelly as the true "enemies of free speech." 104 They were the ones who had high-handedly determined that the full membership of the League

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should not learn the complete details of the AAA plan; they were the ones who kept the membership list a closely guarded secret, "although under the law members are entitled to see the list." The Committee for Action had informed him that it now had a suit pending in court to obtain access to the membership list as well as the minutes of Authors Guild Council meetings, which Sillcox had denied them. "It is these reactionary, almost incomprehensibly censorious writers, some of them in this so-called AWA, others of t h e m a clique which runs the Authors Guild and the Authors League," Cain fulminated, "who are guilty of a monstrous campaign against the right of a writer to say what he thinks." He pilloried Rice and Sillcox for exercising "dictatorial powers" and termed the postponement of the scheduled League meeting "an obvious double cross cooked up by Mr. Rice and Mr. Connelly." 105 In the midst of his twenty-page address, Cain revealed that, while Rice and Connelly had officially welcomed his visit, actually they "were ready with the old Army switcheroo, so that one hit me high and one hit me low, and I went down for awhile—long enough for Mr. Heym and Mr. Carmer to get another hall." 1 0 6 Turning to the AAA itself, Cain tried to explain why writers would have to assign their copyrights to the Authority. Among other reasons, the AAA could not be set up merely as "counsel" to writers, because federal law did not permit a corporation to act as counsel; it was perfectly legal, however, for a corporation to act as a trustee. James T Farrell then claimed the floor to state his objections to the Authority. His remarks were greeted "with scornful laughs and boos," according to the Times. Farrell asked Cain directly why he had "made such a mistake as to put the fear of coercion" into his original plan for the Authority. Cain replied that at the time he had thought that a closed shop would give the AAA necessary clout, but that he had quickly discovered that many, even in the SWG, disagreed. Moreover, writers had responded so enthusiastically to the plan that, after some "soul-searching," he now agreed to abandon "the blackjack." However, Cain unrepentantly declared, "I mean power here, no mistake." 1 0 7 By his fourth question, Farrell was hissed from the floor; "Why don't you get psychoanalyzed?" someone shouted. 108 Pressing on despite the clamor, Farrell asked a series of questions about the precise nature of copyright; Cain responded that he did not want to go into "intricate theories" of copyright law, but he insisted on the importance of the distinction between literary work as a legal property and its use as a commodity. 109 Farrell, for his part, recalled the meeting in a letter written the following spring:

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When James M. Cain spoke at a meeting in New York, the whole affair was rigged. I went to that meeting and asked questions. My questions were pertinent. The chairman declared that I was out of order. Cain could not answer all of my questions. Cain made no protest when I was declared out of order. In addition, I was hissed by the caucus which was really running the meeting [the CFA]. I cite these facts to you, for the following reasons: If you cannot ask questions about a controversial plan for the organization of writers, how can you trust these people to defend your rights in a dis-interested manner? Cain in his report on this meeting, printed recently in the Screen Writer, did not have anything to say about the treatment I received. Also, he didn't point out that the meeting was abruptly ended before there had been a full discussion, and before I had an opportunity to ask all of the questions I wished to ask. Most of those present accepted the idea of the plan without knowing what it was about. Cain himself confessed he didn't know all about the plan. He said that while he was asking people in New York to accept it, it was being changed in California. I asked h i m why he came to New York with a plan that was not complete, and not properly thought out. In addition, I asked what plan should be discussed. He didn't know, and that is why I was declared out of order and hissed. Now frankly what can you expect from such people? n o As the meeting drew to a close, a woman who claimed to be a writer but refused to give her name, rose to attack the plan and defend the publishing industry. According to the Times, she was "greeted by boos" and "it was impossible to hear her for the ensuing five minutes," as Carmer banged his gavel and called for order. Even though the vast majority of the writers present appeared enthusiastically to favor the AAA, both Cain and Carmer resisted taking a vote, arguing successfully that it was a matter for the League and its guilds to approve. With that, the meeting adjourned. 111 Cain, for his part, hinted at his own emotional response to the meeting in the Screen Writer report referred to by Farrell. Writing on behalf of the SWG AAA Committee, Cain recounted the support he had received: And there was the meeting that was held, when one of us was in New York to explain the plan to a group there that was curious about it. Confronted with a sudden change in the arrangements, he took

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the grand ballroom of one of the hotels, sight unseen, in order to be able to make his announcements without further delay. Arriving there to speak, he was somewhat appalled by the size of it, and concerned that his small gathering, as he thought, would be quite lost in it. Before the chairman called for order he wondered if it would be big enough. Six hundred writers turned out that night, said to be the largest number of t h e m ever assembled at one spot in the history of literature. 112 In Los Angeles, the more than three hundred writers who had gathered at the Masonic Temple for the SWG's Advisory Committee meeting listened while Lavery apprised t h e m of the weekend's events in New York. A "misunderstanding" had arisen between Cain and Connelly over the cancellation of the AL Licensing Committee hearing, Lavery said, and the press was having a field day. Lavery believed "that in the long run not m u c h harm would be done by the incident." He might have regretted this assurance when the very next day he received a scorching telegram from Elmer Rice, which read in full: I feel strongly that James Cain's irresponsible, untruthful and defamatory remarks about the Authors League administration which you will find in clippings that follow air mail special and the wide publicity which these statements have received have seriously complicated and gravely imperilled all the constructive work we have been trying to do here toward setting up some machinery for making the licensing plan effective. In fact I do not see how the special committee [the AL Licensing Committee] can continue to function until this situation is cleared up. If, as I believe to be the fact, Cain was speaking only for himself, then I think it is important that the Screen Writers Guild Executive Board issue a strong public statement repudiating Cain's remarks and expressing confidence in the manner in which the League administration is handling this matter. I expect to be in hospital another week so please address me care of Authors League. 113 Lavery wrote to Connelly on October 23, asking for his help in defusing the tense situation. Lavery took seriously Rice's thinly veiled threat to quash all League action on the AAA. Ever the diplomat, and now desperate to avoid a serious rift between the SWG and the League, Lavery wrote that he could not take sides in the feuding between Rice, Cain, and Connelly, but could only note its destructiveness. "There is nothing that the Producers would like more—

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and book publishers t o o — " Lavery reminded Connelly, "than to see a lot of writers whaling the living daylights out of each other." He also revealed that he hesitated to bring before the executive board Rice's " u l t i m a t u m " that the SWG disassociate itself from Cain, since "at this moment it would simply set off six or seven more conflagrations." During the entire AAA affair, Lavery insisted, he had worked for guild solidarity. He had appealed consistently to writers on both coasts for patience in resolving their differences over the AAA. All of this effort would go down the drain if Rice insisted that the SWG repudiate Cain. Lavery assured Connelly that Rice was simply wrong if he thought that the SWG had sent Cain to New York "to pick a fight with League officers"; thus, nothing could be gained by demanding that the SWG "repudiate what Jim may have said or done in N e w York." As far as Lavery could see, since no official action had been taken over the weekend, the best way to heal any wounds would be to consider the matter a personal one, and for the people concerned to forget about it. Then Lavery made a threat of his own: "If Elmer insists that the Screen Writers Board m u s t enlarge this personal issue by either an acceptance of Jim's statements in New York or a repudiation of them, I shall have to ask permission to appear before the full Council of the League. Frankly, Marc, I don't intend to have the whole licensing program threatened by Elmer's irritation any more than you would want it prejudiced by Jim Cain's irritation. I am trying to put out all the fires in sight. It seems to me that Elmer is trying to light one more." 1 1 4 This was about as blunt as Lavery ever got; in short, if Rice insisted that the SWG censure Cain, then Lavery would demand that the AL Council look into the reason the meeting had been canceled in the first place. He sympathized with Connelly's irritation over Cain's harsh words and regretted all the name-calling, but, as he admonished Connelly, "lots of us get called all kinds of names these days—even by our best friends. And if I had to stop to defend myself every time I have been called a few names which I detest, I would have no time left to write or be President of the Screen Writers Guild." Lavery stressed that many members of the SWG would balk at any attempt to discipline or repudiate Cain. "After all," Lavery warned Connelly, "most of the members would immediately ask: wouldn't it have been m u c h wiser and m u c h simpler for the League to have held the meeting on schedule with somebody else in the chair?" Although Lavery himself had reluctantly agreed to the postponement, he still questioned the reason for it.115 There the matter rested for the next few weeks. Both Connelly and Rice calmed down, at least publicly, and Rice stopped pressing

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the SWG to denounce Cain. Cain had apparently achieved a notable triumph when at the Henry Hudson yet another mass meeting of writers enthusiastically endorsed the AAA, but it had been a costly victory that damaged considerably the chances for League approval. Rice, Sillcox, and the others in the Authors League and Authors Guild offices were now openly hostile to Cain and his plan. Sillcox in particular was now convinced that Cain meant to wreck the League. Easily the most important administrator in the guilds with Rice recuperating, Sillcox controlled all of the levers in the League's eastern offices. "All American authors owe her a debt of gratitude/' Alan Jay Lerner said on Sillcox's death in 1965. 116 She had been hired by Theodore Roosevelt two years after the AL;s founding in 1914, and remained with the League for forty-seven years. In 1946-1947, she was at the height of her influence, having been named the League's executive secretary in 1944. She also served as secretary to both the Dramatists Guild and the Authors Guild councils. After Sillcox had helped h i m set up the Radio Writers Guild, Kenneth Webb swore that she knew "more about copyright problems than the entire Senate and House." 1 1 7 Born into a wealthy upstate family, and a graduate of Barnard College, Sillcox devoted her life to the Authors League, and if she had the manner, as one writer remarked, of an Edwardian duchess about to open a charity bazaar, she also possessed a sharp mind and a proven commitment to fighting for authors' rights. She had often single-handedly kept the Authors League afloat over the years, and understandably had grown protective of the organization. 118 Relations between East and West, never great, turned sour. Whether or not Rice and the other AL leaders deliberately sabotaged the Licensing Committee meeting remains unclear, and perhaps irrelevant. Rice was seriously ill. Yet Cain was convinced Rice's hospitalization provided too convenient a pretext for preventing the League membership from considering a proposal its leaders disliked. Thus Cain returned to Hollywood cheered by the enthusiasm writers had shown for the AAA, but wondering why he had ever agreed to work through the Authors League. Taken in sum, the correspondence between East and West Coast organizations reveals that, while all agreed on the worthy aims of the licensing, separation, and reversion of rights, they could not paper over their profound disagreement over the means to achieve these goals. The western guilds believed tough, united action would be necessary to win the day and that the AAA provided the means to prevail. The eastern guilds and the League leadership doggedly believed that the Dramatists Guild's successful pledge campaign in the 1920s could be re-

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peated to win licensing. Their ambitions were much more limited and, almost from the first, they suspected the AAA and mistrusted its supporters. Amid all the portentous comment from both sides, the charges and countercharges, angry denunciations of "the desperate plight" of writers, and dire warnings of the Communist menace, the last word on this chapter of the AAA debate should go to E. B. White, who found in the AAA controversy a target far too tempting to resist: "The Muse and t h e Mug" Come, Goddess, thou who guards my song, From whom I'm never distant, Muse, meet Mug, who'll right my wrong; Meet Mug, my new assistant. Come, Muse, and drive my laggard pen! Come, Mug, and drive my bargain! To star and to Authority I'll hitch my creaky wagon. Sweet Muse, Tough Mug, profitable pair, Gaudier soon my raiment; Muse shall inspire me with the thought, Mug will collect the payment. O happy time, O perfect end, O prospect so inviting! I think I need just one more friend— To do the actual writing.119

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6. The Second AAA Plan (November 1946-April 1947) I want the author to enjoy real freedom, not the sorry imitation of it that obtains at present. —JAMES M. CAIN

JUST AS EMMET LAVERY HAD PREDICTED, the October debacle in New York, for all its fireworks, settled nothing. Cain returned to Hollywood and his work on the SWG AAA Committee. Critics in and out of the eastern writers' organizations hammered away at the plan. Lavery himself, as ever, tried to focus both sides on such areas of agreement as existed—the need for licensing in particular—and indefatigably recommended to increasingly antagonistic writers the virtues, indeed the necessity, of acting together. James T. Farrell, for his part, continued his sharp attacks on the AAA immediately after his confrontation with Cain at the Henry Hudson. Smarting from the hostile reception he had met there, Farrell turned to a more sympathetic audience—the Socialists and Trotskyites on the non-Communist Left. In early November, the Call reprinted his September 14 letter to Elmer Rice under the title "A 'Cartel' Plan for American Writers," and he wrote another polemic against the AAA, "Artists in Handcuffs," for the Progressive and LaFollette's Magazine.1 The struggle among authors over Cain's plan, he warned in this second piece, "promises to become the most bitter in the history of modern American writers." This assessment was shared by the Saturday Review's Harrison Smith, who had been following the AAA controversy closely. In addition to writing the critical editorial in September which had so disappointed Cain, Smith had also attended the Gotham Hotel press conference at which Cain and Connelly had tangled. After all of the "strange maneuverings" during Cain's visit to New York, and the modifications to the AAA plan Cain announced there, Smith decided that the Saturday Review's readership would be interested in an update on the controversy. Thus he invited Farrell and Cain to continue their public debate in writing. In his piece, Farrell again disparaged Cain's characterization of the

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American writer's—especially the American screenwriter's—plight as "desperate"; this time he cited statistics indicating the generous salaries paid by the studios. "Desperation must be defined differently in Hollywood," he commented. While conceding that Cain had subsequently backed off from his initial conception of the AAA as a closed shop, which would compel writers to join one of the guilds and compel purchasers of literary material to deal only with the AAA, Farrell insisted that coercion lay at the heart of Cain's plan. "The strong language" of the Screen Writer article revealed that "in effect, Cain was prepared last summer to drive out of the living current of American literature every American writer who refused to surrender his copyrights to [the] AAA." Moreover, a note to Cain's article in the Screen Writer had announced that its editors "unanimously approved the plan in principle," convincing Farrell that "an important part of the Screen Writers Guild" also accepted coercion. That its earliest champions had been so comfortable with these "coercive ideas," Farrell reasoned, "only cast suspicion on their later revisions." He also repeated his earlier warning that the AAA was being supported by "the Stalinist press, and by known Stalinist writers," adding that the AAA's supporters were accusing all of its opponents of being "reactionary, even Fascists." 2 In Farrell's mind, however, it was the AAA itself that was bureaucratically reactionary. Farrell also charged that the AAA would "hitch the chariot of the independent writer to the chariot of the hired writer," who would then dominate the economic life of the literary c o m m u n i t y Farrell had alluded to this point before, but in this Saturday Review piece he elaborated it for the first time. He correctly observed that the AAA did not encompass writing done under contract, the work of those "hired" writers who did not own their own copyrights; the AAA only concerned free-lance writing by "independent" authors who did own their copyrights. Therefore, the hired writers of the Screen Writers Guild and the Radio Writers Guild, w h o m Farrell feared would have disproportionate influence in the AAA, could not benefit from it themselves, but could force independent writers to surrender their own autonomy. The "hired writers" at present touting the AAA were in effect asking all other writers "to sacrifice just a little of our individuality for the promise of rich gains"; Farrell was not sure whether AAA supporters in this case meant economic or artistic individuality, or both, but at a time when American writers' obsession with "the musical ringing of the cash registers" had led inexorably to a decline in the national literature, Farrell would not countenance any further diminution of creative independence or

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personal autonomy In any conflict between "the power of organization" and "the power of ideas, . . . of genuinely produced art," organization must always take a back seat. "Organization, collectivization is good on the economic front; but only anarchy, freedom, struggle towards untrammeled freedom in the expression of ideas and the creation of art can be our guide." For this reason, above all others, the AAA gravely endangered American writers and American literature generally. 3 For his part, Cain willingly granted FarrelPs point that writers 7 freedom was very much at stake in the AAA, but he flatly rejected the rest of FarrelPs analysis. He would oppose his own plan if it was really a question of an "authoritarian" AAA threatening a writer's actual freedom, Cain vowed in his response, for he regarded "gag, repression, and cloture just as inimically as anybody does." However, Cain insisted that the artistic and economic independence that the AAA's opponents believed to be at such risk was in fact largely illusory; the very basis of their opposition rested on a "pleasant, comfortable, and simple, but wholly imaginary theory." 4 In reality, writers enjoyed no such freedom. The protests of syndicated columnists (such as George Sokolsky, George Peck, Eugene Lyons, and John O'Connor) in the American Writers Association that the AAA would threaten their intellectual and economic freedom Cain derided as "really too absurd to discuss," since their colu m n s were copyrighted by the newspaper syndicates that employed them and—in Cain's long journalistic experience—most merely parroted the views of their bosses. The "established" novelists among the ranks of the AAA—Cain mentioned Louis Bromfield, John Erskine, Philip Wylie, and Rupert Hughes, among others—might be able to make a stronger claim to independence, but this as well was more apparent than real. Economically, such authors might indeed hold the copyrights to their works, but—as Cain observed time and again—such copyrights were often little more than empty shells, stripped of so many of their valuable subsidiary rights as to be in themselves of little worth. Moreover, publishers, editors, and producers by custom and contract controlled the dispensation of even those rights in which authors retained an interest. The publisher made the deals. "I want to bring about a condition whereunder the author owns all his rights, for the life of the copyright," wrote Cain. In addition, he argued, publishers' control of such rights led to these authors' vaunted intellectual freedom being subtly but no less effectively circumscribed. The mere fact that publishers controlled valuable rights—and could simply sit on them if they liked—was in itself coercive:

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I don't say that publishers have done this [refused to sell rights they controlled in order to pressure writers]. But I do say they can do it. And I do say, and hereby make the direct charge, that the knowledge of this threat to their security lies like a nightmare at the back of the thinking of these various members of the American Writers Association. . . . In other words, as effectively as though they had rings in their noses, these writers are already under c o n t r o l . . . I want the author to enjoy real freedom, not the sorry imitation of it that obtains at present. 5 Cain was convinced that beneath all of the apparently principled opposition to the AAA lay simple self-interest, the fear that publishers would cut writers off from their subsidiary rights' income if authors supported the AAA. Cain's analysis is open to question, since it rests on the motivations of writers who opposed the plan, but his basic point—that the AAA did not threaten to destroy authors' freedoms, since such freedoms were largely illusory—was a more realistic assessment of the authors' position in the literary marketplace than that of the plan's detractors. After ignoring Farrell's piece until the end of his own, Cain then acknowledged that the Saturday Review had asked him to reply to Farrell's stated objections. Since Farrell had written "in the gobbledegooky of the professional leftist," Cain had found it difficult to understand m u c h less respond to his argument. Farrell had stressed that some Hollywood writers earned as m u c h as a hundred thousand dollars a year, Cain noted, without realizing that most of t h e m "make $60 a week when they make it, which isn't often." Farrell also, like many of the AAA's critics, rejected the "common sense" view in Cain's words that the AAA was simply designed to give the writer more leverage in the marketplace, preferring instead to read into it all kinds of far-fetched political conspiracies. For Farrell's "nearest approach to a lucid position," his belief that the only guide for true writers should be "anarchy, freedom, . . . untrammeled freedom in the expression of ideas and the creation of art," Cain had utter contempt: If this twittering nonsense is what the editors of this magazine expect me to dignify with something in the way of a reply, all I can say is I don't know how to do it. That somebody, in this age and time, still believes in anarchy, that freedom can be struggled for without making contact with the realities as they exist, that art can be consciously "created" any more than a baby can be consciously created—these ideas, to me, are simply weird, and

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downright silly. I don't believe freedom is successfully pursued by cranky theorists riding far-fetched obsessions. I believe free speech is uttered by free men, and that men become free by fighting repression as it exists, and not by ignoring repression as it exists to tilt at phantom windmills.6 For all its vitriol, this Cain-Farrell exchange does shed considerable light on the AAA controversy. Within the literary community, whether or not the AAA was Communist-inspired was never more than a side issue; the real debate centered on two conflicting conceptions of authorship itself, of what a writer was and did. Farrell expressed one view: the author was an autonomous artist who could only operate in a condition of "anarchy," that is, divorced from any organized structure (a movie studio, an advertising agency, a college classroom) and, in fact, removed from the marketplace itself. Writing, as all artistic activity, was a calling more than a career, a life more than a livelihood, and Farrell indicated his kinship with the nineteenth-century gentleman-amateur by his damning comment on the destructive effect of the profit motive on American literature in the mid-twentieth century. The left-wing Farrell shared this view with virtually all of the opponents of the AAA, including those on the extreme Right. We recall that in George Sokolsky's August column condemning the AAA, he had also complained that the writer's "preoccupation with rights and deals" had "reduced American literature to its current vulgarity." According to Sokolsky, the true writer would "risk the garret" rather than "recognize any Authority."7 Farrell, Sokolsky, and the many others who defined the writer in this way equated copyright possession with artistic and personal independence, and thus adamantly resisted copyright assignment. For Cain, as for so many of the others who believed in the AAA, such sentiments were just so much "twittering nonsense." To cling to such an anachronistic definition of the writer in the complex modern literary marketplace, where he or she faced off in an unequal battle with powerful corporate interests, smacked of selfdelusion and courted disaster. For Cain, the writer was a creator of both art and a potentially valuable property. To deny the latter in the name of the former not only invited economic exploitation but also, in itself, threatened the writer's freedom. Farrell repeatedly called the AAA "bureaucratic," and in a sense he was correct; Cain and many others in the Screen Writers Guild particularly had firsthand knowledge of how little influence the individual writer enjoyed in the bureaucratically organized and operated movie studios and had concluded that the only way for writers

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to regain a measure of autonomy was to organize collectively, to create their own powerful bureaucracy to counter that of the corporate interests arrayed against them in the modern literary marketplace. Farrell's insistence on maintaining the artist's independence and individuality, and his fear of organization in any shape, merely prescribed disaster for the profession as a whole. This disagreement over the writer's very identity, rather than political ideology, commercial success, or craft allegiance, divided writers during the AAA controversy into two feuding camps. Farrell was not the only AAA opponent who went on the attack in the aftermath of the October meetings. The chorus of criticism of both Cain and his plan only increased in late 1946, especially from the AWA. It issued its first newsletter, The American Writer, on November 1, explaining its objections to Cain's plan and criticizing the Authors League's recent conduct. Even as Cain believed Rice was stifling discussion because he personally opposed the AAA, the composition of the AL Licensing Committee named by Rice, two of whose four members (aside from Rice) represented guilds that had already endorsed the AAA, proved to the AWA's satisfaction that Rice was stacking the deck in favor of the plan and was not going to study it with "reasonableness and impartiality." Ironically, the AWA, like Cain, suspected the motives behind Rice's cancellation of the Licensing Committee's open hearing; however, if Cain was convinced that Rice had acted to stifle discussion in order to kill the AAA, the AWA charged that he had so acted in order to railroad through its acceptance. 8 The AWA had also discovered a natural ally in the New Leader, the staunchly anti-Communist magazine that billed itself as "America's Leading Liberal-Labor Weekly." 9 Several of its frequent contributors, among t h e m John Chamberlin, Max Eastman, Eugene Lyons, and Dorothy Thompson, were early and ardent members of the AWA. The New Leader claimed that it had led the way in exposing the AAA as a "totalitarian plan, . . . hatched by the commissars in Hollywood," and it had featured prominently several articles on the Authority. 10 Dorothy Thompson also used the magazine to launch another attack on the AAA, but this time on another front. Cain's accusations of self-interest on the part of the well-to-do authors in the AWA had apparently struck a nerve, for Thompson now described a previously unremarked danger in the AAA. Under existing practice, she argued, publishers underwrote the risks involved in publishing unknown or less-popular authors with the profits from the works of the more-successful ones. However, if publishers' profits on popular books were held to a m i n i m u m , as would

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happen under the AAA, then publishers could not finance the works of untested or unpopular authors. Under the Cain plan, Thompson thus argued, successful authors would make even more money, but at the expense of the real artist or creative thinker, who wished only to express "his own particular vision of the truth/ 7 Under the Cain plan, the strong would get stronger and the weak would be shut out. The AWA believed that the strong should carry the weak, according to Thompson, and that "writers w h o m fortune had favored, usually after a long struggle/ 7 should be "willing and glad to help 77 publishers launch new writers—strange words indeed coming from such a devout anti-Communist. 1 1 Thus, Thompson claimed that the AWA, and not the AAA, was the writer's true champion. As if to prove the point, the AWA encouraged local and regional writers 7 clubs to oppose the AAA and to let the Authors League and the guilds know of their opposition. Indeed, the AWA itself forwarded more than a dozen such letters and petitions to Christopher LaFarge at the Authors Guild, and dozens more flowed into guild offices during the late autumn. One typical letter, from the Golden Bridle Poetry Club in Kansas City, opposed the AAA on the grounds that "any action that would endanger the freedom of publication would be nothing less than outrageous and is contrary to the principles upon which our nation was founded, and through which it has grown to its place of leadership. 77 The club had no desire for a "planned and censored literature 77 and declared itself four-square in favor of free speech, at least for free speech "insofar as it is constructive and represents a cross-section of our people.77 It urged the rejection of the AAA in the name of "free enterprise, 77 the bedrock of Americanism. 12 Many protesters also sent copies to President Truman, evidence that the AWA was orchestrating this anti-AAA campaign. Similarly, six free-lance writers in Tulsa, Oklahoma, wrote jointly to the Authors League declaring their opposition to the "dictatorial control of writers 77 the AAA would impose. They would not willingly "become a party to such un-American tactics 77 as boycotts, blacklists, blackmail, and coercion, which they believed to be at the heart of the AAA movement. 1 3 Mrs. Helen Richards Cook, of Lincoln, Nebraska, wrote personally to Elmer Rice to protest the movement afoot to form what she called a "Writer's Union. 77 "Shades of Hitler, 77 she declared. "Is America coming to this? What about freedom of the Press? 7714 Mrs. Claire Barber, who termed herself a "beginning writer 77 from Dubuque, Iowa, put the case to Rice even more forcefully: "This is not Nazi Germany, nor is this Soviet Russia. Under such governments people were and are being dictated to. Men

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fought and died so that we in this country would never know that degradation. Now, under our very eyes, a dictatorship is trying to rise." Barber concluded with the hope that the AAA "meets the same ignoble end as did Hitler and Mussolini." 1 5 This flood of opposition to the AAA, most from the Midwest and virtually all naive and extraordinarily inaccurate in its understanding of the AAA, could easily be dismissed as simply the protests of amateur writers with little or no experience of the marketplace. It reveals, though, at least one important dynamic of the AAA controversy. These letters well illustrate the extent to which the AAA became caught up in the shifting ideological sands of postwar America. Their singular feature is the absence of pointed Red-baiting or, more precisely, the extent to which C o m m u n i s m and Fascism were perceived as an undifferentiated authoritarian menace. In other words, these correspondents damned the AAA not because it was perceived as a purely Communist plot, but rather because it threatened traditional American freedoms. C o m m u n i s m and Fascism were lumped together; indeed, the Soviet Union was referred to in the same terms as Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy. In short, C o m m u n i s m was merely one variant of authoritarianism. Fully aware of, but undeterred by, the depth of hostility toward the AAA plan, Lavery, Cain, and the other AAA proponents in Hollywood plowed ahead with the work of giving concrete shape to the Authority, and by late November the articles of incorporation and the bylaws were all but complete. Lavery, still trying to prop up the teetering edifice of League unity, cabled Connelly in New York on November 21, suggesting that the Licensing Committee and the Screen Writers Guild "stabilize League thinking for the mom e n t " by endorsing that to which all on both coasts could agree— that is, the general principles of licensing, reversion, and separation of rights—and some "reasonable authorization" for the continued search for the most effective machinery for implementing these principles. This, thought Lavery, might "hold the line in all directions." He again confided to Connelly that he personally did not favor copyright assignment, but that most of the SWG AAA Committee did; Lavery believed that the AAA negotiations could get back on track only if everyone focused on those areas in which there was general agreement. 16 The draft articles of incorporation and bylaws that the SubCommittee on Organization submitted to the entire AAA Committee in Hollywood on November 25 presented the most detailed description of the structure and functions of the AAA to that point and also revealed just how m u c h Cain's original conception had been

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modified to meet the criticisms of its opponents. The articles of incorporation stated the general powers and purposes of the proposed organization,- the bylaws, a more complicated document, set out its structure and operations. The articles defined the American Authors' Authority as a nonprofit, voluntary association under the aegis of the Authors League. Its purposes would be to encourage commerce in literary properties; to protect the proprietary interests of authors in their works; to hold in trust for authors their copyrights, or subsidiary rights under copyright and "to sell, assign, deal in, transfer, dispose of, license, lease and grant interests and rights of all kinds in such properties"; to protect all of the rights it held in trust from unlawful use; and to encourage more advantageous treatment of authors by the government and the industries with which they dealt. These announced objectives mirrored precisely the functions Cain had envisioned the AAA fulfilling in his Screen Writer article. The articles empowered the AAA to conduct business—including acquiring property, borrowing money, and the like—necessary to fulfill these aims. A specific article, not subject to amendment, guaranteed that the services of the AAA would be available to all "without discrimination by reason of the content of the property submitted/' and without regard to the race, color, creed, or political or organizational affiliation of the creator. 17 The bylaws designated the guilds of the Authors League as the "member" associations of the AAA and provided for the addition of others on the unanimous consent of those already admitted. No organization, however, could become or remain a part of the AAA unless it was nonprofit, democratically governed, and not affiliated with any church, sect, or political party. Its own constitution or bylaws m u s t forbid discrimination against literary works by virtue of their content, or against their authors by reason of race, color, or creed. Four representatives elected by each of the member organizations would constitute the board of directors, with the president of the Authors League designated as chair. Each director would serve a two-year term, and no individual could serve more than two successive terms. Persons could not serve as directors unless they belonged to one of the member organizations of the Authority and had assigned at least one copyright to it. Additionally, at least half of the directors from each member organization m u s t have assigned to the Authority works that had earned, in the preceding five years, at least one thousand dollars. The unsalaried board of directors would enjoy overall control of the AAA and set its policies, but would also hire five officers. A

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president would be the AAA's chief administrator, responsible for executing the decisions of the board and running the office. A recording secretary would be responsible for keeping complete records of the status of each copyright and subsidiary right the Authority held in trust, and a treasurer would account for the AAA's transactions, chiefly those concerning the rights assigned to it. A counsel, in addition to the duties normally performed by any corporate attorney, would draft legislation of benefit to all writers and supervise legal actions taken to defend rights the AAA held in trust from unauthorized or improper use. An executive signatory would certify all of the transactions involving copyright, subject to specific conditions: each transaction required the cosignature of the author; the terms of the transactions must conform to the m i n i m u m basic agreements or model contracts of the guilds, where appropriate; no transaction could involve the outright sale of a work, or the grant of a license for more than seven years; if, after legal advice, the board determined that a transaction might render the AAA liable for damages in a plagiarism or libel case, it could require an indemnity from the author of the work; no assignment could be refused because of the assignor's race, religion, political or organizational affiliation; and the material submitted to the AAA could not violate laws against piracy or obscenity. The bylaws also stipulated the procedures for the board of directors' annual meeting and any special meetings that the board might need to conduct business. It stipulated that all records kept by the Authority would be confidential. It gave to the board the power to set fees for the AAA's services, but did not specify a schedule. Finally, it also detailed the procedures for amending the bylaws, as well as how copyrights would be reassigned to their owners if the AAA dissolved. 18 The Sub-Committee on Organization submitted a separate report, written by Cain himself, explaining where and why the articles and bylaws departed from his original proposal. Although he had anticipated a certain amount of resistance to the AAA, Cain admitted in this report that he had been surprised by the "storm of abuse" meted out by the national press; nor had he expected that a group of writers, the AWA, would organize for the sole purpose of derailing the AAA. Cain conceded that the charges that the AAA might prove coercive, however groundless, needed to be faced and the fears of writers assuaged; thus the subcommittee had, in drafting the articles of incorporation and the bylaws, balanced the need for an organization strong enough to prevail over publishers and producers with the need to provide assurances that the AAA would deal "not with what a writer said in his works, but what he got for them." For this

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reason, the subcommittee had abandoned the idea of requiring guild membership of those who used the AAA, even though to Cain's mind this was merely "the application of the union shop principle to literary properties as well as literary services." Similarly, nondiscrimination clauses had been written into the documents—in the articles of incorporation and in the bylaws—requiring the AAA to accept all copyright assignments regardless of the content of the work or the beliefs or affiliations of the author. This, though, raised an additional problem for Cain and others on the AAA Committee: if the Authority had to accept all material, regardless of content, one of its enemies could simply assign to it material obviously obscene, "and then let it take the rap for it, in court and public esteem, without having any choice in the matter." This would be "one of the surest ways to wreck the Authority." Thus the subcommittee had included a provision that the AAA could refuse material that its lawyers deemed libelous or obscene or obviously pirated. 19 Cain also directed the attention of the Overall AAA Committee to two related issues, which intentionally had been omitted from both the articles and the bylaws. The subcommittee had researched extensively the question of revocation of copyright assignment to the AAA. Originally, Cain had imagined that a writer would have to assign copyright to the AAA "for keeps, and could only renege on his bargain at some cost to himself." While he admitted that there were legal problems with "any actual forever-and-ever" assignment, he had insisted that there should be a long interval between a writer's request for the return of copyright and the actual revocation of assignment. If it was too easy for writers to revoke assignment, then the Authority would be watered down "to the level of a glorified pledge system." However, Cohn and others on the committee had convinced Cain that the courts would rule against any interval of more than a year, and that a writer bent on getting around the rule could simply offer a prospective buyer an option on the property in question, such option to be taken up once the copyright assignment had been revoked, regardless of the interval involved. Thus, a long interval between the request for assignment revocation and the actual return of copyright to the writer presented no great obstacle to writers bent on circumventing it, and "would arouse real misgiving in the writer still honestly dubious about the Authority." Thus, Cain's original idea had been abandoned, and the subcommittee decided that revocation should be granted after a thirty-day processing period. This provision was to be included in each assignment contract itself.20 On November 25, when the entire AAA Committee discussed the

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articles and the bylaws, it agreed that a revocation clause should be included in each assignment contract and not in the articles or the bylaws themselves. But the committee, under the strong urging of Lavery, decided that it could possibly meet the objections to copyright assignment by offering an alternative plan, under which a writer would only assign to the AAA subsidiary rights and not the basic copyright itself. This, in fact, paralleled the ASCAP model more closely than complete assignment, since composers assigned only specific performance rights to the Society, and not their copyrights. Aside from this new wrinkle, the committee made no other substantive changes in the articles and the bylaws. 21 Lavery cabled Connelly in New York the next day, informing h i m that the AAA Committee was at last close to finishing the corporate structure for the Authority, including provisions that he believed would satisfy not only the writers on the West Coast, but also the AL Licensing Committee. While the AAA Committee was "still deeply concerned" that the Licensing Committee in the East had yet to appreciate sufficiently the importance of creating the "machinery necessary to implement" the licensing program (in other words, the need for something stronger than a pledge system), the writers in the West were still committed to working within the League. Overall, Lavery thought that the situation was " m u c h more hopeful" than he had anticipated, given the donnybrook over Cain's visit to New York.22 Based simply on this corporate structure submitted to the AAA Committee, Lavery's optimism does not seem entirely misplaced, since the AAA that took shape in November eliminated or substantially modified all of the features that critics of Cain's original proposal had found so objectionable. In response to the charge that the AAA held the potential to limit free expression and "control thought," no less than three non-discrimination clauses had been written into the articles and the bylaws, each expressly forbidding the AAA, or its member organizations, from taking the content of a literary property into account, except in the case of libel, piracy, or obscenity. In response to the charge that the AAA could become dangerously authoritarian, the closed-shop provision had been dropped and the board of directors enlarged. The reluctance of many writers to assign their copyrights had been addressed both by the thirty-day revocation feature and, more important, by the formula agreed on at the last minute that would allow writers to retain their basic copyright and merely assign specific subsidiary rights to the Authority. The concern expressed by Dorothy Thompson, Norman Thomas, and others that successful writers would dominate

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the AAA was met not only by the anti-discrimination clauses but also by language in the bylaws that stated that the "express i n t e n t " of those clauses was "to throw open the facilities of the Authority to writers everywhere in the world, whether or not they are members of its member organizations or not, whether or not their views agree with the personal views of its governors, and without regard for the relative market values of material offered for assignment." The AAA would "service all writers equally." 23 Indeed, the tone of the articles and the bylaws—reasoned, cool, and reassuring—seemed light-years away from Cain's impassioned Screen Writer piece, and m u c h more likely to convince skeptical writers that, to paraphrase Cain, the AAA was interested only in what a writer got, not in what he or she said. It is all but impossible to read into these documents some sinister plot to control American writers and writing; at least, that was Lavery's assessment in late November, once the structure and operations of the AAA finally began to take concrete shape. While the AAA Committee was fleshing out this corporate structure, both the Screen Writers Guild and the Authors Guild were dealing with internal crises that diverted attention from the AAA debate. When the Conference of Studio Unions again struck the film industry in a jurisdictional dispute with IATSE in the a u t u m n of 1946, as it had the year before, the SWG was once more pressured by its left-wing members to support the strikers, even in the face of the no-strike clause in its own collective bargaining agreement. The conservative faction in the Guild adamantly resisted any move to aid the CSU, which it denounced as Communist-dominated. The CSU strike proved the biggest issue in that year's rancorous election for the SWG's own executive board. The conservatives fielded their own slate of candidates, headed by Talbot Jennings for president. A coalition of liberals and progressives supported Lavery for another term. In the event, Lavery won reelection handily at the guild's annual meeting on November 13, but only after a divisive campaign. The AAA did not surface as a major issue, largely because the CSU strike so dominated the agenda; ironically, Cain's name appeared on the slates of both factions, and only Lavery himself received more votes. 24 In the East, the Authors Guild also faced rebellion within its ranks as its own annual election approached. After Cain's appearance in late October, the Committee for Action was more convinced than ever that the leadership of the Authors Guild was not only ineffective but now actively obstructionist. Thus, it mounted a direct challenge to the leadership of the Authors Guild by fielding its own slate of candidates in the Guild elections, including Carl

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Carmer, Philip Van Doren Stern, Howard Fast, Nancy Davids, and Stefan Heym. The slate supported by the leadership included Paul Gallico, Elizabeth Janeway, Irwin Shaw, and Richard Wright. Ballots, which were to be returned no later than December 3, the date of the Guild's annual meeting in Manhattan, were mailed to Authors Guild members across the country. On the day before that meeting, the rebels received a significant boost when the New York Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Committee for Action, ordering the Authors Guild to make available its membership list and the minutes of its previous year's Council meetings. 25 Although it came too late to affect that year's election, the decision cheered the Committee for Action. After hearing of the court's ruling, Stefan Heym wrote Cain to crow about the Committee for Action's triumph over "that old fuddy-mummy, Miss Sillcox, and the fuddy-duddies of the Guild." Even if the insurgents did lose the forthcoming election, and Heym predicted that the result would be close, access to the membership lists would allow his group to lobby all members of the Authors Guild in the future, and he confidently predicted victory the next year. 26 The Committee for Action, in any case, was going to press hard for an early meeting to consider the AAA. The ongoing AAA debate, he revealed to Cain, had done more than anything in recent memory to galvanize the membership of the Authors Guild, and "the more ordinary members of the Guild are involved in Guild activities, the less the hierarchy in the Guild and League offices will be able to continue their shenanigans." Already, Guild officials had finally, after four years, published its recommended m i n i m u m book contract in the Authors League Bulletin, although there had been "no word on how to get the publishers to accept [it]." Heym hoped that Cain and the other Authors Guild members on the West Coast would be able to strengthen its Los Angeles regional chapter; if it became a "real, functioning" organization, this would further pressure the Authors Guild Council to implement one of the main planks in the Committee for Action's platform—the creation of other regional chapters in the Midwest and the South and thus decentralization of the guild. One hundred and fifty writers gathered at the Beekman Tower Hotel on Tuesday afternoon, December 3, for the annual meeting of the Authors Guild. Although the meeting was closed to the press, a reporter in the hallway outside the ballroom recounted that he could often hear "vociferous booing and applause" from within over the next four hours. When LaFarge finally emerged, he announced that the Committee for Action's slate of candidates had been defeated

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"by a pretty substantial majority," but he revealed no precise tally. He also announced that the AG had decided to appeal the court decision ordering it to disclose its membership list. For the record, LaFarge insisted that it had been "a most productive meeting with a remarkable degree of unity." 2 7 Nancy Davids, one of those just defeated in the election, could not believe her ears; the meeting had been a "shambles" in her view. Nothing had been accomplished because of LaFarge's "obstructionist tactics." LaFarge had again thwarted the desire of the Committee for Action for a full airing of the AAA issue, claiming that the Cain plan lay in the province of the Authors League, whose Licensing Committee was still studying it. 28 Despite the favorable court ruling, then, and the fact that more than two hundred writers had joined the Committee for Action, the insurgents had made little progress in budging the leadership of the Authors Guild. Perhaps, though, the CFA was having more impact than it imagined, for when The New York Times's John Hutchens suggested in a column that the AG's Book Contract Committee, in finally producing a model m i n i m u m contract, might have been responding to pressure from "vocal critics within its ranks," LaFarge quickly objected. 29 He wrote to Hutchens, flatly denying that the Guild's model contract was either a counterproposal to the AAA or a response to the Committee for Action's criticisms; rather, it was entirely the result of Rex Stout's, and then LaFarge's own, recent efforts after years of Guild inactivity. LaFarge refused to take the blame for the ineffectiveness of previous AG presidents. 30 However, and for whatever reason, the Authors Guild was now moving on the contract front, and despite LaFarge's protests to the contrary, the AAA proposal and the challenge of the Committee for Action could only have increased the Guild's incentive to act. If the Authors Guild and the Screen Writers Guild were distracted by these internal wrangles, the AL Licensing Committee had continued to meet during November and early December, and on Christmas Eve it published an interim report. It did not contain good news for the AAA's supporters. The report echoed precisely Elmer Rice's attitude toward Cain's plan: the Licensing Committee had determined that there were many "objectionable features" to the AAA, above all, the proposals for "compulsory membership" and the assignment of copyright, however limited; the committee questioned the legality of these provisions, among others. Moreover, the League could establish a licensing system within its existing structure, precluding "the possibility of any editorial control of writers' works or dictatorship by individuals," which the AAA plan threatened. The

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committee preferred the example of the Dramatists' Guild's Minim u m Basic Agreement to the AAA as a means to achieve licensing, since it would remain "utterly free of susceptibility to political or economic pressures." The report concluded that the committee would present more detailed recommendations "as soon as they have reached the blueprint stage." 31 In essence, the Licensing Committee had virtually turned thumbsdown to the AAA, m u c h as Rice had hoped it would. Having accomplished this much, Rice surprised the League by resigning from the presidency. While pleading ill-health and the need to attend to the production of a play soon to open, Rice in fact had had his fill of the bitter disputes within the AL over Cain's plan. "I hope very m u c h that my successor, whoever he may be," Rice announced in his letter of resignation, "will be able to reconcile the unfortunate factional differences that have evidenced themselves lately and to restore unity of purpose and of action to the League membership." In a clear reference to the donnybrook during Cain's October visit, Rice felt that "the ill-advised and intemperate statements and accusations that have been made recently by certain individuals and groups, often uninformed and misguided, have only served to weaken the capacity of the League as a whole" and thus only served the cause of the powerful motion picture, broadcasting, and publishing interests. 32 With this parting shot, Rice washed his hands of the whole affair. After Street Scene opened, he planned to take a long vacation, "remote from New York." 33 If Rice believed that the Licensing Committee's interim report would take the wind out of the AAA's sails, he was to be disappointed. In a confidential m e m o to the SWG executive board, Lavery tried to put the best face on the report, arguing that, since all now formally agreed on licensing, half the battle had already been won. Whatever the fate of the AAA itself, "only by concretizing the whole plan in specific form here have we been able to take this idea and make it a day to day reality instead of an editorial abstraction." For this, writers owed a great debt to Cain. The SWG AAA Committee would press on. 34 Moreover, in the first few months of 1947, writers' interest in the Authority remained keen. The SWG was especially encouraged when it received letters from two British screenwriters: one, Roger Bray, enthusiastically endorsed the AAA and even advocated an international organization of screenwriters; the other, Guy Morgan, who had recently been elected the secretary of the British Screenwriters Association (BSA), noted that writers in Britain were following the AAA debate closely after Cain's Screen Writer article had been re-

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printed in the BSA's magazine. Morgan also informed his American counterparts that British screenwriters too hoped to introduce royalty arrangements in their contracts with film producers. 35 In the United States, groups and organizations of writers, puzzled as to what precisely the AAA entailed, wrote to the Authors League or its constituent guilds for more information. The Boston Writers Club, for one, wrote to the Authors League requesting that it send someone to speak about the Cain plan at a meeting scheduled for early March; Barbara Hunt, a member of the AWA, had already agreed to present the case against the Authority. Sillcox replied that, since no one at the Authors League supported the AAA, the Boston Writers Club would have to look elsewhere. 36 Sillcox's response betrays her hostility to the AAA at a time well before the League officially took a position on Cain's plan. Similarly, when the Colorado Authors League queried the Authors Guild about the AAA, Christopher LaFarge replied that the AG opposed the plan because of its copyright assignment provision, and because the Guild was convinced that the AAA would violate the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. 37 Not entirely satisfied by this, the Coloradans invited Cain himself to Denver to explain his proposal. He accepted and made a weekend visit to Colorado in mid-January. Judging from the warm letters he received in subsequent weeks, Cain charmed his audience, clarified misconceptions about his plan, but left many still unconvinced that the AAA was a worthy or a workable idea. Eve Bennett Haberl, for one, who had hosted Cain's stay, wrote to h i m that he and his plan were now the talk of Denver. She urged h i m to send her "the finished plan" as soon as the AAA Committee had completed it. While Cain had persuaded many of the AAA's merits, "of course there are those who never intended to be convinced and aren't—but to a man, they say how nice, how sincere and honest and conscientious you are." The Colorado Authors League had decided to delay a vote on the plan until it had seen the corporate structure the AAA Committee was still devising, but Haberl warned Cain that she thought the writers would vote against it, given the "horror of organization" so many of them had. Haberl herself supported the plan. "I am happy and proud to have met you," she wrote, "you are just SO DARNED NICE. . . . Thank you, again and again, for being so wonderful about everything." 38 That Haberl's effusiveness was not simply the result of Cain's unlikely but demonstrable appeal to women is confirmed by other letters from Colorado writers. Harlan Mendenhall, for one, wrote that he had enjoyed Cain's visit "immensely," and that his colleagues were certainly much more in favor of the AAA after Cain's visit than before it. 39

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William Barrett, for another, assured Cain that he had "made a great personal hit with everyone." Barrett confessed, though, that he was skeptical of the AAA, even though "no one could have done a better job" of selling the idea. Barrett's doubts about the AAA resulted from "a number of fundamental things," which he suspected Cain had not fully considered. He pointed out the difference between Hollywood writers, like Cain, who worked under contract, and free-lance book and magazine writers, like himself, who rarely if ever did. Contract writers, Barrett believed, "naturally think in terms of organizing, of banding together to insure that they will be all right if they fall from favor and do not have [their] options renewed"; a free lancer, on the other hand, "takes a very great pride in his own ability to handle his affairs, to protect his rights and to arrange his own future." Free-lance writers did not want to be "organized, protected or lumped together behind a hired fighter." Organizations could get out of hand, and "though they start by serving the individual, they end up dominating him." 4 0 Barrett pointed out that, while Cain had talked to a good many people in Denver who called themselves writers, only a handful were true professionals, like Western author William McLeod Raine, mystery novelist Harlan Mendenhall, and himself. The rest, and by far the greatest number of the members of the Colorado Authors League, were "housewives and people with jobs who write and sell occasionally, or authors of a non-fiction book or two in some specialized field." The professional writers were naturally wary of the AAA, as they would be of "any approach to organization that does not provide them ironclad protection of their personal rights in their literary property." The nonprofessional writers knew little about copyright, subsidiary rights, and the like, and thus had difficulty fathoming Cain's proposal: "Believe it or not, a number of these writers were prepared to support you with great enthusiasm because they believed that you were building an organization that would COMPEL editors to buy the effusions of all AAA members. (That was the real point of the drunk's fuzzy interruptions at your press conference. So many sober people expressed it better, if with more naivete—'But what good is the AAA if it can't SELL stories for its members?') Silly? Okay. That's your public." Barrett found it difficult to oppose "a man so obviously sincere," a man "as patient and as courteous" as Cain had proved to be during his grueling schedule in Denver; but after considering all that had been said and written about the AAA, Barrett had concluded that its dangers outweighed any possible benefit for the individual writer. The AAA's board of directors could become so powerful that they would "dictate rather

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than serve/ 7 "You are sincere and honest/ 7 reasoned Barrett, "so was Kerensky—but after Kerensky came Trotsky and Lenin, after them, Stalin.77 The responses from the writers in Denver, and Barrett 7 s letter in particular, point out clearly the quandary facing Cain and the other supporters of the AAA. The charge that the AAA was Communistinspired, damaging though it was, could at least be confronted directly and refuted to the satisfaction of all but the most fervent anti-Communist. However, Barrett 7 s refusal to countenance any organization that even potentially threatened his professional autonomy proves that such resistance was not limited to the leaders of the East Coast guilds, and it was just such professional writers, as the owners of valuable copyrights, whose support was so necessary if the AAA was to win its inevitable showdown with publishers and producers. Those amateur and quasi-professional writers who did wax enthusiastic about the Authority often did so, as Barrett suggested, because they completely misunderstood how the AAA would operate. This issue, for all the Denver writers, however, was not ideological, but rather philosophical. Barrett, in essence, spoke for many of those writers who believed in the image of the writer as an individual economically and creatively autonomous. Cain hurried back to Hollywood from Denver so that he could attend an important AAA Committee meeting scheduled for January 27. Work on the bylaws and the articles of incorporation had slowed over the Christmas holidays, and Lavery was pushing the committee to finish its work before February 1. He well knew—as Cain had learned in Denver—that the lack of a concrete prospectus was not helping the AAA cause. The AAA Committee decided that the best way to publicize the revised AAA plan would be to publish the articles and the bylaws in a special supplement to the Screen Writer, together with an article by Cain explaining the evolution of the corporate structure, an editorial by Lardner stating the SWG7s position, a question-and-answer section written by Morris Cohn setting out how the AAA would work for writers in different fields, some statement from the "reasonable 77 opposition, various letters supporting the plan, and any other material that would help writers understand what was being proposed. Lavery reported that he had asked Luise Sillcox for the Authors League membership list, so that this supplement could be sent to everyone in the League, and the AAA Committee even discussed holding a press conference at the time of the supplement^ release to put further pressure on the AL leadership to distribute it. Clearly, the AAA Committee was now counting heavily on this pam-

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phlet to win new converts to the AAA from the rank and file of the Authors League, in spite of the resistance put up by its leaders. The AAA Committee then turned to putting the finishing touches on the corporate structure of the AAA. Again, as in its deliberations in late November, most of the changes it made were intended to disarm the AAA's critics and reassure skeptics. Some of the changes were cosmetic: the title of the chief administrator, for example, was changed from "President" to the less imposing "National Director"; similarly, the corporate "Board of Directors" became the more democratic "Board of Governors." 4 1 Other changes were more substantive. It rewrote the bylaw concerning the election of governors to make it difficult for the board to act as a self-perpetuating cabal: terms of office were to be staggered, with two of the four governors from each guild elected in rotation each year for a two-year term; in addition, no governor could serve more than two successive terms. The committee also rewrote the clause concerning amendment, so that the bylaws could be changed only by vote of the memberships of the guilds and the assignors. Finally, the committee agreed to deal with the potential threat Cain had identified in November by requiring authors to sign a statement on assignment of copyright that the material being assigned was not libelous, slanderous, obscene, or otherwise in violation of the law.42 With this, the AAA Committee completed the work begun the previous September by Cain and his colleagues on the Sub-Committee on Organization. The American Authors' Authority at long last possessed a specific and detailed structure. The Authors League office in New York, though, which had hoped that the Licensing Committee's December interim report would effectively derail the AAA, was hardly pleased to see the SWG launching yet another effort to promote the Authority. From its point of view, the AAA merely distracted writers' attention from the preferable approach to achieving licensing—a voluntary pledge system. Thus, a battle royal ensued when the League got wind of the SWG's plans for the special AAA supplement to the Screen Writer. On February 28, with copy already sent to the printer and scheduled for release in early March, the AL Licensing Committee wired Lavery in Hollywood urgently requesting that the supplement not be distributed to anyone until it had had a chance to comment on the revised plan's effect on each of the guilds. The publication of Cain's article the previous July had put the entire licensing program at risk by causing dissension, the Licensing Committee complained, and this second plan only threatened to enlarge this schism. 43 Lavery ignored this rebuke when he wrote Sillcox to say that of

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course the Authors League could draft a cover letter to accompany the supplement, but that he would like to review the text of the letter before it was distributed. "I think you will like the special issue/ 7 he wrote disingenuously to Sillcox; "it is a distinctly League concept and I think will make for great unity throughout the League/' 44 Later that same night, Lavery cabled Marc Connelly in New York that he had just airmailed him page proofs of the AAA supplement, and he instructed Connelly to send him the Authors League's cover letter quickly, since the supplement was to be mailed to SWG members within the week. "It's difficult to see any real danger of a possible split," Lavery reasoned, referring to the Licensing Committee's telegram, "since the members of all guilds have been working on our committee and the League has been kept informed of our work at all times." 45 When the Licensing Committee received the proofs of the AAA supplement, it was so alarmed that, rather than compose a cover letter stating its objections, it immediately demanded that the SWG cancel its distribution, claiming that publication of the supplement would further divide the League or even destroy it entirely. The AL therefore refused to give the SWG its membership list. At this point, the AL Council had yet to choose a successor to Rice, and thus Sillcox was handling most of the League's business. Given her adamant opposition to the AAA, one can detect her hand in the AL Council's demand for the supplement's suppression. This was more than even the usually phlegmatic Lavery could stomach, and on March 5 he sent a long telegram to Connelly, with copies to Sillcox and the presidents of the three other guilds, informing them that he had called an emergency joint meeting of the SWG's executive board and the AAA Committee to consider the Authors League's request. Although he could not speak for either group, he personally opposed cancellation of the supplement; indeed, he would "urge full steam ahead and earliest possible distribution." Lavery did not understand the fear that the publication of the supplement would divide and possibly destroy the League. What was the harm, he asked, in a "frank and public discussion" of the AAA? "For League officials to see in this supplement some devious effort to wreck the League from within is simply fantastic," he declared.46 Lavery advised the councils of the three other guilds to review all of the AAA correspondence from the SWG and challenged them to read into it any such intent. Such a reading would prove that the SWG had never tried to bypass the League; on the contrary, the SWG had made every conceivable effort to involve the League in its delib-

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erations from the start. It had allowed the League to review the supplement and had held up its distribution waiting for the League to supply a cover letter. "If you still insist this is a unilateral run around end on the part of the Screen Writers Guild/' Lavery could only conclude that the recent "New York blizzard must be beclouding somebody's clear vision." The SWG AAA Committee had done its work with the full understanding of the SWG's board and membership, he insisted, many of w h o m were also members of other guilds as well. The AAA had enjoyed more overall support than any other proposition in recent years; thus, the League's fear that publication of the supplement would be divisive made little sense. Indeed, the "only real disaster to the League" would be if its leadership attempted to "smother" discussion of the AAA. "I have full faith in the basic good sense of all members of the League to view this report objectively and to read it in the spirit in which it was offered," Lavery concluded, insinuating that the League office did not share his faith in the judgment of its own members. 4 7 The League had pushed the SWG as far as it would be pushed, Lavery implied. If undeclared war had broken out between the East Coast and the West Coast writers' organizations, the SWG had not fired the first shot. In response to Lavery's wire, the Authors League Council decided to meet on March 11 to air the entire issue of the supplement's distribution. Its members faced a thoroughly muddled situation. A new president had not been chosen since Rice's resignation ten weeks earlier, so Sillcox referred to each of the guild presidents the SWG's request for distribution of the supplement to the entire League membership. Both Christopher LaFarge and Sam Moore had given their permission before they had read the supplement themselves, provided that a cover letter from the League accompanied it; Richard Rodgers, of the Dramatists Guild, had withheld permission until he had seen the supplement, arguing that distribution would imply the DG's approval of the AAA. The Licensing Committee had then asked the SWG to send page proofs to Rodgers. On receiving the proofs, the Licensing Committee itself had requested that the SWG withhold the issue, and LaFarge had withdrawn permission to use the AG's mailing list. Thus, the SWG and the RWG were ready to mail the supplement to their members, but the DG and the AG adamantly opposed the idea. 48 Before this AL Council meeting, Lavery sent supplements to each of its members. He also sent Rodgers a note privately urging him to permit the distribution of the AAA supplement to all DG members. 49 Instructed by the AG West Coast Steering Committee, which

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he chaired, Albert Maltz similarly wrote to LaFarge, warning that the AL Council would "put itself in the unfortunate position of a censoring body over its own membership" if it refused to release the supplement. Even if the Council distributed the articles and the bylaws alone, together with the Licensing Committee's objections to them, the League would "surely face the most bitter charges of censorship at our next general membership meeting and we are afraid it will mean many resignations out here from the Guild." Maltz added that the "level-headed reaction" of the steering committee itself proved that "the League is safe despite any material in the supplement." 5 0 Since two guilds (the SWG and the RWG) were already distributing the pamphlet, both Lavery and Maltz thought it senseless for the other two guilds not to do likewise. Others also registered their protest, most notably radical writer Alvah Bessie, soon to be named one of the Hollywood Ten, who delivered a far more scorching attack on the League than Lavery or Maltz felt it politic to express. He wondered why the AL Council was so "panic-stricken" by the AAA supplement. "I can understand the League and the Authors Guild being sensitive to criticism," wrote Bessie, "but such untoward sensitivity as they now exhibit is surely indicative of the fact that such criticism is warranted." The League had failed so many times that Bessie could not cite a thing it had done for h i m as an author, "except to collect m y dues and send an occasional bulletin possessed of the intellectual caliber and the literary level of a shoe manufacturer's trade paper." In fact, Bessie argued that the Council's opposition to distributing the supplement was self-defeating, for "when an organization of American writers takes such a step as the Council of the Authors League now proposes—and insists upon censorship and suppression of a document drawn up in good faith by its own members and affiliated writers—it has taken a step which signalizes its ultimate bankruptcy." 5 1 However, and predictably, the AL Council endorsed the Licensing Committee's request to quash the AAA supplement and endorsed the decisions of LaFarge and Rodgers to withhold their membership lists from the SWG. LaFarge himself had some second thoughts about complete suppression, and he agreed to notify AG members that copies of the AAA supplement would be available on request at the Guild's West Coast offices, together with a cover letter detailing its "misstatements." 5 2 After the meeting, Marc Connelly returned to his room at the St. Regis Hotel and resigned from the Licensing Committee, having had enough of his "anomalous position" as Lavery's representative

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defending the AAA, which he personally opposed. 53 Robert Ardrey, who had attended the Council meeting as the SWG's representative, wired Lavery the grim news of the Council's decision: Consider situation Authors League Council virtually hopeless. Not more than three members have slightest interest in or sympathy with authority idea. Blind and complete opposition to discussion of any form of assignment of copyright however limited is to me unbelievable. We m u s t in m y opinion understand their attitude as part conservatism, part east coast west coast jealousy, and part something resembling religion which brooks no blasphemy. If you wish details meeting call me. In my opinion their decision to emasculate report represents total defeat for us. 54 The next day, Lavery informed Ardrey that Hector Chevigny, one of the few AL Council members sympathetic to the AAA, had confirmed Ardrey's assessment by telephone, and that Lavery was going to relay Ardrey's wire confidentially to the SWG's executive board and AAA Committee. "The hopelessness of a particular personality who continues to filter everything at the League end," Lavery confided, referring to Sillcox, had made it virtually impossible to persuade the AL Council of the legitimacy of the SWG's position. Despite the actions of the AL Council, he was determined to circulate the AAA supplement as widely as possible while "maintaining publicly a friendly attitude" toward League headquarters. Lavery had no doubt that the members of the Authors Guild and the Dramatists Guild would "clamor," as he put it, for the distribution of the supplement, once they realized what had occurred. 55 Lavery also revealed that he hoped to come east in May to take his seat on the Licensing Committee, replacing Connelly, who had served in his stead. Ardrey, for his part, was so incensed by the attitude of the AL Council that he began to circulate copies of the supplement among his friends in the two eastern guilds. "Rush me a dozen copies of the supplement," he wired the SWG offices on March 15, "am finding rich opportunities for subversion." 56 That same day the SWG announced the forthcoming publication of the sixty-four-page supplement, and in the next few weeks it mailed more than ten thousand copies to its own members, to members of the RWG, and to other interested writers nationwide. In the months after this supplement appeared, the AAA debate percolated anew. Writers continued to praise or damn the Authority

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in the most hyperbolic language, the press hammered away at its dangerous implications and the sinister purposes of its framers, and the guilds endured one more wrangle concerning the Authority, shattering irrevocably the tenuous unity of the Authors League. Cain, for his part, held out little hope that the revisions announced in the supplement would win many new converts. In a letter to Taylor Caldwell written on the same day that the SWG announced publication of the AAA supplement, Cain told the novelist, who had earlier let h i m know of her enthusiasm for his idea, that "the general situation still stinketh," even though Lillian Hellman and a few others on the AL Council had recently championed the AAA. 57 Cain's spirits sank further when he learned that a higher court had reversed Judge Shientag's ruling in favor of the Committee for Action. The Authors Guild's bylaw restricting the availability of its membership list, an appeals court decided on March 21, was perfectly legal. 58 This ended any hope that the SWG would be able to obtain the list against the wishes of the AG Council, and it also made it less likely that the Committee for Action, itself favorably disposed to the AAA, would unseat the leadership of the Authors Guild in the near future. Just how adamantly that leadership opposed the AAA became clear early in April when the Authors Guild Council, after discussing the revised Authority plan in detail, voted to disavow the plan and publicize what it believed to be its many errors and distortions. 59 In the face of all these obstacles, however, the supporters of the AAA within the SWG determinedly pressed their campaign. Having invested so m u c h time and effort, they were unwilling to see the AAA die without a fight, particularly before it had received what they considered to be a fair hearing before writers in each of the guilds. Thus Lavery, Cain, and Morris Cohn willingly agreed when they were asked to attend a meeting of the West Coast regional chapter of the Authors Guild, not to make any elaborate pitch for the AAA, but simply to answer questions. The writer in charge, Albert Maltz, had anticipated a divisive meeting, but it turned out to be a "calm and amiable" session. A small group arrived already in favor of the AAA and a like number came unalterably opposed. The largest number were "neutral with questions," unsure they understood the plan accurately but interested and of open mind. The AAA's advocates argued in the plan's favor, Rupert Hughes spoke several times opposing it, and the undecided group asked many questions. Many then urged a straw poll, even though Maltz had not intended to take a vote. Thus a motion

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was made to support ''the basic design" of the articles of incorporation and the bylaws published in the supplement, which thirty-nine of the fifty writers present approved. 60 Maltz was impressed by the vote. The many skeptical questions posed by the audience convinced h i m that if it had been taken at the beginning of the meeting, the motion would have been defeated soundly; but during the meeting "people listened, discovered that they had come with initial misunderstandings, and went away convinced" of the Authority's value to them as writers. Several days later Maltz apprised LaFarge of the vote, and also his own attitude toward Cain's plan. His eleven-page letter reasonably and cogently stated the case for the Authority, perhaps better than anyone else had. He reminded LaFarge that they had not discussed the AAA before, although he gathered that LaFarge opposed it. Maltz conceded that "no proposition ever got off to a worse start than AAA. It was presented very badly by Jim Cain and it led inevitably to a host of confusions that have now become automatic prejudices against it; and, in addition, it contained bad features." For this reason Maltz himself had been skeptical at first, and while on the SWG AAA Committee he had asked quite a few questions and suggested what he considered to be improvements. Now he was convinced that the revised AAA plan was "reasonable, workable, intelligent, and bright with promise for the economic needs of writers"; he found nothing in it that was "objectionable, unworkable, or dangerous." However, unlike many of the members of the AAA Committee, Maltz did not think it was a simple proposition or one that would be easily effected; he believed, as he had told Cain earlier, that it would take several years' deft handling to rally American writers behind it. 61 That said, Maltz had yet "to hear any sober arguments against it," even though he had discussed the Authority with many of its harshest critics. Invariably, these discussions had ended "in mutual agreement that the AAA seems like a good idea." To those who feared the AAA might become a rogue elephant, Maltz pointed out that the Authority would be entirely a creature of the Authors League; if the League believed it had grown too powerful, the League could simply abolish it. To those who feared that the AAA might involve any kind of censorship, Maltz immediately cited the nondiscrimination clauses in the articles and the bylaws. Maltz confessed that the copyright assignment provision had originally worried him, as it had so many other writers. Now he was convinced that such opposition to the AAA was a matter of "confusion and misunderstanding, not of reality." Cain and the others involved in the AAA had in fact formulated it precisely "to keep

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copyright in the author's hands where now he loses control over it in everyday practice/ 7 He cited the example of magazines' insistence on copyrighting in their own name the short stories and articles they published and reassigning such copyrights to authors only on formal request. 'Tor such authors (including myself) to feel proud of now owning their copyright is absurd/' Maltz lamented, since "the minute we make such a sale we place a part of our ownership in jeopardy." In contrast, the AAA would allow writers "permanent possession of all rights under our copyrights, which we now don't have because we sell them away." Maltz minimized the danger of a writer's losing control of material under the trusteeship arrangement, since the AAA could make no deal without the writer's agreement, and a writer could withdraw altogether if he or she did not like the way the Authority functioned. Maltz concluded by saying that he supported wholeheartedly the Authors Guild's separate campaign for the licensing of motion picture rights, and not "a minute should be lost in carrying forward" with it. Nonetheless, and as he had argued to Cain, Maltz saw no conflict between the Authors Guild's licensing campaign and the AAA. Moreover, the AAA enjoyed the advantage of providing "an instrument that can improve the position of all writers at once—and can be of service to me in dealing with m y book publishers as well as a film company, with a radio company and a magazine editor. It is a means of mobilizing the goals, hopes, efforts, of all the individual Guilds into one master instrument that can work for all writers in all fields and will, by its sheer creation, so qualitatively improve the bargaining strength of writers that many things will then become possible by unified strength that are not possible now." On April 30, the SWG AAA Committee met to plot further strategy. The Committee clung to the hope that the Authors League might be turned from its opposition to the Authority. To this end, a motion was carried to notify the AL of the Committee's desire to discuss the current status of the AAA with the AL Council, "in order that the urgency which we know exists on the part of our members here can, in part, be answered." The Committee also proposed that the Authors League soon hold a seminar on the AAA in N e w York, at which as many League members as possible could learn about the revised plan. A small group from the SWG could attend the seminar to answer questions. 62 The rest of the meeting was devoted to generating support for the Authority from outside the AL structure and so pressuring the League offices in New York. Several ideas were discussed. The Committee arranged a meeting with a group of literary agents to enlist

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their support for the Authority. Cain reported that Robert Shaw, who had succeeded Trumbo as editor of the Screen Writer, had asked for another article on the AAA. Cain had begged off, since he had written two articles already, so Lavery agreed to supply a progress report. The Committee also decided to publicize British support for both licensing and the AAA, first by asking Guy Morgan for a formal statement of the British Screenwriters Association's enthusiasm for the Authority, and also by soliciting George Bernard Shaw, who was known to sympathize with the AAA, for a public comment to that effect.63 Finally, the Committee resolved to send letters to "outstanding individual authors throughout the country" asking their opinion of the AAA, in the hope that support from such writers would further pressure the Authors League. Such efforts proved to be too little, too late. The very next week the Authors League Licensing Committee delivered what turned out to be the coup de grace to the AAA movement: the SWG Overall AAA Committee never met again.

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7. The Muse and the Mug (May-June 1947) I say that plan is infamous and any author who joins it is an idiot. —RUPERT HUGHES

the Authors League Council elected Oscar Hammerstein II to replace Elmer Rice as president of the League. One of Hammerstein's first actions was to reorganize the Licensing Committee, abandoning the "All Presidents" concept and appointing two members from each of the three full-fledged constituent guilds— Marc Connelly and Russel Crouse from the Dramatists Guild; Edna Ferber and Paul Gallico from the Authors Guild; and Eric Barnouw and Kenneth Webb representing the RWG. Noticeably absent were any representatives from the SWG.1 While the "All Presidents" Committee had taken more than four months to issue its brief interim report, the reconstituted Licensing Committee took less than two months to appraise the revised Authority plan, and on May 8 it sent its detailed report, marked "Confidential—Not for Publication," to the Authors League Council.2 In it, the Licensing Committee rejected the AAA, even in its revised form, claiming that, while the AAA's purposes were admirable, it represented an "oversimplified single approach" to achieving them, "namely, assignment to a new organization with certain powers of control; such control, in the opinion of the Committee, in many instances cannot and will not serve." The AAA, according to the report, would only unnecessarily duplicate many of the functions of the Authors League and its guilds, such as enforcement of guild minimum basic agreements and lobbying for more effective tax and copyright legislation. The report catalogued a host of other dubious features of the articles and the bylaws: it considered sinisterly vague the Authority's charge to "reserve, enforce and protect rights arising out of or under copyright"; it viewed with alarm the Authority's power "to censor material and refuse to approve its sale if the board decides that it violates any law"; it believed that some of the Authority's activities might violate the law, and that the plan as a whole might be illegal under the antitrust statutes; it termed IN EARLY MARCH,

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the thirty-day assignment withdrawal provision "ineffective"; and it generally cautioned that "vesting copyright ownership in another" involved "potential risk" for authors. In all, the Committee cobbled together most of the criticisms that had been leveled against the Authority from the start. 3 The Licensing Committee's report then considered how the Authority would, or would not, address the problems faced by each of the guilds. Regarding the Dramatists Guild, the AAA's provision that rights could not be leased for more than a seven-year period conflicted with the theatrical manager's right, under the M i n i m u m Basic Agreement, to a share of the profits from the licensing of subsidiary rights. Any time limit on the producers' participation would violate the MBA. The Committee argued that the AAA would thus jeopardize the "generally satisfactory and workable" MBA that had benefited playwrights for twenty years, and that there was "no apparent reason for change in this field." 4 The report conceded that radio writers faced more difficult circumstances, but it argued that the RWG had already "succeeded in negotiating advantageous contracts for salaried writers" in the field, and that by threatening to strike, the RWG had recently brought the networks to the bargaining table to discuss the conditions for the sale of original material by free-lance writers. The Licensing Committee expected that a m i n i m u m basic agreement protecting such material would soon result, and that free-lance writers would thus in the near future enjoy the protection of such an agreement, enforced by the RWG. It also claimed that most contracts involving the broadcast rights for novels, short stories, and plays already granted only the right to make a limited number of broadcasts and left all other subsidiary rights in the hands of the author. This being the case, the Licensing Committee questioned what additional benefit the AAA could provide. 5 For members of the Authors Guild, the seven-year limit on leases would amount to "a backward rather than a forward step," insofar as all authors desired to keep their books in print for as long as possible. The Licensing Committee predicted that if publishing contracts terminated after seven years, few authors would be likely to find new publishers; even if they could, they invariably would have to settle for a lower royalty. Similarly, in the event that the original publisher renewed the contract, the author could also expect to be offered a smaller royalty. Concerning subsidiary rights, the AG Negotiating Committee had reported that it was confident publishers would agree to substantial cuts in both the amount and the duration of their participation in the profits of such sales. The Licensing

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Committee conceded that writers faced any number of difficulties in their dealings with magazines, but the duration of publication rights was not one of them; in addition, the general-circulation periodicals, for the most part, took little interest in subsidiary rights. The Committee therefore found "nothing in the proposal of the Authority which can be of any aid or which affords any remedy in the publication field as effective as that available with the [Authors] Guild." 6 Finally, the Licensing Committee considered motion picture contracts, accurately distinguishing between contracts for original material, which the studios acquired outright, and those for novels, stories, plays, and other previously published or performed material, for which they acquired screen rights. Admittedly, the motion picture industry was the one group that clung to the "indefensible" practice of acquiring rights for an unlimited duration, as well as claiming a wide range of rights connected with film production. However, the Licensing Committee believed that the SWG itself could best negotiate a standard contract for original material, or that an overall contract for both original material and screen rights to previously published material would eliminate the practice. The Committee thus asserted that the Authors League could win negotiated agreements with the studios; if it could not, it would then have to "use the power of its unified strength to such ends." 7 In sum, the Licensing Committee contended that the AAA offered writers nothing they could not achieve within the individual guilds or the Authors League, and, given the potential dangers and questionable provisions of the Authority, it concluded that it was not worth exploring further. The Authors League Council immediately approved the report and, in stark contrast to its resistance to distributing the AAA supplement, ordered a copy of the report sent to every League member. It also agreed to send a copy to the SWG for comment, but not for revision. 8 Lavery was startled, if not outraged, when he received it. Calling on every bit of his considerable tact and loyalty to the League, Lavery wrote to Hammerstein on May 13. He appreciated the chance to comment on the report before it was published, but he had several questions "about the procedure of the Committee," which he wanted to ask "as briefly and objectively" as he could: Wasn't I a member of this Committee? And if so, wasn't I entitled to participate in the discussions in New York either personally—or by proxy? The minutes of the Authors League Council will show that I

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was appointed to this Committee by Elmer Rice under date of September 18th, and for several months thereafter I was represented by Marc Connelly until he resigned on March 11, 1947. Since that time I had heard nothing from the Committee and had taken it for granted that there wasn't a meeting. I am naturally quite interested in every phase of the Licensing Committee's report and will do m y level best to give you a prompt, fair and candid judgement from this end. But, as a member of the Licensing Committee, I can't help feeling that I was entitled to participate in the New York discussions. 9 Lavery had every right to be furious, but rather than "belabor the point unduly," he simply asked what had become, for him, the central question: "Is it your plan to dispose of AAA completely in the Licensing Committee and League Council or will the individual members of all Guilds have a chance to ballot on it?" The AAA Committee, at its April 30 meeting in Los Angeles, had decided that the only chance for acceptance of the Authority rested with the members of the individual guilds having the opportunity to vote on it; but the Licensing Committee report landing on his desk under the circumstances it did only confirmed Lavery's suspicion that the AL Council was determined to prevent that from happening. Lavery had put the question to Hammerstein so bluntly in order to pressure the Authors League president—who would not have welcomed having to explain it in such terms to his membership—into reevaluating his tactics, if not his strategy. Lavery sent this letter airmail, but evidently it remained m u c h on his mind all night, for the next morning, May 14, he sent a straight cable to Hammerstein raising again his earlier request that the eastern boards receive a delegation from the AAA Committee to discuss the Authority. "Can you advise immediately," he queried, "whether the League intends to follow up the Licensing Committee report with an opportunity for balloting on the AAA in all Guilds?" Lavery stressed that no one on the West Coast had known that the Licensing Committee was still meeting, m u c h less writing a report. "Although this seems a strange lapse of democratic procedure," Lavery again insisted that he would not "stand on formality" and promised that the SWG Board and the AAA Committee would send their response to the Licensing Committee's report quickly. 10 Hammerstein replied that he had been "surprised" to learn that Lavery did not know that a new Licensing Committee had been appointed, since he had assumed that Robert Ardrey had so informed

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him. Hammerstein had considered it wise to reconstitute the Committee, given that the guild presidents had so many other duties. He had appointed six members from the three other guilds, but he had not selected writers from the SWG because he could think of none in New York qualified to serve in such an important capacity. Marc Connelly had been reappointed, but representing the Dramatists Guild. Because he believed the "first duty" of the Committee was "to give prompt and full consideration to the Supplement," Hammerstein had directed it to proceed with its work even in the absence of SWG representation. He intended to appoint two representatives from the SWG to the Licensing Committee soon, and he asked Lavery to send the names of likely candidates. Hammerstein did not explain why he had not asked for this list six weeks earlier, when he had appointed the new committee. He was "truly sorry" that Lavery "had the impression that I had summarily taken you off the old committee," and he acknowledged that he had "no right to assume that Bob [Ardrey] had told you and we should have given you official notice." 1 1 That said, Hammerstein thought it an "excellent idea" for the SWG to send a group east to discuss the AAA, but he warned that few writers would still be in the city after June 15. To Lavery's pointed question concerning a possible vote by the memberships of the guilds, Hammerstein replied that the Authors League Council felt such a vote would be "premature." It did not think League members had enough information about the AAA, and Hammerstein himself was uncertain just what they would be asked to vote on. Would they vote to establish the AAA as described in the supplement? Would this ballot commit those who voted in favor of it to assign their copyrights to the AAA? Or did Lavery simply desire a vote endorsing the general idea of the AAA? Hammerstein hoped that the contingent from the SWG would help resolve these questions when they came east. Hammerstein then turned to a subject Lavery had raised in an earlier letter. 12 Lavery had pointed out that the AAA, as a voluntary trusteeship for the licensing of literary material in all fields, could begin operation by the action of only a few hundred writers; the Licensing Committee's alternative suggestion, however, an overall agreement for original material sold to films, not only dealt with just one market, but it also would be much more difficult to achieve, since it required "the combined action of several thousand writers." It was just this problem that had stymied the SWG's own Licensing Committee more than a year earlier and led it toward the concept of

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the AAA. Thus, an overall agreement respecting the sale of original material for films, to Lavery's mind, would be "the last round in the licensing fight rather than the first round/' Hammerstein disagreed. "You apparently have the feeling," he wrote to Lavery, "that a few hundred writers declaring their intention of assigning their copyrights in trust to AAA would have some major bearing—which I don't understand—on establishing the custom of licensing." He argued that licensing could prevail only if salaried writers as well as copyright owners cooperated, since they wrote original material for their employers and adapted literature in the public domain, under foreign copyright, or already owned by the studios, and by so doing could "spike the entire movement" for licensing. Unless contract writers promised not to work on nonlicensed material, achieving licensing would remain "an impossible task." The studios could be counted on to demand the outright sale of material from all of those writers who did not belong to the Authority. As everyone knew, the motion picture producers "were no crowd of sissies," and they would not give in without a ferocious fight. 13 Hammerstein's analysis made some sense, but he had missed Lavery's basic point. For all the reasons Hammerstein cited, leasing of original material for the movies would be the most difficult aspect of any licensing program, the last battle, not the first. Lavery had simply asserted that the AAA could be inaugurated by a relatively small number of writers, and in that way the fight for licensing be joined. The AL's position, at least in this instance, simply did not parse: it rejected the AAA as too far-reaching and ambitious, but suggested an alternative that would be even more difficult to achieve. Licensing was a worthy goal, Hammerstein agreed, and Lavery should not think he considered it unattainable. If writers on the West Coast had accused those in the East of being "emotional and sentimental" in resisting copyright assignment, Hammerstein felt that the West Coast writers were being "emotional and sentimentally loyal to the AAA." There were some "very hard-headed reasons" why eastern writers had not embraced the Authority. They were not a "bunch of slow-moving fuddy-duddies clogged with fear or laziness or conservatism," he insisted. "We are honestly and sincerely very doubtful about your AAA as the best instrument for winning the licensing fight, whether or not you agree with our doubts, please believe in their honesty." Lavery responded at once to Hammerstein's letter, thanking h i m for his "fair and comprehensive" comments. He did not dispute

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Hammerstein's explanation of how he came to be removed from the Licensing Committee, but he did press again about its report. He formally requested that the SWG AAA Committee be allowed to comment on it before it was circulated. He also thought that " m u c h would be accomplished" if the report was presented as an interim one rather than the Licensing Committee's final word. While Lavery was anxious to have members of the AAA Committee meet with the eastern councils, he did not think he or the other leaders of the AAA fight would be able to leave Los Angeles before June 15, and thus he suggested that the SWG delegation come east for the AL Council's first meeting in the autumn. "We are not die-hards here," Lavery reassured Hammerstein. "We simply believe that the AAA plan was one possible short cut on the road to m i n i m u m basic agreements in all fields, and knowing this field as well as we do, we think there has to be an interim step of some kind and rather soon." 1 4 Lavery's use of the past tense here (the AAA was one possible short cut) suggests that he himself knew that the fight for the Authority was now doomed. While Lavery corresponded with Hammerstein, members of the SWG board and the AAA Committee worked quickly to provide the written response Lavery alluded to in this letter. They finished it on May 22 and promptly sent it to Hammerstein. They first responded to the two principal objections of the Licensing Committee, that the AAA duplicated the functions of the League and the guilds, and that it contemplated an "oversimplified" approach to the complicated problems writers faced in the marketplace. The screenwriters asserted that the articles of incorporation and the bylaws intended the AAA to be an instrument of the Authors League and subordinate to it; if this was not clear in the text of the corporate structure, the AAA Committee would welcome any advice as to how such ambiguity could be clarified. Licensing of rights was an issue that concerned all authors; so, too, did copyright law and the tax code as it affected literary material. No single guild could address these areas by itself, and thus they were the proper concern of the League; yet to date it had been ineffective in fulfilling these functions. The League "has represented little other than a coordinating agency in regards to the Guilds," and thus the question of duplication of responsibility was simply academic, since the League could not conquer these as-yet unaddressed problems "without setting up machinery for the attack." The SWG believed that the AAA provided just such machinery, but however the League chose to implement licensing, duplication would be a problem: "Duplication of energy and jurisdiction of control are not problems confined to considera-

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tion of the AAA. The same problems must be faced, discussed, clarified and settled just as soon as the League establishes any machinery [for licensing] which will effectively satisfy the writer's needs outside of his special field. Duplication seems a problem at present only because so little has so far been done in the direction of satisfying those needs/' 15 Concerning the AAA's "oversimplified" approach to writers' problems, the screenwriters found this difficult to judge, since there were no alternatives with which to compare it. "Until such alternative plans are drawn," they commented, "then the AAA proposal must stand with all the strength—and weakness—of being the only plan." Moreover, the simplicity of the Authority approach to writers' economic problems had always struck its promoters as its cardinal virtue. "If one tool may be used for several purposes," it should be preferred to "several tools each adapted to only one purpose." The report then turned to the more specific objections raised by the Licensing Committee. If it thought that the language mandating the Authority "to protect, enforce and preserve rights arising out of copyright" was dangerously vague, then the AAA Committee would welcome suggestions for tightening it. The plan as presented in the supplement, the screenwriters reminded the Licensing Committee, was merely a proposal and subject to modification; since they did not intend the AAA's powers to be ominously all-inclusive, they would entertain any alternative wording that more clearly delineated them. To the report's charge that the AAA would possess the right to censor material it deemed obscene, the screenwriters stressed that the framers of the bylaws had needed to consider that obscene material might be assigned purposely to the AAA in order to involve it in destructive litigation. The SWG report also rejected the argument that the AAA would "conflict with statutes against the practice of law." The AAA Committee had drawn up the articles of incorporation and the bylaws guided by "sound legal advice"; it was "hardly the intent of the Committee to propose illegal measures." Similarly, the AAA Committee had considered carefully the AAA's status under the antitrust laws and concluded "that the AAA, an organization of a voluntary, nonmonopoly nature, subject to withdrawal of membership, possessed of no powers direct or indirect to enforce a 'closed shop' or in otherwise restrain trade, is on sound legal footing in regard to the antitrust acts." Furthermore, if closed-shop contracts like the Dramatists Guild's MBA were ever struck down by the courts, or were restricted by future legislation, then the theory of "voluntary limited assignment of copyright" embodied in the AAA "may well prove to be a

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second line of defense for writers." Thus, the Authors League's rejection of this theory seemed especially short-sighted. Finally, the screenwriters addressed the question of the "risks" involved in copyright assignment, which from the m o m e n t Cain's plan had surfaced the previous summer had been the League's main stated objection to the AAA. The members of the AAA Committee, all copyright owners themselves, shared this concern that copyrights not be entrusted to an organization in any way "irresponsible, unchecked or unlimited in its powers." The danger of losing control of their copyrights was as "appalling" to them as to any writers. For this reason the AAA Committee, after studying the issue for almost a year, had done everything it could to construct the AAA in such a way as to "enforce responsibility and limitation of power, and as a last resource of the individual author we have introduced the power of revocability." The AAA Committee itself could see no further risk in vesting copyright in the Authority, but it was willing—indeed eager—to discuss additional safeguards if other writers could identify dangers that the Committee had not considered. However, if the screenwriters shared their eastern brethren's concern for copyright, they, "perhaps more than the Eastern members of the Licensing Committee, have been impressed with the emptiness of a copyright from which all the subsidiary rights have been sold." It remained the fundamental premise of the AAA, "that a copyright with all its subsidiary rights intact," jointly controlled by the writer and the Authority, "is a better copyright than one entirely stripped of its powers and still solely in the author's name." Even if the Licensing Committee rejected the machinery of the Authority, the basic theory of voluntary, limited assignment of copyright "can be of such benefit to writers in the solution of problems yet unsolved, and to great measure unattacked," that it was obligated to consider it carefully. Pleading the press of time and their desire to respond quickly to the Licensing Committee, the screenwriters did not exhaustively rebut the Licensing Committee's critique of what the AAA offered the individual guilds. They acknowledged that the seven-year licensing limitation did conflict with the Dramatists Guild's M i n i m u m Basic Agreement, but insisted that "with energy and good will" such problems could be solved. It is surprising that the screenwriters did not go into more detail about the AAA's benefits to each guild, for the Licensing Committee's analysis of the remedies offered by the separate guilds for the problems within their jurisdictions was remarkably sanguine, if not downright naive. The Licensing Committee, for example, had

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claimed that the RWG would be able to win, by negotiating with the networks, a contract advantageous to writers, including provisions for licensing and the separation of rights, a dubious assertion at best, given the weakness of the RWG and the adamant opposition to it within the industry. Similarly, the Licensing Committee placed great stock in the Authors Guild Negotiating Committee's ability to win from the publishing industry a favorable standard book contract. However, as of this writing, the industry has refused to consider any such move. In fact, it was the relative weakness of the guilds in dealing separately with the publishing, motion picture, and broadcast industries that had led Cain and the other framers of the AAA to consider an overall solution in the first place. Thus, the Licensing Committee's claim that the guilds could handle by themselves the problems facing writers simply did not hold up under scrutiny. The screenwriters concluded by stressing that their allegiance was not to the AAA as such, but rather to addressing the needs of writers: "We are not chained to an idea, to a phrase, or to a slogan. We make no religion of the AAA, nor are we dedicated to any such other limited crusade. What we are convinced of—and it is a conviction from which we cannot be shaken—is the inequity that a writer faces in certain fields of his professional life. Help us destroy these inequities, and we will help you, with courage, with imagination, with increasing determination. What road we take is a matter of indifference—so long as we take it together, and it takes us there." The Authors League Council reacted predictably to the SWG's comments. In an increasingly testy exchange of letters during the first two weeks of June, Hammerstein complained to Lavery that the AL Council was "troubled" by the screenwriters' attitude as expressed in their response; moreover, and this would have come as no surprise to the SWG, the League refused to distribute the West Coast writers' reaction to the report. Hammerstein bluntly informed Lavery that there was "widespread, emphatic, and in many cases, violent opposition to the Authority plan" within the League. Few writers in the East supported it. Hammerstein took offense at Lavery's implication in an earlier letter that the League would "take a nice, long sleep over the summer" and by so doing let an urgent issue go unattended. The Licensing Committee, he insisted, would continue to work on a program or formula to achieve the leasing of rights, and he reminded Lavery that it had been the SWG's own decision to wait until the fall to send a delegation to New York.16 On June 23, Hammerstein ordered the Licensing Committee report sent to all League members. In an interview with The New York Times early in July,

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he indicated that a meeting would be held in the fall to hash out the differences between the League and the SWG over licensing. 17 With that, work on the AAA on both coasts ground to a halt. Lavery, for his part, in the June issue of the Screen Writer had tried to put a brave face on the events of the past few months. The Authority plan was gathering momentum, he insisted: more than thirteen thousand copies of the supplement already had been distributed; the West Coast members of the Authors Guild had approved of it; and the revised AAA plan was officially before the member guilds and the AL Council, with votes by the memberships expected in the near future. Lavery relegated to a footnote the information that the Licensing Committee's report was about to be published, and that the AL Council had yet to agree to a ballot on the issue. However, "it would be bad reporting/ 7 Lavery confessed, "to suggest that the AAA is sweeping the country." Many writers still had reservations about the Authority, some reasonable and valid, others irrational. All of the guilds, however, agreed on the goal of licensing. "We in the Screen Writers Guild say, let's stop talking about licensing," Lavery concluded; "Let's begin to license. Let's set a stop-date. Let's have a thorough study and prompt vote on AAA. We still think [the] AAA is the best form of licensing we have seen so far but we're willing to be shown if somebody has found a better way. Let's have alternatives, if any, and let's have them soon—very soon." 18 One can only admire Lavery's restraint throughout the entire episode of the Licensing Committee's report. His lack of egotism, deft advocacy of the AAA, and scrupulous handling of relations with the League taken together confirm that the leadership of the Screen Writers Guild was neither dominated nor successfully manipulated by a militant Communist Party If anyone was being provocative during this episode, it was the Author's League Council—refusing to distribute the AAA supplement, reconstituting the Licensing Committee without informing Lavery, leaving off representatives of the SWG from the reconstituted committee, refusing to make the SWG's comments on the Licensing Committee report public, and obstructing all efforts to allow League members to vote on the AAA. Indeed, throughout the entire AAA controversy, the SWG—including such political radicals as Maltz, Lardner, and Trumbo—acted as reasonable, moderate professionals, judging by all of the documentary evidence still extant. They neither wrote in recognizable Marxist jargon, nor espoused particularly Marxist ideas in their service to the SWG. In this episode, at least, the officials of the League and the eastern guilds, by marked contrast, can be judged guilty only of inefficiency and disorganization at best, self-serving and undemocratic

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actions at worst. If anyone could be accused of cynical political maneuvering, it is they. Just as the SWG was engaged in this damage control operation over the unfavorable Licensing Committee report, it faced an even larger crisis. The House Committee on UnAmerican Activities again entered the scene, menacing the SWG and, indirectly, the AAA. On May 9, the day after the Licensing Committee submitted its report to the Council, J. Parnell Thomas, HUAC's chairman, arrived in Los Angeles to conduct secret hearings into Communist infiltration of the motion picture industry. As noted earlier, such investigative forays into Hollywood had previously met with stiff resistance from the studios themselves, wary as they were of any interference with their affairs. (As Thomas arrived, Louis B. Mayer was heard to mutter, "Nobody can tell me how to run m y studio." 19 ) However, the cracks that had appeared in Hollywood's united front as early as 1944, when the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals had broken ranks by inviting the Dies Committee to look into Communist subversion in the movies, had widened considerably by 1947. Thomas was welcomed with open arms by the MPA, whose members made up the greater number of "friendly witnesses" who streamed into his suite at the Biltmore Hotel to testify about the character and extent of Communist activity in the movie industry. Robert Taylor, Richard Arlen, Adolphe Menjou, Howard Emmett Rogers, James Kevin McGuinness, Leo McCary, and Rupert Hughes all singled out the Screen Writers Guild as the hotbed of Communist activity in Hollywood, according to freely leaked press accounts of the supposedly secret sessions. Hughes, for one, was quoted as describing the SWG as "lousy with Communists today." 20 Richard Arlen, for another, informed Thomas that "the real Reds are among the writers." 2 1 Given HUAC and the MPA's conviction that many of the films Hollywood had been releasing contained left-wing propaganda, it is less than surprising that the writers of these films became the focus of HUAC's investigations. Even Jack Warner, who earlier had shared other producers' distaste, albeit self-serving, for the intrusion of government into their domain, now labeled as Communists a whole list of screenwriters, many of whom, including Emmet Lavery, not only had never joined the Communist Party but actually had opposed it outspokenly. As the Biltmore hearings ended, Thomas concluded that "90 percent of Communist infiltration in Hollywood is to be found among screenwriters." 2 2 Lavery himself denounced Thomas as a mere headline seeker. While admitting that there might be a few Communists in the

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SWG, "as there may be a few Communists in all of the professions and the arts," he emphasized that the SWG accepted all members without regard for their political affiliation. "Writers are always being called Communists," Lavery told the press; such Red-baiting had been "a favorite indoor and outdoor sport for many years."23 Nonetheless, the SWG braced itself for further attacks. The national press had been surprisingly indifferent when the AAA supplement had appeared in March, considering the vituperation heaped on Cain's original plan the previous July. Lavery attributed the initial lack of comment to the new plan's eminent reasonableness; there were few arguments "in law or logic" that could be marshaled against it, and "none of the kind that give comfort to the creators of scare headlines in the five star finals."24 Beginning in early May, however, and prompted by the charges leveled against the SWG during Thomas's visit to Hollywood, critical columns once again filled newspapers across the country. The New York Daily News set the tone for much of the press's reaction with an editorial entitled "Thought Control." It charged that "the Hollywood comrades are rigging up an American Authors' Authority, so-called, to assume absolute power over the literary output" of every writer who joined. Cain himself was not called a Communist, but he was accused "of letting himself be used as a transmission belt for the plans of men and women smarter than he." Referring to the revised AAA plan, the News asserted that the SWG had had "a lawyer dress the scheme up in a constitution and set of by-laws couched in very fancy language indeed," but dismissed the argument that the revised plan had altered the sinister features of Cain's original proposal. Since "Communists and fellow travellers and dupes such as Cain is thought to be have done the spadework and therefore have a long head start toward control," the Authority plan itself was nothing less than "a carefully concocted Red device for getting a stranglehold on book, magazine, radio and movie writing in this country, so that nothing out of tune with Communist ideology can reach the American people." For this reason, the News advised HUAC "to include the AAA in its current probe of Communism in Hollywood."25 The Charlotte Observer echoed the editorial position of dozens of provincial papers when it labeled the AAA "another Communist threat." When the Observer first denounced the Authority the previous September, it claimed that Cain's plan would place every American writer "under the deadening hand of racketeering." The newspaper now feared an even greater danger—that "Cain's organization would be dominated by Communists" who intended to "enslave all creative writers." The means by which this would occur,

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the Observer revealed, was the requirement in the revised plan's bylaws that authors "give power of attorney to the authority to do as it liked with their writing." The Observer then quoted approvingly the comment of a "prominent Charlotte writer," who described the AAA as a "gigantic monopoly" and "hideous in its possibilities," since "the first aim of any Communist program is to corner the market in ideas." 2 6 The Spokane Spokesman Review also advised HUAC to "pay particular attention" to the AAA, which it condemned as the attempt of "a group within the Screen Writers Guild" to "create a monopolistic literary agency to which all American writers . . . would be required to submit their work." In effect, the AAA would have "absolute power over the livelihoods of all authors." 2 7 Syndicated columnists shared these editorial writers' eagerness to brand the AAA a Communist plot; they were similarly unimpressed by the changes announced in the revised plan. "Biblical Cain slew his brother Abel," George Peck pronounced, and "today a gentleman of the same name is out to slay American writers." Peck claimed that Cain's AAA was "undoubtedly to date the most cunning Communist scheme" for subverting traditional American freedoms. Once writers surrendered copyrights to the Authority, they would be at its mercy; they "would have to conform with the ideologies of its Communist bureaucrats or else." Moreover, the AAA would also boycott "any publisher who attempted to do business with any writer who did not hew to the Party Line." In this way, the Communists would "control all ideas in America," and that in turn would mean "curtains" for "The American Way." 28 George Sokolsky—a charter member of the AWA—also was appalled by the revised AAA plan, claiming that it was "as bad or even worse than the original." He argued that the Cain plan remained "an instrument for thought control," authoritarian and obviously unconstitutional. "No plan for controlling thought, writing, ideas, freedom of expression in every form has ever been devised which so completely violates every American principle of life as does the Cain Plan," he warned. The AAA was an attempt to reimpose left-wing hegemony in the American media: "During the halcyon days of the New Deal, left wingers got jobs, not only in government agencies, but in private publishing houses where they used every indecent means available to determine what books, what magazine articles, what motion pictures should be made available to the American people. For several years, distinguished American writers could find no market even in conservatively owned magazines because these pivotally placed left wingers managed to kill t h e m off."29 While

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there had been a "general house cleaning" of these radicals immediately after the war, Sokolsky was convinced that the AAA meant to restore their control over the means of expression in America. All right-thinking Americans should oppose Cain's scheme. A subtle but revealing shift had occurred in the editorials and colu m n s on the AAA that appeared in May and June from those that had greeted Cain's original proposal the previous year. C o m m u n i s m now dominated discussion of the AAA. In the summer of 1946, the AAA had been condemned broadly as "authoritarian," and equated as often with the policies of Nazi Germany as with Communist Russia. By the summer of 1947, less than two years after the end of the war, the allusions to right-wing Fascism had disappeared completely, and only C o m m u n i s m remained as the bete noir menacing American liberties. We can see at work in the controversy over the AAA, then, the historical process by which American animus was redirected from the Fascists of World War II to the Communists, both at home and abroad, an animus that was to dominate American politics and foreign policy for m u c h of the next forty years. 30 Another quality of this press comment is also worth considering: virtually all of it contained distortions or errors of fact about the terms of the revised plan. The editorial writers and columnists seemingly had not even read the articles of incorporation and the bylaws, but rather had relied on comment on them by the AWA and others opposed to the Authority. For example, the AAA would not have been a "monopoly," it would not have "owned" the copyrights it held in trust, it would not have possessed a power of attorney granted by writers, nor would it have had the power to relegate to the back drawer properties of which it disapproved. In short, it would not have been able to control the expression of ideas in America, or to threaten the economic livelihood of writers who did not share the ideology of its board of governors. The opponents of the AAA, by deliberately distorting the specifics of the AAA, themselves willfully resorted to gross falsehood, the Big Lie, to defeat it. If both the Authors League and the national press had turned thumbs-down to the revised AAA plan, what of American writers themselves? The appearance of the AAA supplement spurred many authors to write directly to Cain, almost all in warm support. Screenwriter Arthur Strawn, for example, praised Cain's article in the supplement as "a beautiful statement of the case, lucid, forceful, witty and properly critical of the League, but without bitterness." He added that "the rest of us who write are in your debt" for the "wonderful job you've been doing right along with the AAA." 3 1 Cain replied that he had debated "whether to soft soap or to criticize" the

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League, but in the end had decided "to get the truth out at last: the League has been at it for thirty-five years and accomplished practically nothing/ 7 3 2 Many of the authors who wrote to Cain vented their own displeasure with the leadership of the Authors League. Taylor Caldwell, for one, informed Cain that, at a booksellers' convention in New York, Christopher LaFarge had "stood up and without any provocation on my part, suddenly launched into a personal attack upon me and the AAA to the great boredom of all the good people present." LaFarge had been infuriated that Caldwell embraced the AAA. Others in New York "who have transcendental ideas of what 'an author owes his public'" had also attacked Caldwell because of her views. "Apparently a lot of people think that any author with an alimentary tract and a need for shelter and shoes should conceal these disgraceful needs from a sentimental public," wrote Caldwell. "Mr. LaFarge may be a gentleman," she seethed, "but it is certainly not evident." 3 3 William Mowery, the director of New York University's Professional Fiction Writers' Group, put the case even more bluntly: the League and the Authors Guild were "clique-bound and piffling." Mowery had been a member of the Authors Guild for ten years, but he had resigned "in protest against the autocracy of the League and in disgust with its moribund condition." He shared Cain's analysis of the writer's precarious situation: "In these days of multiple markets and [a] confused copyright situation, there can't be any question that we need some central authority to look after author rights and with the power to stand up against these parties where the author is more or less helpless. It cost me twenty years and the Lord knows how m u c h money to learn m y way around in the jungle of literary rights." Mowery knew of nowhere he could refer writers who had questions about their contracts and other business matters; the Authors Guild itself he thought hopeless in this regard. 34 While Mowery endorsed the AAA wholeheartedly, he had two improvements to suggest. Since a great many writers he had talked to still harbored the mistaken impression that the AAA would negotiate on behalf of writers, he thought it necessary to make it even more "plain and emphatic" that the AAA would not so act, nor would it be empowered to refuse any deal an author had negotiated unless it violated the rules of the AAA. He advised that an appeal procedure might "promote a feeling of security among authors" in this regard. Also, he believed the AAA should place more emphasis on the basic licensing principle and deemphasize the time limitation of such a lease. If relicensing after seven years were to become practice, Mowery feared that it might cut down the amount of new

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material licensed by publishers and editors. For example, if a magazine was licensed to publish a certain serial once, and then several years later a different magazine could publish the same serial, "authors would find themselves in the position of competing with their old work, and new authors would have hard sledding indeed." This was informed and constructive criticism, based on an accurate reading of the bylaws proposed in the supplement; Cain could only have wished that the AAA had received more like it. Phyllis Gordon Demarest, another New York writer disenchanted with the Authors Guild, let Cain know that, after staying up half the night to read the supplement, she was more enthusiastic than ever about the plan. She deplored the "name-calling" that had become so m u c h a part of the AAA controversy. "I am a registered Republican," she told Cain, "but I fail to see that protecting an author's rights, putting honestly earned money in his pocket, is Comm u n i s m . " Demarest applauded Cain's "strength and moderation" and felt certain that "if we all put our brains together and work patiently and tirelessly something truly worthwhile and workable will come out of this thing," regardless of the League's opposition. If so, "all writers will live to thank you." 3 5 As part of the AAA supplement, the SWG had included a brief questionnaire asking writers for their opinion of the Authority and encouraging t h e m to send any detailed commentary directly to Emmet Lavery. Given all the fuss surrounding the AAA, the AAA Committee m u s t have been disappointed by the response: only 115 writers returned the questionnaire, with 86 approving and 29 opposing the plan. That so few of the thousands of writers who received the supplement bothered to reply suggests as nothing else the ebbing of interest in the AAA by the spring of 1947. Nonetheless, many authors did take the time to write to Lavery, most voicing their support, and many sharing the suspicion now prevalent within the SWG that the Authors League was not up to the challenge of fighting writers' battles. Leane Zugsmith stated simply that there was "no use asking the Authors Guild [to discuss the AAA]; our council is opposed to permitting Eastern members meeting more than once a year." 36 Earl Conrad, also writing from New York, encouraged the SWG to "keep trying to reach writers in the sticks, strangely and unfortunately under the influence of the moribund clique running the Authors League in N e w York." 37 Stefan Heym, one of the founders of the Committee for Action, predictably expressed this same opinion: "We will never get anywhere with the present administration in the Authors Guild," he wrote on his questionnaire; thus, the "prime condition for success of AAA is

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ousting of Stout-LaFarge machine/' 3 8 Just as predictably, Alvah Bessie lashed out at the AL Licensing Committee's report, claiming that the Committee, "acting under the obvious inspiration of the Authors League Council," was "doing its level best to kill AAA" before it got off the ground. Bessie urged the SWG to protest the undemocratic nature of the Licensing Committee, given that the SWG was not represented on it. He also thought that the SWG should demand that the League set up licensing machinery of its own if it considered the AAA unworkable. 3 9 Other writers, in supporting the AAA, attacked not the League but the Red-baiters who opposed the Authority. Jean Bordeaux, writing from Kentucky, put it most pithily: it was "time someone trimmed the horns off [Bennett] Cerf and the rest of those bastards who call 'Communist 7 at everyone who disagrees with them." 4 0 Thomas A. Dickinson agreed with Bordeaux and advised that, "to offset most of the unfavorable publicity that has appeared, I suggest that the American Authors' Authority name be abandoned. Use something like the Elected Representatives of Republican and Democratic Authors of the United States—and let the newspapers play with that awhile." 4 1 Other writers expressed their opposition to the AAA just as emphatically. Ernest Haycox, who belonged to the AWA, voiced the fear of many in that organization that the AAA would inevitably become authoritarian. "The intemperance of Mr. Cain's original proposal" had convinced Haycox that even in its revised form the AAA posed a grave danger. "My objection is to the philosophy of force" that still permeated the plan, he wrote, "no matter what softening has been applied since." Haycox's suspicions had also been raised by the SWG's embrace of the Authority, since he "did not care for the political tendencies" of many of the Guild's members. 42 Vardis Fisher, writing from Idaho, echoed Haycox and complained that "this country has become so odiously commercialized that some of you people seem to see all forms of writing wholly in commercial terms." Fisher believed that "there m u s t be complete protection of art and artists within the machinery" of any organization set up to exploit the commercial value of literature, protections which the AAA did not guarantee; thus, Fisher could only conclude that "only an author who is an utter idiot would think of accepting" the bylaws as written. 4 3 Alfred Sinks, a member of the Authors Guild from New York, thought that the AAA was unnecessary, since licensing could and should be achieved by individual authors. He disagreed with one of the major premises on which the Authority rested:

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Hollywood may be different but here in the East writing is still something of a craft if not an art. The prices and terms an author gets, in fact all his relations with the buyers of the stuff he writes, are highly individual matters. We have good publishers and bad ones and we have a lot of in-betweens. If we're good enough to peddle our own stuff to the good ones, we skip the others. The grievances you complain of exist and we all know it, but we also know that they are not universal. If they were universal, it would be different. . . . On the whole, I'm afraid I must agree with the Authors League Council in feeling that the AAA scheme is based on insufficient understanding of the writer's craft and his relation to his market. 44 Thus, Sinks rejected Cain's assertion that writers were hideously exploited in the marketplace. He insisted that writers should not abandon control of their business affairs without overwhelmingly good reason. Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the Tarzan series and other popular adventures, saw no advantage "in paying someone to do what I can do for myself." For thirty-five years he and his staff had successfully handled all of his rights, and he doubted the AAA or any other organization could do it any better. 45 It was an argument the SWG heard often. William Pratt, for example, after scrawling "Nix on the AAA" across his questionnaire, added, "I'm a big boy now, can handle my own affairs." 46 Finally, a few writers chose to argue ad hominem rather than discuss the Authority itself. Marie Armstrong Essipoff, of Terryville, Long Island, opposed the AAA because she distrusted "the source of the matter (Mr. Cain and his well-known leanings)." 47 Alfred Campbell of Lambertsville, New Jersey, went so far as to suggest that "Mr. Cain and his friends submerge their heads in buckets of water for at least ten minutes. That should solve everything." 48 Such comments could be dismissed as the rantings of kooks. The public opposition of such persistent foes of the AAA as James T. Farrell and the American Writers Association, however, was far more worrying. Farrell, for example, argued against the AAA whenever and wherever he could. It was typical of him that, when in April a writer named Ward Moore, who identified himself as a fellow Trotskyite, asked h i m why he opposed such an apparently progressive idea as the AAA, Farrell replied with yet another denunciation of the Authority, this one running to some six typed pages. Moore had written that the Cain plan seemed to be a commendable first step toward a "genu-

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ine trades union for writers/ 7 The only thing to give h i m pause had been the attacks on the plan by Farrell and other "Socialists and anti-Stalinists/ 7 If there was no objection to the AAA other than its possible domination by Stalinists, Moore had asked, "would it not be better to adhere to it and muzzle the CP members and their dupes?" An alliance of the "genuinely revolutionary" elements and the "conservative rank and file" within the Authors League could "overwhelm any possible combination of fellow travellers." 49 Farrell replied that Moore had "confused" himself by regarding the AAA as a proposal for a trade union; the AAA had nothing to do with the wages, hours, or working conditions of the "hired writer," Farrell corrected. He opposed the AAA not because it had been "advanced by Stalinists," although this was alarming enough, but because he "opposed any sacrifice of copyright" to a "powerful and bureaucratically controlled organization of writers." In essence, Farrell disagreed utterly with Moore's characterization of the AAA as a progressive step. "I find the whole proposal still objectionable," he concluded. 50 While Farrell pressed his attack from the left, conservative writers continued their own assault. The AAA Committee had hoped to convince conservatives of the Authority's value, or at least to blunt their criticism, by revising the plan to meet such objections, but the supplement failed utterly in this regard. For example, John Dos Passos, who in the late forties savaged the American Left with the fervor of his political apostasy, condemned the AAA as, quite simply, "Communist inspired," a clear "campaign to destroy the American form of government and with it, all free institutions." 5 1 Too many American writers "remain ignorant of or indifferent to the political movements that are shaping the world we live in," and thus play into the hands of "the fanatical Communists who do their work behind the Screen Writers Guild and the Hollywood center of proSoviet propaganda." According to Dos Passos, non-Communist writers needed to stop acting as "willing dupes" and begin "to meet and thwart the Communist putsch at every level." 52 Dos Passos had eagerly joined the American Writers Association over the winter, and he endorsed wholeheartedly its analysis of the revised AAA plan, which Rupert Hughes released to the press in early May. Hughes, who had taken over from John Erskine as president of the AWA, also dismissed the changes made in the Authority proposal. The corporate structure published in the Screen Writer was "entirely in conformity with the original Cain document," Hughes alleged, and "the dangers of the scheme have been even more starkly revealed." The plan had not been "revised, but simply translated into

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a legal d o c u m e n t / ' and "the fears aroused by the original proposal are justified, and in some cases, deepened by the more detailed document." The Authority would be "both a holding company and a closed shop," and the new plan still rested on "a total surrender by the writer of his property in his works." The proponents of the AAA meant "to control the market and to dictate to everyone concerned." While such power would be dangerous if wielded by any political group, "it happens to be a notorious fact that those who hatched the plan and those most energetic in pushing it are of the proCommunist persuasion." For these reasons, the AWA could only condemn again the AAA, even in its revised form, as "dictatorial and monopolistic and the brainchild of Communists and their fellowtravellers." 53 Hughes had made it something of a personal crusade to defeat the AAA, serving as point man for the AWA, leading the opposition to the AAA at the AG meeting in Hollywood convened to discuss the plan, and publishing a number of attacks on it throughout the spring of 1947. E. C. Mills, the general manager of ASCAP, who had previously offered his support to Cain, wrote to Lavery in early June that he had noted Hughes's efforts to derail the Authority and thought Lavery might like to know that Hughes's opposition was "inconsistent with his own personal established practice." Mills pointed out that Hughes had been "a very valuable and a very loyal member" of ASCAP for years; as such, he had executed many times "an outright, complete and irrevocable assignment to ASCAP exclusively, to license throughout the entire world, the non-dramatic performance rights of every musical composition of which he might be author of the words and/or music." The ASCAP bylaws gave the organization the exclusive right to fix the rates under which Hughes's material could be licensed. In addition, Hughes had agreed as a condition of membership to adhere to the bylaws of ASCAP, which gave to its board of directors the exclusive right to determine policy and manage its affairs. Mills had "no wish to embarrass Mr. Hughes," but he merely wanted to expose his inconsistency: "the very points he urges in opposition to the AAA plan are inherent in the ASCAP policy and operation," which Hughes had enthusiastically supported and benefited from through the years, and he had never accused ASCAP of "Communist intent or plot." Mills hoped that this information might "rather weaken the fire or effect of Mr. Hughes's opposition, which presently seems rather potent." 5 4 Lavery, thankful for any ammunition at this point, asked Mills for permission to publish his letter, since it made "a very cogent point, and we are glad to have it." 55 Mills replied that what he had written

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on June 10 was a matter of "incontrovertible fact." Mills had only the "friendliest feelings toward Mr. Hughes/ 7 and he hoped that if Hughes was "shown the inconsistency of his position, and convinced of the bona-fides of the AAA intent he might change, or perhaps reverse his attitude." Mills suggested that Lavery invite Hughes to lunch, point out his inconsistency, emphasize the value of the AAA, and "hope for a complete and public conversion." Mills believed that Hughes was a "big enough man . . . to reverse himself if he can be made to see it that way." If this approach did not work, Mills would then consider Lavery's request to publish his previous letter, even though it might be misconstrued as an attack on Hughes's integrity. 56 There is no evidence that Lavery and Hughes ever lunched; if they did, Hughes remained unconvinced. His subsequent attacks on the AAA grew even fiercer and more personal. In an interview with Frederick Woltman of the New York World-Telegram in late June, he described the AAA as an "attempt to Stalinize American literature." Hughes called the plan "infamous" and branded any writer who joined it an "idiot." The revisions in the AAA had not impressed him; "it's still the old wolf in granny's costume," he snorted. He did not understand why "there should be an authority of some writers over other writers." Cain, on the other hand, believed that "writers should discipline each other, hold a whiplash over each other." Hughes insisted that "art, works of imagination or whatever you call it, are gambles," citing the case of Lloyd C. Douglas, the obscure minister whose best-seller Magnificent Obsession had been rejected by fifty-one houses before a small religious publishing firm had accepted it, subsequently making Douglas a fortune. "How can you unionize gifts like that?" asked Hughes. "I'm all for labor unions," he added, "but authors don't belong in them." The AWA, he explained, was "anti-Communist and anti-totalitarian," and C o m m u n i s m was "the nearest thing to pure Fascism we've got today." Cain and Lavery had both protested vigorously that they were not Communists, Hughes conceded, and he himself did not know who was a Communist and who was not. "All I say," he added, "is if anyone runs with Communists and preaches C o m m u n i s m he's one, whether he calls himself a hypochondriac or a Zulu." 5 7 Hughes's attacks on the AAA and its advocates represented the apotheosis—or the nadir—of the anti-Communist critique of the Authority by American writers. He expressed what we can call the political objection to the AAA. The other main argument made by writers against the AAA we can call the professional one, and it found its best expression in a newspaper column, "The Right to

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Starve/ 7 by novelist and screenwriter Philip Wylie. For Wylie and the many others who shared his view, the AAA seemed dangerous not so m u c h because of its political implications, but because it involved a definition of the writer's identity at odds with their own deeply held beliefs of what a writer was and did. Wylie defined the birthright of all authors as "freedom—freedom from every interference, to write what they think and feel in the most artistic forms they are capable," and it was just this birthright that Hollywood screenwriters had exchanged for wages: "they give up their liberty; they let the studio determine what shall be written—and they take in return a fortune, or a chance for one." 5 8 Wylie himself had made such a bargain and, given the exorbitant salaries paid to screenwriters, he judged it a fair exchange. However, some screenwriters were "too immature emotionally" to stick to the bargain they had made. They sought to recover the liberty they had sold, but since they were unwilling to abandon their studio paychecks, "they turn that conflict in themselves into a hatred of [the] commercial enterprise which has lured them—and, finally—all commercial enterprises." Some of these "tormented people" turned to the Communist Party "in an attempt to keep the illusion that they are still free men, still champions of liberty and the underdog." Wylie recalled one such wealthy Communist who, as he left a Hollywood cocktail party to walk a picket line, was asked by another guest, "What are you going to do, Fred? Stop your limousine and have your chauffeur throw a buck?" Wylie did not quarrel with the right of such screenwriters to organize a union, as they had in the 1930s. He did object, though, to their attempt, through the AAA, "to force their status [as hired writers] on free speech, take charge of the printed word, and beat to silence any voice but their own." Wylie had just read the AAA supplement with horror. It proposed "to reduce the temple of literature to politics, and commerce, to labor, commodity, a trust." Any writer who embraced the AAA would therefore prove "that he had lost contact with the meaning of man's struggle for liberty, that he did not understand his function in relation to free speech, that he thought of himself as a hack, and that he was not even smart financially. It is a remarkable pamphlet. It does not argue; it sneers. It does not appreciate the deep psychology that makes a writer tick—but jeers at it. It sounds parliamentary and democratic with a first look; with a second, it has the hollow ring and bad odor of the Soviet constitution." Wylie simply could not fathom this attempt by the Screen Writers Guild "to syndicalize free speech." He asked: "What novelist ever wrote on wages? What poet, under union rules?" Wylie would will-

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ingly return to Hollywood if offered a contract, and would probably accept the protection of the SWG. "But when I write my own column—or my own story—or my own books—I m u s t be on my own, or I am less a man and less an author," he insisted. "The right to starve," Wylie concluded, was "sacred and the risking of hunger in defense of h u m a n freedom man's noblest enterprise." Cain had little tolerance for such arguments, as seen when he had ridiculed James T. Farrell's allegiance to "anarchy" and "untrammelled freedom" the previous a u t u m n in the Saturday Review. Wylie's impassioned defense of the author's "right to starve," his assertion that writers must remain impervious to all commercial considerations if they were to survive as artists, struck Cain as similarly ludicrous. Such a view of the profession of authorship, noblesounding as it might be, simply did not conform to the realities of the writer's situation in the twentieth-century marketplace, as Cain and the other supporters of the AAA perceived them. For Wylie and so many others who opposed the Authority, a writer was no longer a writer but merely a hack if he or she abandoned creative control at any stage. This was a Manichean view of the writer's trade. Moreover, such critics had great difficulty in divorcing the commercial dimension of writing from the act of creation itself. A loss of autonomy in one realm threatened a loss of autonomy in the other. It was not surprising that Wylie railed specifically against screenwriters who, while sitting around "swimming pools and barbecue pits," complained that they were mere victims of a bad bargain, having sold their "birthright" for a "mess of pottage." The scores of American novelists and playwrights who traveled to Los Angeles beginning in the early 1930s to work in the film industry had quickly learned that nowhere was writers' traditional image of themselves as independent, creatively autonomous artists more threatened than within a Hollywood studio. There, writers were not valued for their individuality, but for their willingness to work as part of a team. In fact, screenwriters were often discouraged from expressing their creativity; rather, they were exhorted to reproduce, with slight variation, scripts that had already proved successful at the box office. Most disastrously from their perspective, writers lost all creative autonomy; they had little choice in screenwriting assignments and, in short, their scripts were not their own. The entire process was thought by many in the eastern literary community to be demeaning and corrupting, and so arose the notion that working in Hollywood destroyed that which made a writer a writer, rendering h i m or her incapable of serious work. Edmund Wilson expressed just this view when he wrote:

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What shining phantom folds its wings before us? What apparition, smiling yet remote? Is this—so portly yet so highly porous— The old friend who went west and never wrote? 5 9 Few writers were actually destroyed as artists in this fashion during the 1930s. Most who worked in the studios, including Cain, did find it an unpleasant or at least a disquieting experience. However, this was not because they felt themselves prostitutes, or feared Hollywood would destroy their talent, but rather because they recognized that in the American film industry they confronted the type of institutional structure—the modern American business corporation—that would come to dominate other areas of the literary marketplace, and that by its very method of operation could not afford writers the same privileges and deference they had enjoyed in the past, particularly in the 1920s. It made sense, then, that it would be the screenwriters who, anticipating these changes in the marketplace, attempted to co-opt them. Cain, for his part, agreed wholeheartedly that a writer's freedom and independence were worth fighting to preserve, but he found the notion of "freedom'' espoused by Wylie and the others chimerical. By inaccurately characterizing the AAA as a union, its critics could express their opposition to the image of the writer as a worker, but Cain himself continuously argued that the AAA was necessary if writers were to avoid the worst consequences of that position by holding onto their literary property whenever and wherever possible. For Cain suspected, and subsequent events proved him right, that in the postwar marketplace writers were increasingly to be workers—in movie studios, universities and other schools, on magazine and newspaper staffs, and even as hired hands employed by publishers to turn hot concepts dreamed up in editorial conferences into marketable prose. Additionally, while Wylie, Farrell, and the others made m u c h of the distinction between "hired" and "independent" writers, Cain and the other AAA supporters argued that this distinction would, in the postwar marketplace, inexorably become blurred, as writers worked for a time under contract and a time for themselves. In short, in the response to the AAA by the writing c o m m u n i t y itself we can see two groups of writers talking past each other, often using the same words but rarely meaning the same thing by them. The debate over the AAA demonstrates, if nothing else, just how woefully unprepared American writers were to confront the challenges awaiting them in the modern literary marketplace.

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8. The End of the AAA You would have thought I had stabbed Truman. —JAMES M. CAIN

EVEN AFTER ANY REALISTIC CHANCE for its success had long passed, the AAA continued to provoke hard feelings. During the summer of 1947 and well into the autumn, the promoters of the Authority stubbornly defended the need for and practicality of such an organization, even as they abandoned hope of establishing it in the near term. For this reason, it took several months after the negative Licensing Committee report for the guilds to close their AAA files. Close them they did, though, and after all the brave words, inflammatory accusations, and dire warnings that swirled around the AAA, it ended with a whimper, not a bang. During the summer, George Bernard Shaw, of all people, stirred the cauldron one more time. When in the spring the AAA's proponents had been searching desperately for leverage in their struggle with the Authors League Licensing Committee, Emmet Lavery had written to Shaw, whose business acumen was famous on both sides of the Atlantic, requesting a statement sympathetic to the AAA for the Screen Writer. Shaw's reply gave the AAA a curiously qualified endorsement and also attacked the moribund leadership of the Authors League. The League had proved its incompetence in dealing effectively with writers' problems time and again, Shaw inveighed, and American authors could "shake the dust" only by forming a new organization to cope with their difficulties. Shaw had also announced that he would join the AAA if and when American playwrights adopted a minimum basic agreement that called for the author to receive sliding-scale royalties for all productions, including amateur and charitable ones.1 This was out of line with contemporary practice, since the MBA in force at the time called for disposal of many subsidiary production rights by fixed-sum payment, shared between playwright and manager. Shaw had skirmished with the Dramatists Guild over the production of many of his plays on Broadway, and he

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had often made it known that he disliked the American MBA. Lavery understood, even if Shaw did not, that such m i n i m u m basic agreements would remain the province of the Dramatists Guild even if the AAA went into effect; the Authority would merely adhere to the m i n i m u m terms set out in the MBA. Having solicited Shaw's letter, Lavery felt obliged to run it in the Screen Writer, even though he knew it would not sit well in the East and did not make an accurate or effective case for the AAA. All he could do was allow Oscar Hammerstein a rebuttal, in which he predictably maintained that the Dramatists Guild had a good record in representing its members and disputed Shaw's implication that conditions were better in the British theater for authors. "If an author is hesitating/ 7 Hammerstein wrote, "between joining Mr. Shaw's version of the American Authors' Authority or casting his lot with the Guilds of the Authors' League of America, I would suggest that we have better pies to sell at our counters." 2 There the matter rested, Shaw's letter having done nothing but further irritate Hammerstein and the other League leaders. During the summer of 1947, the leaders on both coasts all but stopped communicating. Lavery did not write to Hammerstein for several months, after weekly and sometimes daily correspondence with New York for most of his tenure as SWG president. He wrote only two very brief letters to playwright Jerome Chodorov, who in May had taken over representing the SWG on the Licensing Committee in the wake of the fiasco over Lavery's nonparticipation in its previous deliberations. In the first of these letters, Lavery confessed that he could only assume, as of July, that Chodorov had been officially appointed to the Licensing Committee, since he had heard nothing from Sillcox. In any case, he sent along the AAA supplement from the Screen Writer and a few other items explaining the SWG's position on the Authority. Lavery hinted of the ill-feeling generated by the SWG's exclusion from the Licensing Committee by stressing to his new representative that "a report in which only three guilds participated is hardly a League report." Above all, the screenwriters wanted a licensing program, Lavery wrote, and "didn't insist it m u s t be the AAA," but Lavery remained convinced that the League had no better one to offer.3 Chodorov wrote back to Lavery on August 6, relating that he had missed one meeting of the Licensing Committee, but had attended a second. Chodorov was an alert, skeptical, and somewhat cautious man, thus it came as no surprise to Lavery that the playwright in New York felt the AAA had been oversold by its promoters. Chodorov detested m u c h of the criticism leveled against the AAA, particu-

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larly the Red-baiting. He also "believed violently in licensing/' volunteering his time to help devise a practical scheme to achieve it—one that would not tear the guilds apart, dooming the entire effort to failure. Based on his own experience on the Dramatists Guild Council, Chodorov believed that an organization as powerful and effective as the AAA was still "a long way off."4 Lavery agreed that the crucial issue was licensing, and not the specific means used to achieve it. The SWG was "genuinely and amicably interested" in the work of the new Licensing Committee and had never been "wedded to one formula" for licensing. "We did believe that AAA might work," wrote Lavery, "and we thought that if we submitted a complete formula, the League would have to better it if it wished to discard AAA." 5 Lavery thus remained emotionally loyal to the AAA, even if resigned to its defeat. He had also lost much of his equanimity in meeting the charges that he himself was a Communist or a dupe, many of them leveled during the AAA controversy. The final straw for Lavery had been a debate in early September on ABC's popular broadcast "Town Meeting of the Air." On the show, Mrs. Lela Rogers, the mother of Ginger Rogers and one of Hollywood's self-appointed Communist hunters, asserted that The Gentleman from Athens, Lavery's play about Socrates, contained thinly veiled Communist propaganda. Lavery denied the charge and eight days later filed a two-million-dollar libel and slander suit against Rogers and the program's producer. 6 By late September, these matters, however, were at least temporarily shelved as the SWG, and all of Hollywood, focused again on a HUAC hearing room. On September 21, HUAC subpoenaed forty-three members of the film industry to testify in Washington the following month. Nineteen of the left-wingers subpoenaed, including sixteen writers, announced that they would refuse to cooperate with HUAC and were dubbed the Unfriendly Nineteen. Of those nineteen, eleven actually testified in late October. One who did, Berthold Brecht, left the country shortly after his appearance before HUAC; the others, the Hollywood Ten, were later jailed for contempt of Congress. Lavery, as president of the SWG, was also subpoenaed, and initially he perceived the HUAC hearings as an opportunity "to project what the Guild was really like and to explode HUAC's accusations with truth"—that is, to refute the charge that Communists dominated the SWG. 7 Thus, Lavery counseled caution. He urged the executive board to turn down the Unfriendly Nineteen's request for financial support from the SWG; he recommended instead that the Guild defend the principle of free expression in the motion picture industry, but not

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the actions or beliefs of individual members. Lavery testified before HUAC in Washington on 29 October 1947, a week after conservative screenwriter Morrie Ryskind had testified that the SWG, under Lavery's leadership, was "Communist controlled/' and just two days after Lela Rogers had told Thomas and his committee that Communist screenwriters were filling the screen with left-wing propaganda. 8 The first six unfriendly witnesses had been gaveled to silence and cited for contempt of Congress. Cole, Lardner, Trumbo, and the other screenwriters among the Unfriendly Nineteen felt betrayed when Lavery, after what they considered a perfunctory defense of intellectual freedom, expressed the SWG's willingness to cooperate with the Committee. Lavery appealed to HUAC not to make martyrs of the Communists and encouraged it to take a more "positive approach to rid the country of un-Americanism by building a better America and extolling its virtues." There were Communists in Hollywood and in the SWG, Lavery admitted, but HUAC was grossly distorting their influence. 9 Lavery's refusal to support the Unfriendly Nineteen before HUAC was not caused by any sympathy with HUAC's aims and methods, which were as repugnant to h i m as to most other liberals and progressives in Hollywood. Rather, he had judged that a disunited SWG simply did not possess the strength to take on Thomas's committee in the full glare of national publicity. Too many Guild members feared—as we have seen with good reason—not only that HUAC held the power to destroy individual careers, but that one of its targets was the SWG itself. Moreover, the HUAC hearings occurred just as the Guild was in the midst of yet another divisive election, which in 1947 involved nothing less than an attempted purge of radicals in its leadership positions. By the time that HUAC's subpoenas arrived in late September, a large group of moderates and conservatives had already organized an "All Guild" slate of candidates meant to unite all but those on the political extremes. Sheridan Gibney, a much-respected veteran screenwriter, was drafted to run for the presidency as someone who could win the support of all factions. One issue became the focus of the campaign: the Taft-Hartley Act, passed just that summer, required that all officers of labor organizations sign pledges certifying that they were not members of the Communist Party or else such organizations would lose the services of the NLRB in conducting representation elections and ruling on unfair labor practices. The All Guild slate believed that the SWG's officers should sign such pledges; a rival radical slate argued

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that this clause was an unconstitutional violation and should be defied. Implicit throughout this debate, however, was the All Guild's desire to purge the Guild of its radical image. Thus, when Lavery testified before HUAC, he was concerned above all that the Unfriendly Nineteen might be treated so unfairly that they would garner sufficient sympathy to affect the Guild election, set for November 20. This might happen, he warned HUAC, "if people thought the Government had interfered more than was necessary in the normal operations of the Guild/ 7 1 0 Back in Hollywood after his testimony, Lavery campaigned for the All Guild slate, arguing that the screenwriters among the Nineteen had severely damaged the Guild by linking it with C o m m u n i s m in the public mind. Thomas's committee posed a real threat to the Guild, and the Nineteen were only making matters worse. The All Guild slate won convincingly in the event, and the SWG steered a distinctly cautious—some charged, timorous—course for the next few years. Their victory brought little satisfaction to Lavery and the other moderates, though, since it signaled the breakdown of consensus within the Guild, the end of the alliance between the Center and the Left. All factions but the most extreme right wing of the Guild had coalesced around Cain's plan for the AAA, but this promising unanimity now lay in tatters. The Guild approached its 1949 negotiations with producers over the renewal of the MBA, set to expire in 1949, in a severely weakened position. For Lavery, it was a disappointingly fractious end to what had been a dynamic and often effective presidency. For all his patient effort on behalf of the AAA, which he genuinely supported as the best hope for writers to achieve licensing, Cain's plan was all but buried, and the conception of the SWG itself as a nonpartisan, purely professional organization, an idea to which Lavery had remained steadfastly loyal, had been discredited. The SWG's long-term goals— more creative control and economic participation for its members—seemed further away that they had been when the Committee on the Sale of Original Material had begun its deliberations two years before. Lavery breathed a sigh of relief as he relinquished responsibility for the Guild in November. He returned to New York to oversee the production of his new play, The Gentleman from Athens, which, like his earlier Broadway hit about Oliver Wendell Holmes, Lavery told reporters was a "tribute to the democratic process." 11 Cain's own involvement in the AAA and the SWG ended at about the same time. His life changed dramatically in 1947, and by late spring he had already distanced himself considerably from the Guild

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and its advocacy of the AAA. Soon he was to distance himself from Hollywood itself. For much of the year he waited impatiently for his divorce from Aileen Pringle to come through so that he could marry Florence MacBeth. They wed quietly in September. Cain determined to make a new start in his writing as well—he would abandon both screenwriting and most journalism to devote himself to writing novels. He left Los Angeles after Thanksgiving, never to return, and spent the last thirty-two years of his life as something of a recluse in a suburb of Washington, D.C. In a June letter to Stefan Heym, Cain wrote that he sensed that the SWG was "teetering on the edge of another one of its periodic eruptions on the left-right issue/ 7 and that, since the AAA was widely viewed as "the cat's-paw of the Hollywood Reds," he did not think it smart to agitate further on its behalf. Those who believed in the value of the AAA should educate other authors about the issues it involved, so that "support for it, if any should be forthcoming, can develop from the ranks so to speak, rather than be propagandized from the top." 1 2 At best, supporters needed to view the AAA as a goal achievable only after great effort over many years. He was more convinced than ever that the choice for writers "unfortunately is not the AAA or some other plan, but the AAA or nothing at all." 13 He never lost this conviction. As he ruminated on the failure of the AAA to catch fire, though, Cain steadfastly refused to attribute its defeat solely—or even primarily—to the political tornado careering toward Hollywood. Cain wrote to Hedda Hopper several times in early September, revealing more fully than before his own views on Communism. Hopper had often used her gossip column to club leftists in Hollywood, and she had written several columns attacking the SWG as Communistdominated, citing the AAA as a prime example of the C o m m u n i s t s ' pernicious influence. As far as he was concerned, Cain protested to Hopper, C o m m u n i s m could best be attacked, in whatever form it appeared, "by recognizing it for what it is, and by ceasing to accept its pretension that it is something else. It is not a political party. It is a secret society, and one dedicated to the interests of a foreign power." Only when all members of the Communist Party were "required to register as agents of a foreign power, and when they get it through their heads that such registration will mean detention in a concentration camp in event of war, then, on this subject, but not until then, we shall be getting somewhere." This was an extraordinarily reactionary response coming from a man who for the better part of a year had been derided as a Communist sympathizer or dupe. Cain did not think, though, that the FBI was going to begin herding all Communists into the camps any time soon, especially

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since Thomas and all the other politicians investigating Communist subversion only wanted to "hit it in the press and not in the precincts, so the CIO won't get too sore." 14 Still, he insisted that "nobody 'used' me on this AAA thing," and that the AAA itself had been supported by writers of all political orientations, in and out of the SWG. 15 The AAA was "about as Communist as you are," Cain declared to George Sokolsky. 16 Cain also minimized the importance of the anti-Communist American Writers Association in defeating the AAA, even though he frequently ripped into Rupert Hughes and its other leaders. Although the AWA had "organized a gang of magazine editors, corporation stooges, and such people, to prevent writers from having this AAA," he believed that Hughes and his associates had done absolutely nothing themselves to benefit writers, and "by taking the side of censorship, suppression, and chauvinism at all times," were in fact "seeking to promote the very cloture" they professed to oppose. 17 Cain told Mencken that Hughes and the AWA had, in fact, scarcely affected opinion within the literary community: My reason for thinking this is that every time he spoke before groups I appeared before, a lukewarm situation turned into something fairly hot in the AAA's favor, as he aroused the utmost distrust by his Union League attitude toward the whole thing, and has not proposed anything whatever to deal with the present situation, his contention being that people like Miss McDonald, Miss Winsor, and the other recent successes are "pretty lucky" to get where they did, with no attention to how lucky they will be ten years from now, when M G M and the other studios remake their stories without paying t h e m a cent, and when they may or may not be as affluent as they are now. 18 Cain admitted in several letters he wrote during that summer that he felt it had been a mistake to allow Dalton Trumbo to publish the AAA plan in the Screen Writer. "It was not a mistake because Trumbo, like Lardner, has the reputation of being high Communist," but rather because "such an organization" as the AAA "cannot possibly be managed by the four guilds." 19 Indeed, the battle over the AAA had merely confirmed his original opinion that "all writer's organizations, not only the Authors League, but the MWA, the Screen Writers Guild and all the rest of them, are falling apart from the daily proof of their ineffectiveness." 20 They were "invariably futile, feeble, and ineffective, at best, and crooked, hypocritical, and clique-ridden, at worst." 2 1 Cain dismissed the Authors League

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to Cyril Clemons as a "petty little office clique masquerading as a writer's organization." 22 He wrote to Mencken that the Authors League was a hopeless case "under the devious leadership of Miss Luise Sillcox." In July, Cain wrote to a sympathetic Stefan Heym that the League's officers opposed the AAA not for their stated reason of its mortal threat to free speech, but rather because "they think it threatens its [the AL's] hegemony in the field of writing, and its more active members, who regard it as a sort of club and honor and that sort of thing, get sick at the idea that they may be superseded." 23 Petty politics aside, Cain thought that the guilds "still conceive of themselves in some part as labor unions, or as similar to unions," and thus were not comfortable with or equipped for managing writers' properties. Cain came to believe over the course of the summer and fall that he should have stuck to his original idea of a small group of commercially successful writers launching the Authority, outside the framework of the guilds. The AAA or any similar entity, he wrote to Eve Bennett Haberl, would "have to be organized by a limited group of writers who know what they want to do and understand the necessity for doing it, and I doubt if it can be organized by these guilds, which seem as silly and clique-ridden in Denver as elsewhere." 2 4 Cain told Rex Beach that he now thought that the AAA would have to be set up by "20 or 30 writers who actually produce titles, and will have to be run by them, with sensible rules for the admission of new members, wholly apart from existing organizations." The effort to make the AAA a part of the Authors League, "which was not my original idea, but was engrafted on it after they got so enthusiastic out here," would and should now be abandoned. 25 Cain even informed Mencken in July that he actually planned "to attempt to set it [the AAA] up with a selected cadre" of writers; if he did indeed try to do this, he left no record of the attempt. 2 6 Whatever their culpability, Cain ultimately blamed the League and the guilds less than writers themselves for the ultimate failure of the AAA. They had not supported the Authority, Cain reasoned to Mencken, because "writers as a breed have almost no comprehension of the basic questions involved by their work." 2 7 He added to Hedda Hopper that he had "come to the conclusion that it is impossible to organize writers. Plumbers, yes, or scene shifters, or electric chair operators. In these will be found some sense, some comprehension of the solidarity they owe each other. But writers, so far as m y experience goes, are idiots." They could be expected not only "to turn on each other at every conceivable point," but also to run after

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"any wacky idea that catches their fancy." At the moment that wacky idea was "leftist labor." Cain had tried his best to convince other writers that "they are not labor, but in their small way capit a l / ' but he had made little headway. 28 Cain himself, then, could explain the failure of the AAA only by pointing to a number of factors: the an ti-Communist opposition of the AWA and the national press; the resistance of the publishing and motion picture industries; the inept handling of the matter by the guilds; and, most of all, the reluctance of writers to act in concert, even in their own self-interest. In early 1946, at the very inception of the Authority plan, Cain had contended that writers were "the worst slugs with regard to enforcement of their rights" of which he knew. 29 A year on the stump for the AAA had only confirmed this view. Forty-odd years later, what can we add to Cain's own postmortem on the American Authors' Authority? To start, we can now see that tactical mistakes by Cain himself and the SWG cost the AAA a great deal of support. Cain's Screen Writer article announcing the AAA plan had excited many writers and motivated them to work on its behalf. Its plain speaking about the marketplace and rousing advocacy of the writer's legitimate interests convinced many of the need for the AAA. Its lack of detail, occasional distortions, and few errors of fact, though, put off many others. More than one skeptic, and there were many in the literary community, warmed to Cain's theme but disliked the tone of the piece. Cain's talk of the "desperate plight" of writers, especially from one assumed to be so wealthy, and of a "tough mugg" who would do battle on their behalf offended many who basically agreed with the premises of his plan. Among many others, both Albert Maltz, who supported the AAA, and Elmer Rice, who did not, disliked Cain's original article. "No proposition ever got off to a worse start than the AAA," Maltz declared in May, 1947, "it was presented very badly by Jim Cain and it led inevitably to a host of confusions that have now become automatic prejudices against it." 3 0 During the AL Council's deliberations about the AAA the previous autumn, Rice had similarly told Lavery that most Council members thought "Cain's article was unfortunately worded, and that a lot of work will have to be done to allay fears of the setting up of a totalitarian regime which it has aroused." 31 The belligerent tone of Cain's piece and its focus on the marketplace had led many writers to assume that Cain was a leftist or an avaricious hack or both. Norman Thomas, for one, believed after reading the article that "Cain's leftism would appear to exclude any consideration of anything else than economic rewards for writers." 3 2

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Many who responded to the SWG's questionnaire voiced this same suspicion. Taking the AAA plan public before it had been thoroughly fleshed out also turned out to be a mistake, even though there were good reasons at the time for so doing. It did win immediate and overwhelming West Coast support for the AAA, which in itself made the Authority a viable proposal for the next year; but the lack of specifics raised many questions for many an anxious writer. It would have proved wiser tactically to have included protections of free expression and democratic management before the AAA had been so thoroughly aired in the press. The six months' delay, from early September 1946 until March 1947, in formulating and distributing the corporate structure of the Authority damaged it severely. Writers, with justification, hesitated before jumping aboard the AAA bandwagon, since it was not completely clear just what they were being asked to support. In short, missteps by the Authority's backers contributed their part to its failure to win over American writers, errors that Cain himself never saw, or believed too trivial to mention. Tactical mistakes by the AAA's supporters aside, there is much evidence to corroborate Cain's findings that four factors—opposition from producers and publishers, an extremely unfavorable political climate, the friction between the Authors League and its guilds, and the innate professional conservatism of American authors—combined to account for the AAA's failure. Cain and the SWG had predicted early on that the prospect of the AAA would prompt Hollywood, Broadway, and Publisher's Row to oppose it, and oppose it they did. Movie producers, theatrical managers, book, magazine, and newspaper publishers, as well as radio and television broadcasters—anyone who commercially exploited the writer's work—stubbornly resisted all arrangements calling for the licensing, separation, or reversion of rights, let alone all three in combination. As Oscar Hammerstein had reminded Lavery as late as May 1947, implementing the AAA would involve "a fundamental fight with the producers—notably with the motion picture producers—who are no crowd of sissies. The copyrights they own are among their most valuable assets. They are not going to lightly have them wrested from them." The guilds should "never underestimate their power to resist."33 Cain himself suspected that corporate interests lay behind the AWA, which he charged was "simply a front, a company union, for their friends the big eastern book, newspaper and magazine publishers, the western picture producers, and the radio users all over."34

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Even Elmer Rice, who disagreed with Cain about virtually everything else connected with the AAA, agreed that the AWA was the work of trade interests. Yet the industries involved responded cautiously to the AAA proposal, waiting to see how many writers embraced the AAA before becoming alarmed. By November 1946, they had judged that the AAA did not seriously threaten their interests, since so many writers themselves were opposed to it; too m u c h opposition from the trade, and from Hollywood in particular, might only keep the AAA in the public eye longer than otherwise. Thus, the Hollywood Reporter aside, the trade press reacted surprisingly mildly to Cain's plan. Variety, Publishers Weekly, and Editor &) Publisher all opposed the AAA with varying degrees of vehemence, but they did not dwell on the issue editorially and reported on it in a markedly low key. Corporate public relations departments held their fire throughout the controversy, content to let writers fight it out among themselves. Those industries that stood to lose the most if the AAA were implemented let the national press excoriate the Authority. With Hearst's columnists like George Sokolsky hammering away at the AAA proposal from its very inception, press criticism took its toll in negative public opinion. Criticism from the media proved less effective, but still harmful, within the literary community itself. Just how m u c h the wild charges and editorials attacking the AAA as an apocalyptic threat to American freedoms influenced the opinions of writers is difficult to judge, but certainly they did nothing to dispose the literary community to Cain's plan. Just what the industries involved might have done behind the scenes to stop the AAA dead in its tracks is also impossible to know. While the media devoted m u c h space to the actions of the AWA in opposing the Authority, there is no evidence—other than Rice's and Cain's assertions—to indicate that the media and entertainment industries did more than simply encourage the group. Rupert Hughes, John Erskine, Dorothy Thompson, and the others who organized the AWA denied just as emphatically that they were anyone's pawns as did Cain that he was a dupe of the Left. Thus, the opposition of the industries that used the writers' work appears not to have been the decisive factor in the AAA controversy, even if it did play some role in the plan's defeat. The trade would have fought the AAA fiercely if push had come to shove; given the poor track record of writers organizing in large numbers and with sufficient will to fight for their economic rights, the trade correctly concluded that the AAA would sputter without their concerted intervention.

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Those few historians who have remarked on the AAA controversy invariably attribute the Authority's demise to the anti-Communist atmosphere of the late 1940s, which made it easy for the Authority's critics to smear it as both authoritarian and Communist-inspired. Roy Hoopes stresses Cain's frustration in meeting the charge that the AAA was a plot of the Communist Party. Cain at times ridiculed the notion that he was fronting for Communists, at others, took it very seriously, and always denied that he had been used by anyone. Ceplair and Englund attribute Cain's failure to "the antiCommunist crusaders" whose "red-baiting worked." 3 5 Nancy Lynn Schwartz agrees. "The major opposition to the plan came from the Right," she concludes, since "any effort of writers to strengthen their position was seen as a communist plot." 3 6 At no time was this more true than in a postwar America obsessed with the Communist threat. Despite the capitalistic nature of his scheme and no matter how many times he protested that he was "about as Communist as Taft," Cain continued to be branded a Red, or a CP stooge. 37 The AAA movement never shook off the accusation that it was a plot by the Communist Party to control the American media, even though this was certainly beyond its power and not its intent. In short, the Red-baiting tactics of most of the AAA's opponents did m u c h to derail it. Anti-Communism also tapped into the historical tide of the antilabor sentiment running high in the late 1940s. TaftHartley wiped out many of the gains made by unions during the Roosevelt administration, and the Red issue proved a highly effective club with which to beat organized labor, inside Hollywood and out. To posit Red-baiting and union bashing as the sole, or even the principal, cause of the AAA's demise, however, both overstates and oversimplifies the case. Particularly when read out of historical context, the reckless manner in which the right wing pinned even the most moderate individuals and organizations with the C o m m u n i s t label surprises and appalls. Today, much of the postwar American animus toward the Soviet Union has been defused by events in eastern Europe, but even during the height of the Reagan administration's anti-Soviet rhetoric in the early 1980s, few administration officials or journalists so overtly accused their domestic critics of "toeing the Moscow line." For example, when assistant secretary of state Elliott Abrams vaguely questioned the loyalties of opponents of the administration's Central American policy, he was slapped down in Congress and in the press. Thus, the strident, scattershot attacks from the anti-Communists during the AAA controversy are a striking reminder of just how poi-

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soned political debate had become even at this early stage of the Cold War. In 1946 and 1947, though, such attacks appeared less extreme than they do today, since the AAA controversy had played itself out before the crucial HUAC hearings in October 1947, which opened the door on the era of the loyalty oath and the blacklist. The AAA debate occurred before writers and all others scrutinized by the investigating committees had witnessed the personal and professional disaster that befell those accused of CP membership or even simply leftist leanings. The AAA controversy also occurred before the Korean War, the Chinese Revolution, and the treason trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, events that so turned Americans against the Left. Additionally, the Authority debate occurred at a time when previous incursions into Hollywood by those investigating committees had been blocked by the united front of the film industry. The Communist charge had been hurled in the past, but in 1947 few if any had yet lost their jobs because of their political opinions. The AAA debate also took place immediately after the wartime alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union, when support for the latter was less suspect, and after the long years of the New Deal, when the Center and the Left had checked the extreme Right in both Washington and Hollywood. As a result, many writers, particularly Guild activists of whatever political stripe, had become inured to a certain amount of Red-baiting; Emmet Lavery's offhanded remark that guild leaders were "all in for a wave of character assassination" and his later statement to Marc Connelly that "we all get called names these days—even by our best friends," suggest something of the nonchalance of the AAA's supporters in the face of antiCommunist invective at the time. In any case, having anticipated this tactic by the plan's opponents, the AAA's champions discounted it and went ahead with their plans, in part because so many other factors—primarily economic ones—seemed right for launching such an ambitious campaign. Writers faced a market primed to expand and more than ever dependent on their work. The motion picture studios were distracted by their antitrust problems, the threat of television, and threatened boycotts from abroad; publishers anxiously awaited the predicted profits mass marketing reprints would reap; television was in its infancy and would never be in a weaker position. The marketplace beckoned even if the political environment threatened. In sum, the Red issue by itself fails to explain the ultimate outcome of the AAA debate. The increasing antagonism between the Authors League and its West Coast guilds played at least as significant a role in the downfall of the Authority. The League and guild

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files document the hostility and suspicion generated by the AAA within these organizations. The decision to tie the AAA to the tail of the League, in light of the Authors League's caution toward it, hurt the AAA's chances severely, as Cain pointed out at the time. Bureaucratic delay tripped up the AAA's proponents throughout the controversy, and, in the formidable person of Luise Sillcox, the Authority faced a foe strategically placed to defeat it. Moreover, the perpetual debate within the guilds over their proper function—as a traditional labor union or as a professional society—confused matters further, as did the fact that the AAA did not deal with the work of salaried writers, who formed the majority in the two guilds most energetically supporting the plan. All this muddied the waters considerably, snarling the AAA in a thicket of institutional prejudices against it. Still, the League's and the guilds' squabbling tells less than the complete story of the AAA's failure, for the simple reason that, if more writers had supported the plan, the Authors League's leadership could not have suppressed it as effectively as it did. While Rice, Hammerstein, and, most notably, Sillcox were all relieved to be well rid of the AAA, their bureaucratic campaign against it slowed, but in itself did not prevent, its implementation. Institutional resistance was only one of several factors at work in sabotaging Cain's hopes for the AAA. Ultimately, Cain blamed the writing community itself for the AAA's collapse, and there is m u c h justice in this view. The peculiar composition of the alliances that formed around and against Cain's Authority make little sense in conventional political terms. Leftwing radicals and conservative Republicans championed it; political reactionaries and committed Marxists campaigned against it. Any organization, such as the American Writers Association, which included the likes of Norman Thomas and Rupert Hughes, Max Eastman and Ayn Rand, defied placement on the traditional political spectrum. So, too, did the SWG Overall AAA Committee, including as it did radical left wingers like Ring Lardner, Jr., and Albert Maltz, progressives like Phillip Dunne and Emmet Lavery, and conservatives like Art Arthur and Adela Rogers St. John. The AAA was supported by writers as conservative as Taylor Caldwell and as left-wing as Alvah Bessie; it was opposed by authors as radical as James T. Farrell and as reactionary as Clare Booth Luce and George Sokolsky. Conventional politics, then, did not lay at the heart of the AAA debate. Nor was the AAA debate merely a referendum on the Authors League. Lavery, Cain, and the other principal AAA supporters com-

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mitted themselves early on to working within the League, whatever their doubts about its overall effectiveness. They argued often and convincingly on behalf of League unity. If the SWG AAA Committee eventually grew disillusioned with the League's leadership in New York, so, too, for that matter, did the AWA. Only a few writers—mainly Stefan Heym, Nancy Davids, Carl Carmer, and the others on the Committee for Action in the Authors Guild—actually wanted to enlist the AAA in an ongoing guild power struggle. In short, a writer's opinion of the Authors League and its guilds did not determine that writer's stance toward the AAA. The heart of the AAA debate took place not within writers' organizations but within writers' minds, and it was this debate that Cain and his colleagues ultimately lost. The AAA clearly enjoyed less than universal acclaim within the literary community, although the reasons why writers opposed it are more interesting than the mere fact that they did. Many supporters of the AAA shared Cain's belief that most writers lacked even a rudimentary understanding of their business affairs—that writers were, as Cain bluntly called them, "idiots" about business. Theodore Pratt similarly grumbled that "the naivete among many writers about their business matters I previously knew to be little less than colossal. Upon trying to spread the word of AAA, I found the word totally inadequate." 3 8 Writers displayed astonishing ignorance of their legal rights and economic situation and misunderstood the Authority's concept and intent throughout the year-long controversy. For example, despite repeated efforts to inform writers on economic issues and explain clearly the function of the Authority, many of t h e m persisted in the notion that the AAA was a union, or else a powerful, centralized literary agency. To an extent, then, Cain was correct that authors did not understand their rights and so could not fight collectively to further them. Yet not all, or even most, of the AAA's critics were uneducated or misinformed about it. Rice, LaFarge, and Oscar Hammerstein II, for example, each a key player opposing the AAA, knew a great deal about literary economics and the range of issues encompassed by the AAA. They understood the basis of Cain's plan and still opposed it, as did scores of others. For them, the AAA debate was not about politics or Communism, but rather a debate within the literary community about the literary community. More precisely, it was a debate about the writer's status and role in the marketplace. The opposing camps in the AAA fight ultimately rallied around competing and virtually contradictory concepts of the writer's profession, which in turn rested on fundamentally different beliefs about the

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writer's identity, about what a writer was and did. These were the gut issues for every writer. Those who opposed the Authority still conceived of the writer in essentially Victorian terms, as an independent, autonomous artist, or a gentleman-amateur, in William Charvat's phrase. Such writers remained suspicious of the marketplace, even as they were profiting more handsomely from it. Commercial success was a double-edged sword, since to them "real" writers maintained their artistic and economic independence, which the marketplace increasingly threatened. Farrell had posed this distinction as one between "free" and "unfree" writers; more often, the terms "writer" and "hack" were so opposed. Critics of the AAA objected most strenuously to just those features of the AAA that seemed to conflict with the traditional definition of the writer, the assignment of copyright most of all, for it meant surrender of what was to them the bedrock of their artistic and economic independence—title to their work. Similarly, the fear of the AAA's control over the content of the properties it handled stemmed from writers' preoccupation with such independence. Indeed, their suspicion of any organization to which they would cede any powers, even to further their own economic self-interest, grew from the conviction that a writer's autonomy took precedence, especially in the marketplace. The strongest opposition to the AAA came from novelists and playwrights in the East, from the worlds of the theater and publishing in which the image of the gentleman-amateur had held sway during the 1920s. We could term such writers "professional"—as opposed to political—conservatives, since, when confronted with a changing marketplace, they retreated, evoking the Victorian tradition of the gentleman-amateur. They wished to reassert the writer's traditional prerogatives of creative autonomy, personal integrity, and insulation from the marketplace. They conceived of the writer's status and role as privileged in society, exceptional; to them, writing was at heart a calling requiring sacrifice rather than a career pursued for profit. Cain and those who advocated the AAA dismissed this reasoning as completely out of touch with the writer's actual situation in the postwar marketplace. They were "progressives" within the context of the profession of authorship, determined to address the writer's plight by concerted action. This did not necessarily mean organizing a union, but it did mean organizing. Writers might be the creators of art, but they were also the creators of property, and it was folly to ignore, much less willfully renounce, this aspect of their professional identity.

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All agreed that the marketplace was increasingly threatening, that the potential for exploitation of writers grew worse, not better, each year. They disagreed profoundly, however, about what to do about it. The conservatives viewed the AAA as one more level of bureaucracy sapping writers 7 independence and autonomy; the progressives saw it as creating a formidable institution to do battle for writers with the other bureaucracies arrayed against them. They also argued repeatedly that the independence so trumpeted by the conservatives was more illusory than real; true intellectual independence was based on genuine economic independence, which could be gained only through collective action. Progressives wanted to change the way writers themselves defined their social identity, while conservatives wanted to reassert the writer's traditional identity In 1947, the conservatives won, or at least drew the game. In sum, writers who joined the AWA, writers in the offices of the Authors League and the eastern guilds, indeed, all writers who resisted the AAA most often did so not for political reasons, but for professional ones. The AAA involved accepting a definition of the writer they loathed. All those who rallied to the AAA cause did so because they could see the writer being buried under the avalanche of change engulfing their profession; if writers did not wake up to this danger and adjust their conceptions of what a writer was and did accordingly, they would lose any hope of obtaining real independence even as they championed an elusive freedom. Cain had put the point most eloquently in his response to Farrell in the Saturday Review: That somebody, in this age and time, still believes in anarchy, that freedom can be struggled for without making contact with the realities as they exist, that art can be consciously "created" any more than a baby can be consciously created—these ideas, to me, are simply weird, and downright silly. I don't believe freedom is successfully pursued by crank theorists riding far-fetched obsessions. I believe free speech is uttered by free men, and that men become free by fighting repression as it exists, and not by ignoring repression as it exists to tilt at phantom windmills. 3 9 Opposition to the AAA broke down not along conventional political lines, then, but over just this issue within the literary community; this schism contributed to the AAA's failure more than any other single factor. The American Authors' Authority never actually operated and was quickly forgotten. Despite its failure, though, the proposal itself

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and the subsequent debate it prompted did have a measurable impact on the course of postwar politics, on the history of the writers' guilds, and on the development of the modern literary marketplace. The AAA proved an early link, hitherto unremarked, in the chain of events that led from our wartime alliance with Russia to McCarthyism and the Cold War. Cain's plan became hopelessly tangled in the burgeoning h u n t for internal subversion that dominated American politics for the next decade, and the AAA had a minor but measurable impact on the shape and growth of anti-Communist sentiment in postwar America. As we have noted, ideological criticism of Cain's plan shifted noticeably during the year-long debate. When the AAA was launched in the summer of 1946, it was described both as Fascistic and Communistic. Analogies to Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy were as common as ones to Stalin's Russia. By the end of the debate, such analogies were rarely employed and the AAA was described as a "cats-paw" of the Communists exclusively, one further justification for intense public investigation of writers and their works for possible subversive ideas. According to standard historical explanation, American antiC o m m u n i s m in the late 1940s grew from the lingering wartime hatred built up against Germany, Italy, and Japan. After more than three years of war, Americans were used to having enemies, and used to fighting them. Les K. Adler and Thomas G. Patterson have examined this shift of animosity from the Fascists to the Communists and assert that it was speeded considerably by the depiction of C o m m u n i s m as simply a more insidious form of the same menace posed by Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese warlords. Even before World War II, some Americans equated Germany with the Soviet Union, particularly during the period of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, but for a momentary period after Hitler invaded Russia, Americans focused on the differences between the Soviets and the Fascist powers. American propaganda during the war stressed that the Soviet Union shared America's revolutionary heritage and anti-imperialist rhetoric. However, Adler and Patterson argue that Americans shifted their hatred from Hitler's Germany to Stalin's Russia after the war "with considerable ease and persuasion," largely by blurring the ideological distinction between Fascism and C o m m u n i s m and focusing instead on their tactical similarities. 40 As the threat of rightwing Fascism had waned, J. Edgar Hoover warned in February 1947, the threat of what he called "Red Fascism" had grown. 41 This analogy helped Americans understand the challenge to American dominance posed by the Soviet Union at just the point

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when Americans had full faith that the American Century had begun. It also made this threat more predictable, since the Soviet Union could be counted on to follow the same path as the country's recently defeated Fascist enemies. ' T h e enigma of Soviet Russia could be fathomed only by the application of the historical lesson learned in the 1930s," Adler and Patterson continue, but such thinking "forced rigidity upon postwar American foreign policy because it assumed that the course of relations was already set and that the prewar decade provided an accurate map for the postwar era." They conclude that, because of this failure to distinguish between military Fascism and revolutionary Marxism, the United States missed opportunities for accommodation with the Soviets immediately after Hitler's defeat, because any concession granted to the Kremlin conjured up the image of Munich and appeasement; this failure also contributed to a simplistically errant view of revolutionary and anticolonial movements in the years after the war; ultimately, it "led to the establishment of world wide alliances and permanent military containment policies in Europe and Asia." In short, the concept of Red Fascism led Americans to believe it pointless to negotiate with the Russians or any other Communists, and that the country had to adopt a hard-line, inflexible posture toward Communism, even if "it did not follow that Russia and Stalin in the cold war would always act in a manner similar to Germany and Hitler, or that Russia was set inexorably on the path of military aggression." 42 The AAA debate, in which fear of Fascism quickly yielded to fervent anti-Communism, illustrates the Red Fascism concept in use, and the AAA itself also convinced many of its accuracy. Red Fascism emphasized methodology over ideology, and critics of the AAA thought they recognized in the Authority the crucial method for expansion employed first by the Nazis and then by the Soviet Union—domestic subversion of the enemy through control of the means of communication. Any attempt to organize or to interfere with the media in America could be, and was, seen as an example of Red Fascism. The AAA demonstrates graphically how C o m m u n i s m came to be the greatest of all "Fascist" threats. A key word in the AAA debate was authoritarianism, an umbrella term used for a repressive, antidemocratic ideology of either the Right or the Left. Writers, of course, possessed a traditional antipathy to political authoritarianism, which in professional terms meant loss of creative control of their work. Thus, it was relatively easy for t h e m to oppose the AAA as authoritarian, without making the overt charge that it was a Communist plot, since in their view it limited freedom of thought

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and action and would challenge their own "authority." By 1947 and the end of the AAA controversy, authoritarianism had changed connotation, becoming a virtual synonym for Communism; indeed, the use of "authoritarianism" and the emphasis on such "control" issues as copyright assignment and censorship waned considerably in the spring. The AAA was increasingly categorized as a specifically Communist threat, part of the CP's attempt to take control of the American media. The rhetoric of the AAA debate, then, reveals the specific road Americans took toward anti-Communism in the immediate postwar years; by the summer of 1947, the AAA had suggested to some, and confirmed for others, that the Communists indeed were trying to subvert America, for they had just been exposed as trying to create an "Authority" to control all of American writing. Moreover, the AAA drew the literary community, and screenwriters in particular, to the very center of the internal h u n t for Communist subversives. This in turn leads us to the more specific question of the AAA's role in the HUAC hearings and the blacklisting era in Hollywood. The AAA fight, as we have seen, should put to rest any lingering belief that the SWG was either a Communist front organization or dominated by its Communist members. Even at the height of left-wing influence in the SWG after the 1946 elections, the Guild still remained in the firm hands of such centrist anti-Communists as Emmet Lavery. Moreover, even those Communists or former Communists—Lardner, Trumbo, Cole, Kahn, and others—who supported the AAA did so not under the prompting of the Party, but because as writers they believed in the virtues of this, ironically, most capitalistic of schemes. The Daily Worker predictably called the American Writers Association a "who's who of literary reaction" with a "far-reaching program to serve the monopolists of film, press and radio," yet the Party itself was not all that enamored of the American Authors' Authority. Rather, it advocated trade unions as the correct means to redress writers' grievances and complained that the AAA created "illusions about the status of the writer under capitalism," leading h i m "to separate himself from the social struggle as a whole, particularly of the working class." 43 The AAA controversy only strengthens Ceplair and Englund's conclusion that the CP, for all its impressive organization and discipline, did not control m u c h of anything in Hollywood, not in the studios, or in the guilds, or in the umbrella political organizations of the Popular Front. 44 However, the AAA debate also qualifies what Ceplair and Englund and most other scholars have written about the specific origins of the blacklist: why, for example, HUAC decided to press its Holly-

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wood investigation in 1947; what the Committee's actual agenda was; and why HUAC succeeded then when it had failed previously. The AAA is particularly significant viewed in terms of each of these questions. Most historians believe that HUAC returned in 1947 in pursuit of publicity more than subversives. Nancy Lynn Schwartz, for example, concludes that "the governmental interest in Hollywood was an obvious opportunity to garner headlines/ 7 She quotes Lionel Stander, the blacklisted actor, to this effect. "HUAC wasn't interested in going after the real members of the Party/ 7 Stander insisted; "they wanted the Hollywood people/ 7 4 5 Ceplair and Englund also conclude that the Committee turned to Hollywood more "to win publicity for its wider witchhunt against subversives 77 than to damage the CP itself.46 This is not a satisfactory explanation of events. After all, when had ambitious politicians not sought publicity? Moreover, if HUAC came primarily for the headlines the inquiry in Hollywood would undoubtedly attract, why were writers singled out, the screen artists in w h o m the public was least interested? Why did HUAC focus on writers rather than on actors or directors? The AAA attracted the fury of anti-Communists in and out of government, to w h o m it furnished proof that the Chamber of Commerce had been correct in 1946 in charging that the Communists were plotting to seize control of the media and in fact already had captured the Screen Writers Guild. 47 J. Parnell Thomas had announced as early as May 1947 that testimony in the film capital had revealed that "90% of communist infiltration in Hollywood is to be found among screenwriters. 7748 The conservative press had often urged HUAC to look into the AAA and its sponsor, the SWG. When HUAC actually convened in Washington, eleven of the nineteen unfriendly witnesses initially subpoenaed, and ten of the eleven who in fact appeared, were screenwriters, including Trumbo, Cole, Lardner, Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, John Howard Lawson, Howard Koch, and Gordon Kahn. All were SWG activists. HUAC did not come to Hollywood because of the AAA controversy, but the controversy helps explain why screenwriters were so targeted—and, clearly, purging Hollywood of left-wing writers was high on the Committee's agenda. Anti-Communists had never been able to convince enough people that the content of Hollywood films presented a prima facie case of Communist subversion; anyone who sits through a standard diet of late forties films will see scant evidence of such ideology. Traditional American values were not subverted in such Hollywood films, but, rather, exalted. As long as the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals rested its case on such evi-

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dence as Lela Rogers's assertion that Dalton Trumbo's line "Share and share alike—that's democracy!" was dangerously subversive Communist propaganda, they stood little chance of shaking up the industry. However, J. Edgar Hoover's warning that the Communist Party "has for its purpose the shackling of America and its conversion to the Godless, Communist way of life/' and so it had "projected itself into some newspapers, magazines, books, radio and the screen," fully justified the h u n t for subversion in the film industry. 49 The MPA and HUAC could now cite the AAA as evidence of the Communist threat to dominate the media and stifle free speech. In short, HUAC launched its 1947 investigation in the immediate wake of the AAA controversy, which had directed the Committee's aim at the SWG, where it was confident it could make a convincing case for Communist subversion. Outside the film industry itself, few people knew who Lardner, Trumbo, Maltz, or Cole were. However, if these writers were plotting to control not only film content but also everything written in the country, that threat certainly provided sufficient pretext for government intervention and was guaranteed to attract the press in the process. HUAC succeeded in 1947 when previous investigations had failed because it won over the producers, however reluctantly, to the antiCommunist cause and finally dismantled the industry's stone wall against any outside interference. According to Ceplair and Englund, as late as October, on the eve of the hearings in Washington, "the studio heads and managers, accustomed to having their own way, had no intention of tossing overboard such valuable writers as Dalton Trumbo, Metro's highest paid screenwriter, or Lester Cole, who was about to be elevated to the rank of producer," simply because a member of Congress disliked their politics. 50 By the end of November, though, producers had recalculated the benefits and costs of such loyalty and issued the notorious Waldorf Declaration instituting the blacklist: the studios pledged to fire any Communists in their employ and not to hire any other known or suspected Communist Party members. The blacklisting era began. This volte-face by the industry, Ceplair and Englund assert, resulted from the economic threat of a mass boycott of any pictures on which Communists had worked; such a boycott was a gun held at the head of the industry to force its cooperation in 1947. Such an explanation, though, does not sufficiently account for the shared interest of the film industry and the congressional committee in cutting down the SWG, provided that HUAC kept its sights predominantly on screenwriters. If HUAC was anxious to investigate screenwriters, the industry

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was not entirely displeased to see the SWG raked over the coals. Negotiations toward a new basic agreement were scheduled to begin in a year's time and, given the militancy and surprising degree of unanimity the SWG had shown over the AAA, anything that weakened the Guild was all to the good from the producers' standpoint. Trumbo, Cole, and the others may have been valuable assets to individual studios, but they were also thorns in the side of the industry as a whole, and Guild activism had deflated several Hollywood careers before and has since. Moreover, the AAA controversy itself had already softened up the SWG, preparing the way for HUAC's allout assault. In sum, the AAA controversy influenced HUAC to go after screenwriters in 1947, and because it was in the producers' interest to hamstring the SWG, their resistance to the idea of a blacklist was not as steadfast as usually supposed. To an extent not sufficiently appreciated, the HUAC hearings were an attack not so m u c h on Hollywood, or even on Hollywood Communists, as on screenwriters and their guild. Aside from weakening the SWG at a crucial time in its industrial relations, the AAA controversy left its mark on the Authors League and its guilds in other ways. Within the SWG itself, the AAA controversy contributed to the triumph of the All Guild slate in the 1947 annual election. In an increasingly politicized climate, the new centrist leadership of the SWG reasserted the Guild's status as a nonpartisan, purely professional organization. The leadership intentionally distanced itself from the unfriendly witnesses precisely because, as Lavery explained it, the latter had wittingly linked the Guild to C o m m u n i s m by their refusal to answer the only two questions they were asked: Are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party; and Are you or have you ever been a member of the Screen Writers Guild? Ceplair and Englund judge the SWG severely for its failure to rise to the defense of the Hollywood Ten. 'Tor the Guild to separate itself from its eleven members," they argue, "was to separate itself from the principle on which both Guild and the Nineteen professed to stand," the right to hold and express one's own beliefs. The SWG thus suffered the "public collapse of its integrity as a union of writers and intellectuals." 5 1 However, in fact, the thrashing it received during the AAA controversy hardly left the Guild in any position to leap to the Nineteen's defense. The SWG was divided, weakened, and especially vulnerable to the charge that it was dominated by Communists. It was also highly suspect in HUAC's eyes. Given the circumstances, it would have proved institutional suicide to support

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those screenwriters who defied congressional authority. It is conceivable but highly unlikely that Lavery, new SWG president Sheridan Gibney, or the other leaders of the All Guild movement were playing their own brand of hardball in the opening rounds of the HUAC hearings, before those hearings turned ugly and dangerous; perhaps they were something less than outraged by the possibility of HUAC's gutting the Guild's left wing, but the SWG leadership was the captive, not the master, of events in 1947. As it was, anxious to reassert its nonpolitical function as the NLRB-certified collective bargaining agent for screenwriters, the SWG focused on its upcoming contract talks with the producers. The Guild's first MBA was set to expire in 1949; as far back as 1945, the prospect of these negotiations had prompted the Guild's interest in radio and television rights and focused attention on licensing. The sequence of committees that developed the proposal for the AAA had in fact been set in motion by dissatisfaction with the MBA then in force. The SWG's bargaining position going into the 1949 talks, weakened by the failure of the AAA, eroded further as the number of writers employed by the studios decreased by more than 25 percent during the postwar recession. The studios agreed to renegotiate only if the SWG dropped its lawsuit challenging the Waldorf Declaration and also formally acquiesced in denying screen credit to all unfriendly witnesses.52 While the contract they did eventually sign contained some modest improvements in wage scales and fringe benefits, producers successfully opposed any attempt to impose any part of the AAA program—licensing, rights separation, or rights reversion. The screenwriters made no more headway in their quest for greater creative control over their material. The new MBA, then, left the structure of the Hollywood marketplace intact, and screenwriters on the defensive. The AAA movement did goad the Authors League and its guilds to further action, however much Hammerstein and the others in the League leadership denied it at the time. In the spring of 1948, for example, the Authors League announced a new all-guild drive to achieve licensing. For what it was worth, the licensing principle, which lay at the heart of the AAA plan, had become official League policy; only the copyright assignment feature, which the AAA's supporters believed the only practical way to implement licensing, had been abandoned. In its place, the League had decided to push for the leasing of rights in contracts for highly saleable properties and merely to recommend leasing clauses in all other contracts.53 This was licensing at its least effective. The Authors Guild itself had the previous November reached

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agreement over a model contract with at least one big publisher, Random House, which called for reduced levels of publisher participation in subsidiary rights—only 15 percent of motion picture rights, for instance, rather than the traditional 50 percent. The Random House agreement was hailed by the Authors Guild as a breakthrough in author-publisher relations. 54 The Dramatists Guild withdrew concessions it had made to managers during the war that had extended the period managers could participate in the exploitation of subsidiary rights. It also successfully defended its M i n i m u m Basic Agreement against a complex legal challenge, which established the legality of the MBA under antitrust statute. 5 5 The Radio Writers Guild, galvanized by the AAA battle, finally brought the networks to the bargaining table in late 1947, after the membership had voted overwhelmingly to strike if necessary. This first MBA in the field covered only free-lance radio writers submitting material to the networks, but it included recognition of the RWG and a 90 percent closed shop. It abolished the worst features of the release contract and forbade speculative writing. Fresh from this victory, the RWG set its sights on the advertising agencies and independent packagers, who produced the bulk of radio programming. 56 Despite this progress within the guilds, however, writers made little headway on the fundamental issues of equity addressed by the AAA. The Authors League's new licensing drive came to nothing. The Random House agreement, which Christopher LaFarge and Luise Sillcox had negotiated on behalf of the Authors Guild, may have reduced the publisher's share in the sale of subsidiary rights, but it did not include licensing, separation, and reversion of rights. Random House stood firm on this point. "If a publisher wishes to stay in the black these days it is imperative that he share in the subsidiary rights/ 7 one of its editors told a reporter after the agreement was reached; "we have long fought for the principle of participating in the sale of the movie rights." 5 7 Moreover, even as the Authors Guild was trumpeting its triumph in obtaining the model contract, it was also announcing its resolve to maintain current royalty rates in the face of publishers' demands for reductions. 58 Publishers did not follow the lead of Random House, and eventually the Authors Guild all but abandoned the goal of an industrywide minim u m basic agreement, m u c h less one including the licensing, separation, and reversion of rights. In May 1948, Paul Gallico, the new president of the Authors Guild, put three items high on his agenda: reducing the publisher's participation in subsidiary rights; automatic reversion of rights for magazine work; and, as ever, the leasing of motion picture rights. 59

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All had been problems the AAA proposed to ameliorate; none had been solved. The Screen Writers Guild was mired in the HUAC muddle and was threatening to sue the producers over the Waldorf Declaration, but it refused to support the Hollywood Ten, cited for contempt of Congress. 60 The Dramatists Guild, although it had won the Ring case, now faced dunning its membership for the extra fifty thousand dollars in legal fees incurred during the suit. 61 The Radio Writers Guild had made absolutely no progress in negotiations with the advertising agencies. The RWG threatened to strike, but the AAAA remained unfazed, refusing to acknowledge the RWG as the legitimate bargaining agent for radio writers. By 1949, the Guild was also deadlocked in a dispute with the networks over news and continuity writers. 62 Moreover, the historically close cooperation between the SWG and the RWG broke down in the midst of a bitter jurisdictional dispute in the late 1940s. The worst fears of the Television Writers Organizing Committee in 1945 came true in 1949, with the RWG and the SWG at each others' throats over organizing the television industry, a rift that in 1954 led to the formation of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), with jurisdiction over all forhire or for-fee writing in television, motion pictures, and radio. The WGA maintained an office in New York, but the Los Angeles branch dwarfed its eastern counterpart. The Authors League, having washed its hands of the Hollywood service writers, now focused exclusively on the Authors Guild and the Dramatists Guild. 63 Thus, the guilds made little if any progress in the immediate postwar years; the economic prosperity predicted by the Saturday Review failed to trickle down. In hindsight, the AAA provided writers with the best chance they would ever have to wrest concessions on such fundamental issues as licensing. In a sense, the AAA proved that the Authors League machinery was outmoded. Writers were increasingly involved in more than one field—screenwriting, publishing, the theater, radio, and possibly television—and the guild structure could deal with the specific problems of only one area. Jurisdictional problems over organizing the television industry in the late 1940s and the 1950s not only alienated the western from the eastern guilds, but even placed the SWG and the RWG at loggerheads. The guild structure barely addressed the problems common to all writers in all fields—licensing, the distribution of subsidiary rights, the reversion of rights after a fixed time, and the government's arbitrary and unfair tax policy. When HUAC reconvened its hearings in 1951, it announced that it was broadening its search for subversion: it would be delving not only into the film industry, but also into radio, television, the theater, and even music. 6 4 Ironically,

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HUAC had learned what the guilds themselves had not—that the media and entertainment industries in America were coalescing into a seamless web, a fully integrated, synergistic marketplace. At the height of the AAA controversy, the New York Times featured a detailed assessment of Cain's plan written by Harvey Breit, who recognized the AAA as of a piece with other changes occurring in the literary marketplace: "Publishing has become a m a m m o t h industry, interlocked with other m a m m o t h industries—radio, music, movies," he argued, and "even the Cain plan can be seen as a manifestation of this 'cartelized' colossus, as a pitting of commercialism against commercialism." 6 5 Breit understood Cain's basic intent where so many others had not. "I mean power here, no mistake," Cain had emphasized to enthusiastic screenwriters in July 1946, such power being a necessary counterweight to that of the large corporations with which the writer dealt. He had pursued the AAA so doggedly because he thought he finally understood the workings of the literary marketplace and how they disadvantaged the writer. The AAA's failure, he feared, doomed writers to an inequitable share of the profits soon to accrue to increasingly powerful media corporations developing old markets and exploiting new ones. Subsequent events have proved Cain and other like-minded supporters of the AAA essentially correct. Two basic features have marked the economic landscape of publishing and the entertainment media since 1947, both extensions of modernizing trends dating back to the turn of the century and examined in the first chapter. Journalists awkwardly but accurately refer to them as "concentration" and "conglomeration." Economic power came to be held by a smaller number of larger companies, and large diversified corporations came to dominate both Publishers Row and Hollywood sound stages. An astonishing array of technologies now exist for the mass dissemination of culture, including movies, television, radio, recordings, computer software, and computer-assisted editing and printing. Each depends, to varying degrees, on the writer's work, yet the vast majority of writers remain no better off in terms of the licensing and the general handling of subsidiary rights than they were in Cain's time. Service writing, for salary or fee, has been the result for many postwar writers. Media corporations, with interests in publishing, motion picture, television, and allied industries, now dominate the literary marketplace. Thomas Whiteside, John Tebbel, and others who have remarked on the phenomenon have erred only in treating it as recent news, a purely contemporary trend. 66 As the AAA debate so well demonstrates, at least as early as the 1940s, some writers were

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aware of the trend toward concentration in the entertainment industry and its implications for the literary profession. For all the change in the literary marketplace—and for all its expansion—the writer's situation has remained essentially the same. The Authors Guild has yet to negotiate a standard contract with the industry. Writers still yield key subsidiary rights as publishers continue to insist, with some justice, that they could not operate without this income. Although writers dismiss this notion, they are—except for a handful of best-selling authors—subject to the iron rule of the marketplace and powerless to do anything about it. Screenwriters, with few exceptions, still sell original material outright to motion picture producers for a flat sum, rather than license material for a royalty—so, too, although for less money, do television writers. In short, while the literary marketplace has changed a great deal in the past forty years, the status of the writer in economic negotiations within the literary marketplace has changed very little. As the literary marketplace—along with the rest of the economy—fell more and more under the sway of large corporations and complex legal and financial arrangements, so the writer's position in that marketplace became more institutionalized, more bureaucratized. Increasingly, writers found themselves within large institutional structures that—while they might offer the security of a predictable income, also limited personal independence and creative autonomy. Having failed to achieve anything like the clout that their functions as the creators of the "software of the entertainment industry/7 as publisher Richard Snyder phrases it, entitled them to, inexorably fewer and fewer writers cobbled together an income from free-lance writing, and more and more accepted salaried positions on newspapers or magazines, in governmental agencies, and especially in universities.67 Similarly, the bureaucratization of the writer is not entirely a postwar phenomenon, as the comments of Cain and others during the AAA controversy suggest. Writers first encountered their new status in the film studios during the 1930s. In New York in the 1920s, as I have suggested, writers primarily dealt with small, privately owned and financed businesses; they often enjoyed close contact with the actual owners of the firms with which they dealt, as Cain did with Alfred A. Knopf. Beckoned to Hollywood in the 1930s (or so they believed), because they were "writers'7 in the traditional sense, they were surprised—shocked even—to discover that within the large, hierarchical companies that operated the studios, the "writer" was defined in an antithetical way—as an employee, working in virtual anonymity, vested with little if any ultimate power

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over his or her work, and valued not for creative individuality but rather for the ability to reproduce in slightly altered form last year's hit movie or blockbuster best-seller. By the 1950s, this same phenomenon had crept into the literary marketplace in New York, into the publishing world, and into the theater, leading to the chorus of complaints from writers about their bureaucratization. From Cain's point of view and that of the other supporters of the AAA, the only way to fight this bureaucratization was for writers to create a powerful bureaucracy of their own, an organization sufficiently large and well financed to take on the combined legal departments of publishers, motion picture producers, and television and radio networks. As we have seen, the dividing line drawn in the AAA controversy was not between radical Left and reactionary Right, or between commercially successful screenwriters and struggling artists, or between hired writers and free-lance writers, or even between writers jealous of others in the various guilds. If anywhere, it was drawn between conservative and progressive professionals, or what we might alternately term East Coast and West Coast factions of writers, always bearing in mind that this distinction refers not so m u c h to geography as to attitude. East Coast writers, represented by Elmer Rice, Marc Connelly, and others—might be politically liberal or conservative, active in guild affairs or not, but all shared the same conservative view of the profession: writers were independent in thought and action, valued precisely for individuality and therefore vested with creative autonomy. Society recognized this by vesting t h e m with ownership of copyright. While they might have to deal in the marketplace, and wanted to be dealt with fairly, they were removed from it and shunned its values. They therefore trusted that those with w h o m they dealt shared their values and would protect them from commercial exploitation. East Coast writers conceived of writing, in sum, as a calling, a special and privileged vocation, rather than an ordinary career. Most writers still respond to Howells's words far more than to Cain's. The writer's duty was to assert traditional prerogatives in the marketplace—the right to cordial relations and sympathetic handling by publishers, respect for the writer's creativity and the writer's creative autonomy—in the face of a marketplace ever more crassly commercialized. West Coast writers, even though they might live in the East, typically had some experience as salaried writers, working for television, the motion pictures, or radio. West Coast writers were m u c h more willing to engage the marketplace. They believed that a writer's independence was important, but they dismissed the notion that

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writing gave the writer any special social status. They rejected the Victorian idea, so prevalent among East Coast writers, that literature was privileged as a profession. For West Coast writers, authorship was by its very nature both a creative and a commercial act. This division, more than any other, scuttled the AAA in 1947 and has prevented writers as a group from achieving much in the marketplace ever since. To conclude, then, the AAA controversy, more clearly than any other episode in our recent literary history, dramatizes the difficulties American writers encountered, in the middle of the twentieth century, in divorcing themselves from the nineteenth-century legacy of their Victorian past. In 1946, and continuing to this date, writers have suffered a crisis of professional identity, and this fact more than any other accounts for their singular lack of success in pressing their claims to a share of the profits from their work commensurate with their contribution. Unable to create a true profession, writers invariably fall back on the cult of the individual and wrap themselves in the quasi-sacred notion that writing is a "calling. " Unable to organize to protect their own economic interests in a society that values those interests above all else, writers have become diminished players in the literary marketplace, and in American culture as a whole.

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1. The Origins of the Profession of Authorship i. Carl Carmer, "Full Employment for Writers in the Postwar World." 2. Harrison Smith, "A New World for Writers." 3. James M. Cain, "An American Authors' Authority," p. 1. 4. Mencken quoted in Ward Morehouse, "Report on America." 5. Rebecca West to James M. Cain, 24 September 1948, James M. Cain Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 6. Diana Laurenson and Alan Swingewood, The Sociology of Literature, PP- 93~94- For more about the writer in the Classical world, see Gordon Williams, "Literature and Society in Augustan Rome," in Literature and Western Civilization: The Classical World, pp. 263-296; and R. M. Ogilvie, Roman Literature and Society. 7. Philip Wittenberg, The Protection of Literary Property, p. 4; Lillian Hellman, An Unfinished Woman, p. 78. 8. Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe, 1:85. 9. S. H. Steinberg, Five Hundred Years of Printing, p. 102; Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography, pp. 179—180. For more about Caxton and the early book trade in England, see Henry S. Bennett, English Books and Readers, 147s to 1557, and John W Saunders, The Profession of English Letters. 10. Maurice J. Holland, "A Brief History of American Copyright Law," p. 5. n . Wittenberg, Literary Property, p. 22. An excellent account of the Stationers' Company is found in Bennett, English Books and Readers, 1558-1603, pp. 56-86. 12. Churchill quoted in Steinberg, Five Hundred Years of Printing, p. 22; also see Bennett, English Books and Readers, 1475-1557, pp. 20-25; a n d Saunders, English Letters, pp. 43-44. 13. Goldsmith quoted in Wittenberg, Literary Property, p. 27. For more information about Grub Street, see Pat Rogers, Grub Street, which is an exhaustive treatment of the historical development of the district.

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14. Wither quoted in Wittenberg, Literary Property, p. 25. 15. Gaskell, Introduction to Bibliography, p. 175. 16. Laurenson and Swingewood, Sociology of Literature, pp. 111-113. For more about authorship, the decline of patronage, and the book trade during the eighteenth century, see Arthur S. Collins, Authorship in the Days of Johnson, Being a Study of the Relation between Author, Patron, Publisher and Public, 1726-1780, esp. chap. 4; and L. C. Knight, Drama and Society in the Age of Johnson, which focuses almost exclusively on the theater. 17. Johnson quoted in Steinberg, Five Hundred Years of Printing, p. 220. 18. Wittenberg, Literary Property, pp. 2 3 - 24. 19. Holland, "Copyright Law," p. 7. 20. The printers of the Stationers' Company did not abandon their privileged position without a fight. They continued to claim a common-law right, in perpetuity, to the titles they had acquired before the passage of the Statute of Anne. This common-law right superseded, in their view, any statutory law. Disregarding the expiration terms set by the Statute of Anne, they tried to restrain publication of material they claimed to own. Only in the 1760s did the case of Millar v. Taylor (upheld in the House of Lords in 1774 as Donaldson v. Beckett) determine that the common-law copyright in perpetuity had been revoked by the Statute of Anne. From that point, copyright was deemed wholly a creature of statute in England (Wittenberg, Literary Property, pp. 30-32). For more about the impact of the Statute of Anne and the legal development of copyright, see especially Lyman Ray Patterson, Copyright in Historical Perspective, esp. pp. 3-19, 213-229. See also John Feather, "Publishers and Politicians: The Remaking of the Law of Copyright in Britain; 1775-1842. Part II: The Rights of Authors." 21. Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, pp. 5 2, 54. 22. Walter Besant, The Pen and the Book, p. 27. 23. Steinberg, Five Hundred Years of Printing, p. 225. 24. Saunders, English Letters, p. 123. 25. Gaskell, Introduction to Bibliography, pp. 183-184. 26. "This appears to be closely connected with the heightened selfconsciousness of the profession of authorship, in the period of transition from patronage to the bookselling market" (Raymond Williams, Keywords, p. 152). See also Martha Woodmansee, "The Genius and the Copyright: Economic and Legal Conditions of the Emergence of the 'Author'." 27. For more information about colonial authorship, see John Tebbel, History of Book Publishing in the United States, 1 ^ 4 - 4 7 , 131-137. 28. Holland, "Copyright Law," p. io; also Tebbel, History of Book Publishing, 1:140. 29. Holland, "Copyright Law," p. 11. 30. Robert E. Spiller, "Art in the Marketplace," in Literary History of the United States: History, pp. 231-236. 31. Cooper quoted in Spiller, "The Making of the Man of Letters," in Literary History of the United States, p. 126.

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32. William Charvat's Literary Publishing in America, 1790-1850 remains the best study of the book trade and authorship during the period. See also Rollo G. Silver's The American Printer, 1785-1825 as well as his ' T h r e e Eighteenth Century Book Contracts/' 33. For more on authorship in the early nineteenth century, see R. Jackson Wilson, Figures of Speech: American Writers and the Literary Marketplace, from Benjamin Franklin to Emily Dickinson. 34. Saunders, English Letters, pp. 158-159; see also John Gross, The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters: Aspects of English Literary Life Since 1800, chaps. 1-3. 35. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar/ 7 in Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralph W. Emerson, p. 55. 36. Charvat, Literary Publishing in America, p. 8; idem, "The People's Patronage," in Spiller, Literary History of the United States, p. 522. 37. Charvat, "The People's Patronage," p. 523. 38. For more about the growth of newspapers and magazines in the late nineteenth century, refer to Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History, 1690-1960, the classic work on the subject; also Michael Schudson's more recent Discovering the News. 39. Charvat, Literary Publishing in America, p. 56. 40. Dixon Wecter, "The Education of Everyman." 41. Besant, Pen and the Book, pp. vi-vii. 42. Ibid., p. 6. 43. William Charvat, The Profession of Authorship in the United States, pp. 2 9 2 - 2 9 3 . Aside from Charvat's ground-breaking essays in the 1950s and 1960s, few scholars have devoted much attention to authorship in nineteenth-century America. See Nelson Lichtenstein's informative "Authorial Professionalism and the Literary Marketplace"; also Daniel J. Borus, Writing Realism: Howells, James and Norhs in the Mass Market; and more specifically about female authors, Susan Coultrap-McQuin, Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century 44. Charvat, "The People's Patronage," p. 518. For more information about the influence of middle-class women on the institutions of American culture generally in the nineteenth century, see Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture, esp. pp. 75-108. 45. William Dean Howells, "The Man of Letters as a Man of Business," p. 6. 46. Ibid., pp. 1-2. 47. Ibid., pp. 2 - 3 . 48. Ibid., p. 23. 49. Tebbel, History of Book Publishing, 11634-644; Wittenberg, Literary Property, pp. 115-123. The manufacturing clause was to impede further international agreements and only recently has disappeared from American copyright law, but at the time it proved crucial to winning support for PlattSimonds from the printers and other protectionists. 50. Charvat, "Literature as Business," p. 959. 51. Christopher P. Wilson, The Labor of Words: Literary Professionalism

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in the Progressive Era, p. 76. Bobbs-Merrill, Macmillan, and Doubleday and Page were the most business-oriented of these new houses. 52. Charvat, "Literature as Business/ 7 pp. 963-966. 53. Ibid., pp. 964-966; and Howells, "Man of Letters/' p. 7. 54. Wilson, Labor of Words, pp. 2 - 3 . 55. See Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order, 18JJ-1920, esp. pp. 1 1 9 174; also Samuel P. Hays, The Response to Industrialism, 1885-1914. 56. Wilson, Labor of Words, pp. 1 5 - 1 6 . 57. Ibid., p. 7458. Norris quoted in ibid., p. 82, and in Charvat, "Literature as Business/ 7 p. 963. 59. Charvat, Literary Publishing in America, p. 56. 60. North American Review 56 (1843): n o . 61. Wilson, Labor of Words, p. 66. 62. Henry Holt, "The Commercialization of Literature," p. 582. 63. Tebbel, History of Book Publishing, 2:145 - 1 4 6 . 64. Ibid. 2. James M. Cain and the Literary Marketplace 1. Cain to Wilson, 29 June 1940, Cain Papers. 2. Roy Hoopes, Cain: The Biography of fames M. Cain, p. 40. Hoopes is the main source for the account of Cain's life in this chapter. 3. Ibid., p. 85. 4. Ibid., p. 97. 5. Johnson quoted in ibid., p. 108. 6. For more about Herbert Bayard Swope, see E. J. Kahn, Jr., The World of Swope. 7. Lippmann quoted in Ronald Steel, Walter Lippman and the American Century, p. 202. 8. Maxwell Anderson to Alvin Johnson, 17 November 1918, Maxwell Anderson Collection, Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. 9. Malcolm Cowley, "Creating an Audience," pp. 1125-1127. 10. Theatrical statistics culled from Burns Mantle, The Best Plays of 1919-20 to 1929-30; publishing statistics from Tebbel, History of Book Publishing, 3:680-690; Malcolm Cowley, Exile's Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s, p. 178. n . Van Wyck Brooks, Days of the Phoenix: The 1920s I Remember, p. 219. 12. Cowley, "Creating an Audience," pp. 1132-1133. 13. Tebbel, History of Book Publishing, 3:53. 14. Walter Hines Page, Confessions of a Publisher, p. 14. 15. Roger Burlingame, Of Making Many Books: A Hundred Years of Reading, Writing and Publishing, p. 107. 16. Alfred A. Knopf to James M. Cain, 7 July 1936, Cain Papers.

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17. Cabell Phillips, From the Clash to the Blitz, p. 365. 18. Eric Homberger, American Writers &) Radical Politics, 1900-1939, pp. 163-186. For more information about writers and radical politics in the 1930s, see Daniel Aaron, Writers on the Left. 19. Cain quoted in Hoopes, Cain, p. 202. 20. " M G M . " 21. For more about Hollywood's treatment of writers, see Richard Fine, Hollywood and the Profession of Authorship, 1928-1940. 22. Hoopes, Cain, p. 244. 23. Ibid., pp. 249-250. 24. James M. Cain to Edmund Wilson, 29 June 1940, Cain Papers. 25. Hoopes, Cain, p. 320. 26. Tebbel, History of Book Publishing, 3: 508. 27. Cowley, "How Writers Lived/' p. 1266. 28. For more about the development of radio, but surprisingly little about writers, given that its author was a founding member of the Radio Writers Guild, see Eric Barnouw, A History of Broadcasting in the United States. 29. Smith, "A New World for Writers/' p. 16. 30. "Nineteen Markets." 31. Laurenson and Swingewood, The Sociology of Literature, pp. 1 3 2 133. 32. Cain, "American Authors' Authority," p. 3. 33. Since 1946, Postman has also been filmed once in the United States and twice abroad; it has been released in several more reprint editions; it was produced as a play in the fifties; and in 1982, Colin Graham and Stephen Paulus wrote an operatic version, recently restaged in Washington, D.C. 34. Knopf royalty statements dated 31 October 1945, 31 October 1946, and 31 October 1947, Cain Papers. 35. Cain, "American Authors' Authority," p. 3. 36. Ibid., pp. 3 - 4 . 37. Hoopes, Cain, p. 253. 38. Cain, "American Authors' Authority," p. 2. 39. Cain to Smith, 8 February 1947, Cain Papers. 40. Smith to Cain, 27 February 1947, Cain Papers. 41. Alfred L. Bernheim, The Business of the Theatre: An Economic History of the American Theatre, 17so-1932, p. 90. 42. Cain, "American Authors' Authority," p. 2. 43. Cain to Marjorie Sirich, 31 March 1938, Cain Papers. 44. Financial statement of James M. Cain, dated 1946, Cain Papers. 45. "Earnings Table." 46.. See Fine, Hollywood and the Profession of Authorship, esp. pp. 1-18, 95-138. 47. Cain, "American Authors' Authority," p. 4. 48. Ibid. 49. Radio Writers Guild: What It Is and What It Does, pp. 1 2 - 1 3 . I lo-

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cated this sixteen-page pamphlet in the Radio Writers Guild Files, Billy Rose Theater Collection, Research Center for the Performing Arts, New York Public Library, New York, New York. 50. Ibid., p. 13. 51. Carl Carmer, "RWG Activities"; see also Barnouw, History of Broadcasting, vol. 2. 52. Cain, "American Authors' Authority," p. 4. 53. Ibid., pp. 5 - 6 . 54. Ibid., p. 6. 55. Ibid., p. 8. 56. Ibid. 57. Cain to Gibbs, 16 April 1938, Cain Papers. 58. West quoted in Budd Schulberg, The Four Seasons of Success, pp. 157-158. 59. Faulkner quoted in Joseph Blotner, "Faulkner in Hollywood," p. 303. 3. Writers Organize (1883-1946) 1. Besant, Pen and the Book, pp. 146, 333. 2. Walter Besant, "The English Society, Part 2." 3. Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing, 2 : 1 3 8 - 1 4 2 . 4. Arthur Train, "The Birth of the League," p. 14. 5. See, for example, "The Author and His Copyright" and "Royalties from Magazines"; also "Literary Property Rights." 6. "Report on Affiliation with Federated Labor." 7. Ibid., p. 8. 8. Freeman to Authors League, Authors League Bulletin 4 (June 1916): 9. 9. O'Higgins to Authors League, Authors League Bulletin 4 (August I9i6):5. 10. Post to Authors League, Authors League Bulletin 4 (June 1916): 6. n . "A Protest against Affiliation." 12. Marquis to Authors League, Authors League Bulletin 4 (August 1916): 8. 13. Marion Couthouy Smith to Authors League, Authors League Bulletin 4 (August 1916): 7. 14. A. E. Dingle to Authors League, Authors League Bulletin 4 (August 1916): 7. 15. Garland to Authors League, Authors League Bulletin 4 (August 1916): 7. 16. "A Supplementary Report from the Sub-Committee on Affiliation with the American Federation of Labor." 17. "Literary Property Rights." 18. George Middleton, "The Dramatists Guild" (New York: the Dramatists Guild, n.d.), p. 7, pamphlet in Cain Papers. 19. Ibid., p. 8. 20. Bernheim, Business of the Theatre, p. 90; also Middleton, "The Dramatists Guild," pp. 9 - 1 2 .

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21. Bernheim, Business of the Theatre, p. 115. 22. Sidney Howard, "Report to Dramatists Guild." 23. For more about the position of writers in the studio system, see Fine, Hollywood and the Profession of Authorship, esp. pp. 9 5 - 1 3 8 ; also Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America, pp. 230-240. 24. Leo Rosten, Hollywood: The Movie Colony and the Movie Makers, p. 318. For more about the founding of the Screen Writers Guild, see Nancy Lynn Schwartz's comprehensive narrative The Hollywood Writers' Wars; also Murray Ross, Stars and Strikes: The Unionization of Hollywood; and, for an excellent summary, Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930—1960, pp. 1 6 - 4 6 . 25. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, pp. 1 9 - 2 0 . 26. Schwartz, Hollywood Writers' Wars, pp. 5 0 - 5 1 . 27. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, pp. 3 0 - 3 5 . 28. Ibid., p. 37. 29. Los Angeles Examiner (27 April 1936). 30. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, pp. 3 8 - 4 0 ; also Schwartz, Hollywood Writers' Wars, pp. 57-80. 31. Kenneth Webb, "Radio Writers Guild"; see also Radio Writers Guild, PP-5-6. 32. Radio Writers Guild, p. 6. 33. Cain, "American Authors' Authority/' pp. 1 0 - 1 1 . 34. Ibid., pp. 8 - 9 . 35. Ibid., p. 9. 4. The Genesis of the American Authors' Authority (January 1945-July 1946) 1. Rex Stout, "The Reprint Situation." 2. Publishers Weekly (21 April 1945), p. 1098. 3. Carmer, "RWG Activities." 4. Mannheimer to SWG Executive Board, 21 October 1944, CSOM Folder, SWG Files, Writers Guild of America, Los Angeles, California. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Joan Didion, "In Hollywood," in The White Album, p. 155. 8. "Committee on Sale of Original Material: Proposals for Discussion," January 1945, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 9. Minutes, CSOM Meeting, 18 May 1945, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 10. Minutes, CSOM Meeting, 1 June 1945, CSOM Folder, SWG Files, n . Emmet Lavery to Russel Crouse, 13 June 1945, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 12. Ibid. 13. "Preliminary Draft—Licensing Agreement for Screenplay," May 1945, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 14. Minutes, CSOM Meeting, 8 June 1945, CSOM Folder, SWG Files.

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15. Ibid. 16. Lavery to Crouse, 13 June 1945, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 17. Stout to Lavery, 18 July 1945, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 18. Cain to H. L. Mencken, 16 July 1947, Cain Papers. 19. "Resolution Passed by Television Writers Organizing C o m m i t t e e / ' 19 July 1945, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 20. Corey to Crouse, 30 July 1945, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 21. Crouse to Corey, first letter, 10 August 1945, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 22. Crouse to Corey, second letter, 10 August 1945, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 23. "Emmet Lavery." 24. Corey to Crouse, 15 October 1945, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Lavery to Pomerance, telegram, 16 January 1946, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 30. Minutes, CSOM, 30 January 1946, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 31. Hoopes, Cain, p. 391. 32. "Memorandum to Committee on the Sale of Original Material," 13 February 1946, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 33. Minutes, CSOM, 13 February 1946, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 34. Cain to Mencken, 16 July 1947, Cain Papers. 35. Minutes, CSOM, 13 February 1945, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 36. Cain to Mencken, 16 July 1947, Cain Papers. 37. John K. Hutchens, "People Who Read and Write," 16 June 1946. 38. "SWG Bulletin." 39. "Bulletin," Screen Writer (March 1946): 40. 40. Minutes, Regular Meeting and Open Meeting of the Executive Board, 4 March 1946, 1946 Membership Meetings Folder, SWG Files. 41. Emmet Lavery, " M i n i m u m Basic Agreement for the Screen." 42. Rice to Lavery, 16 March 1946, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 43. Lavery to Rice, 19 March 1946, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 44. Luise Sillcox to Lavery, 26 April 1946, CSOM Folder, SWG Files. 45. Bernheim, Business of the Theatre, p. 117. 46. Cain, "American Authors 7 Authority," pp. 1 0 - 1 1 . 47. Ibid., pp. 1 4 - 1 5 . 48. Mencken to Cain, 8 July 1946, Cain Papers. 49. Cohn to Fleisher, 22 March 1946, RWG Archives, Billy Rose Theater Collection. 50. "AAA Log," AAA Overall Committee Folder, SWG Files. 51. Cain, "American Authors 7 Authority, 77 p. 17. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid., pp. 13, 17, 18.

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55. W. R. Wilkinson, "A Vote for foe Stalin/ 7 pp. 1, 4. 56. W. R. Wilkinson, "Trade Views/ 7 p. 1. 57. Tenney quoted by Wilkinson, "Trade Views/ 7 p. 1. 58. Los Angeles Examiner (27 April 1936). 59. Sklar, Movie-Made America, p. 244. 60. Schwartz, Hollywood Writers' Wars, pp. 8 2 - 8 5 . 61. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, pp. 55, 75. 62. Sklar, Movie-Made America, p. 244. 63. Variety (28 July 1941), p. 3. 64. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, p. 186. 65. Sklar, Movie-Made America, pp. 257-258. 66. Minutes, SWG Executive Board, 8 October 1945, 1945 SWG Executive Board Folder, SWG Files. 67. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, pp. 203, 215. 68. Cain to Christopher LaFarge, 31 July 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 69. Hollywood Reporter (30 July 1946), p. 1. 70. Minutes, SWG General Membership Meeting, 29 July 1946, 1946 Membership Meetings Folder, SWG Files. 71. Ibid. 72. Cain to Christopher LaFarge, 31 July 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 73. Minutes, SWG General Membership Meeting, 29 July 1945. 74. Cain to LaFarge, 31 July 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 75. Ibid. 5. A War of Words (August-October 1946) 1. Cain to LaFarge, 31 July 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 2. Ibid. 3. "Bulletin/ 7 Screen Writer 2 (October 1946): 36. 4. "Studios Unexcited by AAA Big Stick Threat on Pic Stories/ 7 pp. 1, 4. 5. Richard Connell replied that, while he was in favor of the AAA, his poor health made it impossible to commit himself (Connell to Estabrook, 20 August 1946, AAA Correspondence Folder, SWG Files). Raymond Chandler also begged off, saying that it was impractical for h i m to accept the appointment because he was about to move to La Jolla, near San Diego. "As for the project itself I am open-minded/ 7 Chandler replied to Estabrook, even though it was well known in Hollywood that Chandler disliked Cain and his work. "I don't go for it just because James Cain does or because majority vote does. Neither am I against it because I personally take a dim view of some of the individuals who are in favor of it77 (Chandler to Estabrook, 24 August 1946, AAA Correspondence Folder, SWG Files). 6. Minutes, Overall AAA Committee, 29 August 1946, Overall AAA Committee Minutes Folder, SWG Files. 7. Hollywood Reporter (30 July 1946), p. 9. 8. Moore to Bryant, 30 July 1946, RWG AAA Folder, SWG Files. 9. For more on Bryant, see New York Herald-Tribune (23 June 1937), p. 17; and RWG Western Regional Bulletin (January 1945): 1.

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10. Bryant to Moore, i August 1946, RWG AAA Folder, SWG Files, n . Ibid. 12. Bryant to Moore, 6 August 1946, RWG AAA Folder, SWG Files. 13. Moore to Rice, 15 August 1946, Sub-Committee on Strategy Folder, SWG Files. 14. ''Authors Authority Editorially Scored in Chi Tribune/ 7 15. "Entire RWG Accepts AAA/' Variety (21 August 1946), n.p., AAA Clipping File, Cain Papers. 16. Bryant to Moore, first letter, 16 August 1946, RWG AAA Folder, SWG Files. 17. "Regimented Writers," p. 12. 18. Bryant to Moore, second letter, 16 August 1946, RWG AAA Folder, SWG Files. 19. Moore to Bryant, 16 August 1946, Radio Writers Guild Files, Billy Rose Theater Collection; Bryant to Moore, second letter, 16 August 1946, RWG AAA Folder, SWG Files. 20. Bryant to Moore, second letter, 16 August 1946, RWG AAA Folder, SWG Files. 21. LaFarge to Cain, 13 August 1946, Cain Papers. 22. "Description of Committee for Action," mimeograph, AAA Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 23. Nancy Davids to Maurice Rapf, 9 August 1946, AAA Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 24. "Description of Committee for Action," mimeograph, AAA Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 25. Davids to Rapf, 9 August 1946, AAA Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 26. Lavery to Rice, 29 August 1946, AAA Sub-Committee on Strategy Folder, SWG Files. 27. George Sokolsky obituary, New York Times (14 December 1962). 28. James C. Petrillo obituary, Los Angeles Times (25 October 1984); also Jack Gould, "Portrait of the Unpredictable Petrillo," pp. 11, 25, 27. 29. George Sokolsky, "Proposed: Thought Control Monopoly." 30. Bryant to Moore, second letter, 16 August 1946, RWG AAA Folder, SWG Files. 31. Lindsay to Lardner, 10 August 1946, AAA Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 32. "Draft of Articles of Incorporation," 6 September 1946, Sub-Committee on Organization Folder, SWG Files. 33. Minutes, AAA Committee, 6 September 1946, AAA Committee Folder, SWG Files. 34. Minutes, AAA Committee, 12 September 1946, AAA Committee Folder, SWG Files. 35. "American Writers Association to Fellow Writers," n September 1946, mimeograph, AAA Folder, AG Files. 36. "AWA to Fellow Writers," brochure, 11 September 1946, pp. 1-2, AAA Folder, AG Files.

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37. Ibid., p. 8. 38. "Authority Plan Defended by Rice." 39. James T. Farrell, "A 'Cartel' Plan for American Writers," original emphasis. This is a reprinting of Farrell's letter to Rice on September 14. 40. Ibid., p. 4. 41. Ibid. 42. "Farrell Opposes Writers Authority." 43. Lavery to Rice, 3 September 1946, Sub-Committee on Strategy Folder, SWG Files. 44. Lavery to AAA Committee, memo, 16 September 1946, AAA SubCommittee on Strategy Folder, SWG Files. 45. "Authority Plan Defended by Rice." 46. "Farrell Opposes Writers Authority." 47. Kuhn to Rice, 17 September 1946, AL AAA Folder, AG Files. 48. "Authors to Discuss Authority Plan." How dimly understood the specifics of the AAA plan actually were at the time was demonstrated when the Times in this same article erroneously described the AAA as "acting as a clearinghouse and agent [my emphasis] in the leasing of their writings," since at no stage of the AAA's formulation was it to negotiate for writers. 49. Cain to Rice, telegram, 18 September 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 50. "AL Takes Up Cain Proposal Today." 51. "Meetings: AGC, 10 September 1946." 52. "Meetings: ALC, 18 September 1946." 53. Ibid., p. 16. 54. "Authors Study 'Authority' Plan." 55. Rice to Lavery, 19 September 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 56. David Raffelock to Cain, 23 August 1946, AAA Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 57. Deacon to Sillcox, 20 September 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 58. Maurino to Cain, n.d., AAA Correspondence File, Cain Papers. Cain had the letter translated in September 1946. 59. Cain to Maurino, 28 September 1946, Cain Papers. 60. Bloom to Sillcox, telegram, 17 September 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 61. Goetz to Cain, 20 September 1946, Cain Papers. 62. Cain to Markey, 23 September 1946, Cain Papers. 63. Ibid. 64. Dalton Trumbo, "Editorial," p. 3. 65. Ibid., p. 2. 66. "Authors Authority, " p . 44. 67. "Authors Want Copyright Control," p. 1593. 68. Harrison Smith, "The Authority." 69. Connelly to Lavery, 24 September 1946, AAA Overall Committee Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 70. Rice to Lavery, 28 September 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 71. Lavery to Rice, 30 September 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 72. Rice to Lavery, 28 September 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 73. Ibid.

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Notes to Pages 145-156

74. Ibid. 75. Minutes, AAA Committee Meeting, 25 September 1946, AAA Committee Folder, SWG Files. 76. Thompson to Rice, 20 September 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 77. Rice to Thomas, 28 September 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 78. Thomas to Rice, 1 October 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 79. Rice to Thomas, 9 October 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 80. Thomas to Rice, 15 October 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 81. Farrell to Rice, 3 October 1946, James T. Farrell Collection, Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 82. James Thrasher, "Would-Be Censor/' West Virginia South-West Times (9 October 1946), n.p., AAA Clipping File, Cain Papers. 83. Editor's note to Wesley Haynes, "A Revolution/1 p. 18. 84. Harry Lorin Binsse, "American Authors Authority: The Plan for a Copyright Pool/7 85. Emmet Lavery, "Letter to the Editor." 86. James M. Cain, "Just What Is the AAA?" 87. The American Writer (1 November 1946): 2. 88. Lavery to Rice, 8 October 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 89. Cain to Rice, telegram, 14 October 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 90. Rice to Lavery, 9 October 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 91. Sillcox to Lavery, 14 October 1946, AAA Committee Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 92. Lavery to Connelly, first letter, 14 October 1946, AAA Committee Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 93. Lavery to Connelly, second letter, 14 October 1946, AAA Committee Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 94. LaFarge quoted in Hutchens, "People Who Read and Write," 20 October 1946. 95. Reese and McNichols to LaFarge, 14 October 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 96. Morris Kaplan, "Cain and Connelly in a Wrangle over Author's Authority Meeting." 97. New York Herald Tribune (19 October 1946). 98. Kaplan, "Cain and Connelly." 99. Ibid. 100. Dorothy Thompson obituary, New York Times (1 February 1961). 101. Thompson to Rice, 20 September 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 102. "Dorothy Thompson Assails Cain Plan." 103. Ibid. 104. "Cain Charges Effort to Bury Authority Plan." 105. "Cain Denounces Authors League." 106. "Cain Charges Effort to Bury Authority Plan." 107. "Cain Denounces Authors League." 108. "Cain Charges Effort to Bury Authority Plan." 109. "Cain Denounces Authors League." n o . Farrell to Ward Moore, 28 April 1947, James T. Farrell Collection.

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257

i n . "Cain Denounces Authors League." 112. James M. Cain, "Respectfully Submitted." 113. Rice to Lavery, telegram, 22 October 1946, AAA Committee Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 114. Lavery to Connelly, 23 October 1946, AAA Committee, Connelly Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 115. Lavery to Connelly, 23 October 1946, AAA Committee, Connelly Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 116. Luise Sillcox obituary, New York Times (29 June 1965). 117. Kenneth Webb, "Report to the RWG." 118. For more about Sillcox, see "Miss Sillcox and the Five Presidents." Sillcox also served as the model for the character of Cora Ballard in longtime League activist Rex Stout's whodunit Plot It Yourself. 119. E. B. White, "The Muse and the Mug." 6. The Second AAA Plan (November 1946-April 1947) 1. Farrell, "A 'Cartel' Plan for American Writers"; idem "Artists in Handcuffs." 2. James T. Farrell, "Do Writers Need an 'AAA'?—No!" pp. 9, 10, 44. 3. Ibid., p. 44. 4. James M. Cain, "Do Writers Need an 'AAA'?—Yes," p. 9. 5. Ibid., p. 40. 6. Ibid., p. 41. 7. Sokolsky, "Proposed: Thought Monopoly," AAA Clipping File, Cain Papers. 8. American Writer (1 November 1946): 1-4, AAA Folder, AG Files. 9. New Leader (21 August 1946): 1. 10. Raymond Howard, "American Writers Refuse to Don AAA Uniform"; Jonathan Stout, "Authoritarianism over Authors"; and Eugene Lyon, "We Want to Write as We Please." n . Dorothy Thompson, "Voluntary Association vs. Coercion." 12. Elizabeth Barnes to Richard Rodgers, 30 November 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. Barnes was secretary of the Golden Bridle Poetry Club; Rodgers was then president of the Dramatists Guild. 13. Tulsa free-lance writers to Richard Rodgers, 1 December 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 14. Cook to Rice, 5 December 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 15. Barber to Rice, 2 December 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 16. Lavery to Connelly, 21 November 1946, AAA Committee, Connelly Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 17. "Draft of AAA Articles of Incorporation," 22 November 1946, AAA Committee—Various Drafts Folder, SWG Files. 18. "Draft of AAA By-Laws," 22 November 1946, AAA Committee— Various Drafts Folder, SWG Files. 19. "Report of Sub-Committee on Organization," 25 November 1946, AAA Committee—Various Drafts Folder, SWG Files.

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Notes to Pages

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20. Ibid. 21. Minutes, AAA Committee Meeting, 25 November 1946, AAA Committee Folder, SWG Files. 22. Lavery to Marc Connelly, 26 November 1946, AAA Committee, Connelly Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 23. "Draft of AAA By-Laws/' 22 November 1946, AAA Committee— Various Drafts Folder, SWG Files. 24. Minutes, SWG Annual Meeting, 13 November 1946, 1946 Membership Meetings Folder, SWG Files. 25. "Rebels Win Fight in Authors Guild." 26. Heym to Cain, 27 November 1946, Cain Papers. 27. "Court Fight Is Due in Authors Guild." 28. Ibid.; also "Authors to Appeal on Opening Files." 29. Hutchens, "People Who Read and Write," 8 December 1946. 30. LaFarge to Hutchens, 17 December 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 31. "Interim Report of the Authors League Committee on Licensing and Secondary Rights," n.d., AAA Folder, AG Files. 32. "Elmer Rice's Resignation." 33. "Licensing System for Authors Plan." 34. Lavery to SWG Executive Board, memo, 30 December 1946, Radio Writers Guild Archives, Billy Rose Theater Collection. 35. Letters from Bray and Morgan reprinted in Screen Writer 2 (January 1947): 4 4 - 4 6 . 36. Sillcox to Lansing, 30 January 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 37. LaFarge to Eve Bennett Haberl, 14 January 1947, AAA Folder, AG Files. 38. Haberl to Cain, 3 February 1947, Cain Papers. 39. Mendenhall to Cain, 25 February 1947, Cain Papers. 40. Barrett to Cain, 27 January 1947, Cain Papers. 41. Minutes, 27 January 1947, AAA Committee, AAA Committee Meetings Folder, SWG Files. 42. Minutes, 29 January 1946, AAA Committee, AAA Committee Meetings Folder, SWG Files. 43. AL Licensing Committee to Lavery, telegram, 28 February 1947, AAA Committee Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 44. Lavery to Sillcox, 28 February 1947, AAA Committee Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 45. Lavery to Connelly, 28 February 1947, AAA Committee Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 46. Lavery to Connelly, telegram, 5 March 1947, AAA Committee Connelly Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 47. Ibid. 48. Sillcox to Ann Roth Morgan, memo, 7 March 1947, Radio Writers Guild AAA Folder, SWG Files. 49. Lavery to Rodgers, n.d., AAA Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 50. Maltz to LaFarge, 12 March 1947, RWG Archives. 51. Bessie to Sillcox, 18 March 1947, RWG Archives.

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259

52. LaFarge to Maltz, 13 March 1947, RWG Archives. 53. Connelly to Lavery, 11 March 1947, AAA Committee Connelly Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 54. Ardrey to Lavery, telegram, 12 March 1947, AAA Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 55. Lavery to Ardrey, 12 March 1947, AAA Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 56. Ardrey to Lavery, telegram, 15 March 1947, AAA Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 57. Cain to Caldwell, 15 March 1947, Cain Papers. 58. "Rebels Lose Right to Authors 7 Lists/' 59. "Meetings/ 7 Authors League Bulletin 34 (May 1947): 25. 60. Maltz to LaFarge, 1 May 1947, AAA Folder, AG Files. 61. Ibid. 62. Minutes, AAA Committee, 30 April 1947, AAA Committee Meetings Folder, SWG Files. 63. Ibid. 7. The Muse and the Mug (May-June 1947) 77

1. "Meetings, Authors League Bulletin 34 (May 1947): 25. 2. "Confidential Report of AL Licensing Committee Re AAA Plan,77 8 May 1947, Cain Papers. 3. Ibid., p. 3. 4. Ibid., p. 4. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., p. 6. 7. Ibid., p. 7. 8. "Meetings, 77 Authors League Bulletin 34 (June 1947): 17. 9. Lavery to Hammerstein, 13 May 1947, Cain Papers. 10. Lavery to Hammerstein, telegram, 14 May 1947, Cain Papers. 11. Hammerstein to Lavery, 19 May 1947, Cain Papers. 12. Lavery to Hammerstein, 13 May 1947, Cain Papers. 13. Hammerstein to Lavery, 19 May 1947, Cain Papers. 14. Lavery to Hammerstein, 21 May 1947, Cain Papers. 15. "Comments of the Joint Over-All AAA Committee and Executive Board of the Screen Writers Guild on the Confidential Report of the Authors League Licensing Committee, 77 22 May 1947, Cain Papers. 16. Hammerstein to Lavery, 17 June 1947, Cain Papers. 17. "Writers to Confer on Licensing Plan.77 18. Emmet Lavery, "Snowball in the Spring,77 pp. 2, 4. 19. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, p. 259. 20. Ibid. 21. "Red Pay Dirt in Hollywood. 77 22. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, p. 259. 23. Lavery, "Snowball in the Spring,77 p. 4. 24. Ibid., p. 3.

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Notes to Pages 201-209

25. 'Thought Control/ 7 26. ''Another Communist Threat/' 27. "A Group That Will Bear Watching." 28. George Peck, "Story of D-Day." 29. George Sokolsky, "Writers' Monopoly." 30. Les K. Adler and Thomas G. Paterson, "Red Fascism: The Merger of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the American Image of Totalitarianism, 1930S-1950S."

31. Strawn to Cain, 7 April 1947, Cain Papers. 32. Cain to Strawn, 12 April 1947, Cain Papers. 33. Caldwell to Cain, 29 June 1947, Cain Papers. 34. Mowery to Cain, 14 April 1947, Cain Papers. 35. Demarest to Cain, 8 June 1947, Cain Papers. 36. Zugsmith to SWG, n.d., Response to AAA Supplement Folder, SWG Files. 37. Conrad to SWG, n.d., Response to AAA Supplement Folder, SWG Files. 38. Heym to SWG, n.d., Response to AAA Supplement Folder, SWG Files. 39. Bessie to Lavery, 16 May 1947, Response to AAA Supplement Folder, SWG Files. 40. Bordeaux to SWG, n.d., Response to AAA Supplement Folder, SWG Files. 41. Dickinson to SWG, n.d., Response to AAA Supplement Folder, SWG Files. 42. Haycox to Lavery, 28 May 1947, Response to AAA Supplement Folder, SWG Files. 43. Fisher to Lavery, 23 May 1947, Response to AAA Supplement Folder, SWG Files. 44. Sinks to SWG, 28 April 1947, Response to AAA Supplement Folder, SWG Files. 45. Burroughs to Lavery, 22 May 1947, Response to AAA Supplement Folder, SWG Files. 46. Pratt to SWG, n.d., Response to AAA Supplement Folder, SWG Files. 47. Essipoff to SWG, n.d., Response to AAA Supplement Folder, SWG Files. 48. Campbell to SWG, n.d., Response to AAA Supplement Folder, SWG Files. 49. Moore to Farrell, 21 April 1947, Farrell Papers. 50. Farrell to Moore, 28 April 1947, Farrell Papers. 51. "Writers Warned of Red Inroads." 52. "Dos Passos Scores Unit." 53. "Cain Plan Scored by Writers' Group." 54. Mills to Lavery, 10 June 1947, AAA Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 55. Lavery to Mills, 13 June 1947, AAA Correspondence Folder, SWG Files.

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261

Notes to Pages 210-221 56. Files. 57. 58. 59.

Mills to Lavery, 17 June 1947, AAA Correspondence Folder, SWG "Rupert Hughes Blasts Hollywood Commissars/' Philip Wylie, "The Right to Starve." Edmund Wilson, The Boys in the Back Room, p. 5. 8. The End of the AAA

1. George Bernard Shaw, "Authors and Their Rights." 2. "Oscar Hammerstein, 2nd, Replies to Bernard Shaw." 3. Lavery to Chodorov, n.d., AAA Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 4. Chodorov to Lavery, 6 August 1947, AAA Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 5. Lavery to Chodorov, 12 August 1947, AAA Correspondence Folder, SWG Files. 6. "Miss Rogers Sued over Red Debate." Lavery dropped the suit against the program's producer, but pursued Rogers until 1951, when a court awarded him thirty thousand dollars in damages, one of the largest judgments in a libel case to that time. This was one of the few times during the postwar Red Scare that someone wrongly named as a Communist sought and won a remedy through the courts. 7. Lavery to SWG, 20 October 1947, Alvah Bessie Collection, Wisconsin Center for Theater Research, University of Wisconsin, Madison. 8. "79 in Hollywood Found Subversive, Inquiry Head Says"; see also "Rogers Testifies before Congress." 9. "SWG President Testifies before HUAC." An extract of Lavery's testimony is contained in Eric Bentley, ed., Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings before the House UnAmehcan Activities Committee, 193868, pp. 169-183. 10. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, pp. 292-296; also Schwartz, Hollywood Writers' Wars, pp. 265-270. 11. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, p. 294. 12. Cain to Heym, 7 June 1947, Cain Papers. 13. Cain to Demarest, 14 July 1947, Cain Papers. 14. Cain to Hopper, 3 September 1947, Cain Papers. 15. Cain to Hopper, 6 September 1947, Cain Papers. 16. Cain to Sokolsky, telegram, 22 November 1947, Cain Papers. 17. Cain to Clemons, 18 August 1947, Cain Papers. 18. Cain to Mencken, 16 July 1947, Cain Papers. 19. Ibid. 20. Cain to Rex Beach, 13 July 1947, Cain Papers. 21. Cain to Mencken, 16 July 1947, Cain Papers. 22. Cain to Clemons, 18 August 1947, Cain Papers. 23. Cain to Heym, 13 July 1947, Cain Papers. 24. Cain to Haberl, 27 August 1947, Cain Papers. 25. Cain to Beach, 13 July 1947, Cain Papers.

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Notes to Pages

221-239

26. Cain to Mencken, 16 July 1947, Cain Papers. 27. Ibid. 28. Cain to Hopper, 6 September 1947, Cain Papers. 29. Cain to Shaw, 16 February 1946, Cain Papers. 30. Maltz to LaFarge, 1 May 1947, AAA Folder, AG Files. 31. Rice to Lavery, 19 September 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 32. Thomas to Rice, 1 October 1946, AAA Folder, AG Files. 33. Hammerstein to Lavery, 19 May 1947, AAA Files, Cain Papers. 34. Cain to Clemons, 18 August 1947, Cain Papers. 35. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, p. 251 ; Hoopes, Cain, pp. 4 1 0 - 4 1 1 . 36. Schwartz, Hollywood Writers7 Wars, p. 262. 37. Cain to Haberl, 27 August 1947, Cain Papers. 38. Theodore Pratt, "Kindergarten of Authors' Economics." 39. Cain, "Do Writers Need an 'AAA'?—Yes," p. 40. 40. Adler and Paterson, "Red Fascism," p. 1046. 41. J. Edgar Hoover, "Red Fascism in the United States Today." 42. Adler and Paterson, "Red Fascism," pp. 1062-1064. 43. Samuel Sillen, "A New Fascist Literary Front"; idem, "An Authors Authority Plan." 44. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, p. 79. 45. Schwartz, Hollywood Writers' Wars, p. 285. 46. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, p. 438. 47. Communist Infiltration into the United States, pp. 1-4. 48. Schwartz, Hollywood Writers' Wars, p. 257. 49. J. Edgar Hoover, "Loyal Americans Must Stand Up and Be Counted," in Origins of the Cold War, 1941-47, ed. Walter LaFeber, pp. 163-164. 50. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, p. 260. 51. Ibid., pp.278, 249. 52. Ibid., p. 411. 53. "Authors League Opens Drive for Lease, Not Sale, of Yarns," pp. 1, 6. 54. John K. Hutchens, "People Who Read and Write," 30 November 1947. 55. "Dramatists Guild Withdraws Wartime Concessions"; "Ring Judgement Reached." 56. Peter Lyon, "A Milestone for the RWG—and the ALA"; see also "The Networks Sign"; and "RWG Membership Authorizes Strike." 57. Hutchens, "People Who Read and Write." 58. "Royalty Cut Opposed." 59. Paul Gallico, "The Authors Guild Looks Forward." 60. Sheridan Gibney, "Report to the Authors League on the Blacklisting of Writers in Hollywood." 61."Dramatists Guild and Ring Case." 62. "RWG vs. Advertising Agencies"; "The Advertising Agencies and Radio Writers"; "RWG-AAAA Deadlocked." 63. The most complete account of this controversy is contained in a pamphlet produced by the RWG, "The RWG and Television," n.d., RWG Clip-

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ping File, Billy Rose Theater Collection. See also Dale Eunson, 'Television: A Warning to Writers/' 64. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, pp. 365-366. 65. Harvey Breit, "Writers, Royalties and Rights/' 66. Thomas Whiteside, The Blockbuster Complex: Conglomerates, Show Business, and Book Publishing. 67. Ibid.

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Hoover, J. Edgar. "Red Fascism in the United States Today." American Magazin e 6 3 (February 1947): 23. Howard, Raymond. "American Writers Refuse to Don AAA Uniform." NewLeader (21 September 1946): 5. Howard, Sidney. "Report to Dramatists Guild." Authors League Bulletin 21 (December 1936): 6 - 8 . Howells, William Dean. "The Man of Letters as a Man of Business." In Literature and Life. New York: Harper, 1902. Hutchens, John K. "People Who Read and Write." The New York Times (16 June 1946, 20 October 1946, 8 December 1946, 30 November 1947). Jowett, Garth. Film: The Democratic Art. Boston: Focal Press, 1976. Kahn, E. J., Jr. About the New Yorker and Me: A Sentimental Journey. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1979. . The World of Swope. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965. Kaplan, Morris. "Cain and Connelly in a Wrangle over Author's Authority Meeting." The New York Times (19 October 1946). Kaplan, Roger. "The Realism of James M. Cain." Dialogue 64 (1984): 6 0 - 6 3 . Karp, Irwin. "The Author's View of the New Copyright Act." In The Copyright Dilemma, edited by Herbert S. White, pp. 6 2 - 6 9 . Chicago: American Library Association, 1978. Kenyon, Frederic G. Books and Readers in Ancient Greece and Rome. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932. Knight, L. C. Drama and Society in the Age of Johnson. London: Peregrine Smith, 1962. Kostelanetz, Richard. The End of Intelligent Writing: Literary Politics in America. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1973. Kurth, Peter. American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson. Boston: Little, Brown, 1990. LaFeber, Walter. America, Russia and the Cold War, 1945-1975. New York: Wiley, 1976. , ed. Origins of the Cold War, 1941-47. New York: Wiley, 1971. Laurenson, Diana, and Alan Swingewood. The Sociology of Literature. New York: Schocken Books, 1972. Lavery, Emmet. "Letter to the Editor." Commonweal (8 November 1946): 91-93. . "Minimum Basic Agreement for the Screen." Authors League Bulletin 33 (March 1946): 1 5 - 1 7 . . "Snowball in the Spring." Screen Writer 3 (June 1947): 2, 4. "Licensing System for Authors Plan." The New York Times (25 September 1946). Lichtenstein, Nelson. "Authorial Professionalism and the Literary Marketplace." American Studies 9 (1978): 3 5 - 5 3 . "Literary Property Rights." Authors League Bulletin 4 (April 1916): 3 - 5 . Lyon, Eugene. "We Want to Write as We Please." New Leader (28 September 1946): 8. MacDermott, Kathy. "Literature and the Grub Street Myth." In Popular Fie-

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Morehouse, Ward. "Report on America." Baltimore Sun (5 June 1946). Moss, Sidney P. Charles Dickens' Quarrel with America. Troy, N.Y.: Whitston, 1984. Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism: A History, 1690-1960. 3d ed. New York: Macmillan, 1962. "The Networks Sign." Authors League Bulletin 34 (August-September 1947): 3-4"Nineteen Markets." Authors League Bulletin 33 (May 1946): 3 - 4 . Noble, David W. The End of American History: Democracy, Capitalism, and the Metaphor of Two Worlds in Anglo-American Historical Writing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985. "Notes on Blacklisting." Film Comment (December 1987): 3 7 - 5 9 . Ogilvie, R.M. Roman Literature and Society Brighton, Eng.: Harvester Press, 1980. "Oscar Hammerstein, 2nd, Replies to Bernard Shaw." Screen Writer 3 (August 1947): 3. Page, Walter Hines. Confessions of a Publisher. New York: Doubleday, Page, 1905.

Parker, William R. Milton: A Biography. 1 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968. Patterson, Lyman Ray. Copyright in Historical Perspective. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968. Peck, George. "Story of D-Day." Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star (18 June 1947). Phillips, Cabell. From the Crash to the Blitz. New York: Macmillan, 1969. Poggi, Jack. Theater in America: The Impact of Economic Forces, 1870-1967. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1966. Polking, Kirk, and Leonard S. Meranus, eds. Law and the Writer. Rev. ed. Cincinnati: Writer's Digest Books, 1978.

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Radio Writers Guild: What It Is and What It Does. New York: Radio Writers Guild, 1951. "Rebels Lose Right to Authors 7 Lists.77 The New York Times (22 March 1947). "Rebels Win Fight in Authors Guild.77 The New York Times (27 November 1946). "Red Pay Dirt in Hollywood. 77 New York News (16 May 1947). "Regimented Writers. 77 Chicago Tribune (9 August 1946). "Ring Judgement Reached.77 The New York Times (6 January 1949). "Report on Affiliation with Federated Labor.77 Authors League Bulletin 4 (July 1916)15-8. Roberts, C. H. "The Writing and Dissemination of Literature in the Classical World.77 In Literature and Western Civilization: The Classical World, edited by David Daiches and Anthony Thorlby, pp. 435-460. London: Aldus Books, 1972. Rogers, Pat. Grub Street. London: Methuen, 1972. "Rogers Testifies before Congress. 77 The New York Times [is October 1947). Rogin, Paul Michael. McCarthy and the Intellectuals: The Radical Specter. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1967. Ross, Murray. Stars and Strikes: The Unionization of Hollywood. New York: Columbia University Press, 1941. Rosten, Leo. Hollywood: The Movie Colony and the Movie Makers. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1941. "Royalties from Magazines. 77 Authors League Bulletin 3 (May 1915): 5 - 8 . "Royalty Cut Opposed.77 The New York Times (10 December 1947). "Rupert Hughes Blasts Hollywood Commissars. 77 New York WorldTelegram (18 June 1947). "RWG-AAAA Deadlocked. 77 The New York Times (20 October 1949). "RWG Membership Authorizes Strike. 77 Authors League Bulletin 34 (May 1947): 2 3 - 2 4 . "RWG vs. Advertising Agencies.77 Authors League Bulletin 35 (April-May 1948): 1 2 - 1 3 . Sanders, Marion K. Dorothy Thompson: A Legend in Her Time. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973. Saunders, John W The Profession of English Letters. London: Routledge &. Keegan Paul, 1964. Schudson, Michael. Discovering the News. New York: Basic Books, 1978. Schulberg, Budd. The Four Seasons of Success. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972. Schwartz, Nancy Lynn. The Hollywood Writers' Wars. New York: Knopf, 1982. "79 in Hollywood Found Subversive, Inquiry Head Says.77 The New York Times (23 October 1947).

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Stout, Rex. "The Reprint Situation." Authors League Bulletin 32 (August 1945): 9 - 1 1 .

"Studios Unexcited by AAA Big Stick Threat on Pic Stories." Hollywood Reporter (29 July 1946): 4. "A Supplementary Report from the Sub-committee on Affiliation With the American Federation of Labor." Authors League Bulletin 4 (April 1916): 3. "SWG Bulletin." Screen Writer 1 (May 1946): 46-47. "SWG President Testifies Before HUAC." The New York Times (30 October 1947). Tebbel, John. A History of Book Publishing in the United States. 4 vols. New York: R. R. Bowker, 1972-1981. Thompson, Dorothy. "Voluntary Association vs. Coercion." New Leader (30 November 1946): 7.

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Wilson, R. Jackson. Figures of Speech: American Writers and the Literary Marketplace, from Benjamin Franklin to Emily Dickinson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989. Wittenberg, Philip. The Protection of Literary Property. Rev. ed. Boston: The Writer, 1978. Woodmansee, Martha. "The Genius and the Copyright: Economic and Legal Conditions of the Emergence of the 'Author7." Eighteenth Century Studies 17 (Summer 1984): 425-448. "Writers to Confer on Licensing Plan." The New York Times (5 July 1947). "Writers Warned of Red Inroads." New York Journal American (13 May 1947). Wylie, Philip. "The Right to Starve." Miami News (22 June 1947).

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Index

AAA. See American Authors 7 Authority (AAA) AAAA. See American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) Abrams, Elliott, 225 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), 71, 72 Act for the Encouragement of Learning, n - 1 4 Actors Equity, 6 8 - 6 9 , 7°, I 4 ° Adler, Les K., 231-232 AFL. See American Federation of Labor (AFL) AFM. See American Federation of Musicians (AFM) AG. See Authors Guild (AG) Agents, 27, 30, 105-106, 142, 1 8 7 188 Akins, Zoe, 154 AL. See Authors League (AL) ALTC. See Authors League Television Committee (ALTC) American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), 76, 239 American Authors' Authority (AAA): Cain's plan for, xi-xii, 4, 4 5 - 4 6 , 102-106, 113; genesis of idea for, 9 6 - 9 7 , 100, 102-106, 112-115; governance of, 1 0 3 , 1 6 9 170, 180; funding for, 104-105; advantages of, 105; and literary agents, 105-106; as Communist plan, 106, i i 2 , 114, 117, 121, 1 3 0 131, 141, 142, 146, 149, 150, 160,

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165, 2 0 1 - 2 0 3 , 2 ° 6 , 2 o 8 / 2 0 9 / 2 I ° / 219, 225-226, 231-236; future expansion of, 106; endorsement by SWG, 112-115, 117, 130; opponents of, 112, 117, 125-127, 129-132, 139-143, 146-149, 161-168, 177, 2 0 1 - 2 0 3 , 2 o 6 213, 223-225, 2 2 7 - 2 3 1 ; and Radio Writers Guild, n 8-122; writers 7 reactions to, 118-140, 167-168, 176-179, 184-185, 203-213, 2 2 7 - 2 3 1 ; and Committee for Action, 123-124; articles of incorporation and bylaws of, 127-128, 168-173, 179-180; publicity for, 128, 146, 1 7 9 - 1 8 1 ; discussion of, at Authors League Council, 132-137; media reactions to, 134, 142-143, 146, 1 4 8 149, 161-167, 185, 2 0 1 - 2 0 3 , 224; Rice's reaction to, 144-146; and Authors League, 145, 1 5 0 160; New York meetings concerning, 150-160; Committee for Action's meeting on, 1 5 2 157; American Writers Association's meeting on, 153-154; White's poem on, 160; second AAA plan, 168-188, 179-188; anti-discrimination clauses in, 169, 173; purposes of, 169; Screen Writer supplement on, 180-184; and Authors Guild, 185-187; strategy for gaining support for,

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276 187-188; rejection by Authors League, 189-200; questionnaire about, 205, 222; professional argument against, 2 1 0 - 2 1 3 ; failure of, 2 1 4 - 2 4 3 ; impact of, 230-243 American Authors 7 Authority (AAA) Committee, 117-118, 120, 124, 127-128, 130, 133, 143-144, 146, 156-157, 161, 168-169, 171-172, 176, 177, 179-182, 186-188, 192, I 9 5 ~ I 9 7 / 10S, 2 o 8 / 127, 22& American Federation of Labor (AFL), 63-66, 140 American Federation of Musicians (AFM), 125 American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), 100-102, 113, 125, 138, 209 American Writers Association (AWA), 129-136, 144-148, 150, 153-155, 163, 166-167, 177, 202, 203, 206-208, 210, 220, 2 2 3 224, 227, 228, 230, 233 AMPAS. See Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) Anderson, Maxwell, 34, 35, 36 Anti-Communism. See Communism Anti-Nazi League, 109 Ardrey, Robert, 92, 118, 184, 1 9 2 193 Arlen, Richard, 200 Arthur, Art, 118, 227 Arthur, Robert, 114-115 ASCAP. See American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Augustus, 6 Authors. See Playwrights; Profession of authorship; Radio writers; Screenwriters; Writer (author); and names of specific authors Authors Guild (AG): as branch of the Authors League, 68; compared with Dramatists Guild, 70; and reprint publishers, 8 i ; and

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Index Television Writers Organizing Committee (TWOC), 9 0 - 9 1 ; protection for members, 94; and author's royalty, 97; and licensing, 99-100, 187; and AAA, 105, 114, 118, 121, 122, 124, 127, 128, 159, 174, 177, 185-187, 190-191; focus of, 119-120; dissatisfactions with, 122-123, 134-135; internal crises of, 173-175; officers of, 173-175; and second AAA plan, 182; restriction on availability of membership list, 185; Negotiating Committee, 198; and model contract, 237-238; impact of AAA on, 237-238 Authorship, profession of. See Profession of authorship Authors League (AL): and markets for literary properties, 46; founding of, 6 2 - 6 8 ; and national confederation of writers, 73; and Radio Writers Guild, 75, 76; criticisms of, 77, 114, 148, 204, 214-215, 2 2 0 - 2 2 1 ; and subsidiary rights, 82; and licensing, 84, 85, 9 7 - 9 8 , 9 9 - 1 0 0 ; and royalties on screen contracts, 8 6 - 8 7 ; and Television Writers Organizing Committee (TWOC), 8 9 - 9 1 ; officers of, 95, 189; and AAA, 116-117, 1 2 0 122, 124, 125, 127, 128, 129, 1 3 0 137, 145, 177, 226-228, 236; Licensing Committee, 135-137, 143, 145, 157, 166, 168, 172, 1 7 5 176, 180-184, 188-200, 206, 215-216; Communists in, 147; AAA meeting at, 150-160; Cain's criticisms of, 154-155, 157-159, 2 2 0 - 2 2 1 ; and structure of the AAA, 169; and second AAA Plan, 180-184; rejection of AAA, 1 8 9 200; impact of AAA on, 237 Authors League Television Committee (ALTC), 9 2 - 9 4 AWA. See American Writers Association (AWA)

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Index Barber, Claire, 167-168 Barlow, Joel, 15 Barnouw, Eric, 189 Barrett, William, 178-179 Barton, Bruce, 129 Beach, Rex, 62, 64, 66, 67, 221 Behrman, S. N., 72 Beloin, Edmund, 118 Besant, Walter, 2 1 - 2 2 , 23, 6 0 - 6 2 Bessie, Alvah, 118, 183, 206, 227 Binsse, Harry Lorin, 149 Block, Ralph, 108 Bloom, Sol, 138 Blum, Edwin, 114 Boardman, True, 118 Boni, Albert, 36 Boni, Charles, 36 Book clubs, 44, 48, 50 Book-of-the-Month Club, 44 Booksellers, 1 2 - 1 3 , x 4, 1S Bordeaux, Jean, 206 Boston Writers Club, 177 Brackett, Charles, 108, 112 Bray, Roger, 176 Brecht, Berthold, 216 Breit, Harvey, 240 Brewer, Roy, n o British Screenwriters Association (BSA), 176-177, 188 British Society of Authors, 21, 22, 6 0 - 6 1 , 66 Bromfield, Louis, 129, 163 Brooks, Van Wyck, 36 Bryant, Dorothy, 118-122, 126 Bryant, William Cullen, 17 BSA. See British Screenwriters Association (BSA) Buchanan, Thompson, 6 3 - 6 6 Buchman, Sidney, 108 Burlingame, Roger, 37 Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 207 Butler, Ellis Parker, 66 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 22 Cain, James M.: plan for the AAA, xi-xii, 4, 4 5 - 4 6 , 102-106, 113;

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277 on profession of authorship, 3 - 4 ; career of, 4 - 5 , 3 2 - 4 3 , 58; early life of, 31; on writing as work, 31-32; as journalist, 3 2 - 3 4 , 35, 38, 40; beginnings of writing career, 3 2 - 3 4 ; during World War I, 3 2 - 3 3 ; marriages of, 33, 34, 41, 116; divorces of, 34, 43, 219; during 1920s, 3 4 - 3 8 ; as magazine writer and editor, 36, 39, 5 1 - 5 2 ; as playwright, 36, 41, 53; during 1 930s, 3 8 - 4 3 ; as screenwriter, 3 9 - 4 3 , 4 3 - 4 4 , 5 3 - 5 4 , 2-13; as novelist, 4 0 - 4 1 , 43, 116, 219; during World War II, 4 3 - 4 5 ; plagiarism suit against Universal, 43, 57; assessment of postwar marketplace, 4 5 - 5 9 ; on publishers, 4 7 - 5 1 ; on magazines, 5 1 - 5 2 ; on the theater, 5 2 - 5 3 ; on the motion pictures, 5 3 - 5 4 ; on radio, 55-56; on plagiarism, 5 6 - 5 7 ; on taxation, 56; on writers 7 organizations, 57, 7 6 - 7 7 , 2 2 0 - 2 2 1 ; and CSOM, 9 5 - 9 6 , 83; and genesis of AAA, 9 6 - 9 7 , 100, 102-106, 1 1 2 115; and AAA Committee, 1 1 7 118; and meetings concerning the AAA, 152-157; debate with Farrell, 155-156, 161-166, 230; Authors League's hostility toward, 1 5 7-15 9; a n d second AAA plan, 168-188, 179-188; visit to Colorado for the AAA, 177-179; and failure of AAA, 2 1 4 - 2 4 3 ; on Communism, 2 1 9 - 2 2 0 —works: "Double Indemnity/ 7 4, 41, 4 3 - 4 4 , 54; The Postman Always Rings Twice, 4, 5, 38, 4 0 4 1 , 4 8 - 5 1 , 53, 5 4 , 9 5 , 2 4 9 n . 3 3 ; Serenade, 4, 41, 43, 57; Crashing the Gates, 36, 53; Our Government, 37; 7 - 1 1 , 41, 53; Mildred Pierce, 43, 54 Caldwell, Taylor, 185, 204, 227 Campbell, Alfred, 207 Canadian Authors Association, 138

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278 Cantor, Eddie, 73 Carey, Henry, 17 Carey, Matthew, 18 Carmer, Carl, 3, 154, 156, 173-174, 228 Carvat, William, 22 Caxton, William, 6-7 Censorship, 119, 141, 172 Ceplair, Larry, 73, 108-109, n o , 111,225, 233,235,236 Cerf, Bennett, 36, 206 CFA. See Committee for Action (CFA) Chamberlin, John, 166 Chandler, Raymond, 154, 253n.5 Char vat, William, 28, 229 Chevigny, Hector, 184 Chodorov, Jerome, 215-216 Chorus Equity Association, 119 Churchill, Winston, 65, 66 Cicero, 6 Clemons, Cyril, 221 Clough, Mary, 33, 41 Code of Fair Practice, 93 Cohn, Morris, 8 3 - 8 6 , 9 5 - 9 8 , 100, 104, 112-114, 118, 124, 127, 171, 179, 185 Cole, Lester, 108, 217, 233, 234, 235,236 Colorado Authors League, 177, 178 Committee for Action (CFA), 1 2 2 124, 134-135, 138, 144, 146, 1 5 2 157, 173-175, 185, 205-206, 228 Committee on the Sale of Original Material (CSOM), 8 2 - 8 8 , 91, 94, 9 5 - 9 8 , 104, 112-115, 124, 218 Communism: in Hollywood film industry, 39, 106-112, 2 0 0 - 2 0 1 , 233-236, 239-240; and AAA, 106, 112, 114, 117, 121, 130-131, 141, 142, 146, 149, 150, 160, 165, 200-203, 206, 208, 209, 210, 219, 225-226, 231-236, 2 3 9 - 2 4 0 ; and American anti- C o m m u n i s m in the 1940s, 106-112, 200-202, 216-218, 226, 231-236, 2 3 9 240; and SWG, 106-108, 1 1 1 -

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Index 112, 114, 134, 144, 146, 200, 201, 217-219, 226, 234-237; and Committee for Action, 144-145, 146; Rice on, 144-145, 147; and Authors League, 147; and Conference of Studio Unions, 173; Cain on, 219-220. See also House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) Conference of Studio Unions (CSU), i i o - i n , 173 Connell, Richard, 2 5 3 ^ 5 Connelly, Marc, 34, 143, 151-155, x 5 7 - i 5 9 , 161, 168, 172, 181, 1 8 3 184, 189, 193, 226, 242 Conrad, Earl, 205 Cook, Helen Richards, 167 Cooper, James Fenimore, 17 Copp, Robert, 100 Copyright: 1710 law passed by Parliament, 1 1 - 1 2 ; and Statute of Anne, i i ; English common-law copyright, n - 1 2 , 14; Massachusetts 1673 statute on, 14; Connecticut's 1783 statute on, 15; Continental Congress recommendation on, 15; Federal Copyright Act (1790), 16, 17; for dramatic works, 18; international copyright, 25, 26, 2 8 - 2 9 ; Piatt Simonds Bill, 25; rights involved in, 4 6 - 4 7 ; subsidiary rights, 47, 4 8 - 5 0 , 56, 57, 67, 68, 70, 82, 93, 164, 172, 241; and magazines, 5 1 52; and playwrights, 5 2 - 5 3 ; for screenwriters, 54; and Authors League, 67; Copyright Act (1909), ioo; AAA plan for copyright assignment, 102-103, I 4 4 ~ I 4 6 , 151, 152, 155, 168, 169, 171, 172, 175, 180, 186-187, 197; Cain's views on, 163-164 Copyright Act of 1909, 100 Corey, George, 8 9 - 9 2 , 94 Cowley, Malcolm, 3 5 Crouse, Russel, 85, 8 9 - 9 2 , 94, 95, 100, 127, 189

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Index CSOM. See Committee on the Sale of Original Material (CSOM) CSU. See Conference of Studio Unions (CSU) Davids, Nancy, 123, 124, 135, 174, 175, 228 Davis, Owen, 69 Day, Stephen, 15 Deacon, William Arthur, 138 Defoe, Daniel, 10 Demarest, Phyllis Gordon, 205 DG. See Dramatists Guild Dickinson, Thomas A., 206 Didion, Joan, 8 3 - 8 4 Dies, Martin, 109 Dos Passos, John, 208 Doubleday, Frank, 26, 59 Douglas, Helen Gahagan, 107 Douglas, Lloyd C , 210 Dramatists. See Playwrights Dramatists Guild (DG): film rights negotiator of, 52, 84, 114; Minim u m Basic Agreement of, 6 8 - 7 1 , 72, 75, 81, 97-100, 137, 145, 149, 176, 190, 196, 197, 214-215, 238; and CSOM, 87; and Television Writers Organizing Committee (TWOC), 9 0 - 9 1 ; and the Authors League Television Committee (ALTC), 92; protection for members, 94; and licensing, 97, 9 9 ioo; and AAA, 105, 118, 121, 122, 124-125, 127, 128, 145, 190; strength of, 113; focus of, 1 1 9 120; labor support for, 140; and second AAA plan, 182; and Shaw, 214-215; and Ring case, 239 Dreiser, Theodore, 48 Dryden, John, 11 Dunne, Philip, 108, 118, 227 Dwight, Timothy, 15 Eastman, Max, 166, 227 Eisenstein, Elizabeth, 6 Elizabethan patronage, 8 - 1 0 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 19

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279 End Poverty in California (EPIC), 107

Englund, Steven, 73, 1 0 8 - i n , 225, 233,235,236 EPIC. See End Poverty in California (EPIC) Erskine, John, 129, 163, 208, 224 Essipoff, Marie Armstrong, 207 Estabrook, Howard, 84, 118 Farrell, James T , 131-133, 148, 155-156, 161-166, 2 0 7 - 2 0 8 , 212, 2 1 3 , 227, 2 2 9 , 2 3 0

Fast, Howard, 174 Faulkner, William, 42, 48, 5 9 Federal Theater Project, 92, 109 Federal Writers Project, 39 Ferber, Edna, 34, 189 Fielding, Henry, 10, 13 Fields, Joseph, 118 Film industry. See Hollywood (film industry) Fisher, Vardis, 206 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 48 Flanagan, Hallie, 91 Fleisher, Sidney, 104 Franklin, Paul, 92 Freeman, Everett, 84, 86, 118, 128 Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins, 64 Gable, Clark, 41 Gaius Maecenas, 6 Gallico, Paul, 174, 189, 2 3 8 - 2 3 9 Gang, Martin, 100 Garland, Hamlin, 66 Garrett, Oliver H. P., 108 Geller, James, 39, 41, 43, 54 Genteel Era, 2 1 - 2 5 , 29, 37, 61 Gibbs, Wolcott, 58 Gibney, Sheridan, 217, 237 Glasgow, Ellen, 48 Goetz, Ruth Goodman, 138-139 Goldsmith, Oliver, 9, 13 Goldsmith case, 5 6 Goodman, Philip, 138, 150 Goodrich, Francis, 118

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280 Graham, Colin, 249 n. 3 3 Greene, Robert, 8 Haberl, Eve Bennett, 177 Hackett, Albert, 118 Hammerstein, Oscar, II, 189-198, 215,227,237 Hammett, Dashiell, 92 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 126 Haycox, Ernest, 206 Haynes, Wesley, 148-149 Hearst, William Randolph, 115, 141 Heaton, John L., 34 Hellman, Lillian, 42, 185 Henry VIII, 7 Herbert, R Hugh, 118 Herbert, Victor, 101 Heym, Stefan, 138, 152, 174, 2 0 5 206, 219, 228 Hoe rotary press, 17 Holland, Maurice, 7 Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, 108 Hollywood (film industry): Cain as screenwriter in, 39~43, 43~44, 5 3 - 5 4 ; writers in, 4 2 - 4 3 , 5 8 - 5 9 , 7 1 - 7 5 , 2 1 2 - 2 1 3 ; Cain's views on, 5 3 - 5 4 ; and copyright infringements, 5 6 - 5 7 ; Communists in, 106-112, 2 0 0 - 2 0 1 , 233-236, 239-240 Hollywood Ten, 107, 183, 236, 239 Holt, Henry, 29, 36 Hoopes, Roy, 225 Hoover, f. Edgar, 231, 235 Hopper, Hedda, 219, 221 Horace, 6 House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC), 107, 109, n o , 200, 202, 216-218, 226, 2 3 3 236, 239-240 Howard, Sidney, 69, 71 Howells, William Dean, 3, 2 3 - 2 5 , 26, 58, 242 HUAC. See House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) Hughes, Rupert, 62, 72, 108, 129,

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Index 146, 163, 185, 189, 200, 208-210, 220, 224, 227 Hunt, Barbara, 177 Hurston, Zora Neale, 129 Hutchens, John, 151, 175 Huxley, Aldous, 42 IATSE. See International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Independent Citizens Committee for the Arts, Sciences and Professions (ICCASP), 3 Ingersoll, Ralph, 39 Ingster, Boris, 118 Ingstrom, Boris, 84 International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), 107, IIO-III

Janeway, Elizabeth, 174 Jefferson, Thomas, 16 Jennings, Talbot, 173 John Reed clubs, 39 Johnson, Samuel, 1 0 - n , 13, 33 Jones, Grover, 74, 108 Journalism: in eighteenth-century England, i i ; in nineteenthcentury America, 18, 2 0 - 2 1 ; Cain's career in, 3 2 - 3 4 , 35 Kahn, Gordon, 141, 233, 234 Kaplan, Morris, 152 Kaufman, George S., 34, 69, 100 Kelly, George, 69 Knopf, Alfred A., 3 6 - 3 8 , 4 0 - 4 3 , 45, 47,49, 50, 5 3 , 8 8 , 9 7 , 2 4 1 Kober, Arthur, 138 Koch, Howard, 234 Kuhn, Irene, 129 Kuhn, Rene, 129, 133-134, 135 Labor unions. See Unions Laemmle, Carl, 109 LaFarge, Christopher, 116 - 1 1 7 ,

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Index 122, 124, 143, 151, 167, 174-175, 177, 182, 183, 186, 204, 228, 238 Lardner, Ring, Jr., 34, 8 4 - 8 7 , 91, 9 6 98, 108, 112, 114, 118, 123, 124, 127, 141, 179, 199, 217, 227, 233, Lavery, Emmet: and CSOM, 83, 87; as SWG president, 83, 95, 173, 218; as playwright and screenwriter, 9 1 - 9 2 ; on licensing, 9 8 100, 215-216; and AAA, 112, 124-125, 128, 132-137, 140, 149-150, 161, 168, 176, 185; on anti-Communist accusations, 112, 2 0 0 - 2 0 1 , 216, 226, 26in.6; and Authors League, 117, 1 3 2 137, 2 2 7 - 2 2 8 ; and AAA Committee, 118, 227, 143; on Authors Guild, 122; on Committee for Action, 123-124; and Authors League Licensing Committee, 143; and pledge system, 143-144; and Rice's comments on Communism, 144-145, 147; and Authors League meeting on AAA, 150-152, 157; on hostility between Rice, Cain, and Connelly, 157-158; and second AAA Plan, 168, 172, 179-184; and Authors League rejection of AAA, 1 9 1 195, 198-199; and AAA supplement, 201; and questionnaire about AAA, 205; Mills's letter to, 209-210; and Shaw, 2 1 4 - 2 1 5 ; and HUAC, 216-218, 237; libel and slander suit filed by, 216, 26in.6 Lawrence, Vincent, 69 Lawson, John Howard, 73, 107, 108, 114,234 League of American Writers, 39 Lerner, Alan Jay, 159 Lewis, Sinclair, 36, 48, 153 Lindsay, Howard, 100, 127 Linotype, 21 Lippmann, Walter, 34, 40

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281 Literary agents. See Agents Literary Guild, 44 Literary marketplace: writer's position in, 10-14, 1 9 - 2 1 ; and Statute of Anne, n - 1 4 ; in America from 1609-1870, 14-30; during Genteel Era, 2 1 - 2 5 , 2 9 , 37, 6 i ; m nineteenth-century America, 2 2 25; during Progressive Era, 2 5 30; during 1920s, 3 4 - 3 8 ; during 1930s, 3 8 - 3 9 , 4 ^ - 4 3 ; during World War II, 44; Cain's assessment of postwar marketplace, 45 59, 165; in nineteenth-century England, 6 0 - 6 1 ; bureaucratization of, 2 4 0 - 2 4 1 Liveright, Horace, 36 London, Jack, 27 Luce, Clare Booth, 129, 227 Lyon, Peter, 87, 143 Lyons, Eugene, 129, 163, 166 Macaulay, Richard, 113, 115 MacBeth, Florence, 116 McCall, Mary, Jr., 108, 118 McCary, Leo, 200 McCutcheon, George Barr, 62, 64 McGuinness, James Kevin, 74, 129, 146, 200 McNichols, Charles L., 151 McVeigh, Lincoln, 36 Magazines: in eighteenth-century England, 11; in nineteenthcentury America, 18, 2 0 - 2 1 ; during Progressive Era, 28; during 1920s, 35, 36; during 1930s, 38; and abridgment rights, 48; Cain's views of, 5 1 - 5 2 ; contracts with, 51-52 Mahin, John Lee, 74, 129, 146 Malley, E. Louise, 135 Maltz, Albert, 92, 118, 183, 1 8 5 187, 199, 221, 227, 234 Managers Protective Association (MPA), 6 8 - 6 9 , 81 Mankiewicz, Joseph, 72

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282 Mannheimer, Albert, 82, 84, 88 Markey, Morris, 139, 148 Marquis, Don, 65 Maurino, Sara, 138 Mayer, Edwin Justice, 72 Mayer, Louis B., 6, 113, 200 MBA. See M i n i m u m Basic Agreement (MBA) Melcher, Frederic C , 142 Mencken, H. L., 4 - 5 , 33, 36, 96, 103, 2 2 1

Mendenhall, Harlan, 177, 178 Menjou, Adolphe, 200 Merganthaler, Ottmar, 21 Merlin, Milton, 92 Merz, Charles, 34 Miller, Patsy Ruth, 129 Mills, E. C , 138, 2 0 9 - 2 1 0 M i n i m u m Basic Agreement (MBA), 5 2 - 5 3 , 6 8 - 7 1 , 75, 84, 97-100, 113, 137, 145, 149, 176, 190, 196, 197, 214-215, 218, 236, 237, 238 Moore, Sam, 100, 118, 118-121, 143, 182 Moore, Ward, 2 0 7 - 2 0 8 Morgan, Guy, 176-177, 188 Morris, Robert, Jr., 118 Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPA), 110-112, 200, 234-235 Motion Picture Artists Committee to Aid Republican Spain, 108 Motion Picture Democratic Committee, 108 Motion picture industry. See Hollywood (film industry) Mowery, William, 204-205 MPA. See Managers Protective Association (MPA); Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPA) MWA. See Mystery Writers of America (MWA) Myers, Henry, 118, 132-133, 135, 143 Mystery Writers of America (MWA), 81

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Index Napier steam press, 17 Nash, Ogden, 39 National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), 7 2 - 7 3 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), 74, n o , i n , 147, 217 National Writers Club, 138 Nevins, Allan, 34 Newspaper Guild, 73 Niblo, Fred, Jr., 112, 114, 115, 117, 129, 146

Nichols, Dudley, 108 NIRA. See National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) NLRB. See National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Norris, Frank, 27, 28 Notary, Julian, 7 Oboler, Arch, 100, 113, 118 O'Connor, John, 129, 163 Odets, Clifford, 138 O'Higgins, Harvey, 64 Organizations. See names of specific organizations Ornitz, Samuel, 72, 107, 234 Page, Walter Hines, 26, 3 6 - 3 7 Paine, Tom, 15 Paperbacks, 44, 48 Patronage, 5 - 6 , 8 - 1 1 , 14 Patterson, Thomas G., 231-232 Paulus, Stephen, 249 n. 3 3 Peck, George, 163 PEN Club, 3 Perelman, S. J., 42 Petrillo, James Caesar, 125 Phillips, David Graham, 27 Piracy, 17, 20, 25 Plagiarism, 43, 5 6 - 5 7 , 63 Platt-Simonds Bill, 25 Playwrights: copyright for, 18; in nineteenth-century America, 18; and Broadway hits, 3 5 - 3 6 ; Cain's views on, 5 2 - 5 3 ; contracts for, 5 2 - 5 3 , 6 8 - 7 1 ; M i n i m u m Basic Agreement of, 52, 6 8 - 7 1

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Index Pocket Books, 44, 97 Poe, Edgar Allan, 19, 126 Pomerance, William, 95, 133, 135, 143 Pope, Alexander, 10, n , 13 Popular Front, 108, 109 Post, Charles Johnson, 65 Pratt, Theodore, 228 Pratt, William, 207 Pringle, Aileen, 116, 219 Printers: in fifteenth-century England, 6 - 7 ; and Stationers' Company, 7 - 8 , 9, io; in seventeenth-century America, 15; and technological developments, 17, 18, 2 i ; in nineteenth-century America, 17, 18, 2 1 ; piracy of British works by American printers, 17 Profession of authorship: Cain's views of, 3 - 4 , 3 1 - 3 2 , 5 7 - 5 8 ; during 1940s, 3 - 4 ; origins of, 3 30; European background of, 5 14; and patronage, 5 - 6-, 8 - 1 1 ; and Stationers' Company, 6 - 8 ; and Elizabethan patronage, 8 - i o ; in America from 1609-1870, 1 4 30; genteel authorship, 2 1 - 2 5 ; during Progressive Era, 2 6 - 3 0 ; "professionalization" of authorship, 27, 2 9 - 3 0 ; during 1930s, 4 2 - 4 3 ; and Statute of Anne, 1 0 1 104. See also Writer (author) Progressive Era, 2 5 - 3 0 , 32, 57 Publishers: subscription publishing, 1 0 - 1 1 ; in nineteenth-century America, 18, 19-20, 23; and piracy, 20, 25; during Progressive Era, 2 5 - 3 0 ; during 1920s, 3 4 38; during 1930s, 3 8 - 3 9 ; during World War II, 44; and royalties to authors, 4 7 - 5 1 ; Cain's views of, 4 7 - 5 1 ; contracts with, 4 7 - 5 1 ; in nineteenth-century England, 6 0 - 6 1 ; and subsidiary rights, 164. See also names of specific publishers

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Pulitzer, Herbert, 38 Pulitzer, Joseph, 38, 59 Quinn, Don, 92 Radio writers, 4 4 - 4 5 , 48, 5 4 - 5 6 Radio Writers Guild (RWG): founding of, 7 5 - 7 7 , 159; and Minim u m Basic Agreement, 81, 97, 238; and CSOM, 87; and Television Writers Organizing Committee (TWOC), 8 8 - 9 1 ; and Authors League Television Committee (ALTC), 92; and licensing, 9 9 ioo; and AAA, 105, 117-122, 130, 238; contract negotiation by, 190, 198; difficulties of, 239 Raine, William McLeod, 178 Ralph, James, 13 Rand, Ayn, 129, 227 Random House, 238 Raphaelson, Samson, 72, 138 "Red Fascism," 2 3 1 - 2 3 2 . See also Communism Reese, John, 151 Reprint rights, 48, 50, 81, 97 Rice, Elmer: and sale of original picture material, 95; on licensing, 9 9 - i o o ; on Authors Guild, 114, 122; and committee to study the AAA, 1 2 0 - 1 2 1 ; and AAA, 1 2 4 125, 130-132, 145-148, 166, 167, 175, 176, 221, 227; and Authors League meeting on the AAA, 128, ! 3 3 - i 3 7 / 150-152; and antiCommunist accusations, 1 3 0 131, 144-145, 147; and AWA, 133-134, 153, 224; and pledge system, 140, 143-145, 150; and Authors League Licensing Committee, 143; o n Committee for Action, 144-145; Cain's attack on, 154-155; on Cain's criticism of the Authors League, 157-159; Farrell's letter to, 161; knowledge of literary economics, 228; as East Coast writer, 242

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284

Index

Richard III, 7 Richman, Arthur, 69 Right of copy, 7 Rinehart, Mary Roberts, 64 Riskin, Robert, 72, 74, 108 Rivkin, Allen, 118 Rodgers, Richard, 87, 125, 128, 143, 182, 183 Rogers, Ginger, 216 Rogers, Howard Emmett, 129, 200 Rogers, Lela, 216, 235 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 73, n o Roosevelt, Theodore, 159 Ross, Harold, 39 Rotary press, 17, 18 Rousseau, Louise, 118 Royalties, 26, 4 7 - 5 1 , 8 4 - 8 7 , 97 RWG. See Radio Writers Guild (RWG) Ryskind, Morrie, 146, 154, 217

Material (CSOM), 8 2 - 8 8 , 91, 94, 9 5 - 9 8 , 104, 112-115, 124, 218; and Television Writers Organizing Committee (TWOC), 8 9 - 9 1 , and Authors League Television Committee (ALTC), 92; officers of, 92, 95, 108, 217-218; and licensing of motion picture rights, 99; early support for AAA, 1 0 3 104; Communists in, 106-108, 111-112, 114, 134, 144/ 14 6 / 2,00, 201, 217-219, 226, 234-237; and CSU strike, n i ; endorsement of AAA, 112-115, 117, 130; AAA Committee, n 7 - 1 1 8 , 120, 124, 127-128, 130, 133, 143-144, 146, 156-157, 161,168-169, 1 7 1 172, 176, 177, 179-182, 1 8 6 188, 192, 195-197, 205, 208, 227, 228; Rice's request of censure of Cain, 157-158; internal crises in, 173; handling of AAA controSt. John, Adela Rogers, 112, 115, versy, 199-200; and HUAC, 2 1 6 118, 227 218, 236-237, 239; M i n i m u m Saroyan, William, 154 Basic Agreement of, 236, 237 Savage v. Neely, 62 Schwartz, Arthur, 84, 85, 92, 118 Serialization, 2 0 - 2 1 , 26 Schwartz, Nancy Lynn, 234 Sextus Propertius, 6 Scott, Sir Walter, 22 Shaw, George Bernard, 154, 188, Screen Playwrights, Inc., 74, 1 4 6 214-215 Shaw, Irwin, 174 147 Shaw, Robert, 188 Screenwriters: in Hollywood, 4 2 Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 177 43/ 58-59, 2 1 2 - 2 1 3 ; contracts for, 53-54, 191; grievances of, 71 — Shientag, Judge, 185 Sillcox, Luise, 123, 135, 150-152, 72; organizing efforts of, 7 2 - 7 5 ; 154-155, 159, 174, 177, 1 7 7 and licensing, 8 3 - 8 6 , 95-100, 181, 184, 215, 221, 227, 238 187; difficulties of, 9 8 - 9 9 ; as ComSimon, Richard, 36 munists, 106-112, 2 0 0 - 2 0 1 , 2 Sinclair, Upton, 27, 107-108 3 3 - 2 3 6 , 239-240; M i n i m u m Sinks, Alfred, 206-207 Basic Agreement of, 218 Sklar, Robert, 109 Screen Writers Guild (SWG): and Smith, Harrison, 3, 45, 51, 52, 142, screenwriters 7 salaries, 53; and 161 copyright infringement, 57; orgaSmollett, Tobias George, 13 nization of, in the 1930s, 7 1 - 7 5 ; and national confederation of writ- Snyder, Richard, 241 Society of Authors, 6 0 - 6 1 , 62, 66 ers, 73; standard contract of, 76; Sokolsky, George, 125-127, 129, and freelance scripts, 8 i ; Com163, 165, 2 0 2 - 2 0 3 , 220, 224 mittee on the Sale of Original

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285

Index Sorrell, Herbert, n o , i n Spanish Civil War, 108, 109 Stander, Lionel, 234 Stationers' Company, 6 - 8 , 9, 10, 11, 246n.2o Statute of Anne, 10-14, 15> I ^ , 25,47 Steam press, 17 Steffens, Lincoln, 27 Stern, Philip Van Doren, 174 Stewart, Donald Ogden, 108 Stolberg, Benjamin, 129 Stout, Rex, 87, 124, 175 Strawn, Arthur, 203 Subscription publishing, 1 0 - 1 1 Subsidiary rights, 47, 4 8 - 5 0 , 56, 57, 67, 68, 70, 82, 93, 164, 172, 241 Swann, Francis, 114 SWG. See Screen Writers Guild (SWG) Swift, Jonathan, 10, 13 Swope, Herbert Bayard, 34 Taft-Hartley Act, 217 Tarbell, Ida, 62 Taxation, 56 Taylor, Robert, 200 Tebbel, John, 240 Television, 45, 81, 82, 88, 93, 94, 98 Television Committee. See Authors League Television Committee (ALTC) Television Writers Organizing Committee (TWOC), 8 8 - 9 1 , 93, 94, 239 Tenney, Jack, 107, 109 Theater. See Playwrights Thomas, J. Parnell, 200, 234 Thomas, Norman, 129, 146-148, 149, 154, 172, 221, 227 Thompson, Dorothy, 146, 153-154, 166-167, i 7 2 / 224 Thoreau, Henry David, 19 Thrasher, James, 148 Trade unions. See Unions Train, Arthur, 62 Trumbo, Dal ton, 103-104, 114,

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140-142, 188, 199, 217, 220, 233-236 Twain, Mark, 126 TWOC. See Television Writers Organizing Committee (TWOC) Tyre, Norman, 100 Tyszecka, Elina, 34, 41 Unions, 6 3 - 6 6 , 72, 74, n o , 140, 147, 153, 173 Victorian Era, 2 1 - 2 5 , 29, 37, 57, 229 Villard, Oswald Garrison, 129 Virgil, 6 Wagner Act, 74 Waldman, Louis, 134 Waldorf Declaration, 235, 237, 239 Warner, Jack, 109, 200 Watt, Ian, 12 Webb, Kenneth, 75, 159, 189 Webster, Noah, 15 Welles, Orson, 107, 121 West, Nathanael, 42, 5 8 - 5 9 West, Rebecca, 5 WGA. See Writers Guild of America (WGA) White, E. B., 34, 160 Whiteman, Walt, 27 Whiteside, Thomas, 240 Whitman, Walt, 19 Wiebe, Robert, 27, 28 Wilder, Billy, 41 Wilkinson, W R., 106 Wilson, Christopher, 27, 28, 29, 32 Wilson, Edmund, 42, 43, 58, 2 1 2 213 Wither, George, 9 Woltman, Frederick, 210 Wood, Sam, n o , 110-111 Worde, Wynkyn de, 7 World War I, 3 2 - 3 3 World War II, 4 3 - 4 5 Wormser, Richard, 114 Wright, Richard, 174 Writer (author): as gentleman-

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writer, 8, 9, 13-14, 2 2 - 2 3 , 1^5/ 229; position in literary marketplace, 10-14, 1 9 - 2 1 , 4 5 - 5 9 ; as man of letters, 16, 1 8 - 1 9 ; romantic image of, 19; genteel authorship, 2 1 - 2 5 , 37/ 6 i ; Victorian image of, 2 2 - 2 5 , 37; during Progressive Era, 2 6 - 3 0 , 32; during 1920s, 3 5 - 3 8 ; during 1930s, 39; in Hollywood, 4 2 - 4 3 , 58-59, 2 1 2 - 2 1 3 ; self-image of, 5 8 - 5 9 ; FarrelPs views on, 131-132, 1 6 5 166, 229; bureaucratization of, 241-242; East Coast versus West

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Coast writers, 2 4 2 - 2 4 3 . See also Playwrights; Profession of authorship; Radio writers; Screenwriters; and names of specific writers Writers Guild of America (WGA), 239 Writers 7 organizations. See names of specific organizations Wylie, Philip, 163, 2 1 1 - 2 1 3 Yankwich, Leon, 5 6 - 5 7 Zugsmith, Leane, 205

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