Free The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild by Miranda J. Banks

anti-labor rancor seethed among the independents as well as the eight major studios, and that the managerial attack was aimed not just at above-the-line creatives but also at below-the-line craftspeople.
    The Screen Cartoonists Guild formed in 1938 under the leadership of Herbert Sorrell. The union quickly secured contracts with some of the major companies: MGM, Leon Schlesinger Productions (creator of
Looney Tunes
and
Merrie Melodies
for Warner Bros.), Screen Gems, Walter Lanz, and Terrytoons. In the spring of 1941, many artists at Walt Disney Studios, fed up by salary cuts and layoffs, decided to join the Screen Cartoonists Guild. Art Babbitt, who was an animator on such films as
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
and
Fantasia
and who created the character Goofy, joined the Screen Cartoonists Guild leadership. Studio head Walt Disney saw Babbitt’s action as a personal betrayal and fired him, calling Babbitt a Bolshevik. 44 The following day, in the midst of their work on
Dumbo
, the Disney animators went out on strike.
    The Screen Writers Guild officially expressed its sympathy for the striking animators, but the SWG leadership did not go so far as to recommend a boycott of Disney pictures. 45 The tone at Disney Studios changed completely because of the strike; almost half of the employees left or were laid off within months of the walkout. Walt Disney himself declared the Screen Cartoonists Guild communistic and even offered his assistance if the Tenney Committee should want to investigate the possibility of communists infiltrating Hollywood. The strike lasted five weeks. Ultimately, with the assistance of a federal mediator, negotiations took place that ended in favor of the animators, and Disney, grudgingly, signed a union contract.
    Skirmishes involving below-the-line unions were not a new phenomenon in Hollywood. For years, craftspeople in IATSE had struggled with their union leadership. In the 1930s, organized crime syndicates and mafia bosses strategically positioned George Browne and William “Willie” Bioff in leadership positions of IATSE, and in 1936 IATSE secured from the studios closedshop status. Attempts at forming a progressive branch of IATSE met with little success. When Browne and Bioff were sent to jail for extortion, a number of independent labor groups took advantage of this vacuum in IATSE leadership to form a new joint labor union, the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU), that covered a number of below-the-line technicians officially still under the jurisdiction of IATSE. Film producers far preferred the more conservativeIATSE over the CSU, which they viewed as a more threatening and potentially more demanding union in negotiations. 46 As historian Reynold Humphries states, “The IATSE . . . was the producers’ union: a threat to it was a threat to themselves.” 47 The studio executives still felt they had an advantage, though, because the CSU could not call a strike since most Hollywood unions had agreed to a no-strike pledge during the war.
    In late spring 1944, members of thirty-eight guilds and unions gathered to discuss how to respond to attacks against labor by the MPAPAI, which was branding unions and their leaders as communists. As a result of these meetings, the unions released a statement that declared, “The unity of the war effort and the unity of the industry are inseparable at this time.” 48 In April, the board of the SWG officially condemned the Alliance for its statement that “the industry is dominated by Communists, radicals and crackpots,” and asked the other Hollywood guilds and unions, as well as the MPAA, to “discuss and find ways and means of combating such harmful and irresponsible statements.” 49 As a whole, SWG members were ready and willing to support the war effort and to fight what they saw as outrageous and unfair vilification.
    At issue was whether workers had the right to be represented by the union of their choosing. Their livelihoods and their basic