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

at the producer.” 54 But other moguls, like Zanuck, sided with their producers in any dispute. As tensions rose in Hollywood, more executives—and unions—jockeyed to take sides.
    Writers at the time were doing fairly well for themselves, and many writers were apathetic to the concerns of the CSU and hostile toward the idea of engaging in labor actions, given that their long struggles for unionization had ended only four years earlier. With the MBA in place, they had a sense of security. And business was booming. The studios needed new products for their movie houses every week. Mel Shavelson, who wrote for Bob Hope for many years, saw the mid-1940s as a great era for writers, especially those who were tied to a popular star: “The day you started working on a screenplay, you’d know when it was going to appear in the theaters because the studios were like factories. Everything was done to schedule.” 55
    SWG meetings were heated, with different constituencies declaring very distinct allegiances. The more conservative members asserted that, on principle and in keeping with the terms of their contract, Guild members could not and should not support the CSU. The more liberal-leaning writers demanded that the Guild take a stand in solidarity with fellow film workers. John Bright remembered Mary McCall Jr., writer of
Craig’s Wife
, announcing that she could not join the picket line; instead, she proposed that the SWG contribute $25,000 to the CSU strike fund. Bright found this idea disconcerting at best, the equivalent of “buying our way with money” and “putting a price tag on our conscience.” 56 This kind of conflicted behavior manifested itself collectively in Guild decisions and also in the stances taken by individual writers. As William Ludwig explained, some writers played for both sides:
    A few of those people who maintained publicly that they would never walk through a picket line and got great kudos for the nobility of their principles—they wrote at home and they sent their stuff in by studio car. I never felt that this was too much of an adherence to principle because Metro never minded if you worked at home. They didn’t get off payroll. They never announced to the studio that they were not working because there was a picket line around. But they got great public acceptance for their extremely liberal positions and I always felt that was kind of shabby. 57
    A handful of writers did support the strike both in word and in deed—but the punishment for this choice was severe. Bright, in good conscience, decided he could not cross the picket line and refused to continue working on a project with Arthur Freed. Though MGM’s general manager Eddie Mannix triedto strong-arm him and then to shame him by making an example of him, Bright refused to budge. As he remembered, with a laugh, “I was blacklisted before the blacklist.” 58
    No matter which side each writer supported, virtually every writer experienced conflicting emotions and serious concerns about the rising temperature in Hollywood. Ring Lardner Jr. remembers that writers were worried about being associated with militant trade unionism, given that producers and the press were branding the CSU as a Red-influenced organization. 59 And while the Communist Party was still active in Hollywood, the MPAPAI was drumming up recruits, too. William Ludwig recalled:
    I remember one morning . . . two writers came into my office—[they] shall be nameless. After a little fussing around they said that they had been watching me and they thought I was good material and they invited me to join the Communist Party and they left. That afternoon King Vidor came into my office and after the same kind of fussing around he invited me to join [laughs] the Association for the Preservation of American Ideals. It was one of my more baffling days. And I said to King, “What are you people
for
?” And he said, “Well, we are against so and so and so and so.” And I said,