Research Guides: Film and Television: Hollywood Labor History

Related Research Guides

Introduction

This page provides a basic guide to collections and resources related to the historical and contemporary study of Hollywood labor in the motion picture and television industry. It is intended as a starting point for research and not a comprehensive list of resources. Many of the other databases and tools listed on other pages of the Film and Television research guide can also inform further study of this topic.

Hollywood Unions and Guilds (note: unions typically represent employees, while guilds represent independent contractors):

American Federation of Musicians (AFM): Represents professional instrumental musicians in the world with jurisdiction in both the United States and Canada. In film and television, AFM covers musicians involved in scoring sessions, live performances, and recording work.
DGA (Directors Guild of America): Represents directors of movies and TV shows.
IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees): Represents a wide range of behind-the-scenes workers, including editors, hair and makeup artists, wardrobe department workers, costume designers, broadcast techs, designers, animators, AV techs, and scenic artists.
SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists): Represents actors, announcers, broadcast journalists, dancers, disc jockeys, news writers, news editors, program hosts, puppeteers, recording artists, singers, stunt performers, voiceover artists, and other media professionals.
Teamsters Local 399 (Hollywood-Motion Picture Industry: Represents drivers, location professionals, animal trainers/wranglers, casting professionals, dispatchers, chef assistants, and mechanics in the motion picture industry.
WGA (Writers Guild of America): Represents writers for film, television, radio, and other media.

Selected Resources

The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation's Golden Age by Jake S. Friedman
ISBN: 9781641607223

Date: 2022-07-05

Soon after the birth of Mickey Mouse, one animator raised the Disney Studio far beyond Walt's expectations. That animator also led a union war that almost destroyed it. Art Babbitt animated for the Disney studio throughout the 1930s and through 1941, years in which he and Walt were jointly driven to elevate animation as an art form, up through Snow White, Pinocchio, and Fantasia. But as America prepared for World War II, labor unions spread across Hollywood. Disney fought the unions while Babbitt embraced them. Soon, angry Disney cartoon characters graced picket signs as hundreds of animation artists went out on strike. Adding fuel to the fire was Willie Bioff, one of Al Capone's wiseguys who was seizing control of Hollywood workers and vied for the animators' union.
Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson by Tom Sito
ISBN: 0813124077

Date: 2006-10-06

Some of the most beloved characters in film and television inhabit two-dimensional worlds that spring from the fertile imaginations of talented animators. The movements, characterizations, and settings in the best animated films are as vivid as any live action film, and sometimes seem more alive than life itself. In this case, Hollywood's marketing slogans are fitting; animated stories are frequently magical, leaving memories of happy endings in young and old alike. However, the fantasy lands animators create bear little resemblance to the conditions under which these artists work. Anonymous animators routinely toiled in dark, cramped working environments for long hours and low pay, especially at the emergence of the art form early in the twentieth century.
Hollywood Unions by Kate Fortmueller (Editor, Contribution by)
ISBN: 9781978830592

Date: 2024-12-13

Hollywood Unions is a unique collection that tells the stories of the unions and guilds that have organized motion picture and television labor: IATSE, the DGA, SAG-AFTRA, and the WGA. The Hollywood unions represent a wide swath of the workers making media: from directors and stars to grips and makeup artists.
The Hollywood Writers' Wars by Nancy Schwartz; Sheila Schwartz
ISBN: 9780394411408

Date: 1982-02-12

The story of the battle to form the Screen Writers Guild is here told fully for the first time, based on diaries, letters, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, and hundreds of interviews with Hollywood people. It is told through the voices of the writers, directors, and producers who were there--some of whom were blacklisted, some of whom helped to blacklist, some of whom were never before willing to tell their stories.
The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community 1930-1960 by Larry Ceplair; Steven Englund
ISBN: 0520048865

Date: 1983-01-01

Contents: The screenwriter in Hollywood -- The founding of the Screen Writers Guild, 1933 -- The Communist Party in Hollywood: intellectual ferment brutalized by politics -- The great Popular Front, 1936-39 -- The disintegration of the Popular Front -- The phony war and the resurrected Popular Front, 1940-44 -- Prelude to repression, 1944-47 -- The congressional hearings of October 1947 -- The influence of Hollywood Communists on American films and American politics, 1930-47 -- The Hollywood ten: from the blacklist to prison, November 1947-June 1950 -- The devastation: HUAC returns to Hollywood, 1951-53 -- Exile and return: the aftermath, 1953 to present.
Negotiating Hollywood: The Cultural Politics of Actors' Labor by Danae Clark
ISBN: 9780816625444

Date: 1995-06-01

This book provides an historical account of actors' labor struggles in 1930s Hollywood. Contents: 1. The Actor's (Absent) Role in Film Studies -- 2. The Subject of Acting -- 3. The Politics of (Self- ) Representation -- 4. Discourses of Entertainment -- 5. Labor and Film Narrative -- 6. The Terrain of Actors' Labor.
The Politics of Glamour: Ideology and Democracy in the Screen Actors Guild by David F. Prindle
ISBN: 9780299118105

Date: 1988-11-01

Examines democracy in action in the Screen Actors Guild, discusses political issues during the Guild's history, and describes current problems facing it.
Stars and Strikes: Unionization of Hollywood by Murray Ross
Date: 1941

From a 1941 Columbia University dissertation, with bibliography and tables.
The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild by Miranda J. Banks
ISBN: 9780813571409

Date: 2015-01-14

Featuring in-depth interviews with over fifty writers--including Mel Brooks, Norman Lear, Carl Reiner, and Frank Pierson--The Writers delivers a compelling, behind-the-scenes look at the role and rights of writers in Hollywood and New York over the past century. Granted unprecedented access to the archives of the Writers Guild Foundation, Miranda J. Banks also mines over 100 never-before-published oral histories with legends such as Nora Ephron and Ring Lardner Jr.

Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive (EIMA)
EIMA is an historical archive of major trade and consumer magazines in film, television, music, radio, and theater, from their inception to 2000. Includes weekly Variety, Hollywood Reporter, American Cinematographer, Back Stage, Billboard, Broadcasting, Picturegoer, Screen International, Spin, and more. UCLA has access to parts I, II and III of this database.
FBI File: Hollywood and J. Edgar Hoover: Communists in the Motion Picture Industry (Archives Unbound)
FBI investigative reports from the Cold War chronicling the working of major film studios such as MGM, Paramount, RKO, and Warner Brothers, and studio management and labor union power struggles.
FBI File: Hollywood and J. Edgar Hoover: Investigations of Actors and Directors (Archives Unbound)
Reports covering 1925-1961. Subjects include: American Federation of Labor; Communist International; front organizations; Council of Hollywood Guilds and Unions; Screen Directors Guild; Screen Office Employees Guild; Screen Cartoonists Guild; Screen Writers Guild; Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee; Hollywood Ten; FBI support of anticommunist organizations; Humphrey Bogart; Charles Chaplin; Cecil B. DeMille; Katharine Hepburn; Gary Cooper; Frank Sinatra; among other topics.
FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals
Searches film and television articles in the International Index to Film Periodicals (1972-current) and Treasures from the Film Archives, which contains silent film-era listings from archives.
Independent Voices
Full text of more than 1000 open access alternative publications from the 1960s-1980s covering feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Latinos, LGBTQ+ activists, and more.
Left Index
Indexes the literature of the left, with an emphasis on political, economic, social and culturally engaged scholarship inside and outside academia. Topics covered include the labor movement, ecology and environment, race and ethnicity, social and cultural theory, sociology, art and aesthetics, philosophy, history, education, law, and globalization.
Making of Modern Law: The American Civil Liberties Union Papers (Gale Primary Sources)
The records of the ACLU on free speech, citizenship, race, discrimination, immigration, labor, radicalism, and related topics support the study of American legal history and complement the modules in the Making of Modern Law series. Documents include newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, court files, memorandums, telegrams, minutes, and legal case records. UCLA provides access to Parts I and II: 1912-1990, and Southern Regional Office,
Media History Digital Library
Freely available online portal, featuring millions of pages of books and magazines from the histories of film, broadcasting, and recorded sound.
Performing Arts Periodicals Database
Articles and reviews from a broad spectrum of the arts and entertainment industry - including dance, drama, theater, stagecraft, circus, opera, pantomime, puppetry, magic, performance art, film, television, and more. Former database title: International Index to Performing Arts (IIPA) Full Text.
ProQuest Newspapers
Searches all ProQuest newspapers to which UCLA subscribes, both current and historical newspapers from major U.S. cities (Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal), international news sources, and alternative press.
Vanderbilt Television News Archive
Indexes network evening news broadcasts from the major US national broadcast networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN, and hours of special news-related programming including ABC's Nightline since 1989. Includes historical streaming video from NBC (since 1968) and CNN.

Academy Library (Margaret Herrick Library) Special Collections
Collected material includes production files, scripts, correspondence, clippings, contracts, manuscripts, notes, scrapbooks, costume and production design drawings, storyboards, sheet music, music scores and recorded sound.
American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, Records Circa 1935-1985
Collection consists of legal, educational, and organizational files of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. Includes minutes, correspondence, memoranda, clippings, case files, and briefs. Topics covered in case files include the right to counsel, women's rights, Japanese-American relocation during WWII, blacklisting in the film industry, and Crawford vs. LA Unified School District. Also contains materials related to the local and national organizations of the ACLU
Art Director's Guild Archive
The Art Directors Guild Archives is a visual research collection that contains a wide range of materials, including more than 6000 books and pamphlets on art, design, history, architecture and much more. The collection also includes set photographs, clipping files, magazines, brochures, maps and other travel ephemera, vintage catalogs, set drawings, storyboards and illustrations. Other holdings include organizational materials about the Guild, various resources on the history and practice of art direction, and a large collection of films and TV programs on DVD.
Hollywood labor dispute : a study in immorality / by George H. Dunne./ UCLA Special Collections
Written by Jesuit priest, opponent of segregation, and supporter of the Conference of Studio Unions’ 1945 Hollywood set decorators strike George H. Dunne. The UCLA Center for Oral History Research also has an oral history available with Dunne.
Hollywood studio strike collection, 1944-1985, bulk 1944-1948./ UCLA Special Collections
Collection consists of materials dealing with the Hollywood studio strike of 1945 and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture Machine Operators of the United States and Canada (IATSE). Includes newspaper clippings from the Hollywood Sun and the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU) news, mimeographed statements to union members, correspondence, ephemera, and a copy of the IATSE proceedings with taped reminiscences of Gene Mailes.
IATSE Material- Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The collection contains an IATSE training manual and pins, technical charts, and documents on projection.
Motion Picture Editors Guild Legacy Archive Collection
The Motion Picture Editors Guild Legacy Archive is a collection of interviews focusing on the life and career history of its members. The project began recording in 2007 and currently has over 100 visual history interviews, with a growing number of interviews each year.
SAG-AFTRA Historical Archives and Special Collections
Information on internal archives for SAG-AFTRA, administered by historian and archivist Valerie Yaros.
Screen Actors Guild, New York Branch Records
The Screen Actors' Guild opened its first branch office in New York City in 1938. The minutes of the New York Section of the Screen Actors' Guild reflect the governance and activities of SAG at the local branch level and provide insight into New York SAG's evolving role in the national organization. The minutes also reveal much about SAG's relationship to other unions both in and outside of the entertainment industry.
Screen Actors Guild Pamphlets
INCLUDES: "Screen Actors Guild, Digest of Contracts" by SAG Board of Directors (Los Angeles, CA: Parker & Son,1967); "The Story of the Screen Actors Guild" by Screen Actors Guild Public Relations Department (Los Angeles, CA: Parker & Son, 1971 and 1972); "The Story of the Screen Actors Guild" by the Information Department if tge Screen Actors Guild (Los Angeles, CA: Parker & Son, 1974 and 1976); "Constitution and By-Laws of Screen Actors Guild, Inc.," 1975
The story of the Hollywood film strike in cartoons
Cartoons by Gene Price, book by Jack Kistner. In YRL Special Collections Stacks
Writers Guild Foundation Archive
Collections include Screen Writers’ Guild and Writers Guild of America historical materials, produced and unproduced scripts, letters, photographs, production notes, memorabilia, oral histories, and personal papers of film, television and radio writers. Both processed and unprocessed collections are available for research.

UCLA Center for Oral History Research (COHR)
COHR conducts in-depth, multi-session oral history interviews with individuals who have been a part of the history of Los Angeles and its many communities. Over 2000 interviews document a wide range of areas related to Southern California history, including the histories of Black, indigenous, people of color and immigrant communities, the arts, political activism, politics and government, and UCLA history. Transcripts available in Library Special Collections (YRL).
Oral History Online
Indexes more than 2,700 collections of oral history in English from around the world. Provides keyword searching of full-text transcripts when available, plus links to audio and video files.

Blacklist Discussed in Oral History Interviews
Interviews from UCLA Library Center for Oral History.
Motion Picture Editors Guild Legacy Archive Collection
The Motion Picture Editors Guild Legacy Archive is a collection of interviews focusing on the life and career history of its members. The project began recording in 2007 and currently has over 100 visual history interviews, with a growing number of interviews each year.
Television Academy Foundation Interviews
Every major social, political, and historical event from the mid-20th century to today has been documented by television. These interviews also feature in-depth discussions on a range of issues relating to television, from the evolution of television technology, to on-air mishaps, to the expansion of opportunities for underrepresented voices in the television industry, to advice for aspiring professionals.
The Crafts in Hollywood: Costuming
This series of interviews documents the work of costumers in the film and television industries in Los Angeles. The interviews preserve a dimension of Hollywood history and Los Angeles history that has been under-documented to date.
The Crafts in Hollywood: Production Design
This series of interviews was undertaken in collaboration with the Art Directors Guild. Its aim is to document the lives and work of Guild members and staff who have made a significant contribution to film and television history.
You don't choose your friends oral history transcript : the memoirs of Herbert Knott Sorrell / interviewed by Elizabeth I. Dixon, [1961].
Forms part of: Oral History collection, Department of Special Collections, University Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Transcript of a 21-hour interview completed under the auspices of the UCLA Oral History Program.
Sorrell discusses unionism in the movie industry and the Hollywood strikes of the 1930's and 1940's.
Interview of George H. Dunne
Jesuit priest, opponent of segregation, and supporter of the Conference of Studio Unions’ 1945 Hollywood set decorators strike.
Interview of Roy Brewer
Trade union leader and international representative for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). President of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals and vice-chairman of the Council Against Communist Aggression.
Interview of Donald Gordon
Story editor who was blacklisted in the post-World War II Hollywood blacklist.
Interview of Albert Maltz
Novelist and screenwriter. One of the Hollywood Ten, who were imprisoned and blacklisted in the post-World War II Hollywood blacklist.

Daily Variety (1948-2013)
DGA Magazine
Hollywood Reporter (1935-41; 1952-present)
IATSE (Production Sound & Video Magazine)
SAG-AFTRA Magazine
The Screen writer
A publication of the Screen Writers' Guild, Inc.June 1945-; Ceased Oct. 1948.
Variety (1905-present)
Written by: The Journal of the Writers Guild of America

Selected articles as examples of writing on Hollywood labor history. Search for more titles in Library article databases.

Behind the masks : the story of the Screen Actors Guild / written by Nick Gordon ; produced and directed by William Gazeck
Collection of four video disks: Contents: Disc 1. Founding & recognition -- disc 2. War & blacklist -- disc 3. TV & New York -- disc 4. Modern times.
Directors Guild of America Visual History Program
For clips related to union membership and the union itself, utilize the side bar and the topic search section, and select the subheading titled: Director's Guild
Eric Johnston on Communism! - March 31st 1947
The head of American film producers, testifying before the House un-American Affairs Committee, refutes charges that Reds succeeded in dominating this country's motion picture industry.
Film and Video on the Screen Actors Guild @ UCLA
Primarily oral history recordings at the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Film Industry Denies 'Red' Influence As Hearings Open - October 20th, 1947
It's the biggest Washington show since the Howard Hughes investigation as the House Un-American Activities Committee begins inquiries into alleged Communism in Hollywood films. Chairman Thomas announces that the hearings should not reflect upon the industry, while Eric Johnston defends the films against charges of subversive influences.
Newsreel: Hollywood Film Strike, November 18th, 1946
As the movies' jurisdictional strike goes into its eighth week, police arrest unionists for defiance of mass picketing rule. Union members, whose homes have been bombed, state their positions in a situation that impedes motion picture production and threatens the jobs of ten to twelve thousands.
US Film Industry Ousts Communists! - November 27th, 1947
Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association, announces suspension of 10 Hollywood figures cited for contempt of Congress, after meeting of the heads of major film producing companies in New York.

Selected online publications that cover contemporary Hollywood labor news.

Los Angeles Times

Variety

Selected articles on the current and emerging topic of how artificial intelligence (A.I.) impacts labor in the Hollywood film and television industry.