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

242 Pages·2013·3.17 MB·English

by  Sean P. Holmes

Weavers of Dreams,
Unite!
Actors’ Unionism in Early Twentieth-Century America
Sean P. Holmes
weavers of dreams, unite!
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Weavers
of Dreams,
Unite!
Actors’ Unionism in Early
Twentieth-Century America
Sean P. Holmes
University of Illinois Press
Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield
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© 2013 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
c 5 4 3 2 1
∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Portions of chapter 3 originally appeared as “All the World’s A
Stage: The Actor’s Strike of 1919” in Journal of American History
91 (March 2005): 1291–1313, and are reprinted in revised form
with permission of Oxford University Press.
Portions of chapter 6 originally appeared in “And the Villain
Still Pursued Her! The Actors’ Equity Association in Hollywood,
1919–1929” in Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television
25 (March 2005): 27–50; excerpts reprinted with permission
of Taylor & Francis.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Holmes, Sean P.
Weavers of dreams, unite! : actor’s unionism in early
twentieth-century America / Sean P. Holmes.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-252-03748-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-252-09468-2 (e-book)
1. Actors—Labor unions—United States—History—20th century.
2. Actors’ Equity Association—History.
3. Theater—United States—History—20th century. I. Title.
PN2016.H66 2013
331.88'11791430280973—dc23 2012028166
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For Alicia Brooke Robinson with love
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Weavers of Dreams, Unite! 1
1. The Great Text in Our Economy Today: The American
Theater in an Age of Organization 11
2. The Sock and Buskin or the Artisan’s Biretta:
Reconciling Art and Labor in the Actors’ Equity
Association, 1913–1919 33
3. All the World’s a Stage! The Actors’ Strike of 1919 58
4. Protecting the High-Minded Actor and the High-Minded
Manager in Equal Part: Occupational Unionism
in the American Theater Industry, 1919–1929 87
5. For the Dignity and Honor of the Theatrical Profession:
Respectability and Unrespectability in the Actors’ Equity
Association, 1919–1929 119
6. Ain’t No Peace in the Family Now: The Actors’ Equity
Association and the Movies, 1919–1929 141
Epilogue 173
Notes 179
Index 213
Illustrations follow page 86
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Acknowledgments
This book has been many years in the making, and in the process of
researching and writing it, I have accumulated many debts both inside and
outside academia. I’d like to begin by thanking Howell John Harris at the
University of Durham for sparking my interest in American labor history; the
late Bernard Sternsher for mentoring me throughout my time as a master’s
student at Bowling Green State University; and Danny Walkowitz and Paul
Mattingly for their help and support both while I was a doctoral student at
New York University and long after. I’d also like to express my thanks to
my colleagues in the sadly now defunct American Studies program at Brunel
University, especially Martin Folly, Niall Palmer, David Ingram, James Mas-
sender, and Steven Want—a more able and committed group of teachers and
scholars one could not hope to meet, and it was a pleasure to work with them.
In researching the lost world of the early twentieth-century theater, I spent
many hours going through archival collections and scouring clippings files,
a task that was facilitated by dedicated staff members at all the libraries
that I visited. In the early stages of my research, the late Deborah Bernhardt
and her team at the Tamiment Library/Wagner Labor Archives in New
York City gave me free and unlimited access to the papers of the Actors’
Equity Association (AEA). More recently, Kevyne Baar came to my rescue
when I discovered to my horror that the AEA collection had been entirely
reprocessed since I had first looked at it, rendering my original endnotes
worthless. I also received invaluable assistance from Maryann Chach and
Mark E. Swartz at the Shubert Archive and from librarians at the Billy Rose
Theatre Division of the New York Public Library, the Margaret Herrick
Library in Los Angeles, and the Special Collection Library at Texas Tech
University in Lubbock, Texas.
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