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Hollywood



  • Will Solidarity Among Hollywood's Unions Make this Strike Different?

    by Miranda Banks and Kate Fortmueller

    A historic pattern of rivalry among Hollywood's big unions representing writers, actors and set workers has limited their ability to win against the industry. Support for striking writers suggests the big unions are getting on the same page. 



  • Hollywood Has Abandoned the Citizen-Inventor

    After generations of populist inventors making the things they need, Hollywood has framed our relationship to invention as receiving the gifts bestowed on us by plutocrats. 



  • Hollywood Strikers Carry the Legacy of Ned Ludd

    by Gavin Mueller

    Our techo-utopian society holds the Luddites in low regard, but their actual history helps explain what's at stake in the screenwriters' strike and any labor conflict where new technology threatens workers' livelihoods. 



  • The Writers' Strike Opens Old Wounds

    by Kate Fortmueller

    The plot of each sequel of negotiations between the producers and writers has followed a formula of compromise for mutual self-preservation. Technological advances have convinced studio heads that they no longer need the labor of writers enough to keep compromising. 



  • Onoto Watanna, the First Asian American Screenwriter

    by Ben Railton

    Under the pen name of Onoto Watanna, a woman named Winnifred Eaton of British and Chinese descent became a literary prodigy, penning romance novels, ethnic cookbooks, and screenplays—and a searing critique of the treatment of writers in Hollywood that rings true today. 



  • Blacklisted Actress Marsha Hunt Dies at 104

    Hunt's participation in the Committee for the First Amendment, which questioned the activities of the House Unamerican Activities Committee in 1947, led to her blacklisting. 



  • Native Activist Gets Apology from MPAAS For 1973 Oscars Protest

    Sacheen Littlefeather appeared in lieu of Marlon Brando to decline his Oscar for "The Godfather" as a protest against racist portrayals of American Indians. The Academy has just now apologized for the abuse she endured during the ceremony and afterward.



  • The Academy Museum Ignores Hollywood Labor History

    by Andy Lewis

    The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was originally established to help studios negotiate contracts with the studio unions. Today, the on-set tragedy in New Mexico reminds that film production is an industry and workers make it run. The Academy Museum misses that part of the story.



  • Socialist Actor Ed Asner Fought for Labor

    by Jeff Schuhrke

    Ed Asner fought for the representation of small-time actors in the Screen Actors Guild and protested American support for right-wing autocrats in Central America.