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. 

WGA Strike Latest Example of Cultural Workers Joining Together as Entertainment Technology Changes

by Vaughn Joy

The development of television and online content have historically forced multiple Hollywood unions to join forces to secure a share of the returns of new techology or risk being frozen out entirely. 

The Hollywood Blacklist, Screenwriters and Free Expression Under Attack

by Larry Ceplair

The current screenwriters' strike is occasion to look back at the targeting of writers by HUAC in the 1950s, the politics of moral panic, and the impact of political fear on the content of popular culture.

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. 

What Anna May Wong's History Tells us About Oscar's Asian and Asian American Moment

by Katie Gee Salisbury

The first Asian-American film star got her break when a film company cast ethnic actors in a 1922 film made to test out the new Technicolor technology. But Hollywood's racial politics and commercial imperatives kept other Asian actors from stardom. 

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.

"All the President's Men": From Misguided Buddy Flick to Iconic Political Thriller

Hollywood's original plan for the film based on Woodward and Bernstein's book was light on substance and heavy on macho hijinks. How would Watergate be remembered if the script weren't changed? 

Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward's Relationship at the Center of the New Hollywood

Mark Rozzo's "Everybody Thought We Were Crazy" tells the story of artistic encounters that ran through the couple's home. 

"Top Gun: Maverick" Latest Chapter in Love Affair Between Hollywood and Pentagon

Despite its characterization as liberal and cosmopolitan, the film industry has eagerly embraced the military in the pursuit of box office. 

How Dennis Hopper Ran the Wildest Party House in Hollywood

The house of the actor and his wife Brooke Hayward was a gathering place of fertile movements in film, arts and music that made the 1960s. 

Outcry over Sparse Representation of Jews in Movie History at New Academy Museum in Hollywood

The contributions of Jewish pioneers of film seem oddly invisible in the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures; some prominent donors hope this changes.

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.

Is the Academy's New Museum Neglecting the Jewish Pioneers of Hollywood?

"After touring the museum’s seven stories, I discovered that Hollywood’s pioneers, who busted their tucheses building the industry it celebrates, ended up on the cutting room floor."

Passing Time and the Challenge of Catching "Eyewitnesses to History"

by Thomas Doherty

Historians have only recently wised up to the need to capture eyewitness remembrances of events. As the "Greatest Generation" passes and the Baby Boomers age, a cultural historian urges: talk to people while you still can. 

"Negotiated Authenticity" and the Precarious Position of Black Creators in Television History

"Since its invention, television has shaped this country’s self-image. To the extent that we share notions of “normal,” “acceptable,” “funny,” “wrong,” and even “American,” television has helped define them. For decades, Black writers were shut out of the rooms in which those notions were scripted."

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.