It’s my privilege to introduce the celebration of our 70th birthday in the Quarterly. Let one of our founders and first president, King Vidor, explain how it all started back in 1936:

“The first discussion of the need of a guild took place on the sidewalk outside the Roosevelt Hotel after a blanket salary cut was proposed by the producers. The need for speaking as a group was obvious, the feeling at the meeting had been that anybody who stood and objected to the cut was fired. A few fellows had the courage to do it, but you could see the anger on the executives’ faces. As a result, we met at my house up Coldwater Canyon where 13 of us each pledged $100 a piece to start the Guild.”

Then a bit later, reflecting on the recognition of the Guild by the producers in 1939, he said, “I went to London to do a picture for MGM, and Capra came in [to the Guild] and we were waiting to get 100 percent membership, or at least all the important directors, before going after a contract, and that took close to a year. It was just by the unified strength of all the directors getting together that we succeeded in getting recognition.”
These men of vision were prepared to put their own careers and economic well-being on the line to create an institution that would eventually protect all directors and their teams. As John Ford, another of our founders, put it, “all of us…realized the need to band together to protect the integrity of motion picture direction.”

Throughout the past 70 years, every significant achievement of the Guild has been the result of committed, active working members providing the leadership to get results. Consider these examples from past presidents: Frank Capra making sure that the Guild got recognition from the studios for our first contract in 1939 by threatening an industry wide boycott of the Academy Awards; George Sidney breaking ground on the Guild’s first headquarters; Robert Wise founding Special Projects, and Gil Cates guiding the Guild through its only strike in 70 years (and, because of his leadership, the strike lasted all of five minutes on the West Coast before the AMPTP agreed to our terms).

We are as strong and as united now as we’ve ever been. One of the great rewards of my job is the understanding that I can call on any member to help the Guild whenever there’s a need. For instance, a couple of years ago we were having an issue with a major studio about a sensitive matter. I called two heavyweight members who intervened and the problem went away. You can’t put a price on that sort of support. It’s been there since the beginning, and will be there whenever we need it. It’s in our institutional DNA, in our board, our councils and committees.

We have inherited this powerful and honorable organization, and it’s the destiny of this generation of leaders and members to protect, nurture and hand over the fruits of these first 70 years to those who follow us.

Happy birthday to the Guild and all our members.

Best,
Michael Apted
President, Directors Guild of America