Sic Joan On 'Em!

Time Magazine - Monday, May 17, 1937

Let me preface this article from Time - the Screen Actors Guild is considering a strike. Can you imagine being a fly on the wall in these meetings!

...But last week he [James Cagney] and such other notably social-conscious cinemactors as Fredric March, Chester Morris, Franchot Tone, Joan Crawford, Jean Muir and Edward Arnold were debating something really big—a strike of the Guild which would shut every film studio down tight. While a committee headed by President Robert Montgomery negotiated the Guild's demands with representatives of producers, a hundred or more stars gathered nightly at the homes of March, Morris and Cagney to talk strike. Asking nothing for themselves, the Guild's 1,100 high-salaried contract players were out to improve the lot of their 4,500 low-paid associates—extras and bit-players getting less than $250 per week...

...Every night producers and Guild officers talked until 2 or 3 a. m. While her husband, Franchot Tone, backed up President Montgomery with telling arguments, Second Vice President Joan Crawford knitted away like a Madam Defarge, occasionally stiffening the men's backbones with her cry: "We strike!"...