The Truth About the 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting

Kevin Brianton, Ph.D.
La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
Author of Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist
The University Press of Kentucky, 2016

Cecil B. DeMille’s role at the Screen Directors Guild (SDG) meeting on 22 October 1950 has been a controversial one for the director. In the Red Scare period, DeMille and his conservative followers—who formed a majority of the SDG board—pushed for the removal of its president, Joseph Mankiewicz. He had supposedly opposed a mandatory loyalty oath for SDG members. To get rid of Mankiewicz, the DeMille group sent out a ballot asking for Mankiewicz to be recalled, which gave SDG members only one option: to vote him out.

In response, Mankiewicz rallied his supporters, called a general meeting to discuss the issue, and gained a court injunction against the ballot. In the run-up to the meeting, it became clear that DeMille had acted in great haste, and Mankiewicz had no plans to oppose the board. Mankiewicz regained full support of the board and the membership, but the meeting went ahead.

At the meeting, DeMille moved that the ballots be destroyed, but the mood of the directors was strongly against DeMille. The meeting formally stopped Mankiewicz’s recall and the board—including DeMille—was compelled to resign. Even so, a voluntary loyalty oath was introduced three days after the meeting. It became mandatory in 1951, following a vote of the entire membership.

Many false stories have circulated about the SDG meeting.

The first is that DeMille spoke with a derogatory Eastern European or Jewish accent, which has prompted accusations of anti-Semitism. A court transcript of the meeting clearly shows that this incident did not happen, but even so it entered Hollywood folklore. The story was possibly confused with a similar incident at an isolationist rally involving Senator Gerald Nye in 1940.¹

This story was first told by Billy Wilder in 1972, who was probably not at the meeting. It was repeated by Mankiewicz in a filmed interview in the 1980s, and by others after that.²

Another story is that at the end of the meeting, John Ford is reported to have attacked DeMille and then demanded his resignation. The court transcript shows that Ford defended DeMille and told his fellow directors that they were being “Un-American” in their accusations.³

DeMille’s attempt to recall Mankiewicz was widely criticized. As a face saving gesture to his friend DeMille, Ford called for the entire board to resign. This saved DeMille the disgrace of being individually dragged from office. After the meeting, Ford sent DeMille a letter of condolence and then followed up with a phone call of support.

¹ Propaganda in Motion Pictures—Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate Commerce, United States Senate, Seventy-Seventh Congress, First Session on S. Res. 152. September 9–26, 1941. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1942.
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?view=text;size=100;id=mdp.39015020646066;page=%20root;seq=9;orient=0.
² Sikov, E. On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder. New York: Hyperion,199, 322.
³ SDG Minutes, 22 October 1950, 122.