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Hollywood Is a Union Town, but the History Is Complicated

Steven Wishnia The Indypendent
The American movie industry has been one of the most consistently unionized sectors of the economy since the 1930s — but to achieve that, workers had to overcome “the iron fist of the moguls” and organized crime, says historian Gerald Horne

Actors Strike Is On, Throwing Hollywood Into Turmoil

Natalie Jarvey and Joy Press Vanity Fair
160,000 actors, members of SAG-AFTRA, are shutting down all industry filming and voice-over production at midnight tonight. They are joining the 11,000 writers, members of the Writers Guild, who have been on strike since May 2.

I’m a TV Writer on Food Stamps

Jeanie Bergen New York Magazine
While writers like me struggle to make ends meet, Hollywood studios get rich off the content we create.

The Writers’ Strike Opens Old Wounds

Kate Fortmueller Los Angeles Review of Books
While the methods of production and distribution have transformed several times over, every industry-wide strike since 1950 has been about residuals. Residuals have historically been the most hard-fought battles. Now there is streaming, and AI.

Angela Lansbury Was a Brilliant Actor and a Comrade

Eileen Jones Jacobin
Angela Lansbury, who died this week at 96, was a proud socialist who achieved enormous success in film, theater, and TV. Yet her astonishing range was botched by the Hollywood studio system — preventing her movie career from flourishing even more.
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