By 1954 there were five different writer’s guilds representing writers in the various trades: The Author’s Guild, The Dramatists Guild, The Radio Writers Guild, The Television Writers Group and The Screenwriters Guild. That year they formed two affiliated guilds with offices in Hollywood and in New York. They were entitled the Writer’s Guild of America west and the Writer’s Guild of America east respectively and were defined geographically by the Mississippi River. In streamlining and reorganising the representative bodies, the two guilds could now focus on their member’s needs in a more geographically confined area and with all the guilds now affiliated, they had more power in arbitrating on their member’s behalf.
With the changing social atmosphere and increasing budgetary constraints on producers, the old system of forced collaboration between many writer had become the unusual. There was no more writing behind people’s backs and the individual writer had more authority and made greater strides in developing a more personal creativity. The period 1950 to the mid 1960’s saw the narrative change in areas of content with more focus on social issues, such as: racial problems, sex and politics. From Here to Eternity (1953) an adult drama of sexual passion was scripted by Dalton Trumbo and won him another Academy Award. Had the HUAC interpreted this film they would have found it very un-American with its portrayal of the army being a rather negative one. It was nominated for thirteen Oscars and won eight. Other films dealing with these issues included: Rebel Without a Cause (1955), written by Stewart Stern, focusing on misunderstood youth; Twelve Angry Men (1957), written by Reginald Rose, writing on racial and social injustice and the ‘system’; Shadows (1959), written by John Cassavetes about racial identity. The Manchurian Candidate (1962), written by George Axelrod is a satire portraying the Left and Right as being the exact same and also sends up the anti-Communist McCartyists. The era of the ‘Red Scare’ was being left behind and the screenwriters were being left to respond to the changes in attitudes and concerns by mirroring social content in their screenplays. They let loose their opinions, emotions and could express themselves without so much reservation.
By the mid 1960’s some of the screenwriters who had been blacklisted were back working in Hollywood. Waldo Salt wrote Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Ring Lardner Jr. wrote MASH (1969). Both writers won Academy Awards for their work. During this period audience numbers had dropped from 42 million in 1959 to 17.5 million by the end of the sixties. Film production fell accordingly, from 187 films in 1959 to 131 in 1969. As before fewer movies meant fewer writers. Young screen writers were not recruited into the film industry. Television was seen as killing the industry yet it offered writers young and old, employment and was also a legitimate stepping stone to Hollywood. It was here that many writers learned the techniques and skills of screenwriting and were allowed to experiment. Writers such as Richard Matheson started writing screenplays, his first being The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), but because of the lack of work in the film industry he turned to television where he worked on projects such as The Twilight Zone (1959). Stirling Silliphant was in his late thirties when he started screenwriting, but for most of the period 1955 to 1965 he worked on television programmes such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents (NBC). When he returned to film he won an Oscar in 1967 for In The Heat of The Night (1967). Horton Foote began in television in 1947 and moved to cinema in 1956 where he wrote To Kill a Mocking Bird (Robert Mulligan, 1962) and Tender Mercies (Bruce Beresford, 1983), both of which won him Oscars. Older, more experienced writers such as Garson Kanin found work in Television when there was little work in the film industry. Television also became a haven where young writers could learn from those more experienced writers and where new ideas were discussed and developed. It was work, there was lots of it and it was an outlet for the developing of many screenwriters.
