The Brief

The battle has been brewing for years. Massive technological advances have completely changed the rules of the game in the entertainment industry. And the losers are the creatives — the actors and writers who make Hollywood products come alive.

Sound familiar? While the scenario above accurately describes the atmosphere that has caused SAG to join the WGA in striking during this long, hot summer of 2023, 63 years ago a dual strike was called for very similar reasons.

During the rise of television in the 1950s, film studios began making an enormous amount of money licensing their movie catalogues to TV stations. While the studios made millions off these deals, actors and writers received nothing.

Throughout the decade, the Screen Actors Guild was unsuccessful in attempts to get their actors residual benefits for their work. According to actor and historian Wayne Federman, by 1959, negotiations with Hollywood producers had become so contentious that actor and future California governor Ronald Reagan (who had already served as SAG leader from 1947-1952) was convinced to run for leadership again, despite the reservations of his wife, Nancy.

Reagan is reelected and studios play hardball

Reagan was reelected at a particularly tense time. Both the actors and producers were thoroughly entrenched on their opposing sides. In an attempt to scare actors, the studios leaked that they had a backlog of 135 unreleased films to tide them over during a strike.

“Spyros Skouras, head of 20th Century-Fox and the major producers’ representative in negotiations, cried real tears when he explained to…the actors on the negotiating committee that payments of residuals would bankrupt the studios,” writes David F. Prindle in The Politics of Glamour: Ideology and Democracy in the Screen Actors Guild.

SAG was also fighting for a health and pension plan like that of other Hollywood unions. But the producers would not budge. The WGA found themselves at a similar impasse. The writers’ union went on strike on Jan. 17, 1960. A month later, 83% of SAG members gave their leaders permission to strike “if necessary.”

On Feb. 23, a SAG strike was officially called, with all motion picture actors ordered to stop working at 12:01 a.m. on March 7.

“The dreaded eventuality that the industry hoped to avert, a strike call by Screen Actors Guild, materialized yesterday,” The Hollywood Reporter wrote, “throwing not only Hollywood but also the exhibition field at large into something of a panic.”

Motion pictures already in production scrambled. On location in New York the cast and crew of Murder, Inc., starring Peter Falk, May Britt and Morey Amsterdam, worked nights and over the weekend in an attempt to finish production before the March 7 deadline.

A star-studded union meeting

On March 14, around 3,000 actors including Bette Davis, James Cagney, Dana Andrews, James Garner, Myrna Loy, Esther Williams, Ernest Borgnine, John Wayne, Van Heflin, and Edward G. Robinson met to discuss the ongoing strike. The Los Angeles Times reported:

The meeting was presided over by Reagan, who was elated by the actors’ overwhelming support for the strike.

“The motion from the floor endorses the negotiating committees’ position and it was particularly impressive because it was by acclamation,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

According to Prindle, producers and their allies in the press were quick to cast aspersions on the movie stars joining the fight, overlooking the rank and file of struggling actors who overwhelmingly made up SAG, instead lampooning the “’two handsomely dressed doormen’ who ‘parked the worker’s limousines and sports cars’ as they arrived at a membership meeting.”

More conservative members of SAG disagreed with the decision to strike, with gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (who had once been a character actress) stating, “I don’t think it’s moral to accept money twice for a single job,” overlooking the fact that that was exactly what the major studios were doing.

The strike shut down eight productions, stopping work on films including Let’s Make Love, starring Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor’s Butterfield 8, and The Wackiest Ship in the Army, starring Jack Lemmon.

Why Reagan later said Gorbachev was easier than the studio heads

While some actors, like beloved comedienne Gracie Allen, refused to do allowed TV work in solidarity, other actors pivoted to television in order to make a living. The trades (who were decidedly pro-movie studios) claimed out-of-work actors were increasingly restless, with The Hollywood Reporter’s Mike Connolly claiming one actor told him, “I can’t eat principle.”

Below-the-line crew members also suffered. According to Variety, the California Department of Employment reported that 3,900 non-striking workers had been laid off due to the strike.

SAG president Ronald Reagan led negotiations with producers.

“Reagan would later joke that negotiating with Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, over arms reduction was nothing in comparison to having to negotiate with the studio heads,” said Iwan Morgan, author of Reagan: American Icon, in an interview with The Washington Post.

Not everyone was happy with Reagan’s role. As many have noted, Reagan should have never been in charge of leading SAG negotiations because he was also a producer. Once a staunch progressive Democrat, he was becoming increasingly conservative, and rubbed other SAG leaders the wrong way.

“I was a vice president of the Screen Actors Guild when he was its president,” James Garner wrote in The Garner Files. “My duties consisted of attending meetings and voting. The only thing I remember is that Ronnie never had an original thought and that we had to tell him what to say. That’s no way to run a union, let alone a state or a country.”

A deal is brokered

Finally, a month later, on April 8, a residuals deal was finally brokered between SAG and the producers.

“They reached a compromise,” Kate Fortmueller writes in Below the Stars: How the Labor of Working Actors and Extras Shapes Media Production. “Residuals would be paid on films from 1960 forward, with an additional $2.5 million paid toward the SAG pension and health fund.”

The WGA strike, however, would continue until June 12, 1960. According to the WGA’s official website: “Gains included the first residuals for theatrical motion pictures, paying 1.2% of the license fee when features were licensed to television; an independent pension plan; and a 4% residual for television reruns, domestic and foreign. Also, this groundbreaking contract established an independent pension fund and participation in an industry health insurance plan.”

Many SAG members felt Reagan, increasingly involved in big business, had brokered a bum deal in terms of the residuals deal. According to Dark Victory: Ronald Reagan, MCA, and the Mob, actors called the deal “The Great Giveaway.”

Comedian and movie star Bob Hope was incensed, since he would not receive a penny from the films he made before 1960.

“The pictures were sold down the river for a certain amount of money,” Hope said, per Prindle. “I made something like sixty pictures, and my pictures are running on TV all over the world. Who’s getting the money for that? The studios? Why aren’t we getting some money?”

Former child star Mickey Rooney was blunter. “SAG screwed us,” he said, “and I’m mad about it.”

A Cal State University lecturer charged with assaulting federal officers with tear gas was acquitted on Thursday.

Jonathan Caravello, a philosophy lecturer at Cal State Channel Islands, was arrested while protesting a raid at a licensed cannabis farm in Ventura County last summer.

For three days, Caravello’s colleagues, friends, family and students packed the courtroom at the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

The jury returned a verdict within about two hours, according to Caravello’s attorney, Knut Johnson.

“He was never trying to hurt anyone and didn't hurt anyone,” Johnson told LAist Thursday after the verdict was rendered. “He knows that trying to hurt people or hurting them does nothing to help the cause he supports.”

What was the case about?

The federal government said agents were executing a search warrant at the farm, in search of evidence of unlawful employment. In his opening statement Wednesday, assistant U.S. attorney Roger Hsieh said agents deployed the tear gas because protesters obstructed traffic on a two-lane road. Hsieh said Caravello picked up the canister agents deployed and threw it back at them.

Caravello's legal team, led by Johnson, underscored that the lecturer did not hurt anyone and shared a video showing federal vehicles making their way across the road. The defense also said Caravaello picked up and threw the canister as far as he could—past the agents—to keep protesters safe from harm.

The California Faculty Association, which represents CSU faculty, said in a statement Thursday that they welcomed the jury's decision.

"After a thorough investigation by the court, John was cleared of any wrongdoing," the statement said. "The jury’s decision underscores John’s right to peacefully protest and speak out against the cruelty and inhumanity this administration has shown toward immigrants and other marginalized communities across the country."

Senior editor for education Ross Brenneman contributed to this story.

On Thursday morning, L.A. Councilmember Eunisse Hernandez stood at Lacy Street Neighborhood Park in the shadow of the 5 and 110 freeway interchange. Just last year, she said, the Lincoln Heights park and the areas near the freeway were filled with unhoused people. But now, thanks to a $6 million state grant awarded last fall, the park is clear and dozens of people are in temporary and permanent housing.

“Today we’re here to celebrate that 59 of our neighbors, human beings, finally have a roof over their heads,” she said.

The funds were secured by Hernandez from California’s Encampment Resolution Funds, which targeted a 4-mile stretch of the 110 Freeway.

A long to-do list before housing is secured

The grant helped pay health and social workers from public and private agencies and nonprofits, including employees with USC’s California Street Collaborative.

These workers helped people straighten things out before they moved into housing, like finding IDs, matching housing with disability needs and space for pets.

That kind of help requires building trust between the worker and the unhoused person, said Caitlin Schwan, director of the California Street Collaborative.

“And it takes an investment of resources and a lot of coalitions, a lot of partnerships across street medicine, housing providers, service providers,” she said.

Los Angeles Global Care has been as the primary interim housing provider. It also provides daily meals to those transitioning to housing, help with pets and case management.

Rigo Vega was unhoused and lived near the 110 Freeway for four years.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

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LAist

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“I used to live right here under the bridge for like, four years,” said Rigo Vega, who attended the announcement at the park.

Outreach workers, he said, helped him get food and clothes, and the paperwork needed to get into housing last November. Now that’s settled him enough for him to set a goal for himself, “to work, to get a job,” he said.

Hernandez’s office said the goal is to house 11 more people with the grant funds.

Topline:

What's on offer: The temple's Thai food court is a must-visit for many during regular weekends, when a large collection of food vendors set up stalls around the temple, similar to what you'd see in Bangkok. Expect this and more at the festival. We're told you should try the Thai gelato. The temple itself is also beautiful.

When and where: The temple is at 8225 Coldwater Canyon Ave., North Hollywood. There's additional parking at the Kaiser Permanente in Panorama City with a free shuttle to the festival. The temple is open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. each day. The opening ceremony starts at 1 p.m. Saturday.

A union-backed proposal to tax California’s billionaires to fund health care has put some progressive lawmakers — and their labor allies — in a quandary.

Taxing the rich to backfill Trump-induced federal funding cuts might sound like a no-brainer policy for the party’s left flank, which counts wealth inequality among its top issues.

But despite a strong show of support from prominent national figures, including Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and liberal economist Robert Reich, the “2026 California Billionaire Tax Act” has become a hot potato for labor leaders.

The proposed initiative would levy a one-time tax of 5% on any resident of California whose net worth exceeds $1 billion, which applies to around 200 people, according to Forbes. That money would plug an estimated $100 billion hole left by federal cuts to Medi-Cal and other social service programs.

Publicly, prominent labor and progressive players have largely kept quiet, unlike Gov. Gavin Newsom who has aired his disdain loud and clear. Yet in private, some union leaders and their allies in the Legislature rail against the measure. Of the critics who spoke with CalMatters for this story — three union leaders and five members of the Legislative Progressive Caucus — only one lawmaker would criticize the measure openly.

Critics question its feasibility and whether the state even knows how to accurately appraise a billionaire’s total wealth, a crucial step to evaluating how much tax they would owe. They fear long-term revenue loss by driving wealthy people out of California. And some resent that the union sponsoring the initiative, SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, designed the measure to predominantly benefit its members rather than boost the state’s general fund, where it could go to all budget needs.

“It's not that taxing billionaires in itself is wrong,” said Keely Martin Bosler, formerly the top state budget officer to Newsom and former Gov. Jerry Brown. She is now a Democratic consultant who has advised several of California’s most powerful labor groups, including the Service Employees International Union of California, the parent union of SEIU-UHW. “The way in which this tax specifically is constructed is problematic.”

Many progressive state lawmakers and Capitol heavyweights, such as Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco and the powerful California Labor Federation, have sidestepped the question of whether they’d support it, declining for now to take a position on an initiative that has yet to officially qualify for the ballot.

“The Labor Federation won’t take it up for an endorsement until July,” said Lorena Gonzalez, the organization’s president, in a text message.

Yet if the tax lands on the November ballot, as it appears on track to do, progressive critics will be saddled with the tricky optics of opposing — or at least not supporting — a measure that embodies one of their base’s core tenets: taxing the rich.

Even the mere threat the measure could qualify for the ballot has already spurred a torrent of opposition spending — more than $50 million in total so far — from billionaires such as Google co-founder Sergey Brin and cryptocurrency mogul Chris Larsen. Brin’s group, known as “Building a Better California,” has also spawned three new competing ballot measures designed to undermine the billionaires’ tax.

Critics fear that if billionaires like Brin become even bigger perennial spenders in California politics, they could neuter the progressive agenda by bankrolling more business-friendly candidates and ousting left-leaning, labor-aligned legislators.

But the measure’s proponents say they are undeterred by the secretive detractors and challenge their critics to put their names behind their words.

Dave Regan speaks to the SEIU-UHW Leadership Assembly in 2013.

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Steve Yeater

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Courtesy of SEIU-UHW

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“What we have is a group of so-called leaders who are not reflecting the attitudes of their own constituents,” said Dave Regan, president of SEIU-UHW and the de facto leader of the billionaire tax measure. “That’s why they want to be anonymous.”

Regan said he’s confident the initiative will amass enough signatures to qualify for the ballot before the end of April. Then, he said, “We believe a lot of those people are going to come around and change because this makes sense, because the public is supportive, because their own members are supportive.”

The case for, and against, the billionaires’ tax

So far, polling has shown the billionaire tax is relatively popular with voters. Recent surveys show just over half of Californians surveyed said they’re inclined to vote for it.

Critics point out that California’s existing state tax structure is entirely based on income, rather than net worth. The state would have to appraise each person’s assets, including real estate, art, automobiles and private and public businesses. The billionaires could pay in installments, handing over 1% of their wealth annually for five years.

Bosler said that with income tax filings, the Franchise Tax Board can use data from federal tax returns to verify its own analysis. Since there’s no federal wealth tax, California would be forging uncharted territory with no tax compliance support from any other source or agency — a risky move that could invite legal challenges.

“The state is not a miracle worker, like, they're not going to suddenly be able to do all of this like perfectly,” said Bosler. “I mean they will do their best, but I just think this is expertise that they have built up over 50-plus years. Like, none of this is in their wheelhouse at this point.”

But champions of the tax argue it is the only real solution on the table so far to save hospitals, health care jobs and, ultimately, patient lives they say are at risk due to federal funding cuts to Medi-Cal and food assistance programs.

Supporters note that the tax is not intended to solve California’s structural budget problems.

“It’s one-time funding to fill what we hope is a one-time hole,” said Brian Galle, a tax law professor at UC Berkeley who helped craft the measure. Galle said only around 200 people would be subjected to the tax, so the extra burden on the Franchise Tax Board wouldn’t be too great.

“It's not like FTB is going to get a blizzard of tens of thousands of new returns that they're going to have to figure out a whole new data system for cracking,” said Galle.

Why some progressives aren’t on board

Those who have qualms with the initiative have largely kept their criticisms private.

One liberal state legislator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the infighting among the unions puts progressive lawmakers in a difficult position. While he empathizes with the urgency that health care workers feel, he and other Democrats are not convinced the policy could withstand legal challenges and worry about the wealthy employing savvy accounting maneuvers to skirt the tax altogether.

Some organizations that are synonymous with progressive politics in California, such as the Working Families Party, also haven’t taken a position, even as other unions such as the Teamsters and AFSCME California support it.

Even the powerhouse labor union SEIU California is choosing not to take a position on the measure, which is spearheaded by one of its local affiliates, SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West.

Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, right, speaks with Assemblymember Chris Ward at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Sept. 12, 2025.

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Fred Greaves

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CalMatters

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Assemblymember Chris Ward, a member of the progressive caucus, called the measure a “well-meaning effort by UHW,” but criticized the proposal for being just a one-time tax primarily benefiting the health care sector rather than boosting the state’s overall revenues. Regan said SEIU-UHW made the tax one-time to nullify the argument that it would push billionaires out of the state.

Ward noted that he and his colleagues are considering “superior” bills, such as one that would close a corporate tax loop to generate $3 billion per year, and another that would create a new tax on corporations that pay workers so little that they qualify for Medi-Cal and nutrition assistance.

Regan argued these measures would only make California more unaffordable, since businesses would pass their increased costs along to consumers.

Ward, the sole state lawmaker who would candidly share his concerns about the initiative with CalMatters, said he and his colleagues have heard pushback from “a number of other labor organizations that don't support that initiative,” primarily because its members would not directly benefit from any of the revenue. Uniting labor, he said, is the key to any successful revenue solution.

“There's a need to look at a wealth tax for a more broad range, including health care workers but other purposes that are state priorities,” Ward said, “and that will be left off of the table if this is the only question we're seeing.”

CalMatters' Nadia Lathan contributed to this story.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.