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.”

President Donald Trump is canceling nearly $1 billion in spending approved by Congress, the White House announced on Friday, using a rare and contested power to axe funding for immigrant services and diversity-focused initiatives.

Trump’s Office of Management and Budget described the funding cut as focused on “the most harmful government spending.”

Most of the cuts are focused on services for immigrants, including nonprofits that serve refugees and unaccompanied minors accused of being in the country illegally. The administration says the funds are no longer necessary because illegal border crossings have diminished considerably.

A White House press release announcing the funding rescissions notes that some of the organizations are led by people who worked in the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama.

Trump’s move was condemned by Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican in a tough re-election campaign and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Collins said in a statement that the action came without warning or consultation. She also said she would work to address with colleagues “these illegal actions.”

“Not only is the delay itself an impoundment that was not reported to Congress, but also it is a usurpation of Congress’s appropriations powers,” Collins said. “OMB is an agency of the executive branch. It does not get to decide which programs are worth funding.”

Typically, Congress can review the president’s proposed spending cuts before they take effect. But Trump made that all but impossible by announcing them with just five days left in the federal fiscal year. The Government Accountability Office says the maneuver, known as a “pocket rescission,” is illegal.

Collins called it the latest attempt by OMB to “undermine Congress’s Constitutional power of the purse.”

A hedge fund manager who wants more bike lanes and a construction workers' union are the biggest donors in L.A. city elections over the past two months.

They put a total of $7 million behind City Councilmember Nithya Raman’s run for mayor, according to the latest campaign filings submitted by Thursday to meet a state deadline.

Aaron Sosnick, a hedge fund founder, and the construction workers union — the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters — each gave $3 million to the same committee backing Raman, city filings show. Sosnick gave another $1 million to the pro–Raman political committee of the street-safety group Streets for All.

Airbnb has pumped in more than $4 million into backing Mayor Karen Bass and three other city candidates. The filings also show the LAPD officers' union has spent nearly $3 million, money that went to oppose Raman, city attorney candidate Marissa Roy and city council candidate Estuardo Mazariegos, and to support council candidate Tim Gaspar. Most of that Airbnb and police union spending was before the June primary election, though police union spending against Raman has picked up recently.

Overall, the filings show Raman’s significant earlier disadvantage in outside dollars has narrowed significantly in recent weeks. So far, the amount of ad spending by outside groups for the general election is similar between the two candidates, with a total of $1.57 million supporting Bass and against Raman, versus $1.53 million supporting Raman and against Bass. Those groups still have millions of donor dollars on hand for future ads.

Ballots are set to start hitting voters’ mailboxes by the week of Oct. 5.

What to know about the mayor’s race

Sosnick runs the New York-based hedge fund A.R.T. Advisors, which uses computer programs to quickly buy and sell stock, to make money from short-term price changes. He is based in Reno, according to campaign filings, and splits his time between New York and L.A.’s Los Feliz neighborhood, according to Michael Schneider, Streets for All’s founder.

Sosnick has been a major donor to prior streets-focused campaigns in L.A., including 2024’s Measure HLA. That voter-approved initiative requires the city to add planned bike lanes, bus lanes and pedestrian upgrades when it repaves major streets.

Two years after voters approved it, the city had completed only about 300 feet of HLA improvements as of March, Streetsblog L.A. reported at the time. The city paused some repaving and shifted to smaller repairs that stay under the measure's trigger, Streetsblog reported.

The construction workers union — which has said most of its nearly 100,000 members are in Southern California — endorsed Bass in 2022, before switching to Raman in August. The union broke with Bass over her affordable-housing directive, ED1, which doesn't require union wages.

The LAPD officers' union has put more than $2 million into groups opposing Raman. A recent ad funded by the union highlights Raman’s remarks about opposing a city ban on homeless encampments near schools. In the ad, Raman is shown saying she doesn’t "think a kid’s gonna be safer because a tent is 500 feet away from a school."

The police union committee also received $525,000 from Douglas Emmett Inc., the landlord behind the largest attempted eviction from rent-controlled housing in the city in decades. The city declined to legally intervene on behalf of the renters, who ended up suing and winning a 2024 court ruling that found the evictions were illegal.

Airbnb has given more than $4 million to groups backing Bass, city attorney candidate John McKinney and City Council candidates Jose Ugarte and Gaspar. The city attorney's office has a current lawsuit against Airbnb over alleged price gouging after the January 2025 fires. Whoever wins in November will inherit the case. This year, Bass advanced a proposal backed by Airbnb to relax city regulations by letting Airbnb hosts rent out second homes and investment properties through 2028.

Dodger Stadium parking-lot co-owner Frank McCourt's real estate firm also gave $25,000 to a group backing Bass. McCourt needs approvals from the Metro board, which Bass chairs, for a proposed gondola project.

Much of Bass' other outside support comes from unions, including the SEIU union that represents most city government staff, whose pay is negotiated by the mayor and approved by the city council.

City attorney

Beyond $2 million from an Airbnb-backed committee supporting McKinney, the police union’s committee has spent $357,000 against city attorney candidate Roy.

Smart Justice California, a criminal-justice-reform advocacy group that wants to reduce incarceration, and a group of trial lawyers are major backers of a committee supporting Roy. The city attorney oversees the city’s misdemeanor prosecutions and defends the city against lawsuits, including those brought by plaintiffs' firms.

City Council: Gaspar and Ugarte far ahead in outside money

In Council District 3, Gaspar’s biggest outside supporters include about $550,000 from an Airbnb-backed group, around $230,000 from a major association for apartment landlords and $136,000 from the police union. His opponent, Barri Worth Girvan, has received a much smaller amount of outside backing, largely from unions, including one that represents construction workers.

In Council District 9, outside spending for Ugarte includes about $300,000 by Airbnb and about $230,000 by the landlords association. Among their many responsibilities, the city council votes on rent rules.

Ugarte’s opponent, Estuardo Mazariegos, has received much less outside support, largely from the main union for L.A. Unified School District teachers and a tenant organizing group known as ACCE.

How the biggest donations flow

Direct giving to the candidates’ campaigns is legally restricted to $1,800 per donor each election cycle for L.A. mayor and city attorney, and $1,000 for city council. So the biggest donors instead spend through “independent expenditure” committees, or “IEs.” Donors can give unlimited amounts to these committees, as long as the spending isn't coordinated with the candidates' campaigns.

That IE money often flows through multiple committees — many of which combine money meant for candidates in multiple races — on its way to election ads, which can make the money hard for the public to easily track.

The general election will take place Nov. 3.

The City of Long Beach is pushing back against requests to release information about a sustained misconduct finding from the personnel file of one of its former officers — even as more details come out about past incidents.

Defense attorney Scott Sanders has requested material in the personnel files of former Long Beach Police Officer Erik Suarez after he learned Suarez was convicted on aggravated battery charges stemming from a 2019 beating in Cobb County, Georgia.

In court filings, Sanders has argued that information should have been disclosed to his client, Lonnie Jacobs, from the outset of the case. Jacobs is facing up to four years in prison on a charge that he brought a controlled substance into a jail. Sanders has argued the case should be dismissed because he alleges the initial arrest was based on Suarez misrepresenting facts and omitting evidence.

Now the defense has requested information from Suarez’s personnel file about both the Georgia conviction and an allegation that Suarez assaulted a man on the job in 2023. Sanders argues that information in the personnel file could show a pattern of misconduct by Suarez. In court filings, he also claims it could reveal a practice within the Long Beach Police Department to conceal incriminating information about its officers in protected personnel files.

“The reasonable conclusion is that the non-disclosure of Officer Suarez’s conduct and conviction is illustrative of an intentionally flawed process designed to conceal evidence that is favorable to defendants and harmful to LBPD officers,” Sanders wrote in a declaration submitted to the court on Sept. 23.

“With what we've learned so far, every defendant charged in a Long Beach case must presume that evidence is being concealed in their case,” Sanders told LAist. “Just look at the lengths the department went to in order to protect Officer Suarez's misconduct. He was arrested after violently causing serious injuries to the victim. Then just three months after being convicted in that case, he used force while on duty that the department found impermissible. Long Beach PD's response? Send him back to the streets and block defendants from finding out the truth.”

Erik Suarez from a photo in a Long Beach police file documenting his use of force during an arrest in 2023.

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Suarez left the Long Beach Police Department in June and is now with the Burbank Police Department, according to records from the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training.

The Burbank Police Department confirmed that Suarez was employed there and assigned to the field operations division. The department said it could not comment on “confidential personnel records or specific aspects of an individual’s background investigation, employment history, disciplinary history, or other personnel matters” and declined to make him available for an interview.

LAist tried to reach Suarez by calling a phone number linked to him in public records. Each time, a man answered and said he was not Suarez, but that he was in contact with Suarez. This week, that man said he had no interest in passing along the reporter's contact information.

Todd Vigus, an attorney for the Long Beach Police Department, argued in a Sept. 22 response to Sanders’ motion that the allegations surrounding Jacobs’ arrest “do not establish good cause to search the officers' personnel files for every conceivable form of misconduct, moral turpitude, discipline, performance deficiency, racial bias, or unrelated wrongdoing.”

A spokesperson for the Long Beach Police Department said in an email dated Sept. 11 that they are prohibited from discussing personnel matters and internal investigations, but did confirm that the department was aware of Suarez’s arrest in Georgia.

In response to a records request from LAist, department officials on Thursday released records from a 2023 use of force investigation that determined Suarez used "unnecessary or unreasonable force" while arresting someone.

That same year, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office investigated an allegation that Suarez committed “assault under the color of authority” but declined to press charges.

“The decision to decline prosecution in the 2023 matter was based on the evidence available at the time,” said Greg Risling, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office. “Although we did not know of the allegation from Georgia, the facts of that case would not have been a deciding factor in that charging decision.”

How Suarez's record came to light

When Suarez left the LBPD in June, Sanders was attempting to subpoena him for questioning about why he arrested Jacobs, who is bald, when his body-worn camera footage showed a witness describing the person who threatened him with a gun as having dreadlocks or braids.

Sanders attempted to subpoena Suarez twice through the Long Beach Police Department. In response to the first subpoena, in April 2026, the department said Suarez was out of the country. After the second subpoena filed June 22, the department informed Sanders that Suarez had resigned.

According to state records, Burbank hired Suarez two weeks later, on July 6. He’d worked for the Long Beach Police Department from November 2017 until June 19, 2026 — three days before Sanders made a second subpoena attempt.

Still attempting to subpoena Suarez, now at his home, an investigator working for the defense of Lonnie Jacobs — the man Sanders represents in the drug case — found Suarez had been convicted of misdemeanor aggravated battery in 2022 in Cobb County, Georgia.

According to court records LAist obtained from Georgia, the incident took place in a Waffle House in 2019.

The victim told the Long Beach Press-Telegram that Suarez threatened to kill him while beating him on the ground. The victim said he has vertigo and problems with his vision from the beating, according to the newspaper.

The Cobb County District Attorney’s office charged Suarez with two felony counts of aggravated battery. In 2022, Suarez pleaded guilty to misdemeanor aggravated battery. He served a year on probation and was ordered to take an anger management class.

According to the article, the victim said he was told by Georgia prosecutors that Long Beach police officials had been informed of the charges, and was surprised to see that Suarez was still working for the police department years later.

Records released by the Long Beach Police Department show Suarez received a two-day suspension for bringing discredit to the department by leaving the scene of the assault without reporting it.

Former Long Beach Police Officer Erik Suarez received a two-day suspension after the 2019 arrest in Cobb County, Georgia.

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Long Beach Police Department

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Sanders argues in his filing that these details support the motion to open up Suarez’s police records. In California, police personnel files are mostly shielded from public disclosure, except under certain circumstances, including findings of unnecessary use of force and misconduct while on the job.

Defendants who believe those personnel files may include information relevant to their case can file what’s called a Pitchess motion in court. If a judge agrees with the motion, the court will have an opportunity to review personnel files and pull out information deemed relevant to the case at hand.

Sanders filed an initial Pitchess motion before a preliminary hearing, but the court denied his request. He filed another motion to disclose Suarez’s personnel files once the defense learned about the Georgia conviction. Long Beach filed in opposition to that motion, arguing information in Suarez’s personnel file is not relevant to the Jacobs’ case. It is that motion that a judge is considering now.

Why this case could have broader implications

Sanders argues the Georgia conviction should have been disclosed not through a Pitchess motion, but proactively under Brady v. Maryland, a 1963 Supreme Court case that established prosecutors’ obligation to disclose information that could help defendants win their case. In his motions, Sanders is asking not only for information about Suarez’s conviction and potential misconduct, but for evidence that the Long Beach Police Department employs a similar tactic to hide information about other officers in their personnel files.

“Quite clearly, there can be no safe haven within a police department that is created to facilitate the concealment of improper acts by its officers or to hide the department’s efforts to protect officers from receiving deserved consequences,” Sanders wrote in a Sept. 23 supplement to the second Pitchess motion. “It is a near-certainty that the department is engaging in a pervasive practice of non-disclosure.”

On Thursday, a judge in Long Beach granted a continuance in the case against Jacobs, rescheduling the hearing for the second Pitchess motion for Nov. 12.

What the DA knew — and didn’t know

Shortly after Sanders began defending Jacobs, a deputy district attorney on the case notified the defense that the DA’s office investigated Suarez in 2023 for “assault under the color of authority,” but did not file charges.

In his latest filing, Sanders argues this disclosure suggests that the district attorney’s office was aware of its obligations to disclose evidence under Brady and would have disclosed the Georgia conviction if they knew about it.

The district attorney’s office handbook instructs prosecutors to turn over evidence that directly opposes guilt or could be used to impeach a witness, including felony convictions, misdemeanors or other conduct that “reflects on believability, misconduct involving moral turpitude.”

A charge evaluation worksheet submitted to the court provides some details about the 2023 incident but, according to Sanders, leaves other questions unanswered.

The worksheet says that Suarez was assisting other officers responding to a domestic violence call in 2023. The other officers had arrested and handcuffed a man who, according to the worksheet, was “forcefully resisting” arrest. The worksheet says the man bit Suarez. The account reports Suarez then punched the man in the face, and the man lost consciousness for about four minutes. That narrative is based on reports from body-worn camera footage, reports and interviews, the worksheet says.

The district attorney’s office decided not to press charges against Suarez, citing “insufficient evidence” showing Suarez used more force than necessary.

In the latest filing, Sanders raises several issues with the worksheet provided by the district attorney’s office and is seeking more information about what happened during the incident.

The worksheet says Long Beach “opened an investigation into the allegation that Suarez used excessive force” in March 2023, two months after the incident.

In response to a records request from LAist, the Long Beach Police Department said they had identified one investigation with a sustained finding of “unnecessary or unreasonable force” from 2023 in Suarez’s personnel file. Later that same day, the department released the investigatory files related to that incident.

The records show the internal affairs investigation was prompted by deputy chief Gerardo Prieto, who also requested a criminal investigation, and resulted in a three-day suspension for Suarez.

A summary of a meeting between Suarez and LBPD leadership states that Suarez and James Trott, an attorney with the Long Beach Police Officers Association, argued the use of force was reasonable. Trott said the incident “should and alone and not be associated with the prior out-of-state incident,” according to the summary.

The worksheet from the district attorney’s office does not reference any sustained findings by the Long Beach Police Department. It does not describe the allegation or explain where the allegation came from, a key omission, according to Sanders.

The report summarizes an interview with the man Suarez punched. It does not include any statements from that man and explicitly states they did not seek a compelled interview with Suarez.

Importantly, Sanders argues, the report makes no mention of the conviction against Suarez in Georgia that occurred just a few months earlier.

The man Suarez punched was convicted of resisting arrest during the incident. Sanders argues that he was entitled to know about Suarez’s conviction, and that the district attorney’s office should have known about the conviction while deciding whether or not to charge Suarez.

The district attorney’s office handbook states that when considering pressing charges on someone, prosecutors shall “review all available police reports and the accused’s background and prior record.”

“The fact that the accused’s alleged conduct is consistent or inconsistent with prior proven conduct may remove or create a reasonable doubt,” the handbook explains.

The district attorney’s office told LAist the office was not aware of the Georgia conviction at the time of their 2023 investigation.

What makes The Little Sugarplum special? Three sisters started the traveling pop-up bakery, each with a different role in running it. There’s the medical student-turned-baker, the hospitality worker-turned-marketer, and the blackjack dealer-turned-accountant.

What else? Their cinnamon rolls, which have become the main attraction, include a variety of rotating flavors like strawberry shortcake, matcha, coffee and ... mashed potatoes. Yeah, you read that right.

They recently shared their secrets with LAist host Austin Cross.

About the owners

Jenna Agpaoa grew up with her two sisters in Valley Center, a city in San Diego County, where their passion for baked goods began to take shape.

The Amish cinnamon roll

Soon after starting the bakery, their content went viral after sharing a recipe for a traditional Amish cinnamon roll, which notably uses mashed potatoes as an ingredient. They learned the recipe from an old neighbor growing up, who was Pennsylvania Dutch, a group descended from German-speaking immigrants from the 17th and 18th centuries.

Now you can find them vending all across Southern California, including at places like Ubefest and 626 Night Market.

Their fall flavor menu

They offer other baked goods in addition to cinnamon rolls, including cookies, brownies and bread.

The Little Sugarplum's fall menu.

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What should we try next?