Politics of Glamour

With over 11,000 page reads per week, many have asked where my blog name came from.  So, here’s how I got ordained THE MEDDLESOME PRIEST by Charlton Heston during the political SCREEN ACTORS GUILD STAR-WARS of the early 1980’s. Rollicking good fun! This is part of the ‘back story’ to the published version in Dr. David F. Prindle’s book:

The Politics of Glamour, ( University of Wisconsin Press; 1 edition (October 15, 1988)

Canadian geese were landing in Charlton Heston's pool. Through the dining room patio glass doors, I could see them, flapping and squawking as they splashed down. Some of their ungraceful landings were comical considering they did this for a living. Everyone else in the room seemed oblivious. Must be a daily occurrence up there on the top of Coldwater Canyon in Beverly Hills I thought.

Chattering among themselves, Jimmy Stewart finally broke the hub-bub and asked me, in his best Mr. Smith Goes to Washington wobble, "Well eh, Mr. McIntire, how much, eh, will it cost... and how long will it, eh, take ya?" As one goose aborted his landing, settling on the diving board instead, I did the math quietly in my head, took three beats of stage pause before delivering the line, "One hundred and fifty thousand dollars and 3 months time." 

Rory Calhoun leaned back on the sofa with a widening smile, "I like this guy...cock sure of himself." To which Chuck responded, "Careful, Mark can be intemperate and impertinent, and often both at the same time." 

Character Actress, Marie Windsor piped up, "Yeah, well how's he gonna do it?" 

Morgan Paul, outgoing chairman of Actors Working for an Actors Guild (AWAG), sputtered, "Mark  found something we missed all these years.” 

Don Galloway piped in, “Yeah. He found a legal way for us to direct mail to all seventy-five thousands members of the Guild (SAG).”  Silence. Even the geese stopped yelping. This was a somewhat embarrassing moment since AWAG had been paying lawyers for years trying to get access to the entire SAG membership list. I found a way to do it in one afternoon of research through California Corporate Code, (Section 2000 throughout). SAG was a California Corporation in addition to being a labor union. As such, members had legal power to direct mail to all other members as long as they paid for the mailing. This was the Holy Grail of AWAG. Some faces in the room turned white, others red as I explained my plan.

Everyone looked around then thumbed through the dossiers each had of me. Someone had done their homework. 

The dossiers contained press clippings from my 1972 overthrow of Dr. Leonard J. Savignano as president of Westfield State College.  I was 25. That’s another story. Then they all looked at Chuck, nodding one by one. "K...  Mark, you’re the new Chairman of AWAG…the money will be in the bank tomorrow..Carol (Carol Lanning, Chuck’s long-serving Chief of Staff) will give you the address. See you there. Then we get to work."

--- Politics of Glamour, page 160

That was the spring of 1983. Ed Asner has just been elected SAG president. His philosophy of trade unionism was vintage 1930’s socialism. Charlton Heston and Ronald Reagan had both been six-term SAG presidents. Their philosophy of unionism was the Guild system, and SAG, as he name implies, was a Guild in their eyes not a play thing for international socialists. The scene was set for what the Hollywood media would dub ‘SAG STAR-WARS’. In the scenes at Heston’s house just described, I had just been recruited by Heston’s forces as field marshal, AWAG chairman replacing Morgan Paull. Eventually, I would be promoted to MEDDLESOME PRIEST.

--- Politics of Glamour, page 161

For years, the ‘conservative’ wing of the Screen Actors Guild failed to regain control of its National Board of Directors even though they had plenty of money for lawyers, PR people and candidates willing to run for SAG office. Since its founding days in the 1930’s with Eddie Cantor and Leon Ames, SAG had always been a rah-rah-American guild for movie actors only. Other labor unions represented stage actors (Actor’s Equity), TV/Radio actors and on-camera reporters (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and movie extras (Screen Extras Guild). By the time Ronald Reagan entered the White House, liberal-progressive-socialists took over almost all SAG elected offices. I simply referred to them as ‘Bolsheviks’. Chuck loved it.

--- Politics of Glamour, page 159

Within a few weeks AWAG was able to send direct mail, ‘torpedoes’ as we called them, to every member of SAG presenting an opposing view to the Ed Asner Bolsheviks.

AWAG membership ballooned from 361 members to over 6,500 members. Not only did this stop Asner’s dictatorial decree for a second SEG/SAG merger vote dead in its tracks, but 13 AWAG members were elected to the SAG Board of Directors in the 1984 elections. The following year 11 more were elected along with AWAG’s Chris Mitchum as SAG First Vice-President second in command only to new president Patty Duke. Ed Asner was overthrown. SAG retreated from publically backing Bolshevik causes. 

Over a single-malt scotch at his house after the fog of battle lifted temporarily, Chuck reminded me of that scene in the movie BECKET starring Peter O’Toole as King Henry II and Richard Burton as Archbishop Thomas a Becket. “Will no one rid me of that meddlesome priest? I bet Asner muttered that line to himself about you many a time over the last two years.”  

--- Politics of Glamour, page 160

One would think that AWAG’s mission was complete.  Not so.  AWAG’s founding mission was yet to be fully realized, i.e. protecting individual union members compulsory dues from financing candidates, causes, and issues that violated the political and moral conscience of those individual objecting members. One more charge up the hill was required. On top of that hill sat the Supreme Court of the United States. As fate would arrange, a man named Harry Beck, a life-long member of anther labor union, Communication Workers of America (CWA) had been arguing AWAG’s predicate for over 22 years in lower courts. SCOTUS decided to hear his case in 1986. Locked and loaded, into the saddle one more time, AWAG filed an amicus curiae’ (friend of the court) brief on behalf of Mr. Beck October term 1986 case No 86-637. Our amici signatories were twelve, the size of a jury, and they included; Charlton Heston, Mark McIntire, Claude Akins, Isabel Boniface, Rory Calhoun, Don De Fore, Hugh Gillian, Howard Keel, Christopher Mitchum, Morgan Paull, Marie Windsor and Alan Young.

In 1988, penned by arguably the most liberal Justice to sit on the High Court in the last century, Justice William Brennan wrote the 5-3 majority decision upholding Mr. Beck’s claim that compulsory union dues cannot extend beyond the ‘financial core’ of those dues that finances his union’s collective bargaining efforts and not union political spending. Mr. Justice Brennen writing for the majority:

 "The statutory question presented in this case, then, is whether this 'financial core' includes the obligation to support union activities beyond those germane to collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment. We think it does not.”--- Communications Workers of America v. Beck, 487 U.S. 735 (1988)

With those last five words, AWAG’s mission was completed. My three-year term on the SAG Board of Directors expired. I did not run for re-election. There was no need. 

That summer of 1988 Chuck arranged a private birthday party for me at the popular Beverly Hills eatery, The Rangoon Racquet Club. Carol Lanning was the only other guest. They commissioned a special cake for the occasion. It was a lime green with chocolate icing replica of our actual amicus brief document, pictured here, but with the added scroll in dark chocolate:

“Happy Birthday To: 

The Meddlesome Priest.”

Best damn cake I ever ate.

REASON ARGUE REFUTE:

 Critical Thinking About Anything 

by Mark McIntire 

Link: http://amzn.com/B00CC12QNE

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