07/13/2023
As Hollywood labor unions prepare for further strikes, here's a bit of history: In August of 1919 Helen Keller, the great Swedenborgian social activist, threatened to boycott the premier of the film Deliverance, a film about her own life in which she made an appearance. When she heard that a strike had been called by Actor’s Equity, the labor union for actors and stagehands, she not only refused to participate in the film’s release, but joined the picket line and spoke at the union meetings, declaring that she would “rather have the film fail than aid the managers in their contest with the players.” In her remarks to the striking actors, she said: "I congratulate you warmly upon the courage with which you are holding out in this great strike, and making your will felt. I rejoice that you have grown into a force to be reckoned with on the stage of life as well as on the boards...You are fighting for the right to your brains, your hands, your labor. The tools to him that uses them, and the rightful profit to him who does the work of the world. This is not only a strike of labor, but also of art. It is a revolt of heart and mind against forces which destroy joy, beauty and thought. It should enlist the sympathy of all whose work is based on thought, So far as the actor is a workman, he has a right to be free in his work. So far as he is an artist, he has a right to be; free in his art."
