History
At a meeting held at the Pabst Grand Circle Hotel in New York City, on May 26, 1913, Actors' Equity was founded by 112 professional theater actors, who established the association's constitution and elected Francis Wilson as president. Leading up to the establishment of the association, a handful of influential actors—known as The Players—held secret organizational meetings at Edwin Booth's old mansion on Gramercy Square. The Players included Frank Gillmore, who from 1918 to 1929 was the Executive Secretary of Actors' Equity and its eventual President, a position he held from 1929 to 1937.
Actors' Equity joined the American Federation of Labor in 1919, and called a strike seeking recognition of the association as a labor union. The strike ended the dominance of the Theatrical Syndicate, including theater owners and producers like Abe Erlanger and his partner, Mark Klaw. The strike increased membership from under 3,000 to approximately 14,000. The Chorus Equity Association, which merged with Actors' Equity in 1955, was founded during the strike.
Equity represented directors and choreographers until 1959, when they broke away and formed their own union.
Read more about this topic: Actors' Equity Association
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Boys forget what their country means by just reading “the land of the free” in history books. Then they get to be men, they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books.”
—Sidney Buchman (1902–1975)
“Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)