I was watching * Cradle Will Rock* last night and started thinking about actors, communism and so on. It’s so difficult to Google “Hollywood+liberal” without getting tons of hate sites from the right and extremist sites on the left so I am looking to the geniuses here for help. I understand that in the minds of many in the first half of the 20th century that union = commie and I know that is not the case. However, in many cases, union = liberal/Democrat.
How did actors become so strongly pro-union? Did the involvement of the SAG foster the “liberal” mind-set of current Hollywood? How can this mindset be reconciled with such a crassly capitalistic setting as Hollywood and the entertainment industry?
Can anyone enlighten me or point me to some good, relatively objective sites/books?
First of all, it is hardly the case that all actors are liberals - or were. But as far as unions go, perhaps I can offer some insight from my experience. My daughter was a SAG member (in New York) when she was acting. Very few actors have the clout to negotiate big contracts, and even those who do remember when they didn’t. SAG is very useful in requiring that production companies pay on time, have decent overtime policies, and in general not jerk the actor around. They also track and coordinate the payment of residuals, which are very important. SAG does look after the interests of its members, and actors interact with SAG far more frequently than most workers do with unions.
Print models don’t have a union, and from what her manager said they get paid less and often with more hassles than people on union jobs get. So, the union actually does stuff for actors, which would make them more pro-union.
As for me, when my daughter got a 78 cent check when a soap she was on ran in Italy, I became a believer.
I’m speculating but it might be because the movie business used to have a very small and concentrated group of owners. The studio system gave the owners an easy opportunity to collude together for their mutual benefit at the expense of the performers (ie if an actor angered one studio head he could find himself blacklisted at every studio - the legendary “you’ll never work in this town again”). Most individuals would not have the capability to confront such a system so that would drive people towards collective action.
You know, I have never seen evidence from a reliable poll that the majority of actors have any particular set of political beliefs. Does anyone have the results of such a poll? Let me say this really clearly now: A poll over a randomly chosen set of actors, not some collection of anecdotes.
A more current survey finds people who self-identify as “actors” giving $101,022 to Democrats and $1,850 to Republicans.
I doubt it, although here obviously we enter the realm of opinion. My own belief is that arts-oriented professions are crap-shoots featuring a large number of starving artists and a few spectacularly wealthy success stories, that the choice of such a profession entails a certain rejection of capitalism, and that life in such a profession inclines one to view economic outcomes as a matter of luck and therefore to favor collectivism over individual enterprise.
Also here’s a list of the top 25 actors by donation to conservative causes. You’ll see names like Ben Stein, Chuck Norris and Clint Eastwood. No big surprises.
Looking back at actors like Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne (who was a member of the John Birch Society) and you have to think not all Hollywood was liberal.
Freddy the Pig writes (quoting a poll of Oscar-winning actors and directors):
> In the latest presidential election cycle, Oscar-winning actors, actresses and
> directors donated about 40 times more money to Democrats than to
> Republicans.
So Oscar winners, who tend to be among the most successful of all actors and directors, tend to donate to Democrats rather than Republicans and overwhelmingly give more money to Democrats. This doesn’t say much about average actors. Note that only 38 Oscar winners gave any money in this survey.
> A more current survey finds people who self-identify as “actors” giving
> $101,022 to Democrats and $1,850 to Republicans.
So the few actors who are currently donating money to presidental candidates overwhelmingly tend to donate to Democrats rather than Republicans. Since this includes only 74 actors, this is a tiny proportion of all actors. Again, this doesn’t say much about average actors.
If you’re looking historically, remember that liberalism was the mainstream from the Great Depression up almost until Reagan. Not only were most people in Hollywood in that era liberals, so were most Americans. Conservatives were few and the racism of the conservative South gave them a very bad reputation.
Also, for most workers, unions were a very good thing. It was only the owners who tried to associate them with communism.
There is no question that actors in general are overwhelmingly liberal. So are painters, musicians, and other artists.
I suspect the artistic mindset tends to draw people who are liberal in outlook. It’s irrelevant whether or not Hollywood is unionized - painters and performance artists and buskers have no unions, but is there any doubt that a poll of those groups would find an overwhelmingly liberal tilt?
And among the conservative artists, I’ll bet you’ll find relatively few who set out to be artists from day one. Take Fred Thompson, for example. He had no intention of being an actor - he backed into acting after being asked to play himself in a movie, and got rave reviews and more job offers so he decided to go for it. Ben Stein was a lawyer and speechwriter who fell into acting late in life. Chuck Norris was of course a karate champion who parlayed his success into an action movie career.
Is there some correclation between the actor’s political ideology and their willingness to donate money? Look at the lists: the top conservative donations are $40,550; $33,800; $32,225; $27,605; $27,250; and $13,250 - nobody else donated over $10,000. The top liberal donations were $1,255,130; $845,645; $498,075; $492,750; and $456,811.
The statistics quoted by Freddy the Pig say nothing about the political beliefs of the vast majority of actors. One of them is about 74 actors, the other is about 38 actors. There are tens of thousands of actors regularly working out there. At most all the statistics say is that the most politically active actors, the ones who care enough to give money, are overwhelming Democratic rather than Republican. This says nothing about 99% of all actors. Does anyone have any statistics from a poll which surveyed a representative sample of all actors? As I suspected, posters in this thread are either just expressing their own vague impressions or quoting statistics which say nothing about the vast majority of most actors.
Maybe there’s an acting “culture” that many actors pick up after they’ve studied acting for awhile.
There’s definitely a culture associated with the visual arts – anybody who’s taken an art class at the university level knows what I’m talking about. It’s hard to become a successful painter if you don’t go to art classes, hang around with other artists, and make some artist friends. It’s only a matter of time before that culture starts to rub off on you.
I think it’s a meme that Republicans like to run with - opposition to Hollywood values. But a list of actors who have actually held major office and been in position to impose their values on society includes…
Ronald Reagan - Republican
Jesse Ventura - Independent
Sonny Bono - Republican
Ben Jones - Democrat
Fred Grandy - Republican
Reagan outwieghs everyone else on the list put together and his values (or lack thereof) became something of a standard that we still live under today.
Additionally, Fred Thompson is running as a Republican for president and Kelsey Grammer told Fox News he is considering running for congress as a Republican. Al Franken is running as a Democrat (and is already being blasted by Norm Coleman for having Hollywood connections.)