Word: unionism
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Browne began to rise in the world, Al Capone had been two years in prison and uncaught gangsters were turning from liquor to labor rackets. Mild, mannerly Mr. Browne (no gangster) was a labor careerist who had just been elected president of A. F. of L.'s union for theatre no-collar-men: the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes. His assistant and bodyguard was one William Bioff, whose record in Chicago included numerous arrests, one conviction for pandering, two efforts to muscle in on Chicago unions, several published references to him as a minor South Side gunman...
Messrs. Browne & Bioff had not long been tops in I. A. T. S. E. before it began to expand. President of a motion picture projectionists' union was a Chicago racketeer named Tommy Maloy. President Maloy was murdered in 1935. Mr. Browne took over the union. One Clyde Osterberg tried to organize a rival union of movie operators. He was murdered. Louis ("Two Gun") Alterie was doing well at organizing theatre janitors when he, too, was murdered. Mr. Browne inherited this union...
Last week the continued rise of George Browne, the continued expansion of I. A. T. S. E., made big news. His union of stagehands having grown until it embraced or claimed nearly everybody except the talent working for legitimate theatres, broadcasters, movie houses and cinemakers, he was out with a kingly plan to enroll the talent as well. He proposed to do nothing less than make I. A. T. S. E. and its subsidiaries one big union, himself a labor tsar for the whole entertainment industry...
This ambition brought Mr. Browne up against "the White Rats." In 1896, before whimsey became a social crime, the first U. S. actors' union worthy of the name was organized as the White Rats of America.† By eventful metamorphosis, including a Broadway strike of actors in 1919 for their right to have a union, that organization is now called Associated Actors & Artistes of America. A sort of union holding company, Four As has eleven affiliates for stage actors, cinemactors, radio performers, vaudevillians, et al. Last week such affiliated Rats as Tallulah Bankhead, Ralph Morgan, Lawrence Tibbett, Edward Arnold...
Stagehand Browne was there as a vice president and executive councilman of A. F. of L., sitting with his fellow councilmen and president, William Green, at their summer meeting to review Federation affairs, deal with such inter-union disputes as this. "It is all a headache," said Mr. Green, who enjoyed elbow-rubbing with stars but had a cold and much confusion in the head...