When Hollywood’s Major Studios Threatened to Leave California — For Florida

Southern California seems to have been terraformed by the Creator to attract the motion picture industry: the mild, sunny weather conducive to outdoor shooting; the boundless variety of natural scenery (ocean, mountains, desert, farmlands) that can double for any location on earth; the diverse population of ready-made extras, and, at least in the first decades, the open shop policies of the city fathers (no pesky trade unions).

Little wonder that the pioneers of the medium ditched the cold, clammy, and crowded precincts of New York and New Jersey to light out for the picture-perfect vista. Soon enough, modern factories staffed by a pool of extraordinarily talented artists sprang up to manufacture quality-controlled product. Why would any filmmaker want to leave such prime real estate and glamorous expertise?

David Ellison has his reasons. The CEO of Paramount has threatened to pick up his infrastructure and depart for a destination to be named later unless California attorney general Rob Bonta and his Blue State cohorts drop their lawsuit to prevent the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. A bracing report from the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, leaked to Politico, predicts dire consequences: the loss of an estimated 60,000 jobs and, perhaps, a green light signaling a broader exodus by kindred studio-conglomerates. The outcome need not be ruinous, but it is certainly demoralizing.

Hollywood has been here only once before — in 1934, when the dread prospect of a hostile business environment had the major studios contemplating (or at least threatening) to leave the promised land for friendlier regions. They were bluffing then. Now? I’ve never played poker with Ellison, but, given the stakes, and his cards, I wouldn’t call his hand.

In 1934, it was a socialist not a capitalist playing for keeps — Upton Sinclair, the Democratic candidate for governor. The original social justice warrior (he joked that when he died the two words “social justice” would be found written on his heart), Sinclair had first come to national prominence with the muckraking classic The Jungle (1906), about another company town, Chicago, with another tantalizing consumer product, meat. Sinclair’s forensic description of how the sausage got made led to the establishment of the Food and Drug Administration. He continued to wrote prolifically in the social realist genre, always wielding his prose in the service of a progressive cause.

A few emblematic works include Oil! (1927), which a reviewer described as “Upton Sinclair strikes oil and propaganda gushes forth”; Boston (1928), a “documentary novel” about the Sacco and Vanzetti case; and The Wet Parade (1931), a preachy melodrama about Prohibition, which Sinclair supported. In 1932, Sinclair turned his social consciousness to Hollywood with an against-his-grain biography entitled Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox: The Inside Story of a Wall Street Conspiracy, praising the mogul and condemning the bankers who seized control of Fox Film Corp. from the man who founded it.

When not typing tracts disguised as novels, Sinclair ran regularly and unsuccessfully for political office — the House, the Senate, and, in 1930, the governor of California. In 1934, he threw his hat into the ring for the Democratic nomination for governor and, to the shock of party regulars, won handily. “I say there is no excuse for poverty in a civilized and wealthy state like ours,” he told California voters, a quarter of whom were unemployed.

Sinclair built his campaign around a platform called EPIC (End Poverty in California), which he outlined in a booklet entitled “I, Governor of California.” His proposals were not modest: he planned to bring the entire economy under state control. Banking, agriculture, and industry would be overseen by a trinity of state agencies: the California Authority for Money (CAM), the California Authority for Land (CAL), and the California Authority for Production (CAP). After two years of a Sinclair administration, he promised, “The old order [will have] crumbled like a dry-rotted log.”

Sinclair’s understanding of the workings of the motion picture industry did not engender confidence. He seemed unaware of the sound revolution that had begun in 1927. “We will make our own pictures and show them in our own theaters with our own orchestras,” he declared. He then added insult to ignorance. “Our pictures, culturally, certainly will be superior to those now being produced by private industry. We recognize that pictures are in bad taste and we will try to raise the cultural standards.”

Sinclair confessed that his only direct experience with the motion picture business was as the financial backer of Sergei Eisenstein’s Thunder Over Mexico (1933), a documentary ethnography of Mexican peasant life. “Mrs. Sinclair and myself went out among our friends and obtained the financial backing,” he said. “It didn’t bring back one third of what we put in to it.” Hollywood columnist Sidney Skolsky reported that Sinclair believed “no one in the picture business should make more than about $300 a week.” (In today’s money, it would mean you’d have to scrape by on $7500 per week). Skolsky reminded readers that Sinclair had earned $10,000 for twelve weeks work on MGM’s adaptation of The Wet Parade (1932).

Sinclair’s Republican opponent was Frank E. Merriam, the incumbent, who had assumed office upon the death of James “Sunny Jim” Rolph in June 1934. (Rolph may best remembered for defending the lynch mob that hanged two accused kidnap-murderers in San Jose Park in November 26, 1933, an incident that provides the backstory for both Fritz Lang’s Fury [1936] and Cy Endfield’s Try and Get Me! [1950]). Merriam was a business-friendly caretaker. Also in the running was a third-party candidate, Raymond Haight, the standard bearer for both the Progressive Party and the Commonwealth Party, who positioned himself as a more moderate reformist alternative.

The smart money was on the colorful, energetic Sinclair with a ready answer and the catchy acronym. The likelihood of a socialist revolution by a Democrat put the major Hollywood studios into full panic mode (remember, this was 1934). Sinclair’s plans to seize the means of motion picture production and limit the income of the moguls and the stars meant nothing less than “the end of California,” exclaimed W.R. Wilkerson, editor-publisher of The Hollywood Reporter. MGM’s Louis B. Mayer urged Californians to reject Sinclair’s “radical and unsound doctrines.” Joseph M. Schenck, president of United Artists and 20^th Century, said Sinclair’s election would “spell the collapse of the motion picture industry in Hollywood.”

Backed by the trade press, the studio heads and the officers of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America banded together to orchestrate a full-court press to derail the Sinclair campaign and drag Merriam over the finish line. They organized a clandestine political action committee and raised $100,000 to prop up the personality-impaired Merriam. At MGM and Fox, stenographers, technicians, and screenwriters were asked to donate a day’s pay to the campaign, a “thinly veiled intimidation and coercion” protested by the Screen Writers Guild. Predictably, the below-the-line workforce — projectionists, stage hands, and musicians — lined up solidly behind Sinclair.

Hollywood figured it had a trump card to play. “If Upton Sinclair is elected Governor of the state of California in the November election, at least four and possibly six of the major studios will close their doors and move all production activity to New York,” warned The Hollywood Reporter. The move would mean the loss of at least 20,000 jobs in the nadir of the Great Depression. Joseph Schenck met with members of the local and state Chambers of Commerce and told them flat out he was bolting to Florida if Sinclair were elected. Even the reliably Democratic Harry and Jack Warner were reported scouting for alternative locations. Sensible Carl Laemmle kept above the fray and denied reports that Universal Pictures was considering a defection. “Never in all my years in the motion pictures have I mixed business with politics nor have I ever cared a rap who was or was not Governor as far as business was concerned.”

For its part, Florida hoped for a Sinclair victory to pump up its own moribund economy. Voters approved a measure to give motion picture studios tax exempt status in the state. New Mexico and Arizona also let it be known that they would welcome the refugees from California.

Most provocatively, and it really was unprecedented, the industry marshaled its stock in trade — motion pictures — to undermine the Sinclair campaign. The attack “marked the first time that filmmakers set out to destroy a political candidate,” said the media historian Greg Mitchell in his comprehensive account, The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics, published in 2011.

In October, studio hirelings with sound cameras and recording devices descended on suburbs around Los Angeles and smaller southern California towns and asked voters to voice their political preferences. After an audition off camera, the finalists were asked to come out on the sidewalk for an on-camera interview. “The stunt is being used in the Governor Merriam campaign for reelection and only interviews that laud Merriam or take cracks at Sinclair are printed,” reported Variety.

Actually, the fake news was smarter than that — and therefore more devious and effective.
Under the titles “California Election News No. 1” and “California Election News No. 2,” two issues were released, each about six minutes in length. Both issues open with the jaunty strains of “California Here I Come” and a title card over a map of the state. “Los Angeles. Local interest runs high in forthcoming election for Governor,” the next card reads. “The man on the street — and the woman — selected at random, voice opinions to the inquiring cameraman.”

An unidentified off-camera narrator — the voice of MGM screenwriter Carey Wilson — introduces himself as “the Inquiring Cameraman,” whose mission is to seek out the voters of California “to express their views for your edification.” The interview subjects are all average citizens and bound to be a little camera shy. “Remember — they’re not actors — they’re nervous — you’d be scared to death yourself the first time you faced the camera and microphone!” He gives a final assurance: “I don’t rehearse them. I’m impartial.” In truth, a few ringers were mixed in from Central Casting.

A parade of men and women of different races, classes, and personality types flashes by, all standing behind a huge field microphone. Among the line-up are several Black Americans, one of whom is Oscar Rankin, a Black prizefighter and preacher, well known in the Black community. He is a Merriam man. Whomever the Black citizens of Los Angeles are voting for, their respectful depiction is a rare departure from the usual screen stereotypes of the 1930s.

The Merriam voters tend to be better dressed and more articulate. “I’m in the real estate business and I’d like to stay in the real estate business and if Mr. Sinclair gets in, I’m afraid they’ll be no real estate business,” says one man. Another Merriam supporter stands in front of a Blue Eagle and a “We Do Our Part” slogan, symbol of the New Deal, an image that grants permission for FDR supporters to vote for Merriam.

The follow-up adheres to the same pattern, but adds a bit of sly self-congratulation. “Our first issue seems to have aroused all California,” says the Inquiring Cameraman. “Some of the politicians don’t like our idea at all.” Rest assured though, “we’re trying to be as non-partisan as possible.”

The claim is immediately contradicted by the first face on screen: an attractive and self-possessed young woman who is a Merriam gal. The Sinclair voters are not as easy on the eyes or ears. A workingman in shirt sleeves says, “Upton Sinclair is the author of The Russian Government — and it’s worked out very well there and I think it should do here.”

The partisan slant is certainly evident: Sinclair is “too radical” and Merriam is the safer bet, especially if you have a job. Yet a few Sinclair supporters seem reasonable and are granted time to make their case. It is the seeming impartiality — and the seamless switch off between the rehearsed ringers and the genuine citizens — that makes the newsreels so devious as propaganda. They are not the newsreel version of AI slop.

Distributed to theaters throughout the state, the fake newsreels were mixed in with the regular newsreel issues on the motion picture program. A naïve spectator might well mistake them for the real deal.
Sinclair was understandably outraged. He accused Hollywood of dirty tricks and named the main trickster: MGM head of production “Irving Thalberg is the editorial genius behind these pictures.” The industry denied duplicity. “The newsreels which Sinclair has branded fake are not fake,” insisted H. W. Chotiner, president of the Independent Theater Owners of Southern California. (David Fincher’s Netflix biopic Mank [2020] depicts the subterfuge.)

The fake newsreels were not Sinclair’s only Hollywood-adjacent media problem. Both the Los Angeles Examiner and the Los Angeles Times published photographs of tramps on freight cars riding into California to partake of “the Sinclair land of mike and honey.” The pictures were actually stills from the Warner Bros. film Wild Boys of the Road (1933). One of the tramps jumping off a freight car was the juvenile player, Frankie Darrow.

Eventually, Sinclair partisans took matters into their own hands by heckling the fake newsreels and disrupting screenings. Daily Variety reported “incipient riots in dozens of pic houses in the Los Angeles area.” On the eve of the election, many theaters pulled the newsreels — but by then the message was out.

On November 6, 1934 Sinclair lost to Merriam by 250,000 votes (for the record, the victor was known by midnight the same day). Postmortem commentaries on the campaign agreed that many factors were at play in Sinclair’s loss — FDR had kept his distance and progressive candidate Raymond Haight siphoned off votes from Sinclair — but Hollywood proudly took credit. “The campaign against Upton Sinclair is the most effective piece of political humdingery that has ever been effected,” bragged Billy Wilkerson. Washington would do well to heed “the real power that is in the hands of the picture industry.” As for the threats to pull up stakes, most people in 1934 thought Hollywood was bluffing. “Bunk,” Sinclair scoffed. “All that is just idiocy, the stale campaign lies” that Republicans always use to frighten people. Think of the enormous cost of relocation. Besides, “Where would they get their mountains, and their eucalyptus trees, which represent the foliage of North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia?” Having lived in insect-infested Florida, Sinclair asked, “What do they do about the mosquitoes? Right in the middle of a scene, one would bite the leading lady on the nose and cost them $50,000!”

In 1934, Florida was never really a viable option — flat as a pancake, hot as the Sahara, with equatorial-level dew points, and yes, the mosquitoes. But in the age of AC — and AI — the means of motion picture production can be constructed most anywhere. Hollywood is a state of mind, after all, and it is no longer ordained that it reside in the state of California.