Current SAG president Alan Rosenberg describes his tenure as "a fascinating journey" marked by many unexpected challenges. "It's been very difficult, but it's been a great education on the issues that concern actors," he says. "It's been a rewarding experience, but not the easiest thing I've ever done."
Steering through a long work stoppage; an unprecedented break with a sister union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists; and down-to-the-wire negotiations of the TV/Theatrical Contract has been challenging, to say the least. But the longtime television, stage, and film actor says he handles such obstacles one at a time, particularly with the help of his ally, National Executive Director Doug Allen. "I have so much faith in him," Rosenberg says of Allen, adding that hiring the former Buffalo Bills linebacker has been Rosenberg's greatest achievement as president thus far. "He's somebody who understands our business profoundly and understands performers," says the president.
Rosenberg is also proud of his attempts to build unity between SAG's West Coast and East Coast factions. He describes unity as elusive at times, saying, "There are times when that seems to be something that's achievable, and sometimes it seems it's taken steps backwards."
Rosenberg says he hasn't thought about how he will re-enter acting full time after his second term. He is considering writing a book—but only after taking a long vacation. The politically active president says he does not want to pursue a career in politics. "I've learned that groups of people with disparate backgrounds can accomplish amazing things when they come together and work in solidarity. And I've also learned the other side of that: that people sometimes get so invested in their point of view that they stop listening. Sometimes there's no amount of logic or reason you can use to sway a person. That's unfortunate, as far as I'm concerned.
"Sometimes you just have to keep your head down, put one foot in front of the other, and just tell the truth," he says. "Just rely on the truth, rely on the membership, and let the chips fall where they may." William Daniels takes a Dickensian view of his presidency. "It was the best and worst of all possible times," he says. "There are some people who really like the politics of it, and I didn't." Daniels, best known for his Emmy-winning role on St. Elsewhere and performances in such films as The Graduate, had been to SAG headquarters only once, to attend a friend's memorial, when a group of commercial actors asked him to run for president. "They told me in what trouble the commercial actor was with the contract that they were living under," says Daniels. "What they needed was someone who was fairly well known in the industry to be the figurehead. I had nothing at stake, because I wasn't a commercial actor, but I told them I would go to the wall for them."
Daniels fought tooth and nail to increase residuals and pay in SAG's Commercials Contract, over which actors held the longest strike in entertainment union history in 2000.
"The strike was successful, but it was a very trying experience. There were a lot of people who asked me to end it, as if I could end it personally," Daniels says.
He says he had difficulty finding acting jobs after his presidency. His series Boy Meets World had ended, and getting a new agent was a challenge. However, Daniels notes, "It didn't bother me that much."
In recent years, he has appeared on The Closer and in Blades of Glory and done many voiceovers as KITT, the iconic car he voiced on the original Knight Rider series. Daniels says he stays out of SAG politics these days but keeps abreast of the issues through his wife and St. Elsewhere co-star Bonnie Bartlett, who currently serves on the national boards of SAG and AFTRA.
Richard Masur, who had been deeply involved with SAG's board and various committees for six years before running for office, said it was his priority to serve the majority of SAG members as president. "In an organization where the vast majority of your membership is not able to make its living through the work…you want to find different ways to service the members who maybe aren't just living off the contracts," he notes. To that end, Masur lobbied in Washington, D.C., to reform the healthcare system, and he helped restructure California's Coogan Law, which protects child actors' assets. During his presidency the guild also worked to pass a California law that protects actors' privacy from the paparazzi. He is also proud to have expanded SAG's staff significantly.
Masur's presidency is perhaps best remembered for his referendum to merge with AFTRA, which the membership voted down by a slim margin. A longtime advocate of a merger, he says the current situation in which AFTRA and SAG are negotiating separately could have been avoided had the 1998 referendum passed. "It's catastrophic," he says. "We would have had 10 years of conflict-free administration of our contracts and negotiation of our contracts. There would have only been one union to which employers could have gone to get access to the people they wanted to work with, and that would have given us an enormous amount of power."
Masur remains active in the union, serving on the national and New York boards. Like other former presidents, he found it difficult to reboot his acting career after leaving office. "We all go through transitional periods in our careers," he says. "While I was on the board and while I was president, I worked a lot. But since I was president, things have shifted." He has guest-starred on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and All My Children in recent years, and he has focused on stage work, recently completing an Off-Broadway run of Mike Leigh's Two Thousand Years.While many former presidents had trouble navigating the guild's contentious internal politics, Barry Gordon—the longest-serving president in SAG history—says he quickly found friends within different factions. "I had tremendous support from all ends of the political and union spectrum. It was very rewarding to be able to work with a group of people that very clearly had the welfare of the union in mind," he says. "I tried never to isolate anybody. I tried to take a position that we could disagree and yet not see it as a personal issue."
Such parity helped Gordon negotiate contracts earlier and create what he calls the "take it or leave it deal." The key, he says, was constructing a solid proposal for a new TV/Theatrical Contract six months before the wages-and-working-conditions process began. "We used the [1988] writers strike deal as a template and put together some things that we knew that we needed to have," he recalls. "Then we said, 'Okay, here you go. You have three days to accept or reject this.' The other side had to take us very seriously, and after three days a deal was done without any changes."
A more personal accomplishment of Gordon's was attending Loyola Law School during his presidency. "It was a very fast ride," he says of balancing law school and leading SAG. "Luckily, nothing suffered. I did well in law school and hopefully did my best for the guild. It was fun; I had a great time."
Gordon says his positive experience as SAG president whetted his appetite for a career in politics. He resigned his guild post in 1995 to run for Congress. Although he lost the election, Gordon came within three points of beating the popular incumbent, Rep. James Rogan. Gordon continues to hash politics on his popular syndicated radio show, Barry Gordon From Left Field, and he teaches a course in politics and the media at California State University, Los Angeles.
"It's one of the great organizations on the face of the earth," Gordon says of SAG. "The important thing to remember: We're there to protect people who largely can't protect themselves. As long as we keep that in our hats, we're going to be very successful." Edward Asner, best known for playing the irascible Lou Grant on Mary Tyler Moore and the spinoff Lou Grant, has mixed feelings about his service as SAG president: "I describe it as being an experience I wouldn't take a million dollars for and an experience I wouldn't take a million dollars to go through again."
Asner led the guild through a relatively peaceful time, without threat of strikes. However, he found anything but peace in trying to satisfy some of the members. "Immediately upon my entrance into office, I was being attacked and assailed for stances the union was taking even before I got into office," he notes. "It never really let up, so I began to learn very quickly."
The seven-time Emmy winner encountered his greatest opposition in 1982 when he and other prominent actors, including Howard Hesseman and Lee Grant, donated $25,000 to aid communist guerrillas fighting the military dictatorship in El Salvador. Many in the guild were led to believe that Asner included SAG funds in the donation. "It was made to seem as if I was giving $25,000 of the union's money; that was not true at all," Asner says. "I was taken to task that I had not made [it] absolutely clear—enough for them anyway. [But] it was made abundantly clear that I was not there as SAG president."
Asner says the controversy affected his acting career. Lou Grant was canceled three months after the group of actors presented the donation. "I became a hot potato and suffered a form of blacklist for a while," he says. He has otherwise stayed quite active in film and TV, recently wrapping six projects, and is currently filming a movie for CBS.
When asked about the current state of SAG, Asner said he heartily supports the current administration. "I think Alan [Rosenberg] is doing a great job, and I'm delighted with Doug Allen." He adds, "I'm ready to serve my union at any time, at any place."
"Being president was a growing experience, one I probably could have done without," William Schallert says of his time as president. "It gets hot in the kitchen. There's a lot of conflicts, and I really don't like that too much. I'm not wild about arguments and all the rest of that. It's a necessary part of it, though."
Schallert, whose role as the father of future SAG president Patty Duke on The Patty Duke Show made him a household name, had the misfortune of presiding over a long, contentious strike in 1980. "We had a terrible strike when I was president, but nobody blamed me specifically," he says. "I think it's very difficult for actors to feel how much power they have. When they get to the table and argue and they don't win what they feel they deserve, it's very difficult for them to deal with that. And some people don't deal with it well at all, and they stay angry about it. The problems don't change. They stay around in one form or another."
Schallert says his greatest accomplishment as president was the formation of the first committee for performers with disabilities, in 1981. "We had established committees for all the various ethnic minorities, women, and seniors—people who were not getting their share of the work for whatever reason," he says. "I'm a big beneficiary of that right now because I'm 85 and I still work." He recently appeared in the HBO film Recount and on the television series How I Met Your Mother and My Name Is Earl.
These days, the actor is still perfecting his craft. He has been an enthusiastic student of Milton Katselas for four years. Says Schallert, "I think any actor, like any other artist, needs to stay in shape by working at it, even when you're not getting paid."
Soon after Kathleen Nolan became the first female president of SAG, Variety asked her if being a woman would be an "issue" in ruling the guild. As she recalls, "I said, 'No, it's not an issue; it's a fact. Next Tuesday night, we'll debate the issues.' "
The actor said some guild members were also slow to accept a female president. "It was a big change in the guild. I think at first they weren't sure," she says. "But I think I convinced them that I was doing the job. It turned out to be a really glorious experience."
Nolan used her post to become a national advocate for actors. She went to Washington, D.C., numerous times to testify in support of revising U.S. copyright law and for increased federal support of the arts, among other issues. Her efforts in Washington impressed then-President Jimmy Carter, who appointed her to the boards of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Nolan, who presided over a brief commercials strike during her second term, proved to be a shrewd negotiator as SAG president. She says the current administration is encountering many of the same issues that arose during her dealings with the studios. "Everybody thinks it's an issue about money, and it's really an issue about our image," she says. "[Management] wants to keep the image; that's not what we do. I think you have to be sensitive to the other side. I also think you have to be more than a little incisive, persuasive, and courageous." Nolan stays active in the union by presiding over the committee of past presidents planning 75th-anniversary events. She is also a member of SAG's Women's Committee, which she founded.
After her presidency, Nolan returned to New York stages, appearing in productions of The Glass Menagerie and Look Homeward, Angel. A recipient of SAG's Ralph Morgan Award for distinguished service to the guild's Hollywood membership, Nolan says it was difficult to re-establish herself as an actor. As television and theatre producer Fred Coe told her, "Nobody wants [you] looking over their shoulder, because you know all the rules."
Melissa Gilbert (2001–05) and Patty Duke (1985–88) declined to speak with Back Stage. John Gavin (1971–73) could not be reached.