By 1938, entertainment workers unionized across the coasts with multiple organizations representing workers in film, radio and live performance. With the field expanding and television on the horizon, the Actors Equity Association President Frank Gilmore asked a simple question in a letter: why not form a single union that represents “all performers in the entertainment world”?
This utopic vision, however, would engender bitter and often heated discussions between the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists for the next eighty years. When the two finally merged in 2012, ten years ago on March 30, it seemed somewhat inevitable within the shifting landscapes of longform television, online streaming and other new media ventures.