Jack Kistner Text (1 results)

First Edition. Sole printing. Quarto (11" x 8-1/2"). 189 unnumbered, mimeographed sheets, including title page and introduction, printed recto-only (chiefly illustrations); post-bound at left margin. Unprinted card rear cover wrapper (possibly later); no front cover wrapper, else complete and probably as issued. Minor edge-creasing and wear; faint marginal stain to final 15 leaves, well away from printed area; evidence of old adhesion to cover page, not affecting legibility; Very Good and quite well-preserved, especially considering the volume's inherent fragility. A bound volume, presumably one of very few produced, collecting all of the circa 185 issues of "The Picket Line," a cartoon broadside distributed daily to striking workers during the 1945 Hollywood Film Strike, which began in March, 1945 following a walkout by the Hollywood local of the International Set Decorators Union. A number of sympathetic locals joined the strike, but others - including the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and the Screen Office Employees' Guild - refused to honor the picket line, leading to a lockout that lasted more than five months. The cartoons draw on topical events, often commenting humorously on developments of the day before. A recurring comic character is a sardonic rat, an avatar for the union scabs who refused to join the strike, weakening the position of labor and paving the way to the violent events of October 5, 1945, the so-called "Hollywood Black Friday", when strikebreakers were brought in to violently suppress the strike, fire-hosing and clubbing dozens of strikers in front of the gates of Warner Brothers Studios. All of these events are pictured here, with the upbeat mood of the drawings growing increasingly dark following the events of Black Friday. The cartoons are preceded by a one-page introduction giving the background of the strike and tracing its history through its conclusion, which came when the strikers finally called a truce on October 31st. A rarely-seen relic of one of the darkest incidents in Hollywood labor history. Rare: OCLC notes three copies (MSU, UM, and UCLA); not generally seen in commerce.