Mary Brian

The Screen Actors Guild started out in secret. My first meeting was at the Dominoes Club, the women's branch of Masquers Club run by SAG founder Lucile Gleason. When I was doing Hard to Handle with Jimmy Cagney, he was very enthusiastic and fired up about the cause. All of our friends got involved: Frank McHugh, Pat O'Brien, Ralph Bellamy and the Gleasons were formative members and they didn't go at it lightly. They were bucking the system in a way. I can remember hearing stories of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi recruiting fellow actors on the sets of their Universal horror movies. You can imagine the persuasive spectacle of Frankenstein's monster and Dracula in full make-up, bringing you an application and urging, "Join the Guild now!"