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The Exodus. Others besides Hedda were worried. The spectacle of millionaire movie actors lined up with extras against the men who once ran the town suggested to Hollywood oldtimers the end of an era. In fact, that era had ended long ago. "I'm not going to start another picture," said M-G-M Producer Joe Pasternak, "until the actors decide to give the business back to the bosses." But there are virtually no bosses around to take it back.
The businessmen who followed the sun westward generations ago to build their dream world on the Hollywood lots are dead, dying or dispersed. Harassed by taxes, producers and actors have split Hollywood into countless independent corporations that make more and more of their movies abroad. The strike has only hastened the exodus of hangers-on, the hard-up hopefuls who could never make it unless the whole town was working; even if the strike is settled, many of them will never be back in movies.
At week's end, negotiators on both sides were suggesting that the guilds would allow the eight suspended pictures to resume work, and that studio heads would agree to a discussion of TV "residuals." But some 2,200 studio employees have already applied for unemployment compensation.
"I gotta live," cracked one out-of-work actor, "so I signed on as a salesman for a new dentifrice—Strike Toothpaste, guaranteed to remove film."