Strike or Die

My father, Lyle Talbot, was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild, I'm proud to say. Ninety years ago, in 1933, Lyle and actors like Boris Karloff and Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart organized SAG in defiance of the all-powerful studios, which dictated the long hours of their work days as well as their personal lives. (Warner Bros. -- the studio where my father was under contract -- objected strongly when my father began dating Lina Basquette, the widow of studio co-founder Sam Warner. He told the WB executives to get lost and they tried to end his career.)

I remember Lyle telling us four kids how he and the other actors had to sneak down alleys to avoid studio spies and hold union meetings.

Lyle would be very proud of the current SAG-AFTRA strike, which comes at a make-or-break moment for actors. Most of the union's 100,000-plus members struggle to make a living now, taking odd jobs to stay afloat. The strike is imposing even tougher austerity on them, but they realize there is no future for them if robotic, profit-obsessed Big Tech and AI continue to take over the entertainment industry.

Let's hear it for the actors' courage and grit. Let's hear it for human talent.

My father, Lyle Talbot, and Barbara Stanwyck