Mr. Wright. They did and they didn’t. We never actually found out.
Mr. Griffin. What was ambiguous about the rules which they had in this respect?
Mr. Wright. Well, our constitution says that no professional entertainer is to work with an amateur entertainer. This was the primary rule that Jack was basing his complaint on, which I and most of the entertainers at the time agreed upon. But you must work in this business, and therefore, Barney and Abe, well, especially Barney, started the amateur shows, I think about 13 years ago, and he has put a lot of people in business as far as dancers go, and he has put a lot of people to work. I was on the local board at the time, and we had memos from the west coast and New York.
Mr. Griffin. Excuse me, was this the local board of the American Guild of Variety Artists?
Mr. Wright. Yes; it is the local executive board. We were sent memos to the branch managers that at one time the amateur shows were to cease, or these people were to join the union and then they could work. Well, this was complied with, and then not long after that, the people that were head of the various regional offices were fired and we had new memos. So actually, we never found out whether the whole thing is still legal or illegal, but a lot of the kids that were amateurs joined the union, and some of them still belong to the union.
But I imagine some of them don’t. I don’t know for sure, because I quit the board because of the fact that we got one memo that said one thing, and another memo that would contradict the memo before, so it got to be a confusing situation altogether. When I got out in California, I went to see Mazzie, who, when I left Dallas, was the west coast regional director of AGVA.
Mr. Griffin. M-a-z-z-i-e?
Mr. Wright. Yes; well he was west regional director. But when I got to California, I went up to see him to talk to him about what was going on in Dallas. He had been fired and Bobby Faye in New York had been fired. They went into an interim committee that took care of the union until recently. I understand they had elections, and I forget the gentleman, I don’t even know the guy that is head of the thing. I haven’t bothered to look to see.
See, our union is not run like most unions. AGVA is run by the secretary of the union, and then you take people like Joey Adams who was president. It is an honorary thing. Then you have the vice presidents and so forth. But the main part of the union is run by the members of the national board.
Mr. Griffin. When did you quit the local board here in Dallas?