JAMES CAESAR PETRILLO, AFM PRESIDENT, 1940-1958
PETRILLO!
“I am not a dictator!”
When James Petrillo spoke those words in defense of his actions to a congressional committee in 1948, he had said them so often that he almost believed them, himself. The 56 year old labor leader had built the best known, highest paid and most militant group of organized craftsmen in North America. Not a day went by without radio listeners being reminded that a program was, “…made possible through the courtesy of the American Federation of Musicians, James C. Petrillo, President.”
If it required a dictator to build that kind of power, Petrillo was just the man for the job.
The American Federation of Musicians was founded on November 6, 1896. It was cobbled together by Samuel Gompers and his American Federation of Labor from the ten year old National League of Musicians with 9,000 members in 79 cities and several smaller local unions affiliated with the Knights of Labor, a rival of the AFL.
Founding AFM President was Owen Miller of St Louis, a former Missouri state senator and an organizer of the NLM. Miller resigned four years later and returned home where he was elected President of the St Louis AFM local. He was succeeded as President of the AFM in 1900 by Cincinnati’s Joseph Weber who held the post for the next 40 years. (1)
One of Weber’s early important moves to settle jurisdictional squabbles was enactment of The Transfer Law which gave musicians greater freedom to travel outside of their home areas in pursuit of work. The Transfer Law was instrumental in bringing the large New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore and Pittsburgh local musicians unions into the AFM in 1903. (2)
James Caesar Petrillo was born on March 16, 1892, the second son of five children in the family of a Chicago sewer digger. (3) The struggling elementary school student was given a trumpet at age eight by his father and took lessons at the nearby Hull House. Although Petrillo later admitted he was, “a lousy trumpet player,” he dropped out of school after nine years, took a string of menial jobs and formed a four piece dance band at 14. He was underage but allowed to join the American Musicians’ Union in 1906, receiving his first taste of labor politics. Eight years later he was elected President of the Chicago Local for three years only to be defeated in his reelection bid. In disgust, Petrillo walked out and joined Chicago Local 10 of the rival American Federation of Musicians in 1918.
The stocky, 5’6” Petrillo was a born street fighter and took immediately to AFM politics when given the job to organize musicians in Chicago’s Chinese restaurants. He accomplished the difficult duty in short order and as his reward was elected Vice President of Local 10 one year later. Nevertheless, the rough and tumble politics of factions within the group led to violence climaxed by the severe beating of its president, Joseph Winkler, and the bombing of its offices. Amid this 1922 turmoil James Caesar Petrillo, 30, was elected President of Chicago Local 10, a post he would hold for the next 36 years. The union immediately outfitted Petrillo with a bulletproof car and bodyguards but his home was bombed two years later. (4)
Robert D. Leiter’s 1953 text, The Musicians & Petrillo, reports that violence didn’t intimidate Petrillo and he immediately went about organizing Chicago’s theaters and early radio stations. He called a successful four day strike against the theaters in 1927 and signed the union’s first contract with a radio outlet, NBC-owned WMAQ. Four years later he called a strike against twelve Chicago stations to begin on New Years Eve to prevent the increased use of records and transcriptions - which he would always deride as “canned music”. The strike was averted when the stations agreed to cut the musicians’ work week. Petrillo was gaining more power within the union and was appointed to the AFM’s Executive Board in 1932.
Against the advice of the national AFM, Petrillo called a strike against all recording and transcription companies by his Chicago local on February 1, 1937, “…to end for all time the menace of canned music competition.” All it ended was work for Chicago musicians because a month later the transcription companies moved production from Chicago to New York and Hollywood. The walkout dragged on for 18 months and cost members of Petrillo’s Local 10 an estimated $250,000 in recording income.
Nevertheless, Petrillo was on a roll. In June he brought the AFM convention to its feet with a blistering speech demanding control of, “…this wage thief, canned music.” The union followed his lead the next month by demanding that any radio station playing phonograph records or musical transcriptions must also hire a number of union musicians deemed “satisfactory” by the union.
With Petrillo needling AFM President Joseph Weber to push the matter further, the union threatened a general strike against the entire radio industry unless something was done to relieve musicians’ unemployment attributed to “canned” music. On September 12, 1937, some 125 owners and managers of independently owned network stations agreed to double their payrolls for union musicians at a total cost of $1.5 Million annually effective October 1st.
Petrillo’s tactics had made him a hero to the union and he made it known that he wanted to succeed the aging Joe Weber as National President of the AFM. But Weber attacked Petrillo in the union publication, International Musician, calling him in a May, 1938, editorial, “…a self-appointed strong man who dispenses hot air.” Weber’s protests against the heavy-handed Petrillo were too late. The publicity hungry Chicago labor leader announced that he, 1) Intended was going to start a new union for radio announcers to rival AFRA, 2) Threatened a strike against NBC if new contract demands weren’t met, and 3) Spearheaded demands that AFM members be hired by stations everywhere to operate transcription and phonograph record turntables to, “…replace jobs lost to canned music.”
Meanwhile, Petrillo’s supporters on the AFM board sweetened Weber’s $250,000 retirement fund with a $20,000 annual salary as Honorary President. It was too good a deal for the 75 year old union executive to refuse. He retired at the 1940 AFM convention in Indianapolis and James Petrillo, 48, was elected National President by acclimation on June 14th. (5)
The new AFM President didn’t wait long to scratch several itches that had bothered him for some time. On Aug 5th he demanded that 1,800 classical and concert artists who belonged to the American Guild of Musical Artists leave the smaller union and join the AFM by Labor Day or their performances would be picketed. AGMA President Lawrence Tibbett prepared for a legal battle but the courts eventually set aside AGMA’s complaints against the AFM and the smaller Guild was worn down over time. At the AFL’s insistence a peaceful settlement was negotiated in February, 1942, that left AGMA alive - but barely - representing solo concert instrumentalists. Petrillo’s group grew with former AGMA members and those few with famous names who simply didn’t join unions - Sergei Rachmaninoff and Fritz Kreisler, for example - were given honorary AFM memberships.
Compared to the AGMA situation, bringing the 111-member Boston Symphony, long a union holdout, under the AFM’s control was an easy matter for Petrillo’s strong arm tactics. He simply cut off the Symphony’s supply of guest artists, its radio broadcasts, its ability to make records and threatened its touring venues with picket lines. The Symphony quickly capitulated and the matter was resolved.
Petrillo proved that no matter was too small to escape his stern rule during his first two years in office. He played the walkout card twice with networks to hasten single station negotiations. In October, 1940, he banned AFM musicians from playing on CBS late night band remotes because of a labor dispute with CBS affiliate WGBI/Scranton that took two weeks to settle, then in September, 1941, NBC cancelled its band remotes for two weeks rather than acquiesce to Petrillo’s demand that the network suspend service to “unfair” WSMB/New Orleans.
An AFM complaint that had been simmering since the union was founded was generally ignored during Joe Weber’s presidency, but not Petrillo’s. It was the threat - or presumed threat - posed to the employment of AFM musicians by amateurs, most notably scholastic and military bands. Petrillo was ever vigilant to this annoyance and finally had the freedom to do something about it - or at least try.
On December 15, 1940, he refused to allow the 104th Regiment Engineers Band at Fort Dix to broadcast its Christmas concert on Mutual, saying it would, “…throw union musicians out of work.” It was only when the networks scrambled to assure Petrillo that no union musicians would lose their jobs when military bands played that he allowed the concert to proceed the next day.
The AFL got involved the following June and ordered Petrillo to rescind his demand that a high school band had to join his union before playing on a CBS broadcast at the launching ceremonies of the U.S. battleship South Dakota. Layering insult to injury on Petrillo‘s authority, Canadians, who were at war in October, 1941, ignored Petrillo when he complained about the non-union Royal Canadian Air Force band performing a series of bi-weekly concerts on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation network. (6)
Despite these minor setbacks to his power, prestige and public relations, Petrillo never lost sight of his biggest target, “canned” music. He waited until the 1942 AFM convention in Dallas then pulled the trigger on June 8th, announcing to 700 cheering delegates that effective August 1st, members would no longer record or transcribe music for public consumption. “We will make records for the home but not for juke boxes,” said Petrillo. “We will make them for the Armed Forces of the United States and its allies but not for commercial or sustaining radio programs. We will make them at any time at the request of our commander-in-chief, the President of the United States.” (7)
Broadcasting magazine summed up Petrillo’s two years on the job by editorializing, “Mr. Petrillo’s feats are amazing. The story used to be that “canned music” resulted in deplorable unemployment of musicians. The remedy then became standby orchestras, then union platter turners. And all in radio will recall hiring staff orchestras whether they played music or pinochle.”
America was in its first year of World War II and Elmer Davis, Director of the Office of War Information, asked Petrillo to call off his walkout and live up to the slogan he promoted in a letter to President Roosevelt six months earlier, “Music For Morale!“ Petrillo refused. Senator Burton K. Wheeler, Chairman of the Interstate Commerce Committee, offered to mediate between the AFM and record companies. Again, Petrillo refused. He was full speed ahead and out the door on August 1st.
When the recording strike was only two weeks away and while his lieutenants were trying to gain public support for the AFM cause, Petrillo made one of his greatest gaffes. He ordered NBC to discontinue its twelve year series of sustaining concerts by the National Youth Orchestra from the Interlochen Michigan Music Camp because the 160 youngsters weren’t union members. Public response was fast and furious to what was perceived as Petrillo’s spiteful and petty attack against a bunch of talented school kids.
Broadcasting reported that Senator Arthur Vandenberg and Representative Frederick Bradley spoke for their angry Michigan constituents and petitioned the FCC to “do something” about the situation. In his July 18th remarks to the U.S. House, Bradley labeled Petrillo, “…a union czar, (and), while our boys fight aggression abroad, insolent aggression has appeared at Interlochen.”
NBC was silent about the situation although lawyers contended that Petrillo’s union had no jurisdiction in the woods of northwest Michigan. Meanwhile, Stanley E. Hubbard, owner of NBC affiliate KSTP/Minneapolis-St.Paul which was a involved in a contract dispute with the AFM, let loose with what most broadcasters were thinking but were afraid to say:
"James Caesar Petrillo has become the Fuehrer of 140,000 musicians in this country. He has grown powerful and rich by the exercise of an iron hand with which he now attempts to wreck an entire industry. … By pressing a buzzer on his desk he can deprive 80 million Americans of radio entertainment and throw those 140,000 musicians out of employment. … That is the kind of power that Fuehrer Petrillo wields today, a power that pays him some $46,000 a year. That is the power, the man and the outrageous tyranny which we and other radio stations in this country who wish to see that democracy and freedom are not stifled at home … are fighting.”
Newspaper editorials hounded Petrillo and a Gallup poll indicated an overwhelming 73% of the public was against his maneuvers. But the determined labor leader was seemingly oblivious to the criticism and slurs hurled at him from all quarters. AFM musicians walked out of recording studios on Friday night, July 31, 1942, and wouldn’t return for 13 months - at the earliest.
The Justice Department immediately began proceedings against the AFM for violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act but on October 12th a Chicago Federal Judge dismissed the government’s case because it was brought under the wrong statute. Petrillo greeted the news by shouting to the press outside the courtroom , “The ban stands!”
The National Association of Broadcasters published a booklet critical of Petrillo, The C Is For Caesar, in the fall of 1942. He went about proving his dictatorial powers by reversing an earlier decision and banning AFM members from recording any transcriptions intended for a single broadcast. Then he rubbed patriotic sentiment the wrong way again with demands that GE’s non-commercial shortwave station KGEI/San Francisco stop broadcasting transcribed programs to U.S. Armed Forces in the Pacific. GE wouldn’t obey Petrillo but NBC did when he ordered told it to stop its transcribed broadcasts of Jack Benny and Duffy’s Tavern on the Blue Pacific Network.
Surprisingly, neither the broadcasting nor recording industry seemed in any hurry to resolve the larger issue and end the walkout. Petrillo had tipped his hand in 1937 that he wanted to use a mass work stoppage against the record and transcription companies so the two had been quietly stockpiling master recordings Secondly, the world was in the early stages of World War II in 1942 and supplies of shellac, imported from India and used in the manufacture of phonograph records, were short. As a result, the AFM and the two affected industries were involved in a waiting game while the idle and unpaid musicians stood by helplessly and watched nothing happen.
Petrillo finally broke the silence on February 11, 1943, by inviting record company executives to meet and discuss ending the walkout with a system of royalty payments based on records produced that would be contributed to a union unemployment fund. (8) He optimistically predicted that negotiations would be settled and AFM members would return to the recording studios, “… within a couple of weeks.” He was off by six months.
While lawyers continued to quietly negotiate a settlement and rack up billable hours, Petrillo scuttled settlement of the ten month old walkout on May 13th by demanding that transcription companies refuse to do business with any radio station deemed “unfair” by the AFM for any reason. Six weeks later the Labor Department’s effort to mediate the dispute ended after 15 minutes when Petrillo said flatly, “Our members will make no more transcriptions for anyone at any time.”
Meanwhile, it was business as usual for Petrillo. Mutual affiliate WSAY/Syracuse had been at odds with the AFM for eight months because it wouldn’t expand its music staff from one pianist to five players. The AFM considered this "unfair" and threatened Mutual with a strike. The network responded by cancelling all of its late night band remotes on July 1st. Petrillo hit back on July 15th, threatening to pull his musicians from every program on the network. Mutual satisfied Petrillo by blocking WSAY from all of its programs containing music. The station finally relented and hired four additional AFM members.
The recording walkout was 13 months old when the National War Labor Board began hearing testimony in an effort to put an end to the standoff on September 7, 1943. Barely two weeks had passed when recording executive Jack Kapp, always the one to grasp a marketing advantage, was first to agree to the AFM terms and get back into the studio with his Decca Records and World Transcription Service. (9) The terms that Kapp and all the producers who quickly followed agreed upon called for a ¼ cent royalty for every 35 cent record up to a five cent contribution for a $2.00 record and 2½% of every disc sold for over $2.00. By October 29th all the studios were all in the fold except RCA-Victor and Columbia. That would take another year.
Petrillo claimed that the lengthy walkout had cost the AFM over $7.0 Million but it was worth it. The AFM had first year collections of $115,000 from 110 record and transcription companies when the two holdouts agreed to terms on November 11, 1944, completely ending the 27 month dispute. The fund created from royalties would swell to $4.5 Million over the next four years - unquestionably Petrillo’s greatest achievement. Never one given to understatement, Petrillo hailed it as, “The greatest victory for a labor organization in the history of the labor movement!”
Petrillo should have been taking victory laps for his triumph. Instead, he found himself knee-deep in hot water again over remarks he made about a situation that had been almost forgotten. Quoted by biographer Leiter, the AFM chief couldn’t resist this dig in his 1944 remarks to the union's convention: “…When the shooting was over and we came to the summer of 1943, there was no Interlochen high school student orchestra on the air. Nor was there in the year 1943 any other school band or orchestra on the networks and there never will be again without the permission of the American Federation of Musicians!”
Michigan Senator Vandenberg, no friend of Petrillo’s after the Interlochen squabble two years earlier, reacted promptly and authored a bill that prevented the AFM from interfering with non-commercial broadcasts presented by educational or cultural organizations. Petrillo considered this to be an affront to his authority and took the unprecedented step of putting the educational camp on the AFM’s “Unfair” list which prevented any network from originating broadcasts at Interlochen and blocked any AFM member from teaching, playing or conducting at the camp. This action spurred Ohio congressman Clarence Brown to declare, “This fellow Petrillo has gone too far. We’ve got to clip his wings. But we don’t want to interfere with the legitimate functions of a union.”
While the House Foreign & Interstate Commerce Committee began to define “legitimate” as it applied to the AFM and Senator Vandenberg’s bill, Petrillo turned his attention to another matter. He threatened NBC and Blue with a strike if they complied with the National Labor Relations Board decision to assign “platter turner” duties to members of the rival National Association of Broadcast Employees & Technicians. When courts affirmed that the job belonged to NABET and engineering unions, not the AFM, Petrillo said he’d take his case to the Supreme Court, if necessary.
FM became an issue in September, 1944, when Petrillo informed the four networks that AFM musicians were no longer allowed to play on any FM station until further notice. Then on October 29, 1945, he ruled that double crews of musicians would be necessary for any programs simulcast on AM and FM. FCC Chairman Paul Porter joked at the time, “The FCC is in favor or duplicate programming, but it appears that Petrillo has overruled the FCC.”
But the FCC did have a hand in the broadcasters’ next move. Most of them took their FM stations off the air to retune their facilities from the 42 to 50 megacycle band to the 88 to 106 band as ordered by the Commission on June 27, 1945 - a move that made some 500,000 existing FM receivers obsolete. (10)
Petrillo tackled television and left it flat in February, 1945. First he prohibited AFM members from performing for television until further notice then he demanded that Hollywood movie studios prohibit their films employing union musicians from being broadcast on television. Petrillo allowed no exceptions to his TV ban when he barred a Chicago AFM organist from playing in a televised Rosh Hashanah service, justifying the act by claiming time was needed for the union to learn if television, “…will destroy our employment in radio - or put men to work.” (11)
Petrillo used his weapon of sudden strikes against networks to pressure individual affiliates on September 30, 1945, when he ordered Artie Shaw’s orchestra off NBC’s Fitch Bandwagon due to labor disputes at the network’s New Orleans and Chattanooga stations. The next night the Carnation Contented Hour was his NBC target. Just to prove he was an equal opportunity raider, Petrillo shut down the CBS Prudential Family Hour a week later to protest the “unfair” actions of several affiliates in the south. The random network work stoppages by the musicians spurred reports that Petrillo is was demonstrating his power in an attempt to form a coalition with the major technical unions - NABET and IBEW - with himself as its head.
California Congressman Clarence Lea, Democrat Chairman of the House Foreign & Interstate Commerce Committee lit the fuse to fireworks on February 21, 1946, when he introduced HR-5117, aka The Lea Act aka The Anti-Petrillo Bill. The pent up resentment toward the AFM and its leader flowed from the house floor and gallery as members related past brushes with the union. Michigan’s George Dondero told of Petrillo’s preventing a Navy band from playing at a Royal Oak memorial service for U.S. servicemen. Ohio’s Brown complained of Cincinnati’s Shrine Temple having to pay the AFM a $2,800 “tribute” for its charity's circus and the AFM's blocking military and amateur groups from a Lynchburg, Virginia, Memorial Day program.
Broadcasting reported that Brown was the highlight of the four hour, one-sided debate, recalling how Petrillo had told the President and Congress that, “they could go to hell’. “I may go to hell someday,” said Brown, “But it won’t be because of James Caesar Petrillo!” When a Petrillo supporter, New York Representative Vito Marcantonio, interrupted him to complain that he was overemphasizing Petrillo’s middle name, Brown retorted, “Here in America we have no place for Caesars!” That, literally, brought the House down with cheers. The body passed The Lea Bill by an overwhelming 222 to 43 vote.
The Lea Act was actually an addendum to The Communications Act of 1934, (Section 506), entitled: Coercive Practices Affecting Broadcasting. The first four provisions outlawed the direct or indirect employment of any excess unneeded persons or more persons needed to do any job connected with broadcasting, (I.e. standbys or featherbedding), double payment for services, and payment for services not performed.
The fifth provision was a carryover of the Vanderberg Bill from the Senate outlawing the interference with any non-commercial cultural or educational broadcast in which the participants receive no payment. The sixth provision outlawed preventing the broadcasting of any radio communication originating from outside the United States. Inside the bill’s fine print were the penalties for violating any of its provisions: up to a $1000 fine and/or one year imprisonment.
The House moved the bill on to the Senate and in less than two weeks, The Lea Act aka The Lea-Vanderberg Bill was passed by a 47 to 3 vote on March 6, 1946. President Truman signed it into law ten days later. Petrillo fumed and conferred with his lawyers about a way to test the bill’s legality.
WAAF was a daytime-only station in Chicago that had no staff orchestra in 1946 but employed three AFM members as “platter turners” to handle records and transcriptions. On May 11th Petrillo ordered the station to hire three additional AFM members without argument or face a strike. When the station insisted on negotiating in accordance with its AFM contract, Petrillo called a strike against the station on May 28th, telling a news conference that he had deliberately violated the Lea Act and was, “…ready to face the music in court.” On his way to court in June Petrillo threatened to remove all union musicians from Network Radio and recording studios if The Lea Act was upheld.
While Petrillo’s fight with the government began to slowly move through the judicial system, the AFM negotiated separately with record and transcription producers over new contracts. The record companies settled first on October 21st, bowing to the threat of a strike and agreeing to a 37½% pay raise for AFM musicians, lifting them to $41.25 per studio hour, of which no more than five minutes could be recorded. Arguing that transcriptions were a different breed, Petrillo demanded and got a 50% raise from transcription producers a week later, boosting them to $50 per half-hour.
There were also hints of his old tricks in 1946. In Apri,l the music supervisor of the Toledo, Ohio, public schools charged Petrillo with threatening to have him fired for refusing to help the AFM organize high school musicians and in December, the Detroit AFM local prohibited a high school band from playing its annual Christmas concert on WJBK claiming the concert would deny work to union musicians.
Petrillo received an early Christmas gift on December 2, 1946, when U.S. District Court Judge Walter LaBuy in Chicago ruled The Lea Act unconstitutional and dismissed charges against him and the AFM in the WAAF featherbedding case. Judge LaBuy decided that the act violated the First, Fifth and Thirteenth Amendments.
A gleefull Petrillo exclaimed, “Thank God for the federal courts!” when he heard LaBuy’s decision. Meanwhile, Congressman Lea, who sponsored the act, called its rejection, “unsound.” He added, “I detest the arrogant racketeering now being pulled off in the country in the name of labor.” In its editorial, Broadcasting predicted, “…The way is cleared for Supreme Court adjudication”. The Justice Department was determined to follow that path with an immediate appeal to the spring session of the highest court.
While AFM and government lawyers presented their arguments to the Supreme Court, the union and four major networks negotiated their first wage agreement in four and a half years. Fearful of adverse conditions that might result from a loss in The Lea Act case, New York’s AFM Local 802 abruptly agreed after four months to a one year contract calling for a 20% pay raise on May 7, 1947. But there was no calming Petrillo’s bluster a month later when he threatened to pull all musicians out of recording studios on December 31st if the Supreme Court ruled The Lea Act constitutional or if the controversial Taft-Hartley Act became law. (12)
The Federal pendulum swung against Petrillo on June 23rd when the Supreme Court ruled The Lea Act constitutional and the Senate overrode President Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act, 68 to 25. The stunning double-defeat on the same day left Petrillo temporarily speechless while Broadcasting gloated: “Last Monday was labor emancipation day for radio. The Supreme Court decision sustaining constitutionality of The Lea Act, (aptly called the Anti-Petrillo Law), coincided with the Senate’s action in overriding the Presidential veto of the Taft-Hartley Bill to spell for radio ultimate solution of its labor problems. … Radio has been abused by arrogant labor leaders. These laws are intended to end labor tyranny. … So, at the end of the labor trail we find a Petrillo, no longer on his high horse snorting fire and fury, There’s diminutive Jimmy riding a burro. Last reports, however, still had him in the saddle.”
Hardly contrite and defensive from his rebuke Petrillo returned to Washington on July 7th and stunned members of the House Labor subcommittee with his plans to prohibit AFM members from making recordings after December 31, 1947 and from working on Network Radio after January 31, 1948. For good measure he suggested that the AFM might go into the record business, “…to keep all the profits for ourselves.” His perfomance was a hit with newsreel cameramen and left his inquisitors speechless. The committee adjourned for 60 days.
The Justice Department renewed its prosecution of Petrillo on October 15th for violation of The Lea Act in connection with the AFM’s strike against WAAF/Chicago in May, 1946. Four days later Petrillo announced that the union’s members would stop performing for records and transcriptions on December 31st and, “…never again make them because they‘re making their own competition.” While record companies were busily stockpiling songs for the impending walkout, Bing Crosby, a pioneer in transcribed network programming, did some stockpiling of his own and increased his schedule to recording two Philco Radio Time half-hour programs a week.
On another front and inspired by its united stand against ASCAP seven years earlier, the National Association of Broadcasters created the Industry Music Committee of 35 executives representing the radio, television and recording industries to form a united front against AFM threats. One executive who wasn’t afraid to stand up to Petrillo was Don Golenpaul. (See Information Please on this site.) Golenpaul filed a National Labor Relations Board complaint against the AFM in November for the union’s refusal to allow a pianist to play on Information Please after its move to Mutual as a co-op program available for local sponsorship. A week later Petrillo lifted the ban on co-op programs, dismissing Golenpaul as, “…One lucky guy - he only employs one piano player.”
AFM members walked out of recording studios for the second time in six years on New Years Eve, 1947. They wouldn‘t return for eleven months. Over 195,000 musicians plus 770 record companies and transcription services were affected, protesting their creating “canned” music without additional compensation. But as was in the case in 1942, neither side was in a hurry to the bargaining table.
January 13th was the opening of the House Education & Labor Committee inquiry into the tactics of Petrillo and activities of the AFM. But the headlines were stolen the following day when Federal Judge Walter LaBuy - the same jurist who ruled The Lea Act unconstitutional in December, 1946, only to be overturned by the Supreme Court - found Petrillo not guily in the WAAF case for calling a strike against the Chicago daytime station when it hesitated to double its number of AFM “platter turners” from three to six. Petrillo’s only comment was conciliatory in reference to a Network Radio agreement, “Everyone is satisfied some kind of agreement will be reached.”
Petrillo had been playing the waiting game with Network Radio as the January 31, 1948, contract expiration date approached. But the NAB’s Industry Music Committee convinced the chains to forget their longstanding objections to recorded music and “go wax” if the AFM walked. CBS and NBC took a lesson from record companies and prepared for .the threatened AFM strike by stockpiling recorded musical bridges, opens, closes, and mood music then arranging with overseas sources to provide them with as much material as they’d need for as long as they’d need it.
The networks’ solid defense prompted Petrillo to renew the existing AFM contracts with no changes for three years on March 18th He also bowed to FCC pressure and allowed union musicians to participate in AM-FM simulcasts at no additional charge. Most importantly, Petrillo finally lifted his television ban and let “his boys” play on TV while rates were negotiated with the networks. The uncharacteristically co-operative AFM leader commented, “To prove our good faith we have pledged that the rate pattern for live music during this development period for television will be reasonable.”
The sweeping agreement even caught Broadcasting off-guard, editorializing: “If there’s a gimmick in the AFM-Network agreement it isn’t discernable to the naked eye. And broadcasters are accustomed to gimmicks when James Caesar Petrillo is on the trigger end. Jimmy either has seen the light or has listened to sound public relations counsel. The joint statement of the four networks and AFM is this generation’s modern miracle in music.”
The recording strike dragged on through the summer of 1948 until September 15th when Petrillo offered to negotiate an end to the union’s eight month ban and avoid threatened court action. But negotiations collapsed a month later over the AFM‘s demand for increased royalties from records sold. Nevertheless, both sides were eager to end the impasse - too much money was being lost by both.
Finally, on October 28th the AFM and Capitol, Columbia, Decca, King, Mercury, MGM and RCA-Victor Records representing the recording industry reached an accord to end the ten month strike however legal entanglements with the Taft-Hartley Law delayed its official end another six weeks to December 14th. Credit was given to Morris Diamond, General Counsel for the AFM, for coming up with the royalty scale system agreeable to both sides although it was not made public. However, the annual total was expected to be close to $2.0 Million. (13)
Standard Transcription service took a page out of radio’s playbook against the AFM in October and took delivery on half of the 300 songs it had recorded in France. The stalemate between the union and ET producers continued a week past the AFM’s settlement with the record companies. A smiling Petrillo hosted officials of both sides in his New York offices on December 20th when the transcription producers agreed to pay three percent of their gross revenues to the AFM fund. The annual sum was expected to be an additional $100,000.
With all quiet on the broadcasting and recording fronts in 1949, Petrillo began a turf war over television in September by demanding that any AFM members who were also members of the American Guild of Variety Artists cancel their AGVA memberships “immediately”. A week later, the Associated Actors & Artists of America, parent body of AGVA, AFRA and Actors Equity, representing 90,000 members, supported its AGVA performers who appeared on television. Nevertheless, Victor Borge, Vaughn Monroe, Artie Shaw and Spike Jones were among the name artists who felt pressured to turn in their AGVA cards but the union refused to accept their resignations.
AGVA applied to the New York Supreme Court in October to restrain the AFM’s actions against it. Its affidavit charged that Petrillo was, “…obviously overcome with delusions and ambitions common to dictators.” AFL President William Green urged the two sides to settle the matter out of court which they finally did to everyone’s reluctant satisfaction in May, 1950.
In response to Petrillo’s demands for a pay hike to $27 per musician for every 15 minutes or less of TV film programs, a large coalition of television networks, major movie studios, film producers TV program packagers and trade associations organized on October 30, 1949. Both sides agreed to renew existing contracts until 1952 when a 15% raise was won by the AFM.
Nineteen-fifty was marked by two radio station strikes that began in April and lasted - and lasted. On April 3rd WINS/New York City fired its eight man staff orchestra that no longer had a program. Local 802 promptly threw up a picket line in front of the station that stayed for a year until the station settled and rehired the unneeded musicians. Then, there was the case of Petrillo’s old nemesis, KSTP in the Twin Cites. The AFM pulled its 13 members in sympathy for striking engineers and the musicians didn’t return until July - three years later!
Petty turf wars erupted again in 1952 when AFRA charged in July that Petrillo was “an obstructionist” and “destructive” for prohibiting AFM members from joining AFTRA. Petrillo retaliated in September by prohibiting band leaders from recording promotional voice tracks for play on local disc jockey programs.
The jurisdictional fight between the AFM and AFTRA heated up in the summer of 1953 when Petrillo demanded that musicians who double on television as emcees to drop out of AFTRA. (14) The Hollywood local of AFTRA simply refused the resignations of those who complied and the dispute was eventually settled amicably between the two unions.
Never one to grudges fade, he appeared on CBS-TV’s celebrity interview show Person To Person in October and asserted to a puzzled Edward R. Murrow, “Many musicians aren’t working because unpaid school children exploited by cheap politicians are performing in their places.” Six months later he accused television, which had provided hundreds of new jobs for AFM members, with making concert goers stay at home and appealed to President Eisenhower for federal funding aid for 100 concert orchestras in cities under 300,000 population.
June 3,1958 Petrillo declined to run for his 19th term as AFM President at the group’s convention in Philadelphia, amidst chants of “Stay Jimmy!” turning the gavel over to his chosen successor, attorney Herman Kenin, West Coast representative of the AFM. Kenin was expected to adopt a more conciliatory attitude than Petrillo - a safe prediction, indeed.
Petrillo remained President of Chicago’s Local 10 for another four years, staying until December, 1962, when he was faced with a rebellion led by the members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and defeated for re-election by 95 votes out of 3,000 cast. He left office at the age of 71 after an even 40 years. Immediately after losing his $26,000 a year position, Petrillo was appointed Director of the AFM’s new National Civil Rights Division for $23,000 annually. He focused on the job through the decade, focusing on the desegregation of its locals and venues in which its musicians played.
James Petrillo died following a stroke in October, 1984, at the age of 92. The death of the fiery leader of the AFM whose activities were reported in thousands of news stories over the years rated a mere paragraph in Broadcasting and a single column in his hometown Chiicago Tribune. The bandshell in Chicago’s Grant Park is named in his honor.
(1) Weber left office briefly in 1914 due to ill health. He was replaced for a year by Frank Carothers then re-elected to the AFM’s presidency in 1915 at age 50.
(2) The New York City situation wasn’t completely resolved for another 18 years when the rival Musical Mutual Protective Union of 8,000 members folded and AFM Local 802 was chartered on August 27, 1921 Local 802 quickly grew to 12,000 members.
(3) James Caesar Petrillo’s brother, Caesar James Petrillo, was a trombonist and band leader employed for many years by CBS in Chicago. As for himself, James told the New York Times in June, 1956, "I hadda look for a job so I went into the union business."
(4) Petrillo held the Chicago post concurrent with his national AFM duties, for the next 36 years. His salary from the Chicago local eventually reached $26,000 per year, plus liberal expenses including amounts to cover income tax on his salary. The local also lavished gifts on Petrillo and his wife, Marie, including trips to Europe and a vacation home on Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
(5) Petrillo collected another $20,000 annually for the union’s presidency, in addition to his Chicago salary package. The national job also included a very liberal expense account which paid for first class travel, a permanent suite at New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria plus tailored suits and imported shoes.
(6) The American Federation of Musicians expanded into Canada in 1900.
(7) Petrillo rejected President Roosevelt’s request to end the strike on October 10, 1944, saying, “…conditions have changed.”
(8) The original sum discussed was one cent per record which would amount to $1.3 Million per year dispersed to AFM members who performed in a series of concerts free to the public.
(9) Kapp made a killing in 1942 when he recorded Bing Crosby's hit White Christmas before the recording ban and released it in October. He was eager to settle the walkout in 1943 because he owned the original cast recording rights to Broadway's smash musical Oklahoma which had opened to rave reviews and capacity audiences on March 31st, beginning a five year, nine month run.
(10) The FM ban dragged on through 1946 and 1947 then finally ended as suddenly as it began on January 29, 1948, during the AFM’s negotiations with the networks over new contracts.
(11) AFM members' total annual income from radio at the time was estimated to be $23.0 Million. The union’s first contracts with the television networks were finally signed on May 1, 1948, and union locals were simultaneously given authority to negotiate with individual stations.
(12) The Taft-Hartley Act aka The Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947, was passed over President Truman’s veto in an effort to curb union abuses permitted under the Wagner Act of 1935. Among its provisions it outlawed the closed shop, allowed union shops only in states permitting them when a majority of workers voted for them, narrowed the definition of unfair labor practices and required 60 days’ notice of any strike.
(13) Morris Diamond was the attorney for Decca Records in 1943 who devised the royalty scale system that ended the first recording strike after eleven months.
(14) The American Federation of Radio Artists, (AFRA), merged with the Television Authority talent union, (TVA), on September 17, 1952, to form the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists, (AFTRA).
Copyright © 2016, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
“I am not a dictator!”
When James Petrillo spoke those words in defense of his actions to a congressional committee in 1948, he had said them so often that he almost believed them, himself. The 56 year old labor leader had built the best known, highest paid and most militant group of organized craftsmen in North America. Not a day went by without radio listeners being reminded that a program was, “…made possible through the courtesy of the American Federation of Musicians, James C. Petrillo, President.”
If it required a dictator to build that kind of power, Petrillo was just the man for the job.
The American Federation of Musicians was founded on November 6, 1896. It was cobbled together by Samuel Gompers and his American Federation of Labor from the ten year old National League of Musicians with 9,000 members in 79 cities and several smaller local unions affiliated with the Knights of Labor, a rival of the AFL.
Founding AFM President was Owen Miller of St Louis, a former Missouri state senator and an organizer of the NLM. Miller resigned four years later and returned home where he was elected President of the St Louis AFM local. He was succeeded as President of the AFM in 1900 by Cincinnati’s Joseph Weber who held the post for the next 40 years. (1)
One of Weber’s early important moves to settle jurisdictional squabbles was enactment of The Transfer Law which gave musicians greater freedom to travel outside of their home areas in pursuit of work. The Transfer Law was instrumental in bringing the large New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore and Pittsburgh local musicians unions into the AFM in 1903. (2)
James Caesar Petrillo was born on March 16, 1892, the second son of five children in the family of a Chicago sewer digger. (3) The struggling elementary school student was given a trumpet at age eight by his father and took lessons at the nearby Hull House. Although Petrillo later admitted he was, “a lousy trumpet player,” he dropped out of school after nine years, took a string of menial jobs and formed a four piece dance band at 14. He was underage but allowed to join the American Musicians’ Union in 1906, receiving his first taste of labor politics. Eight years later he was elected President of the Chicago Local for three years only to be defeated in his reelection bid. In disgust, Petrillo walked out and joined Chicago Local 10 of the rival American Federation of Musicians in 1918.
The stocky, 5’6” Petrillo was a born street fighter and took immediately to AFM politics when given the job to organize musicians in Chicago’s Chinese restaurants. He accomplished the difficult duty in short order and as his reward was elected Vice President of Local 10 one year later. Nevertheless, the rough and tumble politics of factions within the group led to violence climaxed by the severe beating of its president, Joseph Winkler, and the bombing of its offices. Amid this 1922 turmoil James Caesar Petrillo, 30, was elected President of Chicago Local 10, a post he would hold for the next 36 years. The union immediately outfitted Petrillo with a bulletproof car and bodyguards but his home was bombed two years later. (4)
Robert D. Leiter’s 1953 text, The Musicians & Petrillo, reports that violence didn’t intimidate Petrillo and he immediately went about organizing Chicago’s theaters and early radio stations. He called a successful four day strike against the theaters in 1927 and signed the union’s first contract with a radio outlet, NBC-owned WMAQ. Four years later he called a strike against twelve Chicago stations to begin on New Years Eve to prevent the increased use of records and transcriptions - which he would always deride as “canned music”. The strike was averted when the stations agreed to cut the musicians’ work week. Petrillo was gaining more power within the union and was appointed to the AFM’s Executive Board in 1932.
Against the advice of the national AFM, Petrillo called a strike against all recording and transcription companies by his Chicago local on February 1, 1937, “…to end for all time the menace of canned music competition.” All it ended was work for Chicago musicians because a month later the transcription companies moved production from Chicago to New York and Hollywood. The walkout dragged on for 18 months and cost members of Petrillo’s Local 10 an estimated $250,000 in recording income.
Nevertheless, Petrillo was on a roll. In June he brought the AFM convention to its feet with a blistering speech demanding control of, “…this wage thief, canned music.” The union followed his lead the next month by demanding that any radio station playing phonograph records or musical transcriptions must also hire a number of union musicians deemed “satisfactory” by the union.
With Petrillo needling AFM President Joseph Weber to push the matter further, the union threatened a general strike against the entire radio industry unless something was done to relieve musicians’ unemployment attributed to “canned” music. On September 12, 1937, some 125 owners and managers of independently owned network stations agreed to double their payrolls for union musicians at a total cost of $1.5 Million annually effective October 1st.
Petrillo’s tactics had made him a hero to the union and he made it known that he wanted to succeed the aging Joe Weber as National President of the AFM. But Weber attacked Petrillo in the union publication, International Musician, calling him in a May, 1938, editorial, “…a self-appointed strong man who dispenses hot air.” Weber’s protests against the heavy-handed Petrillo were too late. The publicity hungry Chicago labor leader announced that he, 1) Intended was going to start a new union for radio announcers to rival AFRA, 2) Threatened a strike against NBC if new contract demands weren’t met, and 3) Spearheaded demands that AFM members be hired by stations everywhere to operate transcription and phonograph record turntables to, “…replace jobs lost to canned music.”
Meanwhile, Petrillo’s supporters on the AFM board sweetened Weber’s $250,000 retirement fund with a $20,000 annual salary as Honorary President. It was too good a deal for the 75 year old union executive to refuse. He retired at the 1940 AFM convention in Indianapolis and James Petrillo, 48, was elected National President by acclimation on June 14th. (5)
The new AFM President didn’t wait long to scratch several itches that had bothered him for some time. On Aug 5th he demanded that 1,800 classical and concert artists who belonged to the American Guild of Musical Artists leave the smaller union and join the AFM by Labor Day or their performances would be picketed. AGMA President Lawrence Tibbett prepared for a legal battle but the courts eventually set aside AGMA’s complaints against the AFM and the smaller Guild was worn down over time. At the AFL’s insistence a peaceful settlement was negotiated in February, 1942, that left AGMA alive - but barely - representing solo concert instrumentalists. Petrillo’s group grew with former AGMA members and those few with famous names who simply didn’t join unions - Sergei Rachmaninoff and Fritz Kreisler, for example - were given honorary AFM memberships.
Compared to the AGMA situation, bringing the 111-member Boston Symphony, long a union holdout, under the AFM’s control was an easy matter for Petrillo’s strong arm tactics. He simply cut off the Symphony’s supply of guest artists, its radio broadcasts, its ability to make records and threatened its touring venues with picket lines. The Symphony quickly capitulated and the matter was resolved.
Petrillo proved that no matter was too small to escape his stern rule during his first two years in office. He played the walkout card twice with networks to hasten single station negotiations. In October, 1940, he banned AFM musicians from playing on CBS late night band remotes because of a labor dispute with CBS affiliate WGBI/Scranton that took two weeks to settle, then in September, 1941, NBC cancelled its band remotes for two weeks rather than acquiesce to Petrillo’s demand that the network suspend service to “unfair” WSMB/New Orleans.
An AFM complaint that had been simmering since the union was founded was generally ignored during Joe Weber’s presidency, but not Petrillo’s. It was the threat - or presumed threat - posed to the employment of AFM musicians by amateurs, most notably scholastic and military bands. Petrillo was ever vigilant to this annoyance and finally had the freedom to do something about it - or at least try.
On December 15, 1940, he refused to allow the 104th Regiment Engineers Band at Fort Dix to broadcast its Christmas concert on Mutual, saying it would, “…throw union musicians out of work.” It was only when the networks scrambled to assure Petrillo that no union musicians would lose their jobs when military bands played that he allowed the concert to proceed the next day.
The AFL got involved the following June and ordered Petrillo to rescind his demand that a high school band had to join his union before playing on a CBS broadcast at the launching ceremonies of the U.S. battleship South Dakota. Layering insult to injury on Petrillo‘s authority, Canadians, who were at war in October, 1941, ignored Petrillo when he complained about the non-union Royal Canadian Air Force band performing a series of bi-weekly concerts on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation network. (6)
Despite these minor setbacks to his power, prestige and public relations, Petrillo never lost sight of his biggest target, “canned” music. He waited until the 1942 AFM convention in Dallas then pulled the trigger on June 8th, announcing to 700 cheering delegates that effective August 1st, members would no longer record or transcribe music for public consumption. “We will make records for the home but not for juke boxes,” said Petrillo. “We will make them for the Armed Forces of the United States and its allies but not for commercial or sustaining radio programs. We will make them at any time at the request of our commander-in-chief, the President of the United States.” (7)
Broadcasting magazine summed up Petrillo’s two years on the job by editorializing, “Mr. Petrillo’s feats are amazing. The story used to be that “canned music” resulted in deplorable unemployment of musicians. The remedy then became standby orchestras, then union platter turners. And all in radio will recall hiring staff orchestras whether they played music or pinochle.”
America was in its first year of World War II and Elmer Davis, Director of the Office of War Information, asked Petrillo to call off his walkout and live up to the slogan he promoted in a letter to President Roosevelt six months earlier, “Music For Morale!“ Petrillo refused. Senator Burton K. Wheeler, Chairman of the Interstate Commerce Committee, offered to mediate between the AFM and record companies. Again, Petrillo refused. He was full speed ahead and out the door on August 1st.
When the recording strike was only two weeks away and while his lieutenants were trying to gain public support for the AFM cause, Petrillo made one of his greatest gaffes. He ordered NBC to discontinue its twelve year series of sustaining concerts by the National Youth Orchestra from the Interlochen Michigan Music Camp because the 160 youngsters weren’t union members. Public response was fast and furious to what was perceived as Petrillo’s spiteful and petty attack against a bunch of talented school kids.
Broadcasting reported that Senator Arthur Vandenberg and Representative Frederick Bradley spoke for their angry Michigan constituents and petitioned the FCC to “do something” about the situation. In his July 18th remarks to the U.S. House, Bradley labeled Petrillo, “…a union czar, (and), while our boys fight aggression abroad, insolent aggression has appeared at Interlochen.”
NBC was silent about the situation although lawyers contended that Petrillo’s union had no jurisdiction in the woods of northwest Michigan. Meanwhile, Stanley E. Hubbard, owner of NBC affiliate KSTP/Minneapolis-St.Paul which was a involved in a contract dispute with the AFM, let loose with what most broadcasters were thinking but were afraid to say:
"James Caesar Petrillo has become the Fuehrer of 140,000 musicians in this country. He has grown powerful and rich by the exercise of an iron hand with which he now attempts to wreck an entire industry. … By pressing a buzzer on his desk he can deprive 80 million Americans of radio entertainment and throw those 140,000 musicians out of employment. … That is the kind of power that Fuehrer Petrillo wields today, a power that pays him some $46,000 a year. That is the power, the man and the outrageous tyranny which we and other radio stations in this country who wish to see that democracy and freedom are not stifled at home … are fighting.”
Newspaper editorials hounded Petrillo and a Gallup poll indicated an overwhelming 73% of the public was against his maneuvers. But the determined labor leader was seemingly oblivious to the criticism and slurs hurled at him from all quarters. AFM musicians walked out of recording studios on Friday night, July 31, 1942, and wouldn’t return for 13 months - at the earliest.
The Justice Department immediately began proceedings against the AFM for violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act but on October 12th a Chicago Federal Judge dismissed the government’s case because it was brought under the wrong statute. Petrillo greeted the news by shouting to the press outside the courtroom , “The ban stands!”
The National Association of Broadcasters published a booklet critical of Petrillo, The C Is For Caesar, in the fall of 1942. He went about proving his dictatorial powers by reversing an earlier decision and banning AFM members from recording any transcriptions intended for a single broadcast. Then he rubbed patriotic sentiment the wrong way again with demands that GE’s non-commercial shortwave station KGEI/San Francisco stop broadcasting transcribed programs to U.S. Armed Forces in the Pacific. GE wouldn’t obey Petrillo but NBC did when he ordered told it to stop its transcribed broadcasts of Jack Benny and Duffy’s Tavern on the Blue Pacific Network.
Surprisingly, neither the broadcasting nor recording industry seemed in any hurry to resolve the larger issue and end the walkout. Petrillo had tipped his hand in 1937 that he wanted to use a mass work stoppage against the record and transcription companies so the two had been quietly stockpiling master recordings Secondly, the world was in the early stages of World War II in 1942 and supplies of shellac, imported from India and used in the manufacture of phonograph records, were short. As a result, the AFM and the two affected industries were involved in a waiting game while the idle and unpaid musicians stood by helplessly and watched nothing happen.
Petrillo finally broke the silence on February 11, 1943, by inviting record company executives to meet and discuss ending the walkout with a system of royalty payments based on records produced that would be contributed to a union unemployment fund. (8) He optimistically predicted that negotiations would be settled and AFM members would return to the recording studios, “… within a couple of weeks.” He was off by six months.
While lawyers continued to quietly negotiate a settlement and rack up billable hours, Petrillo scuttled settlement of the ten month old walkout on May 13th by demanding that transcription companies refuse to do business with any radio station deemed “unfair” by the AFM for any reason. Six weeks later the Labor Department’s effort to mediate the dispute ended after 15 minutes when Petrillo said flatly, “Our members will make no more transcriptions for anyone at any time.”
Meanwhile, it was business as usual for Petrillo. Mutual affiliate WSAY/Syracuse had been at odds with the AFM for eight months because it wouldn’t expand its music staff from one pianist to five players. The AFM considered this "unfair" and threatened Mutual with a strike. The network responded by cancelling all of its late night band remotes on July 1st. Petrillo hit back on July 15th, threatening to pull his musicians from every program on the network. Mutual satisfied Petrillo by blocking WSAY from all of its programs containing music. The station finally relented and hired four additional AFM members.
The recording walkout was 13 months old when the National War Labor Board began hearing testimony in an effort to put an end to the standoff on September 7, 1943. Barely two weeks had passed when recording executive Jack Kapp, always the one to grasp a marketing advantage, was first to agree to the AFM terms and get back into the studio with his Decca Records and World Transcription Service. (9) The terms that Kapp and all the producers who quickly followed agreed upon called for a ¼ cent royalty for every 35 cent record up to a five cent contribution for a $2.00 record and 2½% of every disc sold for over $2.00. By October 29th all the studios were all in the fold except RCA-Victor and Columbia. That would take another year.
Petrillo claimed that the lengthy walkout had cost the AFM over $7.0 Million but it was worth it. The AFM had first year collections of $115,000 from 110 record and transcription companies when the two holdouts agreed to terms on November 11, 1944, completely ending the 27 month dispute. The fund created from royalties would swell to $4.5 Million over the next four years - unquestionably Petrillo’s greatest achievement. Never one given to understatement, Petrillo hailed it as, “The greatest victory for a labor organization in the history of the labor movement!”
Petrillo should have been taking victory laps for his triumph. Instead, he found himself knee-deep in hot water again over remarks he made about a situation that had been almost forgotten. Quoted by biographer Leiter, the AFM chief couldn’t resist this dig in his 1944 remarks to the union's convention: “…When the shooting was over and we came to the summer of 1943, there was no Interlochen high school student orchestra on the air. Nor was there in the year 1943 any other school band or orchestra on the networks and there never will be again without the permission of the American Federation of Musicians!”
Michigan Senator Vandenberg, no friend of Petrillo’s after the Interlochen squabble two years earlier, reacted promptly and authored a bill that prevented the AFM from interfering with non-commercial broadcasts presented by educational or cultural organizations. Petrillo considered this to be an affront to his authority and took the unprecedented step of putting the educational camp on the AFM’s “Unfair” list which prevented any network from originating broadcasts at Interlochen and blocked any AFM member from teaching, playing or conducting at the camp. This action spurred Ohio congressman Clarence Brown to declare, “This fellow Petrillo has gone too far. We’ve got to clip his wings. But we don’t want to interfere with the legitimate functions of a union.”
While the House Foreign & Interstate Commerce Committee began to define “legitimate” as it applied to the AFM and Senator Vandenberg’s bill, Petrillo turned his attention to another matter. He threatened NBC and Blue with a strike if they complied with the National Labor Relations Board decision to assign “platter turner” duties to members of the rival National Association of Broadcast Employees & Technicians. When courts affirmed that the job belonged to NABET and engineering unions, not the AFM, Petrillo said he’d take his case to the Supreme Court, if necessary.
FM became an issue in September, 1944, when Petrillo informed the four networks that AFM musicians were no longer allowed to play on any FM station until further notice. Then on October 29, 1945, he ruled that double crews of musicians would be necessary for any programs simulcast on AM and FM. FCC Chairman Paul Porter joked at the time, “The FCC is in favor or duplicate programming, but it appears that Petrillo has overruled the FCC.”
But the FCC did have a hand in the broadcasters’ next move. Most of them took their FM stations off the air to retune their facilities from the 42 to 50 megacycle band to the 88 to 106 band as ordered by the Commission on June 27, 1945 - a move that made some 500,000 existing FM receivers obsolete. (10)
Petrillo tackled television and left it flat in February, 1945. First he prohibited AFM members from performing for television until further notice then he demanded that Hollywood movie studios prohibit their films employing union musicians from being broadcast on television. Petrillo allowed no exceptions to his TV ban when he barred a Chicago AFM organist from playing in a televised Rosh Hashanah service, justifying the act by claiming time was needed for the union to learn if television, “…will destroy our employment in radio - or put men to work.” (11)
Petrillo used his weapon of sudden strikes against networks to pressure individual affiliates on September 30, 1945, when he ordered Artie Shaw’s orchestra off NBC’s Fitch Bandwagon due to labor disputes at the network’s New Orleans and Chattanooga stations. The next night the Carnation Contented Hour was his NBC target. Just to prove he was an equal opportunity raider, Petrillo shut down the CBS Prudential Family Hour a week later to protest the “unfair” actions of several affiliates in the south. The random network work stoppages by the musicians spurred reports that Petrillo is was demonstrating his power in an attempt to form a coalition with the major technical unions - NABET and IBEW - with himself as its head.
California Congressman Clarence Lea, Democrat Chairman of the House Foreign & Interstate Commerce Committee lit the fuse to fireworks on February 21, 1946, when he introduced HR-5117, aka The Lea Act aka The Anti-Petrillo Bill. The pent up resentment toward the AFM and its leader flowed from the house floor and gallery as members related past brushes with the union. Michigan’s George Dondero told of Petrillo’s preventing a Navy band from playing at a Royal Oak memorial service for U.S. servicemen. Ohio’s Brown complained of Cincinnati’s Shrine Temple having to pay the AFM a $2,800 “tribute” for its charity's circus and the AFM's blocking military and amateur groups from a Lynchburg, Virginia, Memorial Day program.
Broadcasting reported that Brown was the highlight of the four hour, one-sided debate, recalling how Petrillo had told the President and Congress that, “they could go to hell’. “I may go to hell someday,” said Brown, “But it won’t be because of James Caesar Petrillo!” When a Petrillo supporter, New York Representative Vito Marcantonio, interrupted him to complain that he was overemphasizing Petrillo’s middle name, Brown retorted, “Here in America we have no place for Caesars!” That, literally, brought the House down with cheers. The body passed The Lea Bill by an overwhelming 222 to 43 vote.
The Lea Act was actually an addendum to The Communications Act of 1934, (Section 506), entitled: Coercive Practices Affecting Broadcasting. The first four provisions outlawed the direct or indirect employment of any excess unneeded persons or more persons needed to do any job connected with broadcasting, (I.e. standbys or featherbedding), double payment for services, and payment for services not performed.
The fifth provision was a carryover of the Vanderberg Bill from the Senate outlawing the interference with any non-commercial cultural or educational broadcast in which the participants receive no payment. The sixth provision outlawed preventing the broadcasting of any radio communication originating from outside the United States. Inside the bill’s fine print were the penalties for violating any of its provisions: up to a $1000 fine and/or one year imprisonment.
The House moved the bill on to the Senate and in less than two weeks, The Lea Act aka The Lea-Vanderberg Bill was passed by a 47 to 3 vote on March 6, 1946. President Truman signed it into law ten days later. Petrillo fumed and conferred with his lawyers about a way to test the bill’s legality.
WAAF was a daytime-only station in Chicago that had no staff orchestra in 1946 but employed three AFM members as “platter turners” to handle records and transcriptions. On May 11th Petrillo ordered the station to hire three additional AFM members without argument or face a strike. When the station insisted on negotiating in accordance with its AFM contract, Petrillo called a strike against the station on May 28th, telling a news conference that he had deliberately violated the Lea Act and was, “…ready to face the music in court.” On his way to court in June Petrillo threatened to remove all union musicians from Network Radio and recording studios if The Lea Act was upheld.
While Petrillo’s fight with the government began to slowly move through the judicial system, the AFM negotiated separately with record and transcription producers over new contracts. The record companies settled first on October 21st, bowing to the threat of a strike and agreeing to a 37½% pay raise for AFM musicians, lifting them to $41.25 per studio hour, of which no more than five minutes could be recorded. Arguing that transcriptions were a different breed, Petrillo demanded and got a 50% raise from transcription producers a week later, boosting them to $50 per half-hour.
There were also hints of his old tricks in 1946. In Apri,l the music supervisor of the Toledo, Ohio, public schools charged Petrillo with threatening to have him fired for refusing to help the AFM organize high school musicians and in December, the Detroit AFM local prohibited a high school band from playing its annual Christmas concert on WJBK claiming the concert would deny work to union musicians.
Petrillo received an early Christmas gift on December 2, 1946, when U.S. District Court Judge Walter LaBuy in Chicago ruled The Lea Act unconstitutional and dismissed charges against him and the AFM in the WAAF featherbedding case. Judge LaBuy decided that the act violated the First, Fifth and Thirteenth Amendments.
A gleefull Petrillo exclaimed, “Thank God for the federal courts!” when he heard LaBuy’s decision. Meanwhile, Congressman Lea, who sponsored the act, called its rejection, “unsound.” He added, “I detest the arrogant racketeering now being pulled off in the country in the name of labor.” In its editorial, Broadcasting predicted, “…The way is cleared for Supreme Court adjudication”. The Justice Department was determined to follow that path with an immediate appeal to the spring session of the highest court.
While AFM and government lawyers presented their arguments to the Supreme Court, the union and four major networks negotiated their first wage agreement in four and a half years. Fearful of adverse conditions that might result from a loss in The Lea Act case, New York’s AFM Local 802 abruptly agreed after four months to a one year contract calling for a 20% pay raise on May 7, 1947. But there was no calming Petrillo’s bluster a month later when he threatened to pull all musicians out of recording studios on December 31st if the Supreme Court ruled The Lea Act constitutional or if the controversial Taft-Hartley Act became law. (12)
The Federal pendulum swung against Petrillo on June 23rd when the Supreme Court ruled The Lea Act constitutional and the Senate overrode President Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act, 68 to 25. The stunning double-defeat on the same day left Petrillo temporarily speechless while Broadcasting gloated: “Last Monday was labor emancipation day for radio. The Supreme Court decision sustaining constitutionality of The Lea Act, (aptly called the Anti-Petrillo Law), coincided with the Senate’s action in overriding the Presidential veto of the Taft-Hartley Bill to spell for radio ultimate solution of its labor problems. … Radio has been abused by arrogant labor leaders. These laws are intended to end labor tyranny. … So, at the end of the labor trail we find a Petrillo, no longer on his high horse snorting fire and fury, There’s diminutive Jimmy riding a burro. Last reports, however, still had him in the saddle.”
Hardly contrite and defensive from his rebuke Petrillo returned to Washington on July 7th and stunned members of the House Labor subcommittee with his plans to prohibit AFM members from making recordings after December 31, 1947 and from working on Network Radio after January 31, 1948. For good measure he suggested that the AFM might go into the record business, “…to keep all the profits for ourselves.” His perfomance was a hit with newsreel cameramen and left his inquisitors speechless. The committee adjourned for 60 days.
The Justice Department renewed its prosecution of Petrillo on October 15th for violation of The Lea Act in connection with the AFM’s strike against WAAF/Chicago in May, 1946. Four days later Petrillo announced that the union’s members would stop performing for records and transcriptions on December 31st and, “…never again make them because they‘re making their own competition.” While record companies were busily stockpiling songs for the impending walkout, Bing Crosby, a pioneer in transcribed network programming, did some stockpiling of his own and increased his schedule to recording two Philco Radio Time half-hour programs a week.
On another front and inspired by its united stand against ASCAP seven years earlier, the National Association of Broadcasters created the Industry Music Committee of 35 executives representing the radio, television and recording industries to form a united front against AFM threats. One executive who wasn’t afraid to stand up to Petrillo was Don Golenpaul. (See Information Please on this site.) Golenpaul filed a National Labor Relations Board complaint against the AFM in November for the union’s refusal to allow a pianist to play on Information Please after its move to Mutual as a co-op program available for local sponsorship. A week later Petrillo lifted the ban on co-op programs, dismissing Golenpaul as, “…One lucky guy - he only employs one piano player.”
AFM members walked out of recording studios for the second time in six years on New Years Eve, 1947. They wouldn‘t return for eleven months. Over 195,000 musicians plus 770 record companies and transcription services were affected, protesting their creating “canned” music without additional compensation. But as was in the case in 1942, neither side was in a hurry to the bargaining table.
January 13th was the opening of the House Education & Labor Committee inquiry into the tactics of Petrillo and activities of the AFM. But the headlines were stolen the following day when Federal Judge Walter LaBuy - the same jurist who ruled The Lea Act unconstitutional in December, 1946, only to be overturned by the Supreme Court - found Petrillo not guily in the WAAF case for calling a strike against the Chicago daytime station when it hesitated to double its number of AFM “platter turners” from three to six. Petrillo’s only comment was conciliatory in reference to a Network Radio agreement, “Everyone is satisfied some kind of agreement will be reached.”
Petrillo had been playing the waiting game with Network Radio as the January 31, 1948, contract expiration date approached. But the NAB’s Industry Music Committee convinced the chains to forget their longstanding objections to recorded music and “go wax” if the AFM walked. CBS and NBC took a lesson from record companies and prepared for .the threatened AFM strike by stockpiling recorded musical bridges, opens, closes, and mood music then arranging with overseas sources to provide them with as much material as they’d need for as long as they’d need it.
The networks’ solid defense prompted Petrillo to renew the existing AFM contracts with no changes for three years on March 18th He also bowed to FCC pressure and allowed union musicians to participate in AM-FM simulcasts at no additional charge. Most importantly, Petrillo finally lifted his television ban and let “his boys” play on TV while rates were negotiated with the networks. The uncharacteristically co-operative AFM leader commented, “To prove our good faith we have pledged that the rate pattern for live music during this development period for television will be reasonable.”
The sweeping agreement even caught Broadcasting off-guard, editorializing: “If there’s a gimmick in the AFM-Network agreement it isn’t discernable to the naked eye. And broadcasters are accustomed to gimmicks when James Caesar Petrillo is on the trigger end. Jimmy either has seen the light or has listened to sound public relations counsel. The joint statement of the four networks and AFM is this generation’s modern miracle in music.”
The recording strike dragged on through the summer of 1948 until September 15th when Petrillo offered to negotiate an end to the union’s eight month ban and avoid threatened court action. But negotiations collapsed a month later over the AFM‘s demand for increased royalties from records sold. Nevertheless, both sides were eager to end the impasse - too much money was being lost by both.
Finally, on October 28th the AFM and Capitol, Columbia, Decca, King, Mercury, MGM and RCA-Victor Records representing the recording industry reached an accord to end the ten month strike however legal entanglements with the Taft-Hartley Law delayed its official end another six weeks to December 14th. Credit was given to Morris Diamond, General Counsel for the AFM, for coming up with the royalty scale system agreeable to both sides although it was not made public. However, the annual total was expected to be close to $2.0 Million. (13)
Standard Transcription service took a page out of radio’s playbook against the AFM in October and took delivery on half of the 300 songs it had recorded in France. The stalemate between the union and ET producers continued a week past the AFM’s settlement with the record companies. A smiling Petrillo hosted officials of both sides in his New York offices on December 20th when the transcription producers agreed to pay three percent of their gross revenues to the AFM fund. The annual sum was expected to be an additional $100,000.
With all quiet on the broadcasting and recording fronts in 1949, Petrillo began a turf war over television in September by demanding that any AFM members who were also members of the American Guild of Variety Artists cancel their AGVA memberships “immediately”. A week later, the Associated Actors & Artists of America, parent body of AGVA, AFRA and Actors Equity, representing 90,000 members, supported its AGVA performers who appeared on television. Nevertheless, Victor Borge, Vaughn Monroe, Artie Shaw and Spike Jones were among the name artists who felt pressured to turn in their AGVA cards but the union refused to accept their resignations.
AGVA applied to the New York Supreme Court in October to restrain the AFM’s actions against it. Its affidavit charged that Petrillo was, “…obviously overcome with delusions and ambitions common to dictators.” AFL President William Green urged the two sides to settle the matter out of court which they finally did to everyone’s reluctant satisfaction in May, 1950.
In response to Petrillo’s demands for a pay hike to $27 per musician for every 15 minutes or less of TV film programs, a large coalition of television networks, major movie studios, film producers TV program packagers and trade associations organized on October 30, 1949. Both sides agreed to renew existing contracts until 1952 when a 15% raise was won by the AFM.
Nineteen-fifty was marked by two radio station strikes that began in April and lasted - and lasted. On April 3rd WINS/New York City fired its eight man staff orchestra that no longer had a program. Local 802 promptly threw up a picket line in front of the station that stayed for a year until the station settled and rehired the unneeded musicians. Then, there was the case of Petrillo’s old nemesis, KSTP in the Twin Cites. The AFM pulled its 13 members in sympathy for striking engineers and the musicians didn’t return until July - three years later!
Petty turf wars erupted again in 1952 when AFRA charged in July that Petrillo was “an obstructionist” and “destructive” for prohibiting AFM members from joining AFTRA. Petrillo retaliated in September by prohibiting band leaders from recording promotional voice tracks for play on local disc jockey programs.
The jurisdictional fight between the AFM and AFTRA heated up in the summer of 1953 when Petrillo demanded that musicians who double on television as emcees to drop out of AFTRA. (14) The Hollywood local of AFTRA simply refused the resignations of those who complied and the dispute was eventually settled amicably between the two unions.
Never one to grudges fade, he appeared on CBS-TV’s celebrity interview show Person To Person in October and asserted to a puzzled Edward R. Murrow, “Many musicians aren’t working because unpaid school children exploited by cheap politicians are performing in their places.” Six months later he accused television, which had provided hundreds of new jobs for AFM members, with making concert goers stay at home and appealed to President Eisenhower for federal funding aid for 100 concert orchestras in cities under 300,000 population.
June 3,1958 Petrillo declined to run for his 19th term as AFM President at the group’s convention in Philadelphia, amidst chants of “Stay Jimmy!” turning the gavel over to his chosen successor, attorney Herman Kenin, West Coast representative of the AFM. Kenin was expected to adopt a more conciliatory attitude than Petrillo - a safe prediction, indeed.
Petrillo remained President of Chicago’s Local 10 for another four years, staying until December, 1962, when he was faced with a rebellion led by the members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and defeated for re-election by 95 votes out of 3,000 cast. He left office at the age of 71 after an even 40 years. Immediately after losing his $26,000 a year position, Petrillo was appointed Director of the AFM’s new National Civil Rights Division for $23,000 annually. He focused on the job through the decade, focusing on the desegregation of its locals and venues in which its musicians played.
James Petrillo died following a stroke in October, 1984, at the age of 92. The death of the fiery leader of the AFM whose activities were reported in thousands of news stories over the years rated a mere paragraph in Broadcasting and a single column in his hometown Chiicago Tribune. The bandshell in Chicago’s Grant Park is named in his honor.
(1) Weber left office briefly in 1914 due to ill health. He was replaced for a year by Frank Carothers then re-elected to the AFM’s presidency in 1915 at age 50.
(2) The New York City situation wasn’t completely resolved for another 18 years when the rival Musical Mutual Protective Union of 8,000 members folded and AFM Local 802 was chartered on August 27, 1921 Local 802 quickly grew to 12,000 members.
(3) James Caesar Petrillo’s brother, Caesar James Petrillo, was a trombonist and band leader employed for many years by CBS in Chicago. As for himself, James told the New York Times in June, 1956, "I hadda look for a job so I went into the union business."
(4) Petrillo held the Chicago post concurrent with his national AFM duties, for the next 36 years. His salary from the Chicago local eventually reached $26,000 per year, plus liberal expenses including amounts to cover income tax on his salary. The local also lavished gifts on Petrillo and his wife, Marie, including trips to Europe and a vacation home on Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
(5) Petrillo collected another $20,000 annually for the union’s presidency, in addition to his Chicago salary package. The national job also included a very liberal expense account which paid for first class travel, a permanent suite at New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria plus tailored suits and imported shoes.
(6) The American Federation of Musicians expanded into Canada in 1900.
(7) Petrillo rejected President Roosevelt’s request to end the strike on October 10, 1944, saying, “…conditions have changed.”
(8) The original sum discussed was one cent per record which would amount to $1.3 Million per year dispersed to AFM members who performed in a series of concerts free to the public.
(9) Kapp made a killing in 1942 when he recorded Bing Crosby's hit White Christmas before the recording ban and released it in October. He was eager to settle the walkout in 1943 because he owned the original cast recording rights to Broadway's smash musical Oklahoma which had opened to rave reviews and capacity audiences on March 31st, beginning a five year, nine month run.
(10) The FM ban dragged on through 1946 and 1947 then finally ended as suddenly as it began on January 29, 1948, during the AFM’s negotiations with the networks over new contracts.
(11) AFM members' total annual income from radio at the time was estimated to be $23.0 Million. The union’s first contracts with the television networks were finally signed on May 1, 1948, and union locals were simultaneously given authority to negotiate with individual stations.
(12) The Taft-Hartley Act aka The Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947, was passed over President Truman’s veto in an effort to curb union abuses permitted under the Wagner Act of 1935. Among its provisions it outlawed the closed shop, allowed union shops only in states permitting them when a majority of workers voted for them, narrowed the definition of unfair labor practices and required 60 days’ notice of any strike.
(13) Morris Diamond was the attorney for Decca Records in 1943 who devised the royalty scale system that ended the first recording strike after eleven months.
(14) The American Federation of Radio Artists, (AFRA), merged with the Television Authority talent union, (TVA), on September 17, 1952, to form the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists, (AFTRA).
Copyright © 2016, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com