Politics: The DGA Stages HUAC

In 1941, two years after the Directors Guild of America signed its first agreement with the Hollywood studios, Preston Sturges’s comedy Sullivan’s Travels satirized a significant issue faced by the newly minted organization: What kind of artists did directors want to be? Sturges’s protagonist, director John L Sullivan, or “Sully” as he is known, has built his reputation on mindless comedies. In the film’s opening scene, Sully shows his producers a dramatic scene from a politically progressive film as an example of the kind of serious production he would like to undertake, a picture that is “something like Capra.” In