Hollywood-held hostage. I'm Rebecca Lieb. I'm Jason Horton. And this is Ghost Town.

On October 5, 1945, a six-month strike by the set decorators represented by the Conference

of Studio Unions came to a boil leading to a bloody riot at the gates of one or

other studios known as Hollywood Black Friday. And it is Friday. It is Friday. Today is a Friday.

This is about a Friday and we're discussing Fridays. What do you want? What do you want?

Nothing. Probably everything. No, this is all you want and it's all you'll get.

Well, that's what Hollywood told the crew and workers and they were like, no, how about

we riot? In 1945, the movie industry is at the tail end of the Golden Age of Hollywood and post-World

War II. Things are changing and the movie industry is making huge profits. Think about that time

in the 1940s. I mean, I'm really releasing like 40 movies a month or something like that.

Exactly. Movie stars are big. We got your carry grants and your Gregory Pecs.

Totally, but they're all tied to the studio system. So they are really beholden. It's not like

now where celebrities are bigger than life. They can work for many studios, do lots of different

things. At that point, unless the studio released them to do a film somewhere else or to do

some kind of shoot or a player, whatever, they were really, really beholden to the studio that

they worked for. And they worked there for many, many years, like contracts for 10 years, 20 years.

It's a long time. And sometimes that worked out and sometimes you found that that wasn't great

because careers waned and things changed and you're stuck at a place where you can't do what you

want or you can't do something that will continue your career. For once, we're not going to talk

about the celebrity. For once. We're going to talk about the people that make the things happen,

namely, in this case, the set decorators. I like that. The people that made, you know,

these sets were amazing lavish, huge ground breaking, especially the time, like go back and watch

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