Hollywood Black Friday

The strikes helped the passage of the Taft–Hartley Act in 1947 and led to the eventual breakup of the CSU and reorganization of the rival International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) leadership.

After the strike in 1946, the CSU would be strategically locked out of the studios by the producers, influenced by the IATSE leader, Roy Brewer.

An estimated 10,500 CSU workers went on strike in March 1945 and began picketing all the studios resulting in delays of several films, including David O. Selznick's epic Duel in the Sun and the Cole Porter story Night and Day.

Regardless, Disney, Monogram, and several independents bargained with CSU, but Columbia, Fox, MGM, Paramount, RKO, Universal, and Warner did not.

Although the violence would continue through the week, national exposure forced the parties back to the bargaining table and resulted in an end to the strike one month later but the CSU victory was a Pyrrhic one, where contentions over wording dictated by an AFL arbitration team would lead to further questioning as to CSU and IATSE jurisdiction on the set.

The CSU would never recover from the strike, which had lasted some 13 months before it voted to permit long-unemployed, impoverished members, and supporters to cross the picket line and return to work.

The disorder in Hollywood helped prompt the Taft-Hartley Act, which was passed by the help of the studios' lobbying and by accusations of the alleged Communist Party membership of Herb Sorrell, the leader of the CSU during the strike, which prompted Sorrell and the CSU to descend slowly into obscurity.