Dolores Ferraro, Joelle Dobrow, Lynne Littman, Nell Cox, Susan Bay Nimoy and Victoria Hochberg formed the Women's Steering Committee of the Directors Guild of America in 1979.
They carried out landmark research showing that women held only 0.5% of directing jobs in film and television, which they reported to the Guild, the studios and the press.
[1] As a result of the Original Six's research, the Directors Guild of America filed a class-action lawsuit against Warner Brothers and Columbia Pictures in 1983 on the grounds of gender discrimination.
[2][1] The risk of legal action, along with pressure from the public and the DGA, was followed by a slow (but not smooth) increase in the number of women directors working in the entertainment industry.
[2] Nell Cox, Joelle Dobrow, Dolores Ferraro, Victoria Hochberg, Lynne Littman and Susan Bay Nimoy were all members of the DGA.
On March 1, 1980, they reported to the Guild's National Board that during the previous 30 years, women directors had been hired for only 0.5% of the possible directing opportunities.
The committee met with major executives including Barry Diller (Paramount), Ned Tanen (Universal), and Frank Wells (Warner Bros.) and television sitcom producer Norman Lear.
"[3]While executives like Norman Lear may have been moved by the "embarrassing, shameful statistics" that the Original Six had compiled, they made few if any changes in response to the WSC presentations.
[3] In 1983, on the basis of the research done by the Original Six, the DGA sued two studios, Warner Bros. and Columbia Pictures, in a class-action suit for discrimination.
Dobrow was the only member of the Original Six to put her name on the lawsuit, but all six women helped select the lawyer and their research formed much of the evidence to be presented.
They agreed to wait a year before moving their case forward, so that a committee representing African American minorities could gather information and join in the suit.
[2][3] On March 5, 1985, the case was dismissed on procedural grounds when Judge Pamela Rymer removed the DGA as the class representative.
The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative more broadly studies representation of gender, race, LGBT status, disability, and age on screen and in the entertainment industry.
[12] Lynne Littman has said: "This fight was central to all of our lives and careers and fortunately, we were products of our generation of feminists who believed in more than our individual ambition.
"[3] Lynne Littman won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject at the 1977 Academy Awards for her film Number Our Days, based on the fieldwork of anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff with Eastern European Jewish senior citizens.
[19] In 2014, the 35th anniversary of the founding of the Women's Steering Committee was marked by the Directors Guild of America with speeches by Nell Cox, Joelle Dobrow, Lynne Littman, Vicki Hochberg, and Susan Nimoy and a ceremony recognizing the role of the Original Six.
[3][20][21] The 2018 documentary This Changes Everything was directed by Tom Donahue and produced by Donohue, Ilan Arboleda and Kerianne Flynn with support from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.