Writers had long been more militant than actors, and this situation did not change as the war approached. Ella Winter acknowledged that the writers were the “group most feared by Hollywood producers”; they “deal with those uncontrollable entities, ‘ideas’; and you don’t know where an idea might lead you.” Writers were beginning to object to the system whereby “studios own everything a writer creates—plays, novels, radio scripts, poems—if written while he is under contract, and [a] contract for one year calls for three months without pay.” With wonder, Winter remarked, “[I]n the last few years there have been great changes in Hollywood. The town has become union-conscious and world-conscious”; writers were “ceasing to be morticians and are becoming doctors.”92