image An estimated 10,500 CSU workers went on strike in March 1945—and the conflict lasted until October.34 The painter Hans Burkhardt—who once studied with Arshile Gorky and created a painting, Protest, depicting the conflict—recalled it as a “bloody fight, it was terrible.”35 Cecil B. DeMille spoke sadly of “men who had worked for me 25 or more years, walked off the studio lot when the strike was called—tears streaming down their faces. These men were friends of mine since they worked … [on] the production of The Ten Commandments and The King of Kings. One day I walked in the picket line with these men, carrying a banner—not that I was in sympathy with the strike but I was in sympathy with the men.”

This episode left DeMille with a lingering anger. Preparing later to testify before Congress, he noted in reference to CSU leaders—whom he contemptuously referred to as “labor czars”—that a “decision made by 8 or 10 more men could do more damage to this country than 8 or 10 atomic bombs dropped at the same moment.” Vowing to curb this power by dint of legislation, he grumbled that labor “may want the right to strike. That I don’t know. But I do know they want the right to work.” DeMille then pledged to push for a bill that would restrain the power of unions—a bill that came to be known as the Taft-Hartley legislation.37