“Comrades, I am not hoping to convince you this evening to overthrow this corrupt system, for that would be too bold a hope. Instead, just acknowledge that you and ourselves, together, we are suffering all the pangs and agonies of the revolution. You, comrade, say you work for Goldwyn. And you, Mademoiselle Comrade, you say you work for Ince. But it is not so—you work for yourselves, and Goldwyn and Ince, parasites lacking the means of production, live off of you. And yet they ask for your loyalty. But does the financier or the production company sweat in the field? Especially when you need to do thirty-seven takes because of the wind? Does the doorkeeper of the barracks filled with gold know the agonies of threshing wheat before the camera, when the Klieg lights have snapped? Who knows the agony of falling from a horse day after day? The actor! Who needs to apply tincture of castor oil after a day under the lights? The actor! Our principle is—all power to the actors.” He underlined this with a thrust of his fist into his palm, and to his surprise there was no laughter, but instead some applause. “All power to the actors!” he said again, and there was more applause. “Comrades, say it all together, ‘All power to the actors!’”

The crowd roared it with passion that could have blown him backward. Even the human statues had broken ranks, squatting on their pillars, chanting, All power to the actors! Why had no one noticed before the disparity of power in Hollywood? All power to the actors! The glasses rendered his eyesight impossible, and his beard was in danger of falling off, but he had memorized the sway and the sense of Bolshevik speeches.

“Whether this will lead to an insurrection depends not only and not so much on the actors as on those who, in defiance of the people’s unanimous will, still hold the studios’ power. Is this an insurrection?” He cupped his hand to his ear. “Is this an insurrection?” No one knew how to respond. He had on his lips the next line of a Trotsky speech, “This only awaits the sweep of history’s broom,” but he could not make himself say it. He throbbed with a kind of power he did not normally feel except in character. He faltered. For he was not just an actor, but a man in charge of hiring actors. He was labor and management, one extremely large shoe in each camp. There was a group waiting to, upon his word, strike, loot, and break windows in the streets of Santa Monica. “No, this is not an insurrection,” he finally said. “Comrade in the bath, they are paying you four dollars? And you deserve that four dollars? And you work for that four dollars?”