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12 ESLJ [1] (2014)

handle is hein.journals/entersport12 and id is 1 raw text is: 






            Contents
Abstract  i                          Empoyee in a Cage? Olvia De
1. IntroductionEm                           lye          aOii
2. The Politics of Hollywood Studio       Havilland, Warner Bros.
System Talent Contracts
De Havilland's Contract and Petition for  Pictures,  and   the 'Limit Case'
Decaratory judqment
The Superior Court Decision                 of  Star Employment.
3. The Apoelate Court's Decision in De
Haviland
First Theme: A ublic interest in work                  Matt  Stahl
Second Theme: Seven years and no                  Associate  Professor
Tomre       A                         Faculty  of Information   and Media   Studies
Third Theme: An inalienable right
4. Apoellate Court's Silence on/and the     University  of Western   Ontario
Politics of Employment                    London,   Ontario, Canada   N6A   5B7
Parallel Cases
5. Star Employment, Peonage, and
Routine Employment
6. Conclusion


  it is the transferability of rights that is the basis of the mass marketing of the human
  image and  the human  voice in the communications industries (Gaines 1991, p. 155)

Abstract
In 1944, two California courts agreed with actor Olivia De Havilland's claim that the state's seven
year limit on the enforceability of employment contracts applied to her 1936 contract with Warner
Bros. Pictures, and refused to enforce the contract beyond its seventh anniversary. This article
revisits the well-known De Haviland v. Warner Bros. Pictures (1944) Appellate Court decision, and
its lesser-known, lower court antecedent, in order to explore the decisions' related but distinct
assumptions about  employment, employers, and  employees. Both  courts agreed (1) that
employees need protection from excesses of employee power, (2) that employment is a public,
social phenomenon, and (3) that protection may (and must) be afforded by the police powers of
the state; this article analyses illuminating differences in the courts' rationales. Examining the
politics of star employment is worthwhile for more than just historical reasons: star employment
constitutes a limit case of employment, illuminating in its extremes features that are central to
but generally obscure in the run of daily working life. The limit case, in this instance, re-injects
controversy into what appears to be a settled institution of modern life. Revisiting episodes of
struggle over the terms of star employment makes available a set of critical concepts useful in
contesting (neo)liberal common sense about employment as a strictly private affair. De Havilland's
two cases and decisions-fascinating and compelling in what they contribute to our knowledge of
Hollywood's labour history-bequeath intellectual tools useful in the dissection of the politics of
employment today.



Keywords
Hollywood, talent contract, politics of employment, liberalism, film history, critique

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