Laura (1944) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) provided Dana Andrews his best-remembered lead roles. In 1947, he joined the Guild's Board of Directors and served as an officer (1st Vice-President and 2nd Vice-President) from 1950-1963. After serving as president, in 1965, he began a final one-year term as 2nd VP.
Main issues during his Guild presidency concerned importation of foreign actors, TV series filmed abroad, and, in the days long before American households had cable -TV, the issue of Pay-TV, which Andrews supported. Why? He was bothered by what he perceived as the decline of good quality roles and productions for actors, due to the fact that advertiser-driven TV shows and commercials had taken the lion's share of the market away from theatrical films. Guild members now made the majority of their income from, first, TV commercials and, second, TV programs. From his 1964 address to the Guild membership:
An entertainment medium without a box office has captured the fancy of the public and has substantially replaced the motion picture theatre, the legitimate theatre, and radio and we - the actors - are the victims of this capture. We must do everything in our power to create, to foster, to encourage another medium which is based on box-office returns. Today there is only one such medium on the horizon - it is Pay-TV...It is sad, I might even say tragic that the material rewards for actors' contributions to the cultural development of our society are becoming smaller and smaller...but it is even more disturbing that our materialistic civilization holds such little regard for the quality of its culture and the strength of its ideals as depicted by the dramatic arts."
In July, 1964, Andrews and the Guild's public relation director, Buck Harris attended President Lyndon Johnson's conference at the White House, relating to the role labor can play in support of the newly-signed Civil Rights Act of 1964. 1965 found Andrews at the White House again in September as President Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act (U.S. Public Law 209) in the Rose Garden.
Actor Steve Forrest, who served on the Guild's Board of Directors from 1962-1965, is a younger brother of Andrews.