1864
- British-born stage comedian William Davidge (in America since 1850) chairs meeting in New York of the Actors' Protective Union, formed due to the "long-existing necessity for an equitable status" for actors, and the desire to establish a standard minimum salary for players.
1886
- April 25: First stagehands union, the Theatrical Protective Union, No. 1, founded.
- June 29: Congress approves incorporation of trade unions.
- December 8: American Federation of Labor founded.
1891
- Thomas Edison granted patent for his first moving-picture camera, the Kinetoscope.
1894
- National Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes (original spelling) founded. Becomes International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees/IATSE in 1902) receives American Federation of Labor charter.
- Actors' Protective Union (a different organization than that of 1864) organized in May.
1896
- American Federation of Labor grants its first actors' union charter, to Actors National Protective Union.
- January 4: Actors Society of America formally organized.
- May 19: Major theatrical producers Al Hayman of San Francisco, Mark Klaw, Abe Erlanger and Charles Frohman of New York, and Samuel F. Nixon-Nirdlinger and partner J. Fred Zimmerman of Philadelphia, join forces to create a Theatrical Syndicate, giving them unprecedented control of theater bookings coast to coast. This took the theatrical business completely out of the hands of the actor-managers, who had their own companies, including Francis Wilson, who would become the first president of Actors' Equity in 1913.
- American Federation of Musicians founded.
1899
- Hebrew Actors Union founded by Jewish labor leader Joseph Barondess.
1900
- White Rats of America, composed largely of vaudeville performers, founded by comic monologist George Fuller Golden, the grandfather of future film actor and Screen Actors Guild board member Harry Carey Jr. Membership restricted to white males only.
1908
- March 23: Future Screen Actors Guild cofounder and first president Ralph Morgan makes his professional stage debut in Ibsen’s Love’s Comedy at Henry B. Harris’ Hudson Theatre in New York.
1910
- July 2: New York Legislature enacts a law regulating the amount of agents’ commission and requiring all employment agencies, including talent agencies, to submit copies of their contracts to the New York license commissioner for examination. White Rats of America lobbied hard for the bill’s passage.
- December 7: White Rats of America and Actors International Union merge and are granted charter by the American Federation of Labor. The union adopts a new name, White Rats Actors Union of America.
1912
- April 15: RMS Titanic sinks. Deaths include New York theatrical producer Henry B. Harris.
- Actors Society of America disbands (but does not formally dissolve) in December. Members of the Society continue to meet, and will form a “Plan and Scope Committee” for further discussions.
1913
- January 13: Plan and Scope Committee of the now-inactive Actors’ Society meets at New York’s Players Club. The meetings produce creation of The Actors' Equity Association, founded May 26 by 111 actors, with Francis Wilson as its first president. Two of the 111 Equity founders will be among Screen Actors Guild’s founding members in 1933: Reginald Mason (Guild member No. 22) and Grant Mitchell (Guild member No. 30). Initially, membership is restricted to men only. Actresses are admitted to Equity only after membership qualifications are revised on July 14.
1914
- April 20: Ralph Morgan (future first president of Screen Actors Guild) and Richard W. Tucker (future member #1 of Screen Actors Guild) accepted into Actors' Equity.
- July 28: World War I begins.
- Most motion picture production is in New York including Biograph, Kalem, Mutual, Thanhouser, Vitagraph); New Jersey (Edison), Pennsylvania (Lubin); Chicago (Essanay), and California (Essanay in Fremont, Flying A in Santa Barbara; Keystone, Selig, Universal in Los Angeles; Famous Players in Hollywood). An August 19 New York Dramatic Mirror article notes increasing competition for theatre audiences from the lower-priced “movies.”
- Lois Weber becomes first woman to direct an American feature-length film.
1915
- Luxury ocean liner RMS Lusitania sunk off coast of Ireland by German torpedo: Entertainment figures losing their lives include famed theatrical manager/producer Charles Frohman, and playwrights Charles Klein and Justus Miles Foreman.
1916
- White Rats Actors Union of America members walk out on strike. The strike fails and members are blacklisted. Spies hunt for evidence of White Rats membership and turn it over to the theatrical producers.
1917
- March 15: Russian Revolution produces abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. Provisional government installed under Alexander Kerensky.
- April 2: President Woodrow Wilson delivers the War Address, which will lead United States to enter World War I.
- October 2: Actors’ Equity's first Standard Contract signed with United Managers Protective Association — but the contract will be rarely used by the managers.
- October 24 and 25 (November 6 and 7 on current calendar): Provisional Russian government overthrown in Bolshevik-led October Revolution. V.I. Lenin becomes new head of Russian government October 26 (November 8).
1918
- Producing Managers Association formed.
- Worldwide influenza epidemic kills millions. Variety prints lists of the theatrical and film world's influenza deaths, including film star Harold Lockwood and stage actor Julian L’Estrange.
- November 11: World War I hostilities end with an armistice.
- November 12: American Federation of Labor issues charter in New York to Motion Picture Players Union, representing extra players.
- After the war, future Screen Actors Guild founding member #28, Béla Lugosi, who will find stage and screen fame as Dracula, founds the Free Organization of Theatrical Employees in his native Hungary, expanding it soon after into the National Trade Union of Actors.
1919
- In March, Béla Lugosi, leads mass demonstration of fellow actors in Hungary.
- Future Screen Actors Guild (and AFRA) President Eddie Cantor elected to Council of Actors’ Equity.
- April 29: Future Screen Actors Guild founding member #9, Boris Karloff, accepted into Actors’ Equity.
- July 18: White Rats give up their American Federation of Labor Charter, allowing creation of new organization, Associated Actors and Artistes of America (Four A's) in New York. Four A's first act is to issue a charter to Actors' Equity Association. Actors loyal to managers, resenting Equity's acceptance into organized labor, resign their Equity membership to form Actors Fidelity League. Equity dubs these deserters "Fidos."
- August 7: Actors’ Equity goes on strike for recognition against members of the Producing Managers Association. Future Screen Actors Guild founders Ralph Morgan (# 19), James Gleason (#7) and wife Lucile Webster Gleason (#14) walk out of their Broadway show The Five Million. Actors, compared with Bolsheviks, are taunted as practicing "amateur Sovietism" for striking.
- August 16: IATSE and American Federation of Musicians members’ walk out in sympathy strike for the Equity actors.
- August 18: Hollywood motion picture actors pledge $7,500 to Equity strike fund.
- Numerous striking Equity actors sued by the Producing Managers’ Association, including future Screen Actors Guild founders Ralph Morgan and Richard W. Tucker.
- Béla Lugosi and wife flee Hungary in August.
- September 6: Equity strike ends. Equity recognized, but without “Equity Shop” terms (see 1924).
1920
- Actors’ Equity begins to assert claim over motion pictures. Equity executive secretary Frank Gillmore makes first trek to Hollywood to meet with the Screen Actors of America organization in January. American Federation of Labor declares Actors' Equity Association has sole jurisdiction over motion picture principal performers.
- Motion Picture Players Union relinquishes its charter to Equity. First regular radio broadcasting begins in the United States.
1923
- Association of Motion Picture Producers f(AMPP) ormed late in the year.
1924
- Actors’ Equity council member Ralph Morgan serves briefly as acting president of Equity. Equity goes on second strike to win “Equity Shop,” resulting in agreement that no less than 80 percent of any signatory cast be Equity members.
- In September, responding to complaints of grueling hours on movie sets, including being worked in multiple pictures on a single day, newspapers report Association of Motion Picture Producers (AMPP) President Joseph Schenck orders ban on overworking film actors. Schenck was president of United Artists and his "order" read, "No more overworking of screen players in order to make economy records for producers or directors...I don't want actors to be afraid. They need have no fear of being blacklisted. It is our purpose to correct this evil. It is not fair to the actor or to the public to expect a player to work 18 hours a day and then be called to the set the next morning." Schenck invited any player who felt ill-used to make a complaint personally to himself or to the group's secretary, Fred W. Beetson. Few actors availed themselves of this intimidating offer. In 1937, when Joeseph Schenck was chairman of the board of 20th Century-Fox, he and Louis B. Mayer, MGM's vice president in charge of production, will be the first producers to formally recognize the Screen Actors Guild.
1925
- May 25: Masquers Club founded by actors in Hollywood.
- Organizing attempt: Petitions signed by 100 prominent Hollywood film actors request Actors’ Equity be recognized as the bargaining agent for motion picture actors. One signer is Richard W. Tucker, who will become Screen Actors Guild member No. 1 in 1933. In July, Equity's executive secretary Frank Gillmore again approaches Will Hays and AMPP president Joseph Schenck about recognizing Equity in films without success.
- December 4: Association of Motion Picture Producers eliminate Hollywood's abuse-laden Service Bureau for Extras and establishes the original Central Casting Corporation.
- Radio: December issue of Equity magazine makes prediction about the future of radio: “It has ever been the contention of the Actors’ Equity Association that radio broadcasting was a great contribution to entertainment, but that once its novelty was worn off it would take its place with the phonograph, and other forms of entertainment which supplement, but have not displaced, the legitimate theatre as a means of culture and amusement.”
1926
- 27-year-old stage actor Kenneth Thomson comes to Hollywood under silent-film contract to Cecil B. DeMille. Thomson's house will be primary "secret meeting" place for Screen Actors Guild in 1933 and Thomson will become the organization’s first paid executive.
- Talkies: on October 7, first public showing of a ten-minute short talking film A Plantation Act starring Al Jolson, one of Warner Bros. Vitaphone Varieties series sound films. A year later Jolson starring in The Jazz Singer will launch the craze for “talking pictures.”
- Studio Basic Agreement signed between Association of Motion Picture Producers and motion picture crafts unions IATSE, IBEW, Carpenters, Painters and Musicians November 29.
1927
- Anti-union Los Angeles Times prints scathing article blaming theatrical labor unions, particularly Actors' Equity, for disastrous decline in legitimate theater and box office receipts.
- May 10: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences founded.
- Salary cuts: June 23. Sixteen prominent production companies announce intent to reduce salaries for motion picture workers by 10 to 25 percent, resulting in renewed enthusiasm by actors for Equity. Equity derailed when salary cuts are withdrawn upon the recommendation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
- “Talkies” - October 6: Warner Bros. premieres The Jazz Singer, a silent film with talking and singing segments, whetting audiences' appetite for films with sound and silent films will soon be relics of the past.
- Contracts: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issues its first-ever uniform contract for freelance film actors in December, which will become known as the Academy Contract. Equity discovers that much of the contract's wording was originally proposed by Equity, and dubs the Academy "The Motion Pictures' Company Union."
1928
- “Talkies”: More "talking pictures" produced, luring stage actors to Hollywood, where most are filmed. "Talkies" require significantly longer working hours than silent pictures and the stage, and reports of abuses flow into the Actors’ Equity office.
1929
- Organizing: Actors’ Equity polls California members as to whether they’d support Equity Shop for motion pictures. Results in April: 1,120 in favor versus 98 against.
- Equity strike - June 5: Actors' Equity declares strike for recognition in Hollywood, but insists its contract players must not break their contracts to join the strike.
- Equity thanks Eddie Cantor (future second president of Screen Actors Guild and first national president of AFRA) for offering "to address a public statement to the motion picture producers, urging them to accept Equity and its contract."
- Equity strike - August 17: Equity strike ends in failure, Equity president (since late 1928) Frank Gillmore returns to New York.
- Stock market crashes in October, ushering in the Great Depression.