Much Drama Leading Up to Actors Guild Revote

The plot features backbiting, conspiracy theories, accusations of cronyism, lies and corruption, even one celebrity calling another “a slug.”

All the makings of a good Hollywood drama, maybe even a prime-time soap. But this bit of reality TV comes to you via the Screen Actors Guild, Hollywood’s biggest and most dysfunctional labor guild. Today, for the second time in five months, it will select a new president.

After failing once, the 98,000-member guild is expected to announce tonight that the winner is either Melissa Gilbert, best known as Laura Ingalls on the 1970s hit “Little House on the Prairie,” or Valerie Harper, Rhoda Morgenstern of the 1970s hit “Rhoda.”

Gilbert, 37, won last fall’s nullified election. Harper, 61, finished second in a field of four candidates.

Gilbert is a moderate who believes SAG can serve its membership through measured negotiations with studios, advertisers and agents. Harper represents a more confrontational philosophy that supported a six-month strike against advertisers in 2000.

They lead sharply divided factions within SAG that have been warring for nearly three years. Whoever wins takes office immediately and will represent the union Sunday night during the Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony at the Shrine Auditorium, which will be televised on cable channel TNT.

More important, the winner will lead a union whose members chronically face rejection and sometimes aim their frustrations at each other over issues ranging from runaway productions to facing off against powerful media conglomerates.

The vote also could be a bellwether of where the membership stands on a proposed agreement to give agents greater freedom to link up financially with companies that employ actors.

At a 69-year-old union in which members still debate whether one of its former presidents, Ronald Reagan, sold out the guild in a strike 42 years ago, fighting often has been the norm. David Prindle, a University of Texas professor who wrote “The Politics of Glamour,” a history of SAG, said other periods of fighting occurred “in the 1930s, the 1940s, the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s and in the 1990s.”

But few veterans recall a time when the bitterness was so public and so lengthy, exacerbated by the use of vitriolic e-mails, faxes and Web sites where there are seemingly no rules when it comes to trashing opponents.

“In the past there may have been a lot of mix-ups, screaming and hollering,” former SAG President Charlton Heston said. “But then it tended to stay within the place. What I find here is deeply disturbing.”

The catalyst for the latest round of fighting came in January, when a SAG committee headed by actor Fred Savage upheld an appeal by Harper and others to scrap the last election. Savage’s committee cited two irregularities: There was no signature line on ballot envelopes sent to New York members and they had two additional days to vote. Also required to run again are two members of Harper’s ticket who won--Treasurer Kent McCord and Recording Secretary Elliott Gould.

Gilbert supporters fired back, calling the action a coup by a committee packed with Harper supporters that will cost the financially strapped union more than $100,000 to rerun the vote. They noted that the violations were minor and Gilbert would have won anyway. They also asked the Department of Labor to overturn the decision. The agency is investigating the matter.

The result was a verbal free-for-all that has become one of Hollywood’s most entertaining sideshows.

Gilbert supporters, for example, disparagingly dub Harper supporters “Val’s Pals” and “The Refuse to Lose Ticket.”

A mass fax from Harper’s side suggested that Gilbert and her team would “sell out this union at the bargaining table,” citing a famous line from a classic film to galvanize support. “Picture Alec Guinness in ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’ lamenting ‘What have I done?’ ” the fax read.

That prompted Oscar-nominated actor James Cromwell, star of “Babe” and “L.A. Confidential,” to dash off an angry letter to Harper.

“I think it’s deplorable that you’ve turned this election into a cat fight,” Cromwell wrote. “Rather than Col. Nicolson’s lament, ‘What have I done?’ I am reminded of Joseph Welch’s reply to Sen. McCarthy, ‘Sir, have you no shame?’ ”

Emmy-winning actress Jane Kaczmarek, star of “Malcolm in the Middle,” was so upset at receiving a Harper fax on a phone line that she and her husband, “West Wing” star Bradley Whitford, keep private that she has demanded an invasion of privacy investigation by SAG officials.

Some of the chief actors in the drama haven’t received this kind of ink in years, and at times the lineup seems as if it came from an evening of Nick at Nite.

In addition to Gilbert and Harper (who can still be seen on reruns of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”), there’s Savage, who played Kevin Arnold on “The Wonder Years” and McCord, who in the late 1960s starred as Officer Jim Reed on “Adam-12.”

The biggest dust-up came last month between two actors who have known each other for years. Both appeared in “MASH,” one in the movie, the other in the TV show.

Harper partisan Gould, 63, played “Trapper” John McIntyre in the film version, while Gilbert supporter Mike Farrell, 63, starred in the TV version as Capt. B.J. Hunnicut.

Gould called Farrell “a slug” during a rally at a Los Angeles theater.

“It’s bizarre. What was I to say to a thing like that?” Farrell said in an interview this week.

Farrell said he was on the verge of sending Gould an order of escargot from a restaurant when he had second thoughts.

“The people who have reduced this contest to such an ugly and personal level are going to have to take responsibility for it in one of two ways,” Farrell said of Harper’s camp. “Either they win as a result of these . . . tactics and try to run a union that is splintered and bloodied, or they lose and try to figure out a way to work with people trying to make things run reasonably well.”

Gould, who is running for recording secretary, offers no apologies, saying he has generally stayed above the name calling.

“My only misstep was likening Mr. Farrell to a slug. I likened him to another creature,” Gould said.

Gould said he was responding to an e-mail Farrell sent SAG members criticizing the scrapping of the election results.

“I don’t think he’s been fair, and I don’t think he’s been correct and I don’t think he’s been right,” Gould said.

Heston, SAG’s president in the 1960s, had his own highly public feud in the early 1980s with then-SAG President Ed Asner over the union’s political activities. Heston said he is hopeful the latest feuds will eventually subside when actors recognize they have common problems to solve.

“That’s not to say it can’t get much worse than it is now,” Heston said. “Things certainly will go back and forth with screaming and hollering. But you can survive that, and I know we will.”