Invisible labor has long powered Hollywood, from blacklisted writers to uncredited directors. But the rise of AI threatens to erase authorship entirely.
In 1953, Roman Holiday won the Oscar for best screenplay. The statue went to Ian McLellan Hunter. The man who actually wrote it, Dalton Trumbo, was blacklisted and invisible. It would take decades for the Academy to correct the record and attach his name to the film he wrote in exile.
It wasn’t an isolated case.
In 1939, The Wizard of Oz opened with Victor Fleming’s name on the director’s slate. But at least two other directors, George Cukor and King Vidor, had shaped the film’s tone and look. They were reassigned, dismissed, or absorbed into the machinery of the studio system — their fingerprints all over the work but absent from the billing block.
