What is SAG?
A president in more ways than one...
The SAG Awards were held last night, honoring the best in film and television like the dozen or so other award shows in the first quarter of the year. Unlike the Golden Globes’ Hollywood Foreign Press, the SAG is not just some makeshift organization with the sole purpose of handing out trophies to actors.
SAG refers to the Screen Actors Guild, which is “the nation’s largest labor union representing working actors.”1 Because an actor’s career can be in a constant flux of work followed by time off followed by work, etc., it’s important to have a strong union to fight for proper benefits and rights of working actors. The current president is Ken Howard (star of The White Shadow TV series from decades earlier), and former presidents have included Ed Asner, Patty Duke, James Cagney, and even a former U.S. President, Ronald Reagan.
So why does a union need to hold an awards show to recognize the achievements of its members? When asked like that, it seems like they are the one group who SHOULD be handing out awards. The real question may be why random third party affiliations feel the need to shower Hollywood with official praise in the form of statuettes. You can debate that Dinner Topic all you’d like, but the answer will almost always have something to do with money, even in the realm of the arts.
Read on:
CBSNews.com – SAG Award Winners: Betty’s “Hot,” Portman’s “Swan,” Buscemi’s “Empire”
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