Guild Presidents

Michele Mulroney is an LA-based screenwriter-director-producer and has been a WGAW member since 2004. She co-wrote Power Rangers, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, and Paper Man—which Mulroney also co-directed. She is currently working on Big Thunder Mountain, Land of the Lost, Second You, Blockbuster, and Fox Hills in addition to developing two half-hour TV comedies. She is a graduate of the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama in London and an alumna of the Sundance Writers & Directors Labs. Mulroney is the Board President of L.A. non-profit ManifestWorks and served as Vice President of WGAW from 2021-2025 before becoming President in 2025.

Meredith Stiehm has been a Guild member since 1994, and served on the Board of Directors for six years before becoming WGAW President. She was a writer and executive producer of Homeland (Showtime) for five years—winning the Emmy, Golden Globe, Writers Guild, and Peabody Awards for drama series. She was the co-creator and executive producer of The Bridge (FX), winner of a 2013 Peabody Award; and creator and executive producer of the drama series Cold Case, which ran for seven years on CBS. Other writing credits include: NYPD Blue (Emmy nomination for outstanding writing for a drama series) and ER (two Emmy nominations for outstanding drama series). Meredith has written pilots for HBO, Showtime, Amazon, and BBC America. 

After graduating, he became a political speechwriter and served as the chief speechwriter for Governor Bruce Babbitt’s presidential campaign in 1988.

Starting his screenwriting career in 1988, Keyser’s credits include Benefit of the Doubt for Miramax and the independent film Highland Park, which was completed this year. He is currently preparing to direct his own script, A Great Education. In television, he writes with a partner, Amy Lippman. Together, they have worked on series ranging from L.A. Law to Equal Justice and Sisters. In 1994, they created the drama series Party of Five, which ran for six years on Fox and won, among other honors, the Golden Globe for Best Drama and the Humanitas Prize. Keyser and Lippman went on to create such shows as Time of Your Life and Significant Others. This past September, their latest series, Lone Star, premiered on Fox.

Mr. Keyser is also a partner in the political media company First Tuesday. He serves on the Boards of the Curtis School and of the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Association of Urban Debate Leagues, as well as on the Board of Trustees of the I Have a Dream Foundation, Los Angeles.

Television writer and producer Charles D. Holland has worked on numerous shows, including JAG, Profiler, Millennium, Murder One, and New York Undercover. A member of the California Bar, Holland has a law degree from Harvard Law School, and is a former vice president of business affairs at 20th Century Fox.

Brad Radnitz’s television writing credits include The Lucy Show, Ironside, McMillan and Wife, Family Affair, Streets of San Francisco, The Brady Bunch, Columbo, McHale’s Navy, Cannon, Trapper John, M.D., Tour of Duty, and Mission Impossible. His films and television movies-of-the-week include The Reluctant Spies, Cops and Robin, and To Die in Paris.

His credits as head writer, executive story consultant, and producer include Lone Star Bar & Grill, Dalton, Call to Glory, The Wizard, and MacGyver. Radnitz served as a panelist for the National Endowment of the Humanites and the National Endowment for the Arts and received the WGAw Morgan Cox Award in 1982.

Christopher Knopf, who received three Writers Guild Awards for his television writing, wrote the made-for-television movies Mrs. Sundance (1974), Scott Joplin: King of Ragtime (1977), The Girl Who Spelled Freedom (1986), the miniseries Peter and Paul (1981), and the pilot episode for the classic 1970s TV series The Big Valley. He was supervising producer for Cimarron Strip (1967) and co-executive producer for the TV series Equal Justice (1990), which earned him a NAACP Award. His feature film credits include Emperor of the North (1973).

In addition to serving as WGAW president, he was WGA national chairman and International Writers Guild vice president from 1967 to 1969. He has participated in and chaired several Guild committees, including MBA Enforcement, Screen Credits, TV Credits, Screen Grievance, Affirmative Action, and Credits Review. Knopf was also a trustee of the Motion Picture Relief Fund from 1957 to 1959. He received the WGAW Morgan Cox Award in 1991 and the Edmund H. North Award in 2002 for his 40 years of service to the Guild and professional achievement.

Knopf died in Santa Monica, California on February 13, 2019.

Academy Award-winning writer Charles Schnee used his aversion to stereotypes to create the characters in Red River (1948), The Furies (1950), Westward the Women (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), for which he won the Oscar, and Butterfield 8 (1960).

He drew upon a ranching experience in Wyoming to create realistic westerns, shunning the formulaic hero-versus-villain picture in favor of what he called the “big Western.” “In the ‘big Western,’” he wrote, “the struggle is that of man against the elements, as in Red River, or of man against his fate, as in The Furies. The conflict is no longer easy, but it has adult appeal. The average adult today doesn’t meet many villains in his time, but he has a keen sense of struggling against forces in the world he doesn’t quite understand.”

As WGAW president, he urged screenwriters to write parts for African-Americans that portrayed them “as they exist on the American scene.”

Schnee was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1916. He earned a law degree from Yale University, and was a lawyer in New York. He wrote two Broadway plays before moving to L.A. Schnee died on November 29, 1962.

His collaboration with screenwriter-director Billy Wilder resulted in such memorable films as Ninotchka (1939), A Foreign Affair (1948), and they received best screenplay Oscars for The Lost Weekend (1945) and Sunset Boulevard (1950). Brackett’s collaboration with Richard Breen and Walter Reisch led to a third Academy Award, for Titanic (1953). He also produced The King and I (1956), which won five Oscars.

Eulogized in The New York Times as “one of Hollywood’s elder statesmen and most successful figures,” Brackett served as Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president from 1949 to 1955, was a Screen Producers’ Guild executive board member, and a Motion Picture Relief Fund board member. In 1957 he received an honorary Academy Award for outstanding service to AMPAS; Brackett and Wilder were given the WGA Laurel Award that same year. In addition, the WGA honored Brackett with the Edmund H. North Award in 1967.

He was born in Saratoga Springs, New York, on November 26, 1892, earned a law degree from Harvard Law School, practiced law for six years, and wrote five novels: The Counsel of the Ungodly, Weekend, The Last Infirmity, American Colony, and Entirely Surrounded. Brackett was also a drama critic for The New Yorker and a regular contributor for the Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, and Vanity Fair. During World War I, he enlisted in the American Expeditionary Force, became vice-consul at St. Nazaire, France, was commissioned as a second lieutenant, and earned a medal of honor from the French army for his services. He died in Bel Air on March 9, 1969.

A founder of the Screen Writers Guild, Howard J. Green wrote or co-wrote numerous films, including the silent comedy Life of Riley (1927), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Morning Glory (1933), The Lemon Drop Kid (1934), and George White’s Scandals (1945). He contributed episodes for television series such as The Gene Autry Show, The Roy Rogers Show, and The Adventures of Superman. Green produced a handful of films, including Inside Story (1939).

He was elected chairman of the writer’s branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in 1932. Green was influential in writing the code of practice that governed producer-writer relations of that era. His peers immediately tapped him to represent them in an emergency fact-finding committee during the 50 percent pay-cut dispute of 1933, recommended by the Academy’s board of directors and announced by a group headed by Louis B. Mayer. He lectured on writing at the University of Southern California, and advised aspiring screenwriters to learn to write on legal pads.

“Developing of a screen story is a tedious business, one that requires deep thought for every line,” he said. “As a result, many Hollywood scenarists have given up typing for the slower but more thought-permitting pencil.”

Green was born circa 1893, and was once a newspaper man. He died of a heart attack while attending a Guild meeting on September 2, 1965.

Multi-faceted Alfred A. Cohn wrote dozens of silent and talking films from 1918 to 1934, including Jazzmania (1923), Legend of Hollywood (1924), starring Zasu Pitts, The Jazz Singer (1927), A Holy Terror (1931) with Humphrey Bogart, and Me and My Gal (1932), starring Spencer Tracy. He was also a reporter by the age of 15, newspaper and magazine editor, Associated Press correspondent, U.S. Collector of Customs for the port of Los Angeles from 1935 to 1939, coordinating officer for Treasury Department law enforcement agencies, Los Angeles police commissioner in 1946, playwright, and best-selling author of Gun Notches and Take the Witness.

Although Warner Bros. received a special Academy Award for The Jazz Singer, the first successful full-length talking picture, Cohn got only a certificate of honorable mention for his adaptation.

Cohn was born in Freeport, Illinois, on March 26, 1880. In 1925 he was The Writers’ chairman of the dramatic committee, responsible for hosting seasonal play performances for the club’s members and guests. He died in Los Angeles on February 3, 1951.

He wrote Shattered Memories (1915), A Child of the Paris Streets (1916), The Woman Gives (1920), starring Norma Talmadge, The Gold Diggers (1923), How to Educate a Wife (1924) with Marie Provost, and Up the Ladder (1925).

 

During World War I, Carpenter served as assistant secretary of the Motion-Picture War Service Association, an organization that he said was formed to “unify the patriotic work of the 175,000 member motion picture business,” and included Mack Sennett, D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Cecil B. DeMille, and Mary Pickford as officers. He appeared before a Congressional committee to advocate for directors, writers, and actors in regards to excess profits tax laws.

“Take a man, who after preparation and long effort...writes a successful play,” said Carpenter. “It may earn for him $200,000 in one year, and the tax will take a very large proportion of it... he may never write another successful play, and year by year, his one work earns smaller and smaller sums.” Instead, he suggested, revenue could be generated by taxing inheritances, social and country club memberships, and accumulated wealth.

Carpenter was born circa 1864 in California, and died in Los Angeles on April 21, 1936.

Screenwriter and associate producer Eugene Percy Heath’s credits include Two Flaming Youths (1927), Half a Bride (1928), and Three Weekends (1928). He was best known for his adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), written with Samuel Hoffenstein, which earned them an Academy Award. The film was praised by the Los Angeles Times in 1931 as “a major masterpiece of the screen—a passionate, vibrant document shot through with unparalleled brilliance of writing, performance, and direction.”

He served on The Writers play committee, which presented monthly one-act plays before members and guests. Heath was an active member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, serving on its conciliation committee in 1928 and 1932, and was nominated for its executive committee in 1929.

Heath was born on January 30, 1884, and began his career as a newspaper man at the Baltimore Herald before he switched to playwriting. He wrote the plays Sari, The Scarlet Man, A Bird in Hand, and Mysterious Ways. Heath started in the film business as a writer and adapter in 1919. He died at age 49 on February 9, 1933, in Hollywood.

Co-founder of The Writers, a precursor to the Screen Writers Guild, Rupert Hughes led multiple careers and shared screen credits for the Oscar-nominated The Patent Leather Kid (1927), Ladies’ Man (1931) with Herman Mankiewicz, No One Man (1932) with Sidney Buchman, E. Percy Heath, and Alice Leahy, and FBI Girl (1951), among numerous other films. His directing credits include The Wall Flower (1922), Look Your Best (1923), and True as Steel (1924).

Best known for his more than 60 books and more than a dozen plays, Hughes was one of the elite authors hired for Samuel Goldwyn’s fleet of “Eminent Authors Inc.” In 1936 Hughes resigned from the Screen Writers Guild, accusing its leadership of communism, and formed the rival group the Screen Playwrights.

Hughes was born in Lancaster, Missouri, on January 31, 1872, earned two degrees at Adelbert College in Cleveland, attended Yale University, and began his writing career as a reporter for the New York Journal. In addition to writing, he was a sculptor, composer, scholar, radio commentator, and a citizen soldier who pursued Pancho Villa. He died on September 9, 1956, in Los Angeles.