The Screen Writers Guild was an organization of Hollywood screenplay authors, formed as a union in 1933. In 1954, it became two different organizations: Writers Guild of America, West and the Writers Guild of America, East. Founding Screenwriters' earliest attempts at organizing date back to the 1910s, when film scenarists participated in The Authors League of America (now the Authors Guild). However, screenwriters soon identified a need to form their own organization, since they had different work products and challenges than literary writers. Another attempt at representation was the Photoplay Authors’ League, founded in 1914 in Los Angeles, but it disbanded after two years. In Summer 1920, twelve writers announced the formation of the Screen Writers Guild. They published an open letter in Variety, defining six objectives of the organization, and inviting all industry writers to apply for membership. Members had to derive income from some form of film writing, and to receive nominations from two existing members. The Guild also formed a social arm, The Writers. The club purchased a mansion on Sunset Boulevard and converted it to a clubhouse, which became a gathering place for SWG members. The Writers held numerous dinners, parties, and presentations of one-act plays through the mid-1930s. Starting in 1927, several historic trends caused the SWG's organizing and representation efforts to become nearly inactive. Louis B. Mayer founded the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences as a means of bypassing union negotiations. Warner Brothers released the first commercial sound film, The Jazz Singer, bringing fundamental changes to screenwriting. And the Great Depression began taking a toll on all aspects of filmmaking economics. In 1933, ten writers met to discuss revitalizing the SWG as union under the protection of laws governing unions under consideration by Congress and eventually embodied in the Wagner Act of 1935. They included Donald Ogden Stewart, Charles Brackett, John Bright, Philip Dunne, Dorothy Parker and Howard J. Green; the union's first president. Others active in the 1930s included Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett, Ogden Nash, Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, and Maurice Rapf. It sought to establish criteria for crediting authors for creating or contributing to a screenplay, known as "screen credits." The film studios responded by refusing to hire Guild members and forming a rival organization called the Screen Playwrights. When the Guild appealed to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the NLRB certified the Guild as the "exclusive bargaining agency"