FLASHES FROM STUDIOS

April 17, 1932

Two pictures with out-of-the-way locations, one Greenland and the other the Malay Peninsula, will be made this year by Universal. The first of these, to be called tentatively “Iceberg,” calls for a special expedition, to be headed by Dr. Arnold Franck, explorer and motion picture director. Carl Laemmle is arranging for the fitting out of an Arctic vessel in a Copenhagen shipyard, and he has announced that the expedition has secured the approval and scientific backing of the Danish government. Dr. Franck is at present in Hollywood, where he consulted with Mr. Laemmle and with Paul Kohner, who will act as associate producer. It is anticipated that the expedition will be fully equipped by May 20. The personnel will consist of Universal players, technicians and photographers, mountain climbers, aviators and guides. The expedition will land at Godthaab and work inland.

The other picture, “Pagan River,” will be adapted from a novel by Wong Wellesley.




Four Ducks, “actors” in Harold Lloyd’s new comedy, “Movie Crazy,” have been insured for the duration of the production for a total of $10,000. Other ducks, which had been trained for their “roles” were stolen, and protective measures were deemed necessary.




Among those in the cast of “The Old Dark House,” to be produced by Universal, is John Dudgeon, 102 year old English actor.




Fox Films announces a new leading part for Adolphe Menjou in “Fancy Free,” a screen adaptation from a play by James Forbes. Joan Marsh will have a featured part.




“Tiger Shark” is a production which Howard Hawks is to direct for First National. Shortly after completing “The Crowd Roars” for Warner Brothers, Mr. Hawks sailed for Honolulu, where he prepared the script for the picture. It will deal with fishermen along the Californian and Mexican coasts.




Three English stage and screen players will appear with Ann Harding in RKO-Pathe’s “Westward Passage.” They are Juliette Compton, Lucy Dorane and Laurence Olivier.




Miriam Hopkins, who has been hard at work since her first film success a year ago with Maurice Chevalier and Claudette Colbert in “The Smiling Lieutenant,” is on a two months’ leave of absence. She is going to England. Miss Hopkins acts the leading feminine part in “The World and the Flesh.”




Walt Disney, creator of Mickey Mouse animated cartoons, will move his bizarre animals from Columbia lots to those of United Artists some time in the middle of July.




Among the cast in “Love Me Tonight,” Maurice Chevalier’s next picture, will be Jeanette MacDonald, Charles Ruggles, Charles E. Butterworth, Myrna Loy, C. Aubrey Smith, Blanche Friderici, Elizabeth Patterson and Ethel Griffies.




Wallace Ford, Myrna Loy and Kane Richmond have been signed to new contracts, and Willard Keefe and Milton Raison have been added to the roster of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios in Culver City.




Zasu Pitts, Robert McQuade and Gloria Stuart have been assigned roles in Fannie Hurst’s “Back Street.” The featured parts in this Universal picture are taken by Irene Dunne and John Boles.


Ten thousand prints of feature-length motion pictures are produced annually at Paramount’s Hollywood Studio laboratory, according to a report by H. N. Ensign, head of the laboratory. An average of two hundred prints is made on the first order for all of the productions of the Paramount studios, making a total of approximately 10,400 release prints.

HOLLYWOOD PRESSES PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN FOR PRINCELY FILM SALARIES

Stars, Studio Press Agents, Coast Writers, All Join in Defense

By Chester B. Bahn
April 17, 1932

It may be that I am unduly suspicious, but it seems to me that Hollywood at this writing is industriously engaged in an organized, or if not that, then an unorganized movement to uphold the sizeable stipends which a free-spending Fourth Industry pays its studio aristocracy.

When Conrad Nagel, filmland’s charming ambassador to American fandom, assures that “headline salaries” actually reward but 23 out of 25,000 screen players; when studio press departments release stories purporting to show where the movie dollar goes; when Coast chatter writers are induced to dwell upon the fact that many film stars are broke despite their “telephone number” paychecks; when publicity men insist that still more cinema luminaries have exchanged those onyx sunken baths for cottage plumbing, what else can one think?

Cinemactors and cinemactresses, of course, are well within their rights when they strive to maintain salary levels, and inasmuch as producers have tacitly admitted that “names” are the most potent box office quantity, there would seem to be some justice in their contention that the economic pruning knife pass them by.

My quarrel, if any, is not with the movement, but with its propaganda, whether the latter professes to be factual or argumentative. For instance, Mr. Nagel’s emphasis upon the comparatively few players who are paid “headline salaries.” Hollywood’s envoy was exceedingly careful not to interpret the phrase in terms of dollars and cents; that was something he left for his auditors. But he did manage to convey the thought that the incomes of even the highest paid players were paltry indeed when compared with those enjoyed by leaders in commerce, industry and finance.

What, then, actually constitutes a “headline salary?” One thousand, two thousand, or five thousand dollars a week? Certainly it must be more than two thousand, for it would not be very difficult to list 23 whose weekly earning reach that figure; and if five thousand should be Mr. Nagel’s measuring rod, what about those stars who receive $10,000, more or less? Are their paychecks to be listed as “super-headline salaries?”

It all depends, of course, on the point of view.



To the non-professional whose total depression salary for the year 1932 will be less than one-half the sum Greta Garbo earns in six working days, even one thousand a week must appear a “super-headline salary.” And yet it was to them, if you please, that Mr. Nagel’s remarks were addressed on tour. Naturally their interpretation was one thing; Mr. Nagel’s, if given, would be another. Perhaps now you can understand some of the fan reaction which has seemed so curious.

I fear that Conrad did the Hollywood salary cause more harm than good by his references to the limited number of “headline paychecks” without defining his standard. To the “90 per cent” accustomed to regarding $52,000 a year as fabulous, the assertion that only 23 film players are richly rewarded had the ring of a lead half dollar.



Returning for a paragraph or two to the subject of “headline salaries,” I should say that these reputed paychecks would so qualify:

Marion Davies, $12,500; John Gilbert, $10,000; Maurice Chevalier, $10,000; George Arliss, $10,000; Four Marx Brothers, $10,000; Richard Barthelmess, $9,000; Norma Shearer, $9,000; Ruth Chatterton, $9,000; Constance Bennett, $9,000; Eddie Cantor, $8,800; Barbara Stanwyck, $8,500; Jackie Cooper, $7,500; Ann Harding, $7,000; Greta Garbo, $7,000; Joe E. Brown, $6,250; Edward G. Robinson, $5,500; Olsen and Johnson, $5,000; Pola Negri, $5,000; Lilyan Tashman, $5,000; Wallace Beery, $5,000; Ramon Novarro, $5,000; Tom Mix, $5,000; George Bancroft, $5,000; Richard Dix, $5,000; Lowell Sherman, $5,000; Ronald Colman, $5,000; Buster Keaton, $5,000; Gloria Swanson, $5,000; Billie Dove, $4,500; Dorothy Mackaill, $4,000; Ken Murray, $4,000; Warner Baxter, $3,500; Esther Ralston, $3,500; Chic Sale, $3,500; Estelle Taylor, $3,000; El Brendel, $2,500; Mitzi Green, $2,500; Alice White, $2,500.



Include $2,000 salaries in the summary and you have these additional names:

Benny Rubin, Mary Astor, Lois Moran, Edward Everett Horton, Gary Cooper, Nancy Carroll, Bert Wheeler, Janet Gaynor, Clark Gable, Edmund Lowe, Lupe Velez, Clive Brook, Claudette Colbert, Fredric March, Robert Montgomery, Richard Arlen and Spencer Tracy.



I accept no personal responsibility for the authenticity of these figures; they come from various respectable sources, including Variety, the Detroit Free Press and others. Re-reading the lists I notice the absence of such names as Will Rogers and Tallulah Bankhead; the former is paid $30,000 a week for 15 weeks by Fox; Miss Bankhead, I understand, receives $125,000 a picture.



And surely the stipends received by Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Marie Dressler, Lawrence Tibbett, Lionel and John Barrymore, William Powell, William Haines, Polly Moran and innumerable others whose names may suggest themselves to you are not exactly “chicken feed.”

If fairness it should be said that the salaries in specific instances may represent the sums paid for stage appearances between pictures; I very much doubt, for instance, if Jackie Cooper receives $7,500 each week from M-G-M.



I suppose that this statement will brand me an iconoclast, but I am of the opinion that Hollywood has been too apologetic all along when paychecks, real or fancied, are under discussion. I do not say that the year’s gross artistic labors of John Gilbert are worth a sum five times that annually paid the president of these United States for guiding the ship of State – that’s something else again – but I believe that Mr. Gilbert’s service at $10,000 a week netted a neat profit to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at the time the contract was negotiated. That the talkies were to come along and wreck the studio’s investment does not enter into the case at all.

Instead of beating about the bush, hemming and hawing, and then finally stammering out lame excuses, Hollywood, when the subject of salaries is brought up, should speak right out. Player’s contracts reflect the box-office drawing power. If $10,000 is paid a particular actor or actress, it is because that money will be returned, with interest, by fandom. In the last analysis, salaries are dictated, not by studios, but by moviegoers. The princely paychecks [illegible line] … business standpoint, they are unassailable.

Critics of filmdom, it seems to me, would be on firmer ground were they to concentrate their fire upon studio wastage; certainly there is a fertile field for criticism when studios confess that expenditures of $200,000 and $300,000 have been necessary to salvage a given production.

It would seem, of course, that even the cinemactor forced to be content with $1000 a week could save a pretty penny for the approaching rainy day, but that is not so, if you will accept the propaganda flowing eastward by wire and mail these mid-April days.

Relman Morin, Coast writer, solemnly assures (via a Los Angeles daily) that “it’s a losing proposition to be a movie star,” and that “the average man, making $50 a week, can save more than the average actor, making $1,500.” And Dan Thomas, who “covers” filmdom for the NEA, spotlights “Hollywood paupers,” a species of humanity who are “by-products of the motion picture industry only.”



Mr. Morin, detailing the sad plight of the $1,000 a week laborer in Elder Hays’ vineyard, says:

“Take a $1000-a-week player. That might not have been terrific in the old days, but it’s highly substantial now. He gets $4,000 a month.

“HOME. Very few of them own their own homes. They rent, usually in Beverly Hills. The average bungalow in that district nicks ‘em from $500 to $1,000 a month to rent.

“AGENT. An agent’s fee is 10 per cent of the total salary. I don’t know anyone except Maurice Chevalier who struggles along without a business manager. There goes another $400.

“INCOME TAX. Under the new law, it runs nearly 20 per cent. Bang, another $800 shot. (We’ve now ruined at least $2,000 of that $4,000.)

“FOOD AND DRINK (particularly drink). Counting parties, this item will hover around the $500-a-month mark. You could list ‘entertainment’ as a separate item, and average $200 a month.

“CLOTHES. For an actress it will run at least $1,000 a month. The average actor spends from $500 to $700 a month. (Barometer says $3,000 or more is in other people’s pockets.)

“BEAUTY. Once again, you can count the man down. But the actress, with a masseur, a hair-dresser, a manicurist, et al., is doing well if she gets out for $200 a month.

“SCATTERED ITEMS. Such as servants, maintenance of the house, maintenance of a car, personal publicity, maintenance of a family (relatives,) charities and a couple dozen others. My manager-friend tells me the victim is lucky if he gets out for less than $1,000 a month on all of these.

“The grand total, in case you’ve lost count, is about $4,500.”

Mr. Morin, of course, expects you to shed an honest tear or two for the actor or actress who pays $500 to $1,000 a month rent and whose “food and drink (particularly drink)” expenditures hit $500 or better, and who must “keep up appearances” – servants, cars, etc. – at a cost of $1,000.

Here again, however, I fear Hollywood employs the wrong tactics. Oh, yes, I know that familiar argument which runs “If I fail to put on a ‘front,’ I am doomed; giving parties, driving expensive motors and all the rest are essential if I am to stay in the swim.”



Perhaps there are instances, too, where it holds true. Gloria Swanson is a case in point. There have been no end to stories regarding Gloria’s financial status. Many will tell you that she is, or at least was practically “broke.” Yet Gloria never has given up her beautiful Beverly Hills mansion, her imported limousine or her servants. From outside appearances there never has been a time when Rockefeller had a thing on her.

Had it not been for that continued display of wealth, many contend Gloria probably would not be in the picture business today. Swanson wearing the latest Paris creation and riding in a Rolls Royce has become almost a tradition in Hollywood.

But Swanson in a cheap ready-made suit, riding in a battered flivver, wouldn’t get past the studio gateman! She found that out once because she tried it for a lark. She dressed in cheap, poorly-fitting clothes, changed her hairdress and went calling on casting directors in search of work – using a fictitious name of course. None of them could be bothered.



On the other hand, lavish expenditures failed to bolster the careers of either Francis X. Bushman or Charles Ray. The former at one time had a fortune of $7,000,000; he spent them and today is a self-confessed pauper. His stellar career also has long since ended. Yet Bushman clings to “front” although it failed dismally to protect his film prestige; when he left the courtroom where he testified in his bankruptcy case, an expensive car and chauffeur were waiting at the curb.



Ray was another who falsely trusted “appearance for appearances sake.” A few years ago when Charles met with financial reverses he kept up the show to the very last minute. Before anyone dreamed of the condition of his failing bank account, he staged a party which seldom has been equaled for lavishness. Nothing was omitted – orchestras, entertainers, champagne and a lavish dinner being provided for the entertainment of his guests. Dancing continued until almost daybreak. And the next day newspaper headlines told those guests that Charles was bankrupt! He could have lived modestly for at least a year with what he spent on that one party, which presumably was designed to attract offers from those he entertained.

The bland assurance that, after all, player salaries represent but a small fraction of each dollar expended in movie making comes from the Fox Film Corporation. Sixteen coppers represent the actor’s split, covering not only the star paychecks but those handed feature players and extra players as well.

DO SCREEN CHILDREN MAKE GOOD WHEN THEY GROW UP?

Several Juvenile Stars of Yesterday Are Ruling Favorites in the Land of Make-Believe Today, While Other Prodigies of a Few Years Ago Have Dropped Out of the Picture Entirely

By Alice L. Tildesley
April 17, 1932

What becomes of child actors when they leave Little-Boy-and-Girl-Land behind?

What chances are there for them to succeed at the same profession when they grow up?

Sam Goldwyn once said that he seldom bothered with actors who had worked as children because the “something essential” was likely to have been burned out or used up before it had matured.

Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich knew nothing of footlights or cameras when they were little girls; Ronald Colman, Clark Gable and Warner Baxter grew up as other boys of their classes, unconnected with things theatrical, the “something essential” slumbering.

Yet Mary Pickford was a child actress.



One of the best bets in Hollywood today, according to the critics who have reviewed pictures in which she has appeared, is Madge Evans, former child star, now determined to prove that nothing essential was ever burned out of her.
Madge is an unbelievably beautiful girl with natural blond hair, blue eyes and a face that can be photographed from any angle.

As a baby, she posed for artists, her best-known effort being an original soap baby. Her parents were not actors and had no connection with the stage; the baby’s posing was a matter of necessity.



When Madge was 4, she used to play with the small daughter of a motion-picture director who lived in the same apartment house. One day a child was needed for a scene. The director persuaded Madge’s mother to bring her over for the day to do the part. It seemed easier than posing, so Madge was taken over to the studio frequently after that.

“I used to run into rooms crying ‘Daddy!’ or ‘Mamma!’ or be put to bed or dressed or washed,” related Madge, “until one day there was a bigger and better part in a picture for me. William A. Brady, then head of World Films, saw the result and thought it would be a good idea to make some child pictures featuring me.

“The Lee children were playing at another studio, making child comedies, but he thought it would be more interesting to make real stories, not concerned with the problems of children, but with a child taking a prominent role. My mother or father would be in trouble, and the solution involved me.

“The woman who wrote the stories used to tell them to me before they decided on them, and I used to feel very important, thinking I was being consulted, but all the time her idea was to get my reaction and find out if a child really would do such things or think such thoughts. If I was confused, or couldn’t understand, she changed the tale until it was clear.



“Baby Marie Osborn was also making child pictures at the time, though we never met.

“When I was 11 I got too big for the pictures and was sent to school. About that time I suppose child pictures slumped, for they stopped making them. If there had been a good market for them, they would probably have found another child.

“Mr. Brady always took an interest in me and I kept in touch with him while I was in school. I was entirely cut off from pictures then and began to be fascinated by the stage. I went to plays instead of pictures, and when I left school I told Mr. Brady I wanted to try the stage.

“He gave me letters to every one who was casting and called up every one he knew who might have a part for me. ‘Daisy Mayme’ was being cast and he made them consider me in the part of the girl. I loved it.

“I went from one part to another. George Kelly wrote a part for me in ‘Philip Goes Forth,’ and I was playing that when M-G-M decided they needed me. I couldn’t let Mr. Kelly down so I stayed to finish the run, while they went on with the picture in Hollywood, saving my scenes to the end.”



The luck that seems to have attended Madge from babyhood was with her then, for Hollywood was full of lovely young girls who might have played the leading lady to Ramon Novarro in this picture. Many had been tested, but the test submitted from New York appealed so strongly that even delay seemed worthwhile.
Madge was met at the train and rushed out to the studio the same evening to make her first scene, dinnerless.

“I’ve been working ever since,” she observed, “although not without food. I’m on my seventh picture.

“I don’t see why child actresses shouldn’t succeed. I hope I can prove the exception, if there’s any rule about it.”



The Lee children – Jane and Katherine – who made child comedies when Madge was starring, are now in vaudeville. Baby Marie Osborne seems to have dropped from sight.



Virginia Lee Corbin, who must have been working in pictures in Hollywood when Madge and her contemporaries were doing the same in the east, was never a star, although she often did leading parts. She returned to the screen when she was 13 to do ingénue roles, played in a number of pictures without ever getting anything very big to do and has now married and left the screen.



Going farther back into screen history, we have Dolores and Helene Costello, who used to do child roles when their father, Maurice, was the idol of film fans.

Dolores was usually cast as a boy, enacting her father as a child because of the resemblance between them, but she hated the work and begged off whenever possible.
Dolores grew up to be a star of great promise, but her marriage to John Barrymore seems to have quenched the flame and her single picture since that event made no great impression.

Helene, on the other hand, who was considered much the better actress when the two were children, failed to register on the screen in later years.



Mary Miles Minter belonged to the early days, too. She came from the stage, where she had had tremendous success as “The Littlest Rebel” with Dustin Farnum. At first she had child parts in pictures. Then, when Mary Pickford demanded more money than her producers felt like bestowing, she was rushed into starring roles.



Lillian and Dorothy Gish, at 12 and 14, portrayed wives. The Talmadge girls in their early teens played everything from boys to mothers. Mary Pickford was too young to buy a ticket for her own picture when she tried to see herself as a young woman on the screen.



Jackie Coogan, perhaps the best known of all child stars, whose performance 12 years ago in “The Kid” was sensational, is again in pictures such as “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn,” but other children in these films steal the honors.

No less an authority than David Belasco once declared after Jackie, aged 10, had read Hamlet’s soliloquy for him, that here was one of America’s greatest actors. But perhaps it is too soon to tell. Jackie’s parents agree that no great actor can afford to be without an education, so the boy spends most of his time at school now, the talkie roles being undertaken during vacations.

Other boy actors, once in the lime-light as potential stars, are Wesley Barry, Ben Alexander, Jack Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.



Wesley Barry tried vaudeville for a while, but without sensational success; established his maturity by getting married and is now said to be bucking the business world.



Ben Alexander, after an interval at school, came back to the screen in an important part in “All Quiet on the Western Front.”



Jack Pickford was on the stage from babyhood. Lillian Gish once told me how greatly he rebelled against it, how it took the united efforts of his mother and sisters and her mother and herself to get him into a girl’s part. He did “Huck Finn” roles in the early screen days, displaying considerable talent, but never made a success after he grew up.



Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. made only one picture as a child. His father had just married Mary Pickford, and after the release of the picture arranged that the boy should go abroad to be educated.

At the time young Doug complained bitterly that his father was trying to ruin his career, that he didn’t want two of the same name to compete, that he was jealous of youth; but later that young man decided that the advantage of foreign education outweighed the advantage of experience on the screen.



Gretchen Young, who used to do round-faced lassies, grew up into Loretta Young, now playing leading roles and not yet fulfilling the promise of her first film days.



Lucille Ricksen, once considered the most talented child on the screen, died under distressing circumstances half a dozen years ago.

Peaches Jackson, well known in Mack Sennett comedies, and a player of juvenile roles in bigger pictures, ran away and got married not long ago, only to have her marriage annulled.



Baby Peggy, child star when Jackie Coogan was at his height, dropped out of sight eight years ago.



Helen Mack, who was the child in “Zaza,” is coming back with a splash as Fox’s favored baby star, sustaining dramatic roles.



Anita Louise, a beautiful blond child, daughter of Alsatian parents, used to appear often in silent pictures; now at 16 she is blossoming into leading parts.



Seven years ago a number of talented children supported Betty Bronson in “Peter Pan.”



Mary Brian, then barely 15, grew up into Hollywood’s sweetest ingénue and is now getting stage training in vaudeville.



Philippe de Lacy, the beautiful youngest boy, was found as a baby on a battlefield in France and brought here by an American nurse who adopted him; his unusual talent still puts him on constant call at studios, though he has entered his teens. The Murphy boys, John and Maurice, are just back from a world tour. One of them has written a book, the other is interested in engineering. The screen knows them no more.

Some years ago Hal Roach was interviewed by a determined mother who had brought her dressed-up infant along. Both infant and parent were affected and tiresome. The producer dismissed them impatiently.

“I hate movie kids!” he snorted to his secretary, and strode to the window. Outside, in the fresh mud left by an April storm, a gang of neighborhood youngsters were playing. As he watched their antics he laughed. Then, being a man of business, he wondered what if what amused him might not amuse others.

“I’ll organize a gang of my own and see if people think them funny,” he decided.

He began that day.



There was little Mary Kornman, Mickey Daniels, the freckled boy; Jackie Condon, Joe Cobb, the fat boy; Johnny Downs, the All-American boys, recruits from average families who had no acting training.



“But we need a little Negro baby to make it complete,” ruminated Mr. Roach. He approached his cook. “Where can I go to get a colored child to work in pictures?”
“Colored chile, honey?” Why, don’t you go no place but here, honey. I got one for you.” And she produced the small boy known as Sunshine Sammy.



A little bit later Farina was added to the gang, it being desirable that Sammy have a sister. Farina was a boy and had to be disguised as a girl for his first picture, much to his disgust.

The “Our Gang” comedies made such a hit that they were continued, new members being added as the older ones grow up.

Sunshine Sammy went into vaudeville and is today one of our best dancers, seldom out of an engagement. Farina, just past the “cute” age, has followed in Sammy’s footsteps and is trying the three-a-day.



Mary Kornman and Mickey Daniels have graduated into Boy Friend comedies, a series at the same studio, featuring the problems of adolescence.



Joe Cobb has gone back to Dallas, Tex., to finish his education, and most of the rest are accepting engagements in vaudeville whenever offered.

As has happened with older players who had their first experience on comedy lots, some of the best Hollywood talent has come from “Our Gang.”

Mary Kornman shows signs of being an accomplished actress before she is 18.



Jackie Cooper, considered by many as the finest child actor of all time and already a star in his own right, competing this year for the highest prize for acting in the award of the community, began at Hal Roach studios.



Eugene Jackson, the young Negro boy who appeared in “Cimarron” and whose intelligent work was noted by critics everywhere, got his first training there.