Stars and Salaries

When a cinema code was finally adopted last autumn, President Roosevelt suspended, pending further investigation, two clauses which seemed particularly galling to the industry. One clause declared against "excessive" salaries; the other prohibited producers from raiding their rivals' star performers with offers of higher salaries. When cinema companies began going bankrupt, Hollywood ceased to brag of its wage scale and cinema employes began to take unusual pains to get their Federal income tax returns just right. Last week, NRA Division Administrator Sol Arian Rosenblatt, able Broadway lawyer, made his long-awaited report on stars and salaries:

P: In 1933, while the industry was losing $19,500,000, no cinema salaries were $75,000 or more.

P: Highest annual pay in the industry was $315,000, to an unnamed actor. Next highest was $296,000, which went to an "artist" who got $10,000 a week while working half a year.

P: Of the 20 highest salaries, eight went to actors, four to "artists," six to executives, two to actresses.

P: Of the 113 highest cinema salaries, 51 went to performers, 28 to directors (highest: $150,000), 22 to executives (highest: $104,000 plus $169,000 in other compensation), two to writers, one to a lawyer ($180,000).

P: Highest weekly pay was $25,000, to two actors. In 1933, one of them worked only three weeks, made only $75,000. The other netted $91,000.

Net result of the investigation was a recommendation by Administrator Rosenblatt that the suspension of code provisions on "excessive" salaries be continued indefinitely; that a committee be appointed to report whether cinemartisans should work for a minimum salary plus a percentage of the box office receipts. Declared Administrator Rosenblatt:

"No salary is too high or excessive if the picture meets with unusual public favor as a result of unique direction or artistry. . . . Public popularity of artists is a flimsy and perishable product.

"Faced with the problem of decreased patronage and with the added problems of tremendous fixed charges, the industry was forced both to reduce theatre admission prices and to attempt to improve the quality of entertainment in the effort to attract more people into the theatres. To accomplish this, the producers invited the public with glamorous and more glamorous personalities. Producers discovered that the creation of such personalities was a costly process and that, moreover, once created, they were always open to the predatory raids of competing producers.

"It appears that the services performed by stars and directors are of such character, and, moreover, their temperament is of such a character, that complete contentment is necessary to the proper performance of their work.

"Their value is apparently nil when they are 'unhappy.'

"It is a common experience of producers that where offers of increased compensation are made to stars during their present employment, their services become practically worthless to their employers unless their salaries are increased to accord with the competing offer.

"The mere offer to a star of substantially increased compensation upon termination of his existing contract apparently produces a psychological effect in his work which tends to decrease or actually destroy the value of his services to his present employer." Pleased at such a sympathetic description of its unbusinesslike behavior, Hollywood busied itself last week by trying to guess the names of the highest paid actors and artists in the industry. Highest paid performers might have been Eddie Cantor ($275,000 a picture), Will Rogers ($125,000 a picture), John Barrymore ($75,000 per picture), Greta Garbo ($9,000 a week), Ruth Chatterton or Constance Bennett. The artist might have been Mae West, who writes her own pictures.

Last week small, sparkling Shirley Temple moved up into President Roosevelt's class as a wage-earner, when her salary dispute with Fox was amicably compromised at $1,000 a week, with a contract of $250 a week for her mother (TIME, July 23).

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