Bagdad-on-the-Pacific

Hollywood, accustomed to the spotlight, was last week Xrayed. In the best book ever written about Hollywood.* Author Leo Calvin Rosten, 33, who also writes under the name of Leonard Q. Ross, and his staff of social scientists published the product of three years' work (financed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations).

Assorted Hollywoodiana:

> Of Hollywood's 1,753 class-A actors (class-B are extras), half earned $5,000 or less in 1938, 54 made $100,000 or more; 50% of the actors in Hollywood today have never earned as much as $10,500 a year.

> The average annual earnings of 7,050 Hollywood extras in 1940 was $350.

> One-third of Hollywood's actors are not yet 35, 35% of them are 50 or over. The average age of actresses is 34; of actors, 46. Seven percent of the actresses, 26.6% of the actors have had four or more years of college.

> No U.S. industry pays such high salaries to so many men as Hollywood does to its 159 producers, executives, associate producers. Two-thirds of the executives, 31% of the producers were paid over $150,000 apiece in 1938. But one-fifth of the producers and associate producers at three major studios earned under $12,500 annually: 52% of the producers got less than $36,000 each.

> Of 244 directors active in Hollywood in 1938, 31% earned less than $10,000 for the year; 34 earned $100,000 or more.

> Of the 800-odd writers in Hollywood, few can turn out a complete, competent, screen play singlehanded. They are paid substantially less than actors, producers and directors.

> A major studio receives from 18,000 to 45,000 fan letters and post cards a month, 85 to 90% of them written by girls under 21. Most U.S. fan clubs (each dedicated to the exaltation of one star) are run by housewives or business girls with a vague desire to get to Hollywood.

> Requests made of two movie stars by 1,821 fan writers included: a cake of soap, a "piece of gum you have chewed," a cigaret butt, three hairs, a bicycle, and permission to name a pet flea after the star.

> About 76% of the members of the movie colony have never been divorced.

> Comment by a nameless observer on the regal bearing of RKO Actor-Producer-Writer-Director Orson Welles (Citizen Kane): "There, but for the grace of God goes God."

The book rakes no muck. Its job is merely to ungild the lily and count its petals. Such subjects as the economics of picture making, Hollywood guilds and labor problems, censorship and the Hays Office, Rosten leaves for a later volume. He says little here about the mass of the 30,000 movie workers and movie makers who live ordinary lives on ordinary incomes. The picture he offers is of the movie colony (producers, actors, directors, writers) and its elite--some 250 people, most of whom earn $75,000 or more a year.

The Colony. Hollywood's wealth is first-generation wealth, earned by talent or luck, spent by people unaccustomed to handling money. Hollywood's rich are very young (46% of the colony is under 40). Their insistent optimism betrays a vague fear that it can't last. This anxiety makes them morbid, self-deprecating complainers. As one sensitive soul put it: "In this town I'm snubbed socially because I only get a thousand a week. That hurts."

Nouveau riche, thriving, socially clambering, the movie colony lacks lineage and decorum. But, says Rosten: ". . . there is being formed an amusement-aristocracy . . . and Hollywood is assuming the social function of European royalty--'that of luxuriously diverting itself in public and diverting others. . . .' "

The elite of Hollywood numbers some 250 producers, executives, directors, actors, writers, publicity experts, miscellaneous key men. Rulers of the elite are seven top executives of Hollywood's Big Four: Louis B. Mayer and Edgar J. Mannix, of Loew's Inc. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer); Paramount's Y. (for Young) Frank Freeman; 20th Century-Fox's Darryl F. Zanuck and Joseph M. Schenck (now appealing a three-year sentence for income-tax evasion); Warner Bros.' Harry M. and Jack L. Warner.

Many of the men who built the motion-picture industry are still active in Hollywood. They came from vaudeville, flea circuses, petty trade, other shabby zones of enterprise. Their unrefinement sensed and satisfied what the U.S. wanted in the way of entertainment.

"There are striking resemblances," says Rosten, "between the founder of the House of Vanderbilt [Cornelius, steamboat owner] and the founder of the House of Mayer [Louis B., theater owner], between the first Warner [Harry M., butcher's son] and the first Astor [John Jacob, butcher's son], ... In 50 years names like Zanuck, Mannix, and Selznick may well be great. . . . 'Honour,' says an ancient proverb, 'is but ancient riches.' "

The Big Money. Hollywood does not believe in sharing its profits with idle stockholders. In 1939, seven of the eight major studios paid their 188 executives 19% ($6,086,000) of their net profits. Of this sum, almost 35% went to 24 Loew's officials. Only U.S. department-store executives got more (32%) of their firms' net. At that time the motion-picture industry ranked 14th among 18 top U.S. industries in annual volume of business.

In the land where size of pay check determines prestige, at least 850 people made $20,000 or over in 1939. Of 200 in Hollywood who made $75,000 or over in 1938, 80 were actors or actresses, 54 executives and producers, 45 directors, 17 writers, four musical directors.

The movie elite commands large salaries because of the scarcity of Grade-A movie talent and management. But they remain employes, not people of property, and they work for salaries. One or two of the wealthiest "may be worth five million dollars," but that is small change beside the established U.S. fortunes.

The Long Arm. In the larger social heavens of the U.S., Hollywood's star is in the ascendant. Manhattan's cafe society has helped bring new money and old money together. The occupation of moviemaking has also taken on prestige--especially since the late '20s, when the sound track brought authors, dramatists, et al., to jack up Hollywood's creative personnel.

"The long arm of Hollywood reaches into every province of the manners and mores of our time; it does not, except obliquely and occasionally, touch the ideologies of our day." In 1936 Pope Pius XI testified to the importance of the cinema by devoting a special papal encyclical to it. So did Clark Gable when he took off his shirt in It Happened One Night and revealed that he wore no undershirt. That gesture cost U.S. men's underwear manufacturers a 40-50% cut in business with-in the year.

The influence of Hollywood on language, women's fashions, home furnishings, etc., is incalculable. When David Copperfield was being ballyhooed, the Cleveland Public Library, which had 500 copies of the book, was cleaned out of it and other Dickens works for weeks. Four U.S. publishing houses sold all their copies of Wuthering Heights while the picture was showing.

When Dr. Rosten has added it all up, he finds the result "too immense and too subtle for exact appraisal." Says he: "It seems self-evident that Hollywood represents a challenge to the sovereignty of church, school, and family . . . that the movies are 'more than any other art the social and political problem of our day.' "

* Hollywood: The Movie Colony--the Movie Makers (Harcourt Brace; $4).

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