Actors' Choice

Onstage at Manhattan's Cort Theater, greying, broad-jawed Actor Ralph Bellamy, 53, brilliantly plays the strong-minded young Politician Franklin D. Roosevelt in Dore Schary's Sunrise at Campobello. Offstage, for the past six years Actor Bellamy has performed an even tougher role: two-term president of the 10,000-member Actors' Equity, A.F.L.-C.I.O.

Last week, after some 200 petitions flowed into Equity's Manhattan office urging him to run again, Bellamy changed his mind, agreed to go for a third term. In deference, the only other announced candidate, Negro Actor Frederick O'Neal, bowed out of the race.

In a profession noted for temperament, Bellamy has been a strong, group-minded president with a talent for toughness and organization. Equity rules now apply for Canadian theaters and off-Broadway productions. The minimum scale has risen 20% since 1952, and rehearsal salaries in the same period jumped 50%. Woefully outdated agency rules were overhauled for the first time in 30 years, and the union's net worth, just shy of $750,000 when Bellamy took office, now stands at $1,500,000. despite expenditures of more than $300,000 for a new headquarters on West 47th Street.

But Chicago-born Actor Bellamy, a veteran of 36 years on stage, screen and television, still has problems to face. Among the leftover projects from his first terms: congressional approval of a tax spread for actors so that fat onetime earnings can be extended to cover lean years; federation with allied theatrical unions.

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