WORK AS "EXTRAS."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21165, 23 April 1932, Page 10 (Supplement)

WORK AS "EXTRAS."

TYPES OF APPLICANTS. DESPERATE COMPETITION. Seventeen hundred people recently lined up at the Film Artists' Guild in Wardour Street, struggling for seven days' work at a guinea a day. There were ex-million-aires and Hussiar princes, young men and girls, and little old men and old ladies. As the last of the line filed by Director Sinclair Hill exclaimed: "I knew it was bad, but I had no idea it was as bad as this!" Down at the Surrey Commercial Docks thirty men, dressed as women, were tipped from lifeboats into the ice-cold water for scenes in " '.L'he Happy Ending." The ending to their night's work was thirty shillings, but it really was a happy ending for some of :.hem who had not worked for weeks.

In Hollywood an extra's chance of being noticed for a " bit " is one in two hundred and fifty. Talkies have killed the old practice of giving promising extras a chance 'o play a small part because they look the character. Small bits are all played ay players with stage experience now.

Hollywood has established its own telephone exchango to deal with the extra problem, have, first of all, to be one of the se.ected few (limited to a mere eight or nine thousand), who are " permitted " to ring up and ask for registration. In the evening the casting directors sit beside the operator at the telephone switc'iboard at the Central Casting Bureau. The girl repeats the name of each caller. If the casting director nod* the caller is put through or another line, and talks to an assistant director, who gives the extra the call for tho following day and details of costume rsquired. If the casting director does :iot nod the caller has to ring off in favour of the next would-be extra waiting on the line. It is heyt-breaking, but still they sign on, these girls and boys, old women and old men, all lured by the promise of a guinea or two a day, and that chance of winning through to their names in the canopy lights, a chance which is non-ex-istent* to all tut one in a hundred.