Bureau of a Thousand Heartbreaks

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12643, 31 December 1926, Page 11

Bureau of a Thousand Heartbreaks

Where the Film Crowds Await the Verdict I

? A woman representative, who has spent some months in Holly- = § wood in order to investigate at first hand conditions of life in the f s world-famed film city, describes the pitiful scenes that are daily I 5 enacted in the room of a hundred heartbreaks where applicants for I g minor parts seek jobs. -

I HAVE just visited a room in Holly * wood where more hearts are brokon, every day, than in any other room of its kind in the world (writes a correspondent). Officially, it is called the Central Casting office; its object is to keep a complete register of all the extra players in Hollywood, and act as an unpaid agent between these players and the studios. Sometimes the daily number of supers,-known in the profession merely as “atmosphere,” whoso services are required by any of the big producers, does not reach one hundred, sometimes not even ten. As there aro 10,G00 people trying to earn a living by/ “walking on” in films, it is obvious that disappointment, oven starvation, awaits most of them day after day. JUST OUT OF REACH They may work tlireo or four days in a month—if they are lucky!—but still they hovAr found the studios gossiping, boasting, telling anyone who will listen how they “supported” Harold Lloyd or Pola Negri, or how Norma Talmadgo wants thorn for her next picture—“a big hit, she tells me; something really' good.” Something really good is always waiting for them, just out of reach. That is the big tragedy of Holly- j wood.; its greatest heartbreak. And the whole thing is concentrated into a single room in the Central Casting Office, whence studio “atmosphere” is secured, every day. j Seven large rooms comprise the offices ; three of them, separated by glass ! partition?, are the most important. First is the bookkeeping room. GENERALS AND HAGS The centre room is a waiting-room; there interviews take place, and players sit for hours against the wall hoping to learn that they are wanted the next day. They form a varied, half-sad, halfcomic collection ; on the list may be found generals from the Russian Imperial Guard, many British and foreign ex-officers; Chinese, Malays, Spaniards, Italians- men and women with strange faces, frankly hideous; deformities, hunchbacks, old women, grey-haired and wrinkled, v/ho register for work as “hags”—and look it. The third room is the most important ; the telephone room. It contains

j a telephone switchboard with thirty I lines, controlled by two operators; ono large table, with seats for ten men and one girl; each seat has a telephone iaepig it. In their heads, those ten young men carry the names and identities of 10,000 players! At three o’clock ■‘he outer offices j close. . By four o’clock messages have , come in from all the studios, giving the number of atmosphere players required next day ; the kind of scene, and the time “shootiijg” starts. 700 CALLS AN HOUR These orders are taken and divided between the ten casting directors; each one is' made responsible for hooking sufficient players - to cover his particular order, and the whole thing is done by telephone. From 4 o’clock to 7 p.m. players on the office register start ringing up from all over Holly wood; over 700 calls an hour come through. The men sit at their telephones, with lists and pencils ready. The telephone operators sav: “Central Casting Office,” and immediately give the name of the caller. Prcibably the name is repented by one of the casting men, in which case the operator connects the caPer to that man, and a conversation ending in an engagement follows. If the name, on being given twice by the telephone operator, is not caught up by anyone at the casting table, the operator speaks to the caller, saying: “No, acting. Nothing yet!” and clears the line. The noise in this room is terrific, but out of it all a vast amovmt of business emerges, triumphantly. The general sound is like this:— SEVEN DOLLARS “Buck Carey. . . Give Buck. to Gordon; he wants him . . . No; I want Buck! Over here, please. Say, Buck, to-morrow morning. Fox Studios, 7.30, ready to leave for location; evening clothes; seven dollars. 0.K.” “Hi, wait a minute! Did vou say Mary Freeling? Gimme her! I wanna talk to her . . . No, give her to me; I’ve got her on my list. Working, Mary ? I want you tomorrow morning, rain or shine, Lasky Studios; beautiful evening gown and wrap.dressed and on set 8.30; pay fou 10 dollars. 0.K.” So it goes on, without breathing space, for about three hours.