WAGE REDUCTIONS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 280, 26 November 1932, Page 18 (Supplement)

WAGE REDUCTIONS

LARGE SUMS INVOLVED. WARNER BROTHERS’ STARS. Constance Bennett, the “glamorous” film star, is expected to lose £5OO a week as the result of wage cuts an nounced recently by the Warner Brothers—First National Organisation. The reductions, ranging from 15 to 35 per cent., follow the cuts of 35 per cent, made by the Metro-Goldwyn-Maver concern in the salaries of all

employees receiving more than £3OO a week. Here is an estimate of what the reductions will mean in the weekly salaries of some of the film stars: William Powell, £l2OO to £800; Ruth Chatterton, £l2OO to £800; Douglas Fairbanks, junr., £5OO to £395; Kay Francis, £5OO to £395; Edward Robinson, £5OO to £395; Warren Williams, £250 to £200; Paul Muni, £3OO to £240; Joe E. Brown, £2OO to £160; Loretta Young, £2OO to £160; Joan Blondell, £l2O to £BO. James Cagney and Ann Dvorak would also have suffered, but they have already left Hollywood. Miss Dvorak is in London, having left Hollywood, whore she received £5O a week, as « protest against her “inadequate compensation.” Constance Bennett’s contract was for £20,000 a picture. She will probably have her yearly pay reduced from £70.000 to approximately £45,000. The company’s leading men stars, George Arliss and Richard Barthelmess, have already voluntarily accepted reductions. Mr. Arliss accepted a cut before his recent journey to England. Richard Barthelmess, whose contract calls for two films a year, has volunteered to make a third without pay.

Juliette Compton, Paramount featured player, is an actress because she had courage, and obeyed an impulse That impulse was to slip out of a crowded New York railway station and leave her known world behind. When the train that was to have borne her to the family summer home in Maine, puffed out of the station, she was not on it. Registered at an hotel under an assumed name, she was looking over ft list of theatrical agencies, wondering where she could apply for a job first.