ACTOR’S SALARIES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 153, 30 June 1934, Page 14

ACTOR’S SALARIES

FURTHER COLOSSAL FIGURES. RECEIPTS IN HOLLYWOOD. Further details concerning film actors’ salaries were recently made known in an English journal which stated that in Hollywood there are not more than 1500 people in the filmmaking business who cam regularly more than £lO a week. This does not include free lancers, prayers whose work is intermittent and uncertain, as in the case of Edmund Lowe, who can get £lOOO a week with a five weeks* guarantee on each picture. Victor McLaglen, who is teamed at least once a year with Lowe, and who recently went heme to England to appear in 44 Dick Turpin,” earns about the same amount. Edward Everett Horton flits between Hollywood and London making films on both sides of the Atlantic, and his salary is usually round about the £lOOO mark. But it is the players uncer contract

who earn really big salaries. The biggest salaries are obtained by what are called ‘‘Prestige Stars.” When Warners signed up William Powell and Ruth Chatterton not veiy long ago they were fighting in keen competition with another company for the prestige these two stars would give them both before the trade and the public. The result was that Powell was given a contract covering forty weeks at about £2OO a week, and Ruth Chatterton was promised £93.000 over a period of two years. Among other “ Prestige Stars” Greta Garbo is receiving between £2OOO and £3OOO a week for at least rorty weeks a year. This is under the new contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. which she signed upon her return from her holiday in Sweden. Marie Dressier, who is the biggest box-office draw at the same studio, receives only about £5OO a week, plus bonuses. But this has been, and still is, a regular payment year in and year out, and Marie has continued to draw her salary during several long periods of illness. 4 ‘Mary Queen of Tscots” will star Madeleine Carioll as Mary. “Advice to the Lovelorn/’ AH the trials and tribulations that go with editing an “agony” column of a big metropolitan daily, fall to the lot o-f breezy Lee Tracy In his new picture “Advice to the nuveiom.” And it is no ordinary loveiorn column that the brisk blond star conducts in this newest offering of Joseph M. Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck's 20th century pictures. As Toby Frentiss, h e dishes out some of the goottest advice ever taken to heart by a lovelorn bouL But it’s all part of Toby’s plot to wriggle cut or a five-year contract that holds him to the detested post to which he was demoted as a penalty for . getting drunk and missing the year's prize story by sleeping calmly through an event of no less cataclysmic proportions than a major earthquake. The role of Toby Prentiss is made to order for Tracy and his work under the brisk direction of Al Worker in this superlatively entertaining .United Artists’ release easily tops any performance he has given. Sally Elane brings her superlative charm and loveliness to the role of lits sweetheart.

* • • • Australian Shows. Sydney and Melbourne are doing un-heard-of business in the theatre to-day. “White Horse Inn.” the musical play that is breaking all records, at the Sydney Theatre Royal, is one of the most successful shows presented in London in recent years, and ran for nearly twelve months at the Coliseum. Another strong attraction in Sydney is “Fresh Fields,” Ivor Nc-vello’s much discussed comedy, which was received in London with overwhelming enthusiasm. “The Dubarry,” at the King’s Theatre, Melbourne, with Sylvia Welling in the lead, sends play patrons seeking library information regarding th© famous lady who, born a daughter of a pretty cook and an unknown father, had some education in a convent, tiled hei lovely hands at peddling cheap jewellery, entered a millinery estaolishment much frequented by young gallants of Mhe period, became a gambler’s decoy Vi id eventually the mistress of Louis KV. after sb© had been conveniently married w a count.