Motion Picture Magazine, May 1914 (1914)

Big Stage Salaries History Will Not Repeat Itself By ROBERT GRAU Author of "Forty Years' Observation of Music and Drama," "The Stage in the Twentieth Century," etc. Because of the overwhelming and constantly increasing change of environment from the speaking stage to the film studio, on the part of famous players as well as the rank and file of the older calling, one is not surprised to hear many theatrical managers express the helief that his- tory is likely to repeat itself, in that the same evolution which transformed the old-time variety show into the gold-laden modern vaudeville is ahout to convert the Motion Picture art into the most lucrative. field of endeavor for stage talent that the amusement field has ever known. But these gentlemen, wise in their generation, are assuming that the same craze for big names that caused the so- called "legit" invasion of the vaude- ville stage, increasing salaries tenfold in an effort to tempt the celebrity into the two-a-day theaters, is due almost immediately in filmdom as a result of the epidemic of "feature photoplays" and the almost complete capitulation of the theatrical play-producers to the lure of the camera-man. And these experienced showmen are shaking their heads ominously, even going so far as to predict that the one great menace confronting the film industry —the mania for "headliners"—is cer- tain to create the "four-figure weekly salary," and the resultant effort will be to bring about a condition that will end the prosperity of the big produc- ing concerns and cause a big boom for the smaller ones. For the purpose of establishing the difference between the stage and film callings, the writer, having started the "legit" invasion in vaudeville, is en- abled to quote figures with accuracy. For instance, the Four Cohans were paid by the writer $175 a week, when they presented the same act that a few years later caused $3,000 to be en- closed in their pay envelope. A more amazing instance was the case of Elsie 121 Janis. In the spring of one year, for a "turn" of imitations, $125 was meted out to Elsie. In the fall of the following year, the same Elsie, having scored on Broadway in musical comedy, asked and actually received $2,500 a week (and she has had $3,000 since). B. F. Keith paid Mclntyre and Heath $150 a week to do ten turns a day in Boston, and the Ethio- pian duo were the envied of their col- leagues on the same program. Yet it is a truth that this team recently re- turned to the same city, under the same management, in precisely the same specialty, but instead of ten turns a day but two were required; instead of $150 Mr. Keith forked out 2,500 "iron men" every Saturday night, with clock-like regularity. Eva Tanguay was just as clever when she was granted $30 a week as now, when, because she cant have $3,500 a week, she has her own show on tour. Gertrude Hoffman actually had to barnstorm because she could not induce the vaudeville managers to pay her $50 a week, but she had her revenge when, only four years later, the latter agreed to pay her $105,000 for thirty weeks. Sam Ber- nard had a hard time inducing the same men who now gladly pay him $2,500 a week to allow him a single hundred, a decade and a half ago. For three years Victor Moore played his present-day sketch at the munificent salary of $125, out of which he paid his company and ex- penses. Today the same managers fall over each other to pay him ten times as much. I recall when Rose Stahl, already well-known as a star, had to beg to be allowed to play gratis at Proctor's Theater in "The Chorus Lady"; later, $350 a week was paid to Miss Stahl, but when Broadway hailed Rose in the full play expanded from the sketch, she refused $3,500 a week.