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THE "SILENT" REACHES ITS ZENITH 381
on the sets. We solved this by providing for a schoolroom in every studio with a full-time teacher, appointed by the Board of Education but paid by the studio. There is one particular rule from which we expected trouble, and that is that no child whose grades do not come up to a certain standard may appear on the set, even of his current production. It may seem incredible, but in the quarter of a century since the establishment of these schools (which John Ford persists in calling "hedge schools") there have been very few such disputes, and none of them serious. The penalty for the child actor who gets low marks is exclusion from the set. It has worked like a charm!
Miss Van Kleeck's investigations were made in co-operation with the State Industrial Welfare Commission, which generously appointed Dr. Louis Bloch to co-operate with her. The gist of her report, submitted through State Labor Commissioner Walter G. Mathewson, was that the extra player was being exploited shamefully, not so much by the studios as by the employment agencies which furnished this live ' commodity" to the sets. For this service, which in many cases amounted to no service at all, since the extra hustled his own job anyhow, the agency would charge a commission, generally 7 or 8 per cent. The agency was able to do this because the extra was not paid in cash at the end of the day, but by a voucher at the agency. The best remedy seemed to be the establishment of some kind of free employment facility, eliminating the agents altogether.
At precisely the same time, another factor appeared which determined us to "decasualize," as Miss Van Kleeck had put it, our extra help. This was the bad publicity the industry was beginning to derive from irresponsible persons and even criminals who, upon being apprehended, claimed to be actors and actresses, even if only extras. It was impossible to prove that they were not. I think that one of the many good incidental features of the Central Casting Bureau was the establishment, long before Social Security, of records of employment.
A little later, too, Fred Beetson, first president of the Central Casting Corporation, arranged with the Los Angeles police to notify his office whenever thieves, pickpockets, or ladies of easy virtue claimed to be extras. By that time it had become possible to find out in a very few minutes if the miscreants were really registrants. Generally, they were not— or if they were, they soon ceased permanently to be registrants. And there were other abuses which the investigation brought to light, including at least half a dozen methods of graft.
Although we became aware of many evils, applying the obvious remedy was more difficult than might be supposed. Unlike most industries confronted with simpler problems of "decasualization," we were up against a vast multitude of people who had daydreamed and wishthought themselves into believing that they were potential stars. It was