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382 MOTION PICTURES 1922-1943
like trying to "decasualize" a gold rush. And there could be no such thing as seniority, for example, among people who were hired on a basis of appearance or type. So in 1925 there were at least thirty thousand extras, or persons who called themselves such, for maybe a thousand jobs. Incidentally, that is a liberal average for daily extras' jobs, even in boom times.
In August of 1925 the Board of Directors of the West Coast Association unanimously approved forming a non-profit corporation with capital stock of $30,000. Of this sum, I believe 60 per cent was subscribed by First National, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Universal, and Fox, and the remaining 40 per cent by the other studio corporations. I have estimated that in the early days it cost the producers $110,000 per year to run Central Casting; but it saved the extra people $1,000,000 in commissions. This meant something when one considers that the daily earning of an extra in those days was $3.20, plus a box lunch, and I fear that some of the agencies would have taken part of the lunch, had there been a way to do it.
On January 19, 1926, I had the pleasure of being present at the foundation of the corporation: Central Casting Corporation. Fred Beetson, whom I had sent out earlier as my personal representative and who was at this time a vice-president of the MPPA, became the first president of Central Casting. I wish to emphasize that although the Central Casting Corporation was created as a result of investigations I had suggested, it has never been a part of our Association. It is more closely related to the MPPA, or West Coast Association. I was at most a kind of godfather. The corporation operates through and controls the Central Casting Bureau, which has a general manager and bureau personnel.
At about that time I took the opportunity to warn the public against various and sundry fake "movie schools" and "scenario-writing schools" which pretended to be able to secure jobs in studios for their successful "graduates." The industry has always refused to endorse any school pretending to train people to be extras. This is not to say that there are not a number of reputable talent schools, or that the producers do not wish the extras to attend them. But schools purporting to train extras, as such, are manifestly rackets, for the simple reason that an extra needs no preliminary training. And right here the distinction should be pointed out between an extra and an actor. The extra is not an apprentice or a kind of junior-grade actor who may, simply because he is an extra, aspire to better roles. Unlike Napoleon's recruit, he carries no marshal's baton in his knapsack. It is notable that of the seventy thousand or so people who have been extras at one time or another, not more than a dozen have risen to stardom. This tiny group— composed of the exceptions which prove the rule— deserves the greatest credit. It includes Erich von Stroheim, Jean Arthur, the late Jean Harlow, Charles Farrell, Janet