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THE "SILENT" REACHES ITS ZENITH 383
Gaynor, Dennis O'Keefe, Richard Arlen, and Gilbert Roland. A few others served as extras for a brief time early in their careers— such as Clark Gable, Joel McCrea, Walter Brennan, and Gary Cooper. Gary, I believe, was a "Western" extra and, as such, belonged to a category of which a certain amount of experience and skill is required. For special talents, such as horsemanship or chorus singing and dancing, there are special rates of pay and a slightly better chance of advancement.
The functioning of the Central Casting Bureau began on March 27, 1926, a year to the day from our receipt of Commissioner Mathewson's report based on Miss Van Kleeck's survey. The chief feature of the Bureau's operation was the method of paying the extra in cash, or with a negotiable check, in exchange for a Bureau voucher— and this regardless of whether the extra had been hired through the Bureau or directly by the studio. All placements were free. The studios, in effect, paid the commissions. We were glad to find that nearly all opportunities for graft had been automatically eliminated.
The one thing we could not eliminate, and have never been able to, was the problem of too many people for too few jobs.
The first general manager and chief casting director of the Bureau was Dave Allen, later to become head of the Special Effects Department at Columbia Studios. Allen had founded the Screen Service Bureau, which had been one of the more reputable of the employment agencies for extras. Because of this and because he had been an extra himself, he understood and sympathized with the extra player's problem. He was given charge of the office and helped to install the first system of really fair and equitable employment that this class of labor had ever known. First he sold his own agency to the corporation for one dollar.
No doubt many instances of favoritism, nepotism, and outright impropriety had occurred in the early days, but the operational methods of the Bureau rendered such practices all but archaic. From the very beginning the Bureau has employed two trained interviewers of impeccable reputation, a man for the male registrants and a woman for the distaff side. As far as Central Casting is concerned, therefore, the uglier possibilities of employment exploitation were early eliminated.
But Allen was accused falsely of favoring his friends. In those days, and even since, the extra legions have contained not only steady and dependable troupers, but many irrepressible and irresponsible characters who have never learned to discipline their emotions. Some years before, during the filming of The Sea-Hawk, starring Milton Sills, Allen had had all his teeth knocked out by a disgruntled extra who had appeared as a pirate in the picture. On another occasion a cowboy extra, standing six feet four inches and weighing about two hundred and fifty pounds, broke into the inner sanctum and menaced Fred Beetson, Dave Allen, and their assistant, Gus Dembling, with a .44. By dint of fast talking,