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18
Your Ckance In Talkies
Helen Kane, with Roberta Robinson and Stuart Erwin, in a scene from "Dangerous Nan McGrew."
Frank Heath, casting director, says that the extra most in demand doesn't make $100 a month.
informed, she was a show girl, and had spoken lines in a Broadway play. She was not an extra in the ordinary sense of the word.
Even this was unusual, I discovered later in talking with Frank Heath, the casting director. Directors had learned from experience not to trust even one line to untried people, no matter if they did look the type.
In the experimental days of talkies, directors handed out lines to promising-looking novices. Almost always the people had been attacked with microphone fright and muffed them. Sometimes five hundred feet of film had to be reshot. It was expensive. Directors weren't doing it any more ; it was too risky.
Thanks to the god efficiency, we were through earlier than we would have been in the silent-picture regime. At two p. m. we were getting our cards O. K.'d by the assistant director. A few moments later we were removing make-up and putting on street clothes.
The girls dressing with me were awfully disappointed that their day's work had come to nothing. They hadn't been selected for bits, nor told to come back. They hadn't even had their names and addresses taken by the assistant director, and told they'd be kept in mind. One confessed it took her weeks to get the job. But on one score all of us were greatly pleased. We were given ten dollars for a short day's work.
Later I went to the casting director. I asked him, "Has the extra a chance of getting anywhere in talkies?"
"Untrained extras ?" He shook his head, and gave me to understand that even the most promising novice ordinarily has about the same chance of attracting attention as he would have of climbing to Mars on a bean stalk.
"Working in talkies as extra, and getting ;';/ talkies," he declared, "are different things. Naturally the extra with stage training and the girls in the dance numbers are regarded as something else again. They stand considerable chance.
"I've a man working here for fifteen dollars a day now, an