Radio age research, manufacturing, communications, broadcasting, television (1941)

«*^ Casting for Television Stan of Broadnay and Hollywood, Once Skeptical of Television, Now Look Upon New Medmm as Potent Showcase for Talent ever since. But those many who gave radio the brushoff have had good cause to regret it. This is something today's actors don't want to have repeated. They see television as something that can coin them a lot of money even if, at present, many of them are not getting rich on it. If one fact about casting for tele- vision stands head and shoulder above all others it is that stage ex- perience is an actor's best qualifica- tion. We have auditioned thousands upon thousands of hopeful aspirants for video programs and in virtually every case, the actor who has trod the board, "has it". Stage Actors Preferable Stage actors, accustomed to act- ing with their whole bodies and able to memorize hours of script in com- paratively short periods of time, are generally preferable to radio people whose voices are better actors than their bodies and who are better script readers than script memo- rizers. I say "generally" because there are, of course major excep- tions. As to film people, they are in general, too far from us geographi- ically and at present too hard to iii By Owen Davis, Jr. Director of Program Preparation and Procurement National Broadcast Company THE casting picture at NBC has changed greatly since, let us say, two years ago. Talent in those days was pretty hard to get; the industry was small, it offered little money compensation and the over- head lights were a great deal less comfortable than those used now. This is not to say that we were un- able to obtain top-name stars. We could and we did, for even then there were actors and actresses genuinely interested in learning the ins and outs of the medium. But today—with many commer- cial programs on the air and a grow- ing number of dramatic productions seeing the light of day—actors are literally flocking to our doorsteps for a chance to appear on television. The reason is simple: television is something they want. They like it artistically and they are afraid to be left out of it financially. And since art and finances are the two chief concerns of any actor, we are having little trouble getting good talent for our shows. All actors today either remember or have been told about the early days of radio, when radio was screaming for talent and the great majority of Broadway and Holly- wood actors were ignoring the screams. What happened was that those few who paid attention to the plaintive cries got in on the ground floor and have been making money get hold ot to permit any generali- zations. The actor today sees television as a mighty i)otent showcase. When an actor goes on television, he knows that his audience may reach into the millions. It would take him many years of appearing on stage to play to that kind of audience. By and large it is the stage ac- tor—the actor trained to play before "live" audiences without a script— who thus far has been most success- ful in television. It is the actor who has felt that "rapprochement" with his audience—whose gags or whose lines are timed split-second with the audience's reaction. Actors have told me that api)earing on television is like one "first-night" after an- other on the stage. Once the show is under way on television there are no re-takes, and once the show is over, it is not repeated hundreds of times by the same actors as a stageplay is. So there is something to the attitude of "first-nighters." Generally speaking, of course, a good actor will be a successful one in television as he would be in any other medium. Talent, wherever it is found, is talent. That television can benefit actors and actresses is demonstrated by the list of Broadway and Hollywood contracts that have been signed as a i-esult of ai^pearances on NBC. Ann Irish. Kathleen McGuire, Olive Stacy and \'aughn Taylor all came (Continued on page .70) PAT GRAY A.ND .MAURICE MAXSON, THE AUTHOR TELEVISION PLAYERS, AUDITION FOR (AT RIGHT). [RADIO AGE 27]