Screenland (May-Oct 1931)

for May 19 3 1 l The RADIO GOLD RUSH From $2,500 to $25,000 for a few minutes of broadcasting! No wonder your favorite entertainers are rushing to the microphones By Louis Keid Will Rogers can always command a high stipend for broadcasting. The golden voiced tenor! Radio is making Morton Downey rich.' ^BOUT the magic world of the /_% is something of the hectic, £ ^ mosphere of the days when into the gates of Hollywood, of entertainment the radio is most promised land to fame and fortune. The broadcasters not only possess the bulkiest wallets in the amusement world, they are continuously unstrapping them that 50,000,000 ear-cuppers may be pleased. It is the rarest spectacle of money-spending that has yet been offered in what is known as legitimate enterprise in the land. Those in control of the microphone mills are the most reckless, the most spendthrift of all the providers of entertainment. Their bank notes are limitless. They think nothing of offering sums that range from $2500 to $25,000 for a few minutes of broadcasting, for a brief and spectacular catching of the ears of the country. Even the legends of Hollywood, concerned, as they have been and still continue to be, with the reckless microphone there breath-taking atthe talkies rushed Among all fields surely today the One of the mike' the moment is Chevalier. He is Lawrence Tibbett , whose fine baritone thrills radio listeners. Ruth Etting, perhaps the most popular torch singer of our times. gesture of shooting the bank-roll pale into insignificance when the radio rajahs assemble in their counting-houses. And maybe the entertainers are not aware of the opportunity before them ! They know they are in demand and they are asking fees that make those of the movie stars seem like the wages of legislators. Moreover, in the majority of cases they are getting what they ask, so spirited is the competition of the radio program sponsors. Radio, in short, is the sweetest racket yet developed in America. And it grows sweeter by day as it reaches out and embraces the foremost personalities of the amusement world. Broadcasters, alert to the armchair appeal of a big name, scour the musical, dramatic, cinematic marts for talent, waving in their search gold certificates, contracts, assurances of vast publicity upon which pledges of even bigger money can be built. Though radio is primarily a musical instrument it has paid curiously the majority of its largest fees to those stars temporarily, if not permanently, located in the Hollywood heavens. It has dug deeply into its purse and come up smiling with a carload in gold to Maurice Chevalier, Al Jolson, Will Rogers, Lawrence Tibbett, Morton Downey. The films made these names famous throughout the land. Radio has enlarged their fame, extended it to the lonely crossroads of the republic, made their personalities known wherever the ether waves penetrate. And are they downhearted ? If money rolls into the radio rajahs — and even in 1930, year of financial calamity, it rolled in more than at any time in its history — it also rolls out. To the pockets of entertainers. If soap or soup must be exploited on the air there are hundreds of performers ready for the job — and with no apologies. There was a time, you may recall, when entertainers concealed their association with radio. It had not achieved the glamor of big business. There was a haphazard, fly-by-night aspect about it that would lower their prestige, they feared, were their connection with it to become known. Suddenly, it became an industrial giant, captured the services of outstanding capi (Continued on page 10S) s particular pets at Monsieur Maurice in ze beeg money.'