Talking pictures : how they are made and how to appreciate them (1937)

Talking Pictures The operation of the bureau is simple. A specially constructed switchboard at the headquarters of the Central Casting Corporation enables instant handling of telephone calls. At peak times — late in the afternoon — these reach one thousand an hour. A registration with the Central Casting Corporation in no way binds the minor player. It merely registers him for crowd work if he needs it. It does not keep him from accepting a better job in the "bit" or even the "featured players" level, if one should be offered. On the other hand, the Corporation promises no certain number of working days each week. It offers merely a connection between day-work actors and the employers, eliminating the duplication of effort and energy required before this plan was made effective. The Casting Corporation places about six hundred players a day. It saves these players a quarter of a million dollars annually in fees which agents formerly charged to get them jobs. But it also has twelve thousand registrants, and no new names were added between 1935 and 1937. Recent statistics show that only fifty-eight out of the fifty-five hundred registered male players average three days or more each week. Only twenty women out of the sixty-five hundred registered average three working days a week. Out of the fifteen hundred children the average for each child is about four days a year.1 The Casting Corporation has consistently held that for anyone to support himself or herself with work in this "bulk" category of minor players is next to an im 1 Figures supplied by Association of Motion Picture Producers. [136]