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Casting 439
and a million hopeful actors continually struggling for seven hundred jobs ! As it is, with only one applicant in twenty registered by the Central Casting Bureau (a sort of " clearing house " of humanity, maintained jointly by all the studios), there are seventeen thousand people for those seven hundred jobs.
Admittedly, times are worse now than they have ever been. But even in the " boom" year of 1929, only five hundred and forty-five of those seventeen thousand extras averaged one day or more of work a week. Which means that if they had to depend on their movie income they would have to live on a weekly wage of less than two pounds — pitifully inadequate' in such a high-priced city as Hollywood.
And they are the fortunate three per cent ! The aristocrats of the profession ! Of the remaining sixteen thousand live hundred, some work as infrequently as once or twice a year I
In normal times, that is.
In 193 1, for which the latest statistics are available, it was even worse. Only four hundred and one persons averaged two days' work a week or more. And of these, only one hundred and fifty-five doubled the one-day ration, only fifty-five made three days a week, seven worked four, and only one achieved the full five-day week which most of labour looks forward to as an ideal minimum !
Competition
Nor is this the full tale of woe, from the standpoint of the " regular." For in the last year many " outsiders" have taken up the scramble for the stray crumbs from the movie banquet. These, usually, fall into one of two major classes. Paupers, whose cases are pressed by one or other of the charitable organizations of the city ; and unemployed studio technicians, who must be kept alive somehow until such time as they are needed again in their regular positions. In most studios, these last are given first preference for all work that does not require actual acting ability.
With such conditions, it is obvious that the pressure brought to bear on a casting director to show favouritism is tremendous. Yet he is not in a position to do so. The actual choice is almost invariably made by the director or his assistant. Except in the case of those who simply walk through the background, the casting department has little leeway.
Yet the competition for even these, the meanest of all jobs in picture work, is incredibly keen.
The average casting department receives more than a hundred letters a day — ^begging, threatening, and pleading for work. One will tell a heartrending tale (perhaps true, perhaps not) of a mother on her deathbed who could be saved by some operation. Another will argue that he cannot answer calls when needed if he does not get enough work to buy new tyres for his automobile. Another will recall the time when he was an assistant-director and did a favouf for the casting man. Many of the arguments and pleas are extremely ingenious, some are amusing — and not a few are tragic. And the hardest part of all for the human being who holds the job is the fact that he knows almost all these people personally !
There is also, of course, a reverse side of the same shield. Accusations