Blind Kiyomi - We Love the Movies!: May 2018

Monday, May 21, 2018

Hooray For Hollywood! The Golden Era

During the heyday of the Studio System, Hollywood offered more stability for its actors. Actors were considered employees of the studios, with all the benefits that entailed, including health care and pensions. About the only difference between an actor and regular workers at the time was that the actors typically signed seven year contracts, tying themselves to a particular studio. In exchange for a steady paycheck and benefits, the actor was now beholden to the studio and its chiefs.

The studios would typically start a newly discovered actor at a lower weekly wage. If the studio saw something special, they’d begin grooming the actor for stardom, often hiding them in plain sight as extras or in lesser roles. Once they were seen as being ready for the big time, their original contract would get torn up, a newer one drawn up and the studio PR apparatus would swing into action to tout its latest “discovery.”

The actors who didn’t crawl out of the lower tier could still find themselves with a decent career. The studio contract gave them a steady wage, benefits and guaranteed work. The contracts made it the responsibility of the studio to find work for the actors, rather than the actors having to struggle to find work. The drawback to this was that the actors pretty much had to do whatever they were assigned. For some, this wasn’t a big deal. Who would turn down steady work? For the bigger names who yearned to explore their own creativity, the contracts were oppressive.

The darker side of the studio contracts would be revealed if an actor chose to rebel against the studio. Studio heads like Louis B. Mayer would often use the contracts to stifle an intransigent actor’s career by either forcing them to work on lesser projects or even by refusing to give them work at all. As long as the studio kept issuing the checks, it was under no obligation to actually provide work for the actors. A promising career could die on the vine due to a lack of exposure. Louis B. Mayer wouldn’t even have to pay out the full contract; he could sideline an actor for a year, crippling her career, then finally tear up the contract at her request, leaving her to struggle to find work elsewhere.

Actors also had to forgo dream projects simply because another studio had acquired the rights and their studio wouldn’t “loan” them out. (The term ‘loan’ was a misnomer; the ‘loaning’ studio always received a hefty payment in exchange for ‘loaning’ out an actor.) Conversely, if MGM agreed to ‘loan’ out an actor to Warner Brothers, but the actor didn’t want to do it, they really had no choice. The studio contracts could be very one sided.