Agents and Agencies



RADIO AND THE MOVIES

Radio became a national pastime during the Depression and offered new opportunities for talent agencies. With unemployment high and disposable income dropping for most people, audiences had time to spare. Radio manufacturers had huge inventories, creating a buyer's market. And as the average of price of a radio fell from 90 dollars in 1930 to 47 dollars in 1932, 4 million families purchased receivers. By 1934, radio was reaching 60 percent of all American homes and had become a common habit. Since radio networks left to advertising agencies the job of putting shows together, talent agencies responded to the opportunity by honing a talent-selling technique called packaging. A practice as old as vaudeville, packaging offered a complete show—star, orchestra, announcer, writer, guest stars, and even a producer. In selling a package, an agency such as William Morris waived its standard 10 percent commission on the salaries from each of its clients and instead levied a 10 percent fee on the package price to the network. MCA honed the practice by becoming an employer of sorts and generating more money. MCA hired its own clients for its radio shows and sold the packages for lump sums. The difference between what MCA paid for the ingredients of the shows and what it received from sponsors went into MCA's pockets.

The most popular radio shows of the era starred former vaudeville headliners, among them William Morris's Fanny Brice, Burns and Allen, and Eddie Cantor, and MCA's Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Rudy Vallee, Abbott and Costello, and The Great Gildersleeve. By the 1940s, MCA had a hand in more than ninety radio shows a week, ranging from the highest-rated coast-to-coast headliners down to soap operas.

Agents fared less well in Hollywood. Close to one hundred and fifty registered agents worked in Hollywood during the 1930s. A dozen or so firms did most of the business, among them the William Morris Agency, Joyce and Selznick, Charles K. Feldman, and Leland Hayward. As a group, they played a marginal role in the industry during the era of the studio system. They sometimes succeeded in negotiating higher salaries for their clients, but it was the studio that nurtured talent, selected properties to develop, and took the long view in developing screen careers.

Because stars played a key role in the marketing of motion pictures, studios devised numerous ways to keep them under control. The most potent device was the option contract. In signing an aspiring actor or actress, the studio used a contract that progressed in steps over a term of seven years. Every six months, the studio reviewed the actor's progress and decided whether or not to pick up the option. If a studio dropped the option, the actor was out of work; if the studio picked up the option, the actor continued on the payroll for another six months and received a predetermined raise in salary. The contract did not provide reciprocal rights, meaning that an actor or actress could not quit to join another studio, could not stop work, and could not renegotiate for more money. In short, the contract effectively tied a performer to the studio for seven years.

Before 1930, the majors had tacit nonproselytizing agreements with one another to tie the knot tighter. In essence, studios agreed not to hire an actor away from a competitor, even after a contract had expired. A star therefore had to negotiate a new contract with the old company. This cozy relationship was broken up by Myron Selznick (1898–1944), the agent brother of David O. Selznick (1902–1965). Warner Bros. had gotten a head start on its competitors by innovating sound, but it needed stars to stay ahead. Understanding this, Selznick offered the studio three of his clients—William Powell (1892–1984), Kay Francis (1899–1968), and Ruth Chatterton (1893–1961), all of whom were working for Paramount. Warner capitulated and hired them away. Paramount sued, but Warner quelled the controversy by agreeing to loan Miss Francis to Paramount when it needed her. By then, nonproselytizing agreements were on their way out.

Producers tried to outlaw star raiding and to hem in the power of agents during the days of the National Recovery Act (1933–1935), but an executive order from President Roosevelt prevented them from doing so. Nonetheless, the studios got their way by instituting the practice of loanouts. Talent was scarce, and although studios developed young talent and recruited personalities from the stage, radio, and foreign fields, nothing proved sufficient to meet all their needs. Rather than raiding one another to bolster star rosters, the majors found it easier and just as effective to loan one another talent. As always, economics played a role. Try as they might, studios found it impossible to keep high-priced talent busy all the time. An idle star was a heavy overhead expense. Why not loan out the idle star and recoup the overhead? Studios devised various formulas to determine the fee: the most common one was to charge a minimum fee of four weeks salary plus a surcharge of three weeks; another was to charge the basic salary for however long the star was needed plus a surcharge of 25 percent.



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