Weekly on Wages

That many an idle man and woman has been saved from starvation or worse by WPA's Federal Theatre is not doubted for a moment by Broadway, although many a Broadwayite wonders what they did with themselves before the Depression. That in 1936 all Federal Theatre enrollees received a higher annual wage than most legitimate Broadway players, who supposedly could take care of themselves and did not need the dole, was an assertion, sensational if true, made last week by The Billboard ("The World's Foremost Amusement Weekly").

The Billboard headlined its discovery: WPA BOYS IN THE DOUGH. The dough in which the WPA boys are is $23.86 a week. Since the pay must go on whether the show does or not, WPActors' annual wage is $1,240.72. To prove that hundreds of "legit" actors get less than this from private show business, The Billboard states and accepts two main statistical premises: 1) average life of all new Broadway shows in 1936 was 5.12 weeks; and 2) six out of seven actors are engaged in only one play per year, a figure established by a Billboard survey in 1934. On this basis, an overwhelming number of actors who earn $40 to $90 a week averaged between $204 and $504 as their annual theatrical incomes in 1936. In the $100-$199 wage bracket the yearly figure was $510 and $1,014. These figures were apparently more than guesswork on the magazine's part, for of all the wage contracts signed through Actors' Equity in 1936, 1,693 were in the $40-$99 class, 522 in the $100-$199 group. Only 402 called for $200 and over. "Survey . . . takes no account of the thousands of actors in the commercial theatre who failed to get any jobs at all during the year," croaked The Billboard in conclusion.

Showfolk know that many an Equity card-holder does not expect to earn his or her living entirely from the stage, takes on radio, film, modeling, nightclub work to eke out stage earnings. The Billboard''?, distressing figures, however, make it easy to understand why the Broadway axiom nowadays is that it is easier to write a play than cast it, many & many an actor having traded prospects of unreliable pay on the stage for modest Hollywood film contracts.

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