Big Earners

Out last week was the Treasury's list of top salaries* paid in 1939. As usual, cinema stars endorsed some of the fattest pay checks. The biggest ten: 1) Gary Cooper (Samuel Goldwyn and Paramount Pictures), $482,819.

2) Thomas J. Watson (International Business Machines Corp.), $442,560.

3) George Washington Hill (American Tobacco Co.), $420,299.

4) Francis A. Countway (Lever Brothers Co.--soap), $383,210.

5) William S. Knudsen (General Motors), $372,366. (Mr. Knudsen's next full-year pay, from OPM, will be $1.

6) James Cagney (Warner Bros.), $368,-333.

7) John Ford (20th Century-Fox), $320,000.

8) A. A. Somerville (R. T. Vanderbilt Co.--Manhattan chemical distributors), $278,476.

9) Edward C. Stone (Employers' Liability Assurance Co.), $272,336.

10) Eugene G. Grace (Bethlehem Steel Co.), $271,224.

All these salaries were in a 1939 tax bracket which took from 50 to 65% of each for the Federal Government.

-- The Treasury list was incomplete: absent were the big pay checks of M.G.M., Universal Corp. and Columbia Pictures. But SEC records showed that M.G.M.'s Louis B. Mayer got $697,048, which almost certainly made him 1939's best-salaried employe.

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