David Warfield — He Refused Five Thousand a Day (1918) 🇺🇸
He was offered, to appear in motion pictures, a salary of $5000 per day, with an additional bonus of $100,000 just as a matter of good will! This offer was fully secured by collateral.
In turning down this stupendous salary proposition Mr. Warfield said that by no means did he wish his rejection to be taken as an embodiment of his attitude toward the screen. He says that one day he will probably make a picture for far, far less.
In fact, when he does come to the point of picture-making, money will cut very little figure, for Warfield is already more than a millionaire, leads a very quiet life, and is past middle age. This man, by many a critic considered America's greatest living actor, regards the photoplay as the eventual and final embodiment of his acting art — a material in which he can pass along the externals of his accomplishments, at least, to another generation.
He says, and evinces therein a shrewd knowledge of the universality and power of the motion picture, that his screen appearance would probably set a definite end to his widespread and unvarying success in the particular pieces in which he appears. The Music Master, for instance, has never been anything but Warfield 's personal vehicle; no one has ever seen it who has not sat before Mr. Warfield in person. The Music Master on the screen will come to us one day, without any doubt at all — but Warfield in the flesh, at a number of dollars a seat, would be a very diminished value if Warfield in the same play on the screen had covered the whole country at regulation motion picture prices.
It is not from a financial point of view that Mr. Warfield speaks — those who know the man know that: he is still holding back, for a finer and finer polishing each year by his own talents, a great vehicle which is his exclusive property — his and his manager's, David Belasco.
The five-thousand-a-day salary of course would not run for an indefinite term. It would cover only the proper making of The Music Master and certain other Warfield successes. If accepted, it would have been a highly profitable proposition for its makers, for a Music Master negative would be worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars.
A little over a quarter of a century ago David Warfield was a poor Jewish boy in San Francisco. He came to New York — still poor. His triumphs did not come to him until he became comedian with Weber and Fields. David Belasco saw him, and his only comment was: "I have never heard such a note of pathos as lies in that man's voice." The Auctioneer was the first real play as a result of this. The Music Master followed it.
Photo by: Sarony
Collection: Photoplay Magazine, October 1918