Movie Extras — They Also Starve (1928) 🇺🇸
Editor's Note: Mr. Cruikshank, second row, extreme left, was one of a group of newspaper writers who acted for eight days as extras in The Bellamy Trial. He gathered these strange tales from the real movie extras with whom he worked. They constitute the sung sagas of the Little People of the movies.
Sometimes figures lie. But various sets of statistics seem to agree that during the past ten years approximately twenty-eight of every hundred thousand persons in California "did the Dutch" — more elegantly — committed suicide.
This is more than twice the amount of self-destruction chalked up against the entire nation over the same weary stretch of time. And even Chicago, that Mecca of casual labor, must yield to Los Angeles — City of the Angels — first place as a winter harborer of down-and-outers.
What percentage of catastrophe may be ascribed to that odd mass of humanity grouped under the studio term atmosphere is problematical. But if an endless routine of sheer discouragement wearies one of life, it is safe to say that the names of countless extras are inscribed on the one-way door.
Inquiry at the Central Casting Office regarding the number of extra people registered met the ruling that an O. K. from the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America — the Sunday name of the Hays organization — is a prerequisite to the divulging of any information. Even in the dolce far niente of sin-kissed Hollywood, time flies too fast for flapdoodle. Hence the following figures are without benefit of clergy.
With more or less inaccuracy, there are some fifteen thousand so-called souls who have left names, addresses, phone numbers and photographs with these arbiters of destiny. Of this number an average of under a thousand work each day. The rest wait. And the waiting is attended by macabre circumstances which would delight the morbid mind of Poe or mad De Maupassant.
They tell the tale of the fat woman who lived for weeks on the promise of a character bit and the churlish charity of a landlady who hoped to collect an overdue board bill.
In desperation the wheezy creature dragged her elephantine weight to the producer's office, and as a gentle leader toward the request for an advance of salary asked when she would be needed to add her touch of comedy to the fun-making film. Then she learned that it had been decided that a skinny woman would get more laughs from the great god Movie Fan. And a human skeleton had been called for the role promised to Marie the Human Mountain. So our Boule de Suif, brave, heart broken, insured her life in favor of her creditors, and took her final funny fall through the portals of Eternity.
French Leave, Indeed
They tell the tale of the little French couple who had drifted to Hollywood from Normandy via Montreal. Both were "extra talent." Some days they earned as much as fifteen dollars. Some days. Some weeks. Some months. But whether fifteen for a bit, or five in a mob scene, a little went for cabbage soup and sour, nourishing loaves disowned by the Jews and now called "Russian" rye. The rest went into the proverbial stocking against the time when there should be sufficient to pay passage back to la belle France. And one day there was enough. The tickets were purchased. And the day before the departure, the French boy, who had won a Croix de Guerre in Flanders, was killed in a war picture. But the travel agent was very nice. He returned most of the passage moneys Enough to pay for the funeral. And the little widow still answers extra calls.
They tell the tale of the one-time star who hurtled downward as falling stars do. She couldn't bring herself to mingle with the hoi-polloi that sweat and swear for bread at casting-office windows. She had a little money, and invested in a project which boasted big film names. Then set out to make poverty genteel. But there was a scandal. and an investigation. Of course, this didn't help her any. Investigations butter no parsnips. But she found a way to live. And now she answers fan mail in a fine, legible hand. And the name she signs is that of an upstart star who litters her richly upholstered chariot with peanut-shells and crumbs from onion sandwiches.
They tell the tale of the girl who besieged a casting-office and wouldn't take no for an answer. Finally the director told some one to "put her down for the sister part," and she was instructed regarding wardrobe. What money she had was spent in making purchases. When she reported for work, it turned out that there was no "sister part" in the picture. They had to get rid of her some way. They did. She went to the beach that night. And somehow forgot to stop walking. So the gentle waters of the Pacific cradled her last sleep.
There's at least one shabby-carpeted hotel in Hollywood that merits the title "Suicide Hall." Those who dwell there with the degree of permanency that indicates the possession of rent receipts, seldom inquire for those who are missing the day after the fatal board bills are presented. Some just move along when they find their keyholes plugged. Some are carried out in those cute little straw baskets affected by the best morticians.
But, if we're speaking of shorn sheep, let's to our muttons. The tragedies of those who seek work in vain are scarcely more poignant than those of the more fortunate ones selected to play parts. The other day a couple of dozen were carried unconscious from the blazing sun, where a mob of extras enacted a pagan holiday. "Make an adjustment," ordered the director, and each received two-fifty more at the pay window in return for incipient sunstroke.
Extra work on a set in which there is plenty of action is far preferable to the indescribable tedium of sitting, sitting, sitting, day after day, merely to form background for the acting of the stars. A recent drama takes place almost entirely in a court-room. Naturally, all interest centers on the accused, the witnesses, the important people in the dramatis personae.
Nevertheless, the room must be peopled. So for two weeks several hundred extras simply sat. The only time they arose was to take the few steps necessary to film an indication of court recess or adjournment. Some gossiped with their neighbors. Many knit or embroidered. A very few read. The great majority simply sat with blank expressions waiting for quitting time. There is no dignity to their labor. No purpose is accomplished. They haven't the consciousness of a task well done. And the hope of reward is as far distant and as intangible as the hope of heaven. Of the fifteen thousand extras, it is an odds-on bet, that not fifteen ever receive a large enough bit to get screen credit in a picture.
Yet these thousands of creatures who must be classified as human beings, come day after day to the torture of idleness which would surely mark an active brain for insanity, or addle an imaginative soul to the point where the sting of Death would be a kiss. It is perhaps possible to account for the young ones. Particularly the girls. Perhaps they have the right to hope that their fresh beauty may sky-rocket them to the affluence of stardom. The tough part is that this very thing happens just often enough to make it not impossible. It seems almost like a come-on. For after your dollars are squandered on some catch-penny gamble, isn't it always so that some one draws the "lucky number" and wins the talking doll? And you throw another dollar after the good one which is gone. But the boys. It's hard to figure the angle that will keep young strapping fellows confined to such puerility. Most of them seem un-American. But perhaps under the John Gilbert-Gilbert Roland side-burns, the patent-leather hair, and the other sheik equipment, there are honest boys named Jones and Brown and Smith. However, they impress as a shifty-eyed lot quite capable of’ helping along a crime wave.
When Director Murnau isn't busy directing Janet Gaynor, he is busy sharing cookies made by Janet's mother.
Collection: Motion Picture Classic Magazine, August 1928