Warren William — Does an Actor Work for a Living? (1934) 🇺🇸

There are persons who when discussing us think only of the glamour of the picture world — hence, give vent to a much distorted opinion — distorted in the sense that the opinion is based upon imagined facts, which neglect ofttimes the vital points.

by Warren William

It is not uncommon either to hear statements utterly vapid, emanating as they do from persons totally ignorant of the ramifications of our work and the responsibility that goes with the actor in pictures. We could easily pass the remarks as unworthy of reply, and thus gain a few moments of complete indifference to it all, but for the challenge the charge carries.

All of us are inclined to leave it to someone else to make answer, for very many reasons, none of which are related to laziness.

We are a regimented crew and when we speak, we design to convey a definite something. I am not a crusader by nature. There is no inner urge to carry a banner for my profession. I am inured to the calumny that actors are cranks, knaves and half-wits. The lies about our drunkenness and immorality leave me disgusted but cold. But there is one slander that makes me mount the soap box. It is when some nincompoop sighs that “It must be grand to be an actor and not have to work.”

Even in this day of widespread unemployment there are still millions of so-called hard-working people who go to work at nine o’clock and quit at six o’clock.

They have two weeks’ vacation in summer. These people represent the bulk of our working population and may be taken as average.

After staying up late studying a long and difficult part, he has a nine o’clock call for the morning. If his makeup is difficult, it means an hour and a half earlier in his dressing room, or 7:30. For his bath, breakfast and drive to the studio another hour is lopped off. So his day really starts at 6:30. He does not go to a comfortable office, but to an enormous stage that is difficult to heat in winter, but is unspeakably hot in summer. In Southern California, where the average temperature is high, it is always too hot under the powerful studio lamps.

This heat spoils makeup almost as fast as it can be put on. Between scenes there is little rest because he is usually rehearsing lines with other members of the cast. After a hurried lunch, which he cannot eat comfortably on account of makeup and costume, he finishes the afternoon on the stage. Very often he is called back for night shots on some exterior. These California nights are cold. Sometimes the scene calls for rain and the poor shivering actor sloshes around in the mud until he is nearly exhausted, and at two or three o’clock sniffles his way to his car for the drive home.

The next day he does not have to go to work until noon, so he figures on a couple of hours’ extra sleep. At eight o’clock his phone rings and the makeup department must see him an hour before he goes on the set; there was something wrong with his makeup in some previous scenes. He is wide awake now and there is no use trying to get more sleep. He picks up the morning paper and is reminded that he is appearing in a radio broadcast. That means he can get home at a reasonable hour as the broadcast is at eight o’clock. At least he hopes for a chance to catch up on his sleep. He works until six o’clock at the studio, and is told that after the broadcast he must return to the set and work until eleven. It is after midnight before he is through. He will not have to report the next day until four o’clock in the afternoon, as he will work all night on exteriors. He will sleep all morning, he thinks.

At ten o’clock in the morning his ‘phone rings again. The publicity department wants to make some special pictures; can he give them a special sitting at one o’clock since he is not working until four? He can… and does.

This goes on every day until the picture is finished, and he figures he will have a few days off until the next production is ready. But does he? Right away he is given a new script. It necessitates special wardrobe. The publicity department has arranged for him to meet important interviewers; he is expected to attend an opening; the production department wants him to make several tests. Instead of having time off between pictures, he actually has a harder schedule, than when he is shooting.

So that is my answer to the assertion that we do not work. Rather it is part of the answer. The rest of the answer is that we love it.

On the Warner Bros.–First National lot I have heard several of our featured actors pretend to feel that they had to work too steadily. They gave themselves away, however, when after several idle days went by, they complained that the casting department had forgotten them.

You can call us hams; you can hate us, deride us or malign us — but by the Great Horn Spoon, you can’t say that actors don’t work!

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Stan Laurel, blustering comic of the screen, married the charming Mrs. Rogers, widow, recently in Mexico. But they are not living together. No, you’re wrong this time. They are not Reno-vating. The reason being that Laurel hasn’t received his final separation from his wife yet. It ought to become permanent very shortly now.

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Warren William, appearing with Mary Astor and Ginger Rogers in The Upper World, a Warner Bros.–Vitaphone picture, is hitting a real stride as the film season rounds the turn for the finish of the 1933–34 year.

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Collection: Broadway and Hollywood “Movies” Magazine, June 1934