HOW HOLLYWOOD EXTRAS LIVE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 65, 3 April 1937, Page 13

HOW HOLLYWOOD EXTRAS LIVE

ff you haven't enough worrxes, i± your salary as a soda jerker or chainstore clerk is too high, if you enjoy hanging on to a telephone all day — become an extra. "Thpy treat ns like props, ' ' a li,ttle extra girl on fi, 3.20 dollars check said. £ asked about wages, hours, conditions, elothes. "I don't get much, work's so unertain, ' ' she said. ' ' Sometimes you get c. call and it's for a few minutes. )ther times you work so long that you could drop dead. The law says the limit for women is sixteen houre, but I've worked longerj sometimes twentythree and a-half hours straight. I used co think,". she / half -smiled, "that 1 could make' the dfcss parade. But doing niob . work once iu a blue moon like 1 «tjn. . . . Of course, I, might get a big chance. Something that'd make ine ?itand out from thp mob. I know I could do i,t, if I just get the chance. " Sidney Skolsky, well-known Hollywood columnist, gives a few additional details: — "The extra girl lives in a single room, no kitchen, for 25 dollars a month; or two rooms and a kitchenette for about 45 dollars a month. ... An extra generally lives with another extra. .... They take turns sitting in tho room all day, waiting for the 'phone to ring, and if one girl receives word uboat 'a call,' the other will go along and try too." I visited an atmosphere worker in her room. "Take me, I'm lucky," she said. "I'm more or less ihternational. I'm dark. I can work on Spanish pictures. Italian and Prench, too, but not English pictures." She was sitting on her bed, pyjama-clad legs tucked under her for warmth. Pale, very slim, pretty, nervous. She wasn 't well — appendix trouble. She needed money badly, for doctors. "I've been out of work for a while, but I usually average three days a week." "How do you get to the studios? They're so far apart." "I have to keep a car. It takes a lot for clothes, too. Of course, it 's hard when you get a slack spell. But I'm really luckier than most." And she is. Not ten per cent. of those looking for extra work can get it. — Clara Weatherway in New Theatre, New York.