FILM EXECUTIVES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 March 1939, Page 5

FILM EXECUTIVES

INCOMES OF OVER £20,000. SOME REMARKABLE FEATURES. Louis B. Mayer, J. Robert Rubin, Nicholas M. Schenck, David Bernstein, and Arthur Loew, the five chief executives of Loew's Incorporated, the great American film organisation which controls the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, divided £400,000 last year, according to evidence given before Judge Louis A. Valente, of the New York Supreme Court (writes Campbell Dixon, film ■ correspondent of the London “Daily Telegraph.”) The evidence, put forward by stockholders demanding an accounting of the corporation’s assets, also alleged that six executives received 31 pei’ cent of the profits, and that 140 executives are paid £20,000 a yeax’ and upwards. This last is denied. One of the witnesses, Sam Katz, related that he had been “on the loose” fox- two years when he walked into Mx' Schenck’s office one day and asked for a job. He got it—-at £6OO a week, plus 0.25 pei’ cent of the company’s profits. The studios, Mr Katz 'estimated, pay out £85,000 a week in salaries, exclusive of pay to extras. All the producers employed by M-G-M were apparently satisfied with their salaries except Benrard Hyman. He found his £4OO a week and 0.70 per cent of the profits inadequate, and suggested he should get as much as Mervyn Leroy. Mr Leroy, it seems, was /given a contract, by which, with guarantees, he makes £60,000 a year. To avoid discontent amongst other producers and stars, however, this was kept secret, his nominal salary being £35,000, He admitted that when his secret commission became common property “there was hell to pay.”

Mr Mayer deposed that when Irving Thalberg died, his widow, Norma Shearer, was dissatisfied with her contract and demanded a continuance of the 7 3-10 per cent commission Mr Thalberg had been receiving.

As Miss Shearer was then halfway through “Marie Antoinette,” on which about £160,000 had already been spent, and Samuel Goldwyn was prepared to pay hex’ £50,000 a picture plus half the profits,- Mr. Mayer thought it best to give her a new contract. By this she will receive nearly £400,000 in three years. Sidney R. Kent, head of the Twentieth Century-Fox Corporation, paid a handsome tribute to the ability of the M-G-M executives. Faced with the same problem, he said, he had divided 600,000 shares between Darryl Zanuck, Joseph M. Schenck,. and Wil-

liam Goetz. As a result the profits rose from £300,000 a year in 1934 to between £1,200,000 and £1,500,000 a year. One of the most remarkable features of the evidence has been the huge sums allegedly spent on unproduced stories. Since 1917 the total has reached £2,250,000. Of this sum £750,000 was fox’ literary work done in the studio. The book rights to “Marie Antoinette,” ■*it was revealed, cost only £2,500, but £85,000 more was spent before it reached the screen.