Starter of this subject: JB
Last post in this subject: 3/27/2002
Messages in this subject: 4
| JB | 3/27/2002 4 replies |
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This topic has fascinated me for some time. Does anyone know what the salaries were for radio performers? Were they comparable to what movie actors made? I know that even supporting actors were well paid at the major studios, and some invested wisely and wound up quite wealthy (while some higher salaried stars died relatively poor). Actors who appeared mostly in B pictures tended to get paid less from what I've heard; while B stars were paid considerably less than their A counterparts (Tom Conway, say, as the Falcon, as opposed to William Powell as Nick Charles). When Richard Widmark was called out to Hollywood to make movies he hesitated, loath as he was to give up his swimming pool back east! Widmark was a well-paid radio and stage actor but certainly not a major star in 1947, yet he was apparently fairly affluent already.
I know that the radio comedians were well-paid, and that Jack Benny and Eddie Cantor died wealthy men, but were they as rich as Danny Kaye? Was Jerry Lewis in his heyday better paid than Fred Allen in his? I'm not asking for actual figures (though that would be nice), but a general ballpark sense of things. |
| jim isham | 3/27/2002 0 replies |
| A good source for information of this sort is "On the Air, The Encyclopdia of Old Time Radio" by John Dunning. It gives you an idea of some of the money being paid to some of the biggest names in radio in the 30's and 40's, especially the comedians. For example Ed Wynn who never really wanted to go into radio was asked what it would take to get him on the air. He replied "$5000 a week" and was handed a pen and contract. This was in the early 30's. Bing Crosby was paid $8000 a week in 1946 when he moved to ABC. Fred Allen was paid $4000 a week in 1933 but he had to pay writers and guest stars out of that. Eddie Anderson, who played Rochester on the Jack Benny show, was paid $700 for every minute of air time. This was 1947. Fanny Brice, who played Baby Snooks, was paid $3000 a week in 1946. Burns and Allen were making $9000 a week in 1940. Back then performers were assessed 77% of all personal earnings over $70000 a year. But by incorporating themselves as a business and selling their show to the network the taxes were only 25%. This is how CBS managaged to get a lot of stars to move to their network in the late 40's. NBC wasn't sure it was legal and hesitated. As a result they lost a lot of entertainers. |
| Ted Hering | 3/28/2002 2 replies |
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Jim had good information for the stars. "Guests," however, didn't fare as well. 2 or 3 years ago, a musician friend of mine showed me some union sheets for Kraft Music Hall, circa 1941. I don't know Bing's salary, but guest artists like Victor Borge would earn $40 per show. (A quartet like, say the Mills Brothers, would earn $40 per quartet member.) Not a fortune, but in today's money, it would be a comfortable living.
Right after I read this information, my wife and I bought tickets for a Victor Borge live concert. Guess what? The price was $40 per ticket! |
| JB | 3/28/2002 1 replies |
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Thanks to both of you for the info, which pretty much answers my question. Radio performers were well paid, and major names like Crosby were given salaries comparable to what people in the movies (and later, television) got.
Now one of these days I'll figure out why OTR was so sponsor-defined, while television managed to move away from this. A lot of early television was identified by sponsors, even the kids' shows like Wild Bill Hickock and Captain Midnight, but somehow television pulled away from this, and by the early sixties there were only a handful left (Alcoa, U.S. Steel Hour). The Bell Telephone Hour and Hallmark Hall Of Fame survived longer, but as specials. Kraft Music Hall and Chrysler Theatre are among the last shows I can remember with the name of the sponsor in them. |
| Michael J. Hayde | 3/28/2002 0 replies |
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Part of that was Pat Weaver's insistence that the networks own the shows and sell the time to sponsors... and part of it was that prime time TV eventually became too expensive for one sponsor to foot the bills for an entire season. (I'd say the former was a partial catalyst for the latter.) Finally, everyone realized that television's real profits were made in reruns and syndication sales. Eventually, production companies would own the series (for a long time it was in association with the network), so both made syndication money.
Interesting that when the sponsors no longer owned the shows, they and the ad agencies became more interested in the quality and content of the co |