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Newspaper Page Text
MORE ON HOW ACTORS LC3E v TEN PER CENT OF SALARIES By James William Fitzpatrick, Inter national President White Rats Actors' Union. Enter now the noble institution of vaudeville known as the Vaudeville Collection Agency, whose purpose is to gouge out of the actor an amount of commission greater than the law allows and at the same time render him easier picking for the vulture "personal agent," who is the camp follower of the manager's army. It is a great little idea for the booking office grafters and their bag men, the aforementioned "personal repre sentatives." Prom long practice 5 per cent has been decided to be a legitimate com mission for an actor to pay to the agent who secures him employment in the vaudeville theaters. Of course, the actor had nothing to say about titrate in the first place. He sim ply' permitted the theater managers to take it out of his pay envelope be cause he couldn't help himself. Grad ually the managers made up their minds that they couldn't be bothered with a lot of actors hanging around their offices asking them for work or wiring in for it if they were on the road. So they conceived the "per sonal representative" idea. The actor who hadn't an organization to look after his interests and keep in line the commission scheme helped to call into existence a man who wouldlookafter his "bookings" while he was on the road away from the market place. Let it be understood right here that the proper kind of an agent is an absolute essential for the actor in the vaudeville business as it is conducted in America. v t The White Rats have no objection to the existence of an agent who shall be paid a legitimate commis sion for the work he does. But it does say that the man who should get the money is the one who secures the work for the actor, not the man ager of a theater or a booking agent- manager, as is the7 present system. At any rate, between the actor and the manager the "personal agent" got to be an acknowledged fact, the unorganized actor permitting it by his weakness and the manager con tinuing it by his greed. As far back as 1901 the actor "be gan to feel the drain of the graft on his salary between manager and agent, so through the White Rats, $ which 'had been founded the year be fore, he fought" the thing out by call ing a strike and winning in about two weeks. The rnanagers promised to abolish commissions altogether and the actors went back to work like fools on a promise. They had no idea of a closed shop to keep what they had won, and not only was the prom ise never kept, but the "personal agent" fastened anew his clutch on the actor's throat where the man agers' fingers left room. Then, after years had elapsed and conditions grew worse, the actor finally organized as a labor union and went to Albany, N. Y and succeeded in getting passed a bill which made 5 per cent the ' maximum amount of commission that could be charged in the state for any .wekly engage ment, no matter how many agents were involved in the transaction. Within two days after the pasge of the bill on all contracts issued by the United Booking Offices, the pa rent of the present family of the Vaudeville Trust, was pasted a "rider," by the terms of which both parties to the contract waived any and all statutes of the state of New York pertaining to the contract That, however, did not get around the law successfully, so a wise law yer dug up the idea of the Vaudeville Collection Agency, which collected jg for the personal agent his 5 per cent and charged him 2y2 per cent for doing it. So that when the actor got his salary envelope 10 per cent of it had been taken out. In place of the money there were two slips, a white one and a yellow one. the chaste and tmimMmMmmSiMm