Who was the first actor to earn $1million dollars for a movie?
In 1896, a 50-second movie called L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat debuted in Paris. Excuse the French, but if you were unable to translate that lengthy and synopsis-like title, the film essentially featured a train rolling towards the camera at La Ciotat station. While the urban legend that viewers dived out of the way of the screen might be exaggerated, fingernails certainly dug into a fair few armchairs. The invigorating new artform was visceral and thrilling; it was about to enamour the masses and head off to Hollywood.
After the war, the subsequent great depression, and yet another war, people needed some levity in their lives. Cinema provided it while also hinting at a bright happy ending with its technological progressiveness. Also, by centralising the distribution from Hollywood, cinema was made wildly affordable. So, by 1946, roughly 60% of the American population were going to the cinema once a week, and the industry was printing money.
The cash pile in question was then dished out far more progressively than it is even today. While you might have expected this to be a tale of the early profiteers being racketeering mobsters exploiting stars, as it happens, one of the first people to make a killing from film was Mary Pickford.
The silent era star was a working-class hero who rose through the ranks thanks to her talent and love of theatre and soon started earning $10,000 a week as a minimum baseline with almost laughably decadent add-ons like $150,000 a year “goodwill” payments to her mother as part of her contract. In an era when most people in the US earned a mere $2000 a year, this was crazy money.
Then Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle soon got in on the act when his rotund tomfoolery earned him a minimum guarantee of $1million per year. During a period when you couldn’t pipe the latest trailer into the audience’s home, the name on the poster was vital, and payment reflected this while the Golden Age was booming. However, by 1963, cinema was being challenged as the top spot of pop culture. By this stage, music had well and truly joined the pop culture revolution, and ‘Fab Four’ records were replacing ticket stubs. With household TV ownership also rapidly rising, cinema attendance began to dwindle.
This led to Cleopatra. The epic was 20th Century Studios’ gamble to reignite the medium. With Walter Wanger onboard as producer, they decided to risk it all and throw a huge budget at a picture that harked back to the must-see glory days of cinema. And getting big names on the poster was just as vital.
When Cleopatra’s budget is adjusted for inflation, it remains the most expensive film ever made, which is utterly remarkable when you consider the intergalactic expanse of the current movie industry. Fox studios had originally set out a considerable $2million for the project’s budget. Half of that would be taken up by Elizabeth Taylor’s record-setting salary alone, and before a single frame had been shot, the film was already $2 million over budget.
In the process, Elizabeth Taylor became the first star to ever earn $1million for a single film. In the end, she ended up earning far more thanks to a robust contract. Before signing on, she managed to secure herself 10% of the gross profits and add-ons if the project ran over (which it did in a spectacular fashion). In the end, she came out with around $7million for the movie. In 2023, that is just about $69million.
“If someone is dumb enough to offer me a million dollars to make a picture,” she once quipped, “I’m certainly not dumb enough to turn it down.” Essentially, she knew her worth. As Tim Mendelson, her chief of staff, told MarketWatch: “Elizabeth worked from the age of 9, so she understood the value of money.”
Elizabeth Taylor: “The most beautiful woman in the world”
“She knew her value and created that value by being so authentic about who she was,” Mendelson added. “She protected who she was and never changed for other people.” Coupled with her considerable attractiveness and the nickname she had acquired as the scientifically proven “most beautiful woman in the world”, this made her a huge draw for audiences. As for the producers of Cleopatra, if you’re making a throwback film to the epic days of old, then having the biggest star is pretty much essential.
Taylor knew this too, and she knew the power of simply walking away from the table if the offer wasn’t fitting. After all, when. She was only 15 when a male studio executive was rude to her mother during a negotiation, she told Louis B. Mayer: “You and your studio can go straight to hell.” Mandelson explains: “She realised at that moment; it is all about the commodity of being Elizabeth Taylor.” The beleaguered team behind the chaotically produced Cleopatra knew that, too, they had to keep her happy, or the whole movie industry might go bust. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we got our first million-dollar megastar.
And thanks to the hellfire of the production, it was the last for a while too. Not long into proceedings, with only a couple of scenes in the can, director Rouben Mamoulian was sacked, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz was brought in to replace him. Following this debacle, Liz Taylor fell ill, and filming was suspended. Then elaborate sets built in London were completely abandoned as filming relocated to Rome and so on, and so on… All leading to an exorbitant rise in costs. However, at this point, it was passed the point of return, and the studio had no choice but to double down.
In the end, the great lumbering epic was somehow slashed from six hours to three and remained coherent. Ultimately, it might have cost the studio a fraction over $42million more than its original budget, but thanks to its sheer star power and the amount of fevered discussion surrounding it, victory was snatched from the looming jaws of defeat, and the studio was spared bankruptcy by its triumphant, troublesome, ugly duckling.
