I THOUGHT IT unwise of Mr. John Davis, Rank Organisation's
managing director, to castigate his starlets as lazy and uncooperative; for if anybody is to blame for the silly starlet system it is surely the Rank Organisation itself. The system by which young actresses are put under contract is a thoroughly bad one. People still imagine that the traditional 'seven-year contract' gives a guarantee to the actress : of course it does nothing of the kind. She can get slung out at the end of a year; the only beneficiary is the film company. The con- tract system, in fact, is little more than a form of insurance for the film companies, so that if they do happen to pick a winner she will not be stolen from them by rivals. As the companies know this, they have really little inducement to do anything for a starlet who turns out not to be a winner; she finds herself given silly parts in silly films or sent to open fetes or to pose for publicity shots; and it is no wonder that she soon gets fed up with the whole business. I would like to see the system changed so that no contract is allowed to be one-sided.
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