Dana Andrews on James Dean

"These stars are built up this way. Because of the independent structure, they have to have a star. These stars are the ones already built up, and consequently they can't get rid of them. I'm sure that they would like to get people for less money, naturally, or people who could demand less. But the public does not know them, and the public is not going to get to know them, because they're not put in the pictures. The pictures they're put into aren't seen by the public. They just don't go anymore. So nobody is building stars anymore. Fox is trying. They used to tie in a large star with a secondary, somebody they were building up, who consequently would get seen. Nowadays they want both of them to be top money drawers. So you get older and older leading men

If younger ones get in, it's just happenstance. If it hadn't been for Mr. Kazan, Jimmy Dean would never have been in pictures. He saw him in New York and got him into pictures, but he was not built up by a studio. At the time of his death, he was at the top. He could have gone on till he was 50 years old, because he hit immediately. Studios as a rule can't do this anymore.

As to my present position, they have at United Artists a strict money tag on every star. They look in a book and say, "He's worth this much; he'll bring in so much money if he just plays the telephone directory." As my rating is now--of course, I'm not young--I'm a medium drawer. The top stars number not more than six or seven. I'm probably within the first dozen. That's looking at it as objectively as United Artists does. I can't think of more than a dozen within whose class I fall. I get a percentage, depending on how much I get in money. These independent deals really don't pay off; these days, box office being what it is now, a picture made for $500,000 (which used to be a small budget) has to gross well over a million dollars in order to pay off. At that time, you will get what you defer, which the government demands that you put down. You can't get half your salary. It's established by what you got in the past. I'll be frank to tell you, my price is $100,000 per picture."