From Frank Balkin, I have this…
Hi, Mark — as always I've been enjoying newsfromme.com. I enjoyed your recent columns about onscreen credits — here's one that's always confused me, maybe you'll have some insight on. On the Orson Welles film Touch of Evil, there's an odd title that says "Guest-starring Marlene Dietrich, Zsa Zsa Gabor." How do you have a guest star, or two, in a standalone film, not a series?
I would imagine the answer is the same answer Jonathan Harris gave when folks asked him — as everyone did — why on the Lost in Space TV show, he was billed every week as "Special Guest Star." He said, "My agent got it for me, probably in lieu of better money."
Someone else whose e-mail I can't find wrote to ask me why TV shows these days have so many producer credits, way more than they used to. There are two reasons, one being that if the program wins an Emmy for "Best Show" of its kind and you were important on it, you might not get a statuette unless you had the word "producer" in your credit. (I have a story to tell about this, one of these days.)
The other is simply money and the studio's desire to pay out as little of it as possible. The agent asks that his client be paid $25,000. The studio counters with "How about $17,500 and a special credit?" Special credits are easy to give as long as they (a) don't go counter to any rules in any union's contract and (b) don't inspire everyone else to demand one.
And they cost nothing. An agent and a guy in Business Affairs negotiate the wording of that credit, caring little about what it actually suggests. It's just a deal point to them. Agents love to go back to their clients and say, "Hey, I got you a credit that no one else is getting!" And the guy in Business Affairs loves to go back to his boss and say, "They were demanding $25,000 but I got them down to seventeen-point-five!"
I would guess that's what happened on Touch of Evil. In negotiations, either Marlene or Zsa Zsa got a credit ("in lieu of more money," as Jonathan Harris said) that sounded good to them…and the other one demanded the same special credit. If that isn't the answer then I can't imagine what it would be.
