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So, what would $5,000 be in today's dollars? I watched Black Friday the other night and when the cab driver is tipped $1,000 he comments that it is nearly six months salary. So if Bela was getting $5,000 he was basically getting what the average guy cabbie would be making for working two and a half years. And weren't most Monogram pictures shot in about ten days? I looked this up recently and found out that the day rate for an extra that was negotiated under their 1937 contract was $5.50 a day. So, if an extra worked five days a week they made $27.50, before taxes.

Ya' never know, Perry, a cab driver might have made more than a professor! The old adage about academics is that the politics are so high because the stakes are so low. But, I guess that would depend on where the professor was engaged. And whether or not he could coach a Big Ten football team.

Cadaverino-
The Inflation Calculator is pretty cool! Thanks for posting it! What cost a dime in 1939 would cost $1.38 today. We've discussed comic book prices here in the past. Put that in perspective with comic books and then realize that the average comic costs $3 today and doesn't have anywhere near the number of pages it would have in 1939.

So, if Bela was making $5,000 for what was probably a ten day shoot during his Monogram days that would translate to $69,500 in 2006 dollars. Putting that in perspective, toward the end of their lives both Laurence Olivier and Vincent Price were available for $100,000 a week. So, maybe ol' Bela wasn't being as mistreated by Hollywood as we've thought all these years.

So then in none of the films did Bela ever get the equivalent to today's $25 million per picture?

While movie stars were paid handsomely in Hollywood during the golden age none of them made the kind of money that stars make today. There are a number of reasons for that. Hollywood used to have a stable of actors under contract which meant that the actors would get a weekly paycheck just like the average Joe. This was a huge expense for studios. With the decline of the contract player system studios saved money on one hand by getting rid of a huge weekly payroll for talent, but found that freelance actors could begin to command higher salaries per picture. Hollywood had gone through this with few players during the 1930's. The only one that comes to mind is Cary Grant. The freelance actor became more common during the 1940's when even our Boris would leave Hollywood for stage work in New York and return to Hollywood to work for Universal, Warner Bros., Columbia and Fox. By the 1950's the star system was pretty much gone. So, if a studio wanted Marlon Brando or Liz Taylor they were paying a premium price for them. And the trend continues to date. Stars who are under contract to studios today generally will have "sweetheart" deals which allows them a housekeeping deal at a studio to develop projects either for the studio or which the studio will have a right of first refusal on. The one contemporary star that had this kind of deal with a studio was Tom Cruise with Paramount. That is why it was such big news a while ago when Paramount did not renew the contract with his production company.

But, back to the original question; did Bela ever make the equivalent of a $25,000,000 paycheck for a picture? No. Nobody did. The highest paid star at the prestige studio M-G-M in the 1920's was Greta Garbo. Garbo was making $3,500 a week under contract. Using the above dollar calculator we find that Garbo's $3,500 a week salary would translate to $38,605 in 2006 dollars. Her annual salary of $182,000 in 1927 would translate to $2,007,457 in 2006 dollars. Garbo averaged two films per year under her contract. Some stars would make four or more. The two films a year would mean that her salary would be written off by the studio at $91,000 per picture which would translate to $1,003,728 in 2006 dollars. So if Garbo was the highest paid star at the time she wasn't making anywhere near what a big star can command in 2007. Exceptions to this might be Chaplin, Fairbanks and Pickford, but they owned their own procuditon company, United Artists. You also cannot consider Marion Davies salary since she was paid more than she was worth because of her relationship with William Randolph Hearst. Her salary was an aberration and not a true reflection of what a big star would be contracted for.

We often hear that some stars, like Roscoe Arbuckle, would make $1,000,000 a year. Even a million a year only translates into just over $11,000,000 in contemporary dollars. And stars like Arbuckle would crank out multiple pictures to earn that kind of money.
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That's assuming, todmichel, that the conversion table that Cadaverino provided for us is accurate. I have no reason to believe that it wouldn't be and it's been kind of fun to play around with.