To the envy and entertainment of many a citizen, to the embarrassment and chagrin of a few, the House Ways & Means Committee last week opened for public inspection two fat typewritten volumes containing the names of U. S. employes receiving salaries, commissions and bonuses totaling more than $15,000 in 1935. Not to be confused with the corporate salary schedules required by the Securities & Exchange Commission, this list was compiled from income tax returns. Highest-paid individual in the land that year was William Randolph Hearst, who drew $500,000 as head of Hearst Consolidated Publications Inc. A close second was Mae West. For her box-office sex appeal, the corporeal basis of which she has had immortalized in marble, Paramount paid $480,833.
No one else bettered the $400,000 mark.
Third place with $398,880 went to Charles W. Guttzeit, little-known president of a little-known specialty concern called Latrobe Electric Steel Co.
Inquiry revealed that Mr. Guttzeit lived at Manhattan's Engineers Club, received commissions on all his company's sales, but paid all selling expenses, including salaries, office expenses and warehouse maintenance, out of his own pocket.
Others earning more than $300,000 included General Motors President Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr. ($374,505) and Executive Vice President William S. Knudsen ($325,869), Marlene Dietrich ($368,000), Bing Crosby ($318,907), Gary Cooper ($311,000). Twentieth Century-Fox Film's Winfield R. Sheehan ($344,230).
Highest-paid business woman was Ethel V. Mars, president of Mars, Inc. (Milky Way chocolate bars). More famed for her racing stable than her corporate connection, which she inherited (TIME, Jan. 4), Mrs. Mars was paid $120,000. Not far below Mrs. Mars came Mrs. Lillian S. Dodge, cosmetician president of Harriet Hubbard Aver, Inc. ($100,000). At that rate it took Mrs. Dodge more than two years to earn the $213,286 fine she had to pay in 1930 for trying to smuggle in trunkloads of French furs, silks, satins and jewelry.
Most valuable hired men in Boston are apparently Mahlon E. Traylor, who was paid $216,505 by Massachusetts Distributors. Inc., sales agency for stock in Massachusetts Investors Trust, and Francis Albert Countway, a retiring bachelor with a fondness for badminton, whose knowledge of the soap business was worth $286,995 to Lever Bros.
The list was not without its oddities.
Three hot dog vendors at Manhattan's Yankee Stadium and Polo Grounds received more ($30,000 to $34,999) than Pitchers Lefty Gomez ($20,000) and Carl Hubbell ($17,500). From Hal Roach Studios fat Funnyman Oliver Hardy had received only about half as much ($85,316) as his slender colleague Stan Laurel ($156,266). Henry Ford drew no salary from Ford Motor Co., while Son Edsel's $100,376 was topped by Ford's Vice President P. E. Martin ($128,008) and General Manager Charles E. Sorensen ($115,100). Pundit Walter Lippmann of the New York Herald Tribune made $54,329, whereas older and more famed Herald Tribune Columnist Mark Sullivan drew only $23,527, Franklin Pierce Adams only $21,852.
In New Orleans, Seymour Weiss, onetime Huey Long henchman, drew $92,390 from an oil outfit called Win Or Lose Corp.