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Some stars are sidewinders. From his mighty altitude in North by Northwest, Cary Grant looked down and imagined the longer name of Eva Marie Saint reaching toward the right-hand margin. In all billings, C a r y G r a n t was stretched out to cover the difference. Others are spacemen. For The Brothers Karamazov, Yul Brynner insisted that his name be followed by a few acres of white space to set it off. When Mary, Mary opened on Broadway last spring, Actor Michael Rennie brooded over his tertiary position after Barbara Bel Geddes and Barry Nelson, finally demanded that if his name was to be printed below theirs, it must begin to the right of the s in Geddes and left of the B in Barry, with nothing but heaven above. "I'd rather pay people off in star billing than in money," shrugs Broadway Producer Hal Prince, "and some people are dumb enough to accept this."
Enter Grace. Once every few years, grace enters the scene. Charles Boyer, gentleman first and actor second, insisted that Claudette Colbert's name be listed before his in The Marriage-Go-Round. Fredric March asked that co-star billing in Gideon be given to Douglas Campbell, who plays the title role. With proper respect for the acting ability of Spencer Tracy, Frank Sinatra acknowledged that Tracy should come first in the billings for Columbia's current The Devil at Four O'Clock.
Nonetheless, some of the most important writing that goes into a Broadway production, a television show or a Hollywood movie will always be done by agents, lawyers and producers who stay up half the night over mugs of cold coffee, plucking crows and picking bones, cutting, revising, editing, fighting, bargaining, compromising, threatening, sulking, foaming at the mouth—working out the billings.