Quote of the Day (Sally Field, on Coming From ‘A Working-Class Show Business Family’)

“A working-class show business family is the toughest, toughest job you can imagine. There is no security. You have a job one week and none for months and months and months. It’s a very grueling, tough life. It can be discouraging and humiliating and disappointing and, beyond that, just frightening because you don’t know when you will have another job or how you will live. One day we seemed to have money, and the next day they came and got everything.”—American Oscar- and Emmy-winning actress Sally Field, on growing up with a stuntman-actor (Jock Mahoney) for a stepfather and an underemployed Paramount contract actress (Margaret Field) for a mother, quoted by Ann Donahue, “Women in Hollywood Icon 2006: Sally Field,” Premiere Magazine, October 2007

There are a couple of reasons why I thought of using this quote today besides, most obviously, because of Labor Day.

After 10 years, I finally got around this past week to watch La La Land. For much of the movie, Emma Stone’s character Mia has her dreams of being an actress dashed repeatedly, in just the “discouraging and humiliating and disappointing” fashion recalled by Ms. Field. 

I also recently read a book called Hollywood Unions, edited by Kate Fortmueller and Luci Marzola. It covers numerous occupations, most like the blue-collar, less prestigious jobs in which Field’s parents struggled to make ends meet.

Unions represent an estimated 331,000 workers in the film and television industry, most of whom will experience economic uncertainty rather than the glamour of Oscar night. Even the most successful actors will be quick to say that they might be lucky to receive one call-back out of 100 auditions.

And most of the other professionals in the nation’s entertainment capital will be employed in just the kind of low-paying, insecure, even dangerous work that so many others across the nation must accept.

(The image of Sally Field that accompanies this post was taken during BookExpo America 2018 at the Javits Convention Center in New York City, on June 1, 2018, by Rhododendrites.)