Director's Rights Respected / "If You Cast Me You Can Sleep With Me"

[Bricker]

Sir Ian McKellen is quoted as saying:

But from my own experience, when I was starting acting in the early sixties, the director of the theatre I was working at showed me some photographs he got from women who were wanting jobs. . . some of them had at the bottom of their photograph ‘DRR’ — directors’ rights respected. In other words, if you give me a job, you can have sex with me.

I find this claim difficult to believe.

Apart from Sir Ian’s claim, is this convention reported elsewhere? Or is this the best kept secret of British theatre (until now)?

[Icarus]

@Bricker

I find this claim difficult to believe.

I do not find this difficult to believe. There has always been the image of a female “sleeping her way to the top”. And the “casting couch” is a two-way street. This would fit in with that trope.

Theatre, vaudeville, burlesque, dance, even early movies, etc., historically were often thought of as one step away from prostitution. So, I would not be surprised that some small segment of the population played that game, even into the modern era.

[Bricker]

@Icarus

I do not find this difficult to believe. There has always been the image of a female “sleeping her way to the top”. And the “casting couch” is a two-way street. This would fit in with that trope.

Theatre, vaudeville, burlesque, dance, even early movies, etc., historically were often thought of as one step away from prostitution. So, I would not be surprised that some small segment of the population played that game, even into the modern era.

I should have been clearer, then.

I believe that performers traded sex for roles.

I don’t believe that a formal system, with well-understood code words that were written on head shots, existed.

[Bryan_Ekers]

The only references I can find lead back to McKellan’s own statement. This reminds me of the term “deadbeats” for people who pay off their credit cards on time (thus the credit card company makes little or no money from them), as cited in Frontline’s episode “The Secret History of the Credit Card”. It’s possible this could have been one person’s private nickname for the group rather than a widespread bit of industry jargon, and it’s equally possible McKellan’s friend was joking around with him, though McKellan thought he was being serous.

[xnylder]

I agree with Bryan Ekers’ post above. DRR could have easily been the name of a talent agency, or a photography studio, two things sometimes marked on actors’ headshots.

[Defensive_Indifference]

I searched for that phrase across newspaperarchive.com and ebscohost.com, and I didn’t get any hits. Maybe the DRR thing was unique to that director’s casting process. The director could have made it known to local agents that that’s what he expected, and they passed the message on to the actresses they represented. Or maybe McKellen’s memory is just playing tricks on him.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@xnylder

I agree with Bryan Ekers’ post above. DRR could have easily been the name of a talent agency, or a photography studio, two things sometimes marked on actors’ headshots.

I doubt it. The name of the talent agency or photography studio would have been printed, while a “DRR” being passed off as an offer by the actress would have to have been handwritten.

I wonder if DRR really did stand for “Director’s Rights Respected”, but that “Director’s Rights Respected” didn’t really mean “if you give me a job, you can have sex with me”. Possibly some sort of non-compete agreement, e.g. “if you give me, an unknown aspiring actress, a big role, I’m not going to turn around and ditch you for another director once I’m a star”.

[Acsenray]

Yeah, without independent confirmation, I call bullshit on this “DRR” story.

[F.U.Shakespeare]

I agree the phrase sounds fishy, and perhaps not coincidentally, shares vocabulary with the pretty much debunked “right of the first night”.