I noticed in several intros to TV shows, that when the main actors are shown, their real names are written on the screen, however, only when the last actor is shown, his character’s name is written in addition to his real name. Why is that?
You can see what I am talking about in this intro to the JAG show:
at 0:40 David James Elliot is shown, followed by two more actors. At 1:00 John M. Jackson is shown but he also has the name of his role displayed “as Admiral Chegwidden”.
There are rules about how the actors of a TV series are billed. First the top stars of the series are shown and their names are given under their pictures. They are ordered either by how important they are to the show or just by alphabetical order if they can’t be distinguished in importance. Then the second-level stars of the series are shown and their names and their character names are given. The idea is that if you don’t know much about the series before seeing that episode, you might not even know that they are on it, while the major stars are supposedly known to everyone who watches the series at all. The second-level stars are often older actors (and are often playing roles like the boss of the major star) who appear only in one scene per episode. The idea is that the series is trying to be nice to these people, who might once have been major stars themselves but who now have to do this sort of secondary star work. So they can’t get top billing, but they can be singled out at the end of the billing with their character name as well as their name.
Much is riding on this for the actors. If they don’t get the billing they think they deserve their reputation could suffer and hence the chance of future roles. One thinks of the tortuous negotiations before Towering Inferno came out over the respective positions on the posters of Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. Both actors were insisting on top billing and the situation was finally resolved by having Newman’s name at the left above the title and McQueen’s at the right raised just slightly higher. Thus Newman could say he was billed first and McQueen could say he had the highest billing. Ridiculous but of such stuff are stupendous salaries made and maintained.
In Splitting Heirs John Cleese got the last billing but as “…and introducing John Cleese”, an amusing play on credits protocol given that the film came out in 1993.
I don’t know if there is a backstory to it but I always remembered the intro for Leave It To Beaver ending with, “And Jerry Mathers as The Beaver.”
And there was all kinds of posturing when the Gilligan’s Island theme named all the characters except the Professor and Mary Ann, who were lumped together as “and the rest.” The theme was updated to named them individually (albeit in the same phrase).
It’s all in the negotiations and the various actors’ star-power. Recall, for example, that Marlon Brando got top star billing for his relative bit-part in Superman (1978). He also got “a salary of $3.7 million and 11.75% of the box office gross profits, totaling $19 million” while Christopher Reeve, for his major role in the whole show, got a paltry $250,000.
And then there’s *Amistad, *starring Morgan Freeman. If you blinked, you may have missed him. (Did he even have any lines at all, or was he just scenery?)
Sometimes an actor will be signed for a series on a “special guest star” basis, like Martin Landau and Barbara Bain on Mission: Impossible or Veronica Hamill and Charles Haid on Hill Street Blues. Their credits are always different from the main cast’s.
The most important line in there is it being negotiated by the agents. That is the only rule that counts. Of course how well the agents do depends on the actors clout.
The only think I disagree with the Master about is when he says that all speaking roles must be credited. That is true, but it goes beyond that. A principal is an actor on whom the camera focuses. Principals get paid more, and get to eat at craft services, not get fed extra chow. (Very important, indeed.) There are SAG rules about this.
By the main star himself (John Denver), actually. His contract let him be billed however he wished. So he stated that he should be billed under the “and the rest” category as well unless they changed it to include the other actors. They couldn’t have Gilligan’s Island without a credit for Gilligan, so, of course, they changed it.
What I always thought was weird is that it fits 100 times better. “And the rest” had a big pause at the end that sounded weird. As I learned in music theory in college, it sounds better if the chords get faster and the rhythm more intense towards the end of a phrase.
Very often, but not always, special credits or higher billing are exchanged for money. Actors aren’t in the business to make a fortune from one appearance, they’re thinking in career terms, they want their name known because it pays off better in the long run.
Great behind-the-scenes story, and it shows that Denver was a decent sort of guy looking out for his co-stars. I might as well take care of the obligatory correction and say here that his name was BOB Denver.
