Top-earning actor
John Gilbert
≈ $520,000
$10,000 a week, annualizedEstimate
About $9.8 million in 2025 dollars
His first talkie, His Glorious Night, was laughed at. MGM kept paying the contract anyway.
The Jazz Age · 1920s
1929
Top-earning actress
Colleen Moore
≈ $650,000
Repeats her 1927 rateEstimate
About $12.2 million in 2025 dollars
No salary list survives for 1929. Moore's last First National pictures came out that year; the figure repeats her peak rate.
The pictures that paid
Box office champions of 1929
By U.S. theatrical rentals, the studios' share of ticket sales
- 1
The Broadway Melody
$2.8 million
- 2
The Cock-Eyed World
$2.7 million
- 3
Gold Diggers of Broadway
$2.5 million
Neither top earner was in one of the year's three biggest films.