There are many different union contracts for actors based on a production's venue, and Mr. Walker usually worked at one of the lowest pay scales.
There are even full-fledged agencies that manage social media contracts for actors, sports figures, and musicians.
The Screen Actors Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers remain in a tense deadlock over a new contract for the actors, but another group, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, has approved its new agreement.
The festival's arrangement with Actors Equity allows "initial appearance" contracts for five actors, up from three last summer.
Begley said he wouldn't do a show about a legendary labor leader without union contracts for the actors, which aren't required in sub-100-seat theaters.
"It's just that there were inequities in this contract for the commercial actors that were obvious to anyone who looked at them," he said.
Studios have also taken the unusual step of posting their entire contract offer on the Internet for actors to scrutinize for themselves, and have been encouraging actors to reject SAG's stance in ads in industry trade newspapers and via fliers distributed at casting agencies.
The current contract for the 120,000-member actors' union expires on June 30, and much of the entertainment industry, hoping to avoid a strike similar to a three-month walkout by writers that began in November, has been eager for bargaining to begin.
Though a contract film actor for Rank for several years, Owen failed to find a niche in that over-full stable, where height and looks were the tools of preferment.
After leaving the service, Lewis worked steadily as a contract actor for Warner Bros. in the 1940s.
