Doctor and actor Wallachs were not related

Q: I was wondering if the Dr. Elliot Wallach who used to practice in Belleville was any relation to actor Eli Wallach?

A: They both hailed from the Big Apple, but an obituary showed no connection between the local doc and the great character actor who earned an honorary Oscar for his body of work in 2011.

Dr. Wallach grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., where his father was a judge. Before enrolling in the St. Louis University Medical School, Wallach attended the College of William and Mary in Virginia, where he played baseball with future Major League pitcher Vic Raschi. After being traded from the Yanks to the Cardinals, Raschi is remembered for serving up Hank Aaron’s first home run on April 23, 1954.

Wallach eventually practiced in Belleville from about 1952 to 1996, first on the Public Square and later at 6401 W. Main St. He also was one of the original staff at Memorial Hospital, where he was known for his good-natured, personal bedside manner. A longtime professor of medicine in dermatology at Washington University, he lived in St. Louis before dying of cancer in 2000 at age 79.

Wallach the actor also grew up in Brooklyn, but his only brother was named Sam and his parents ran Bertha’s Candy Store. After roles in more than 90 movies, including “The Misfits” and several spaghetti Westerns, he died last year at age 98.

Q: I don’t mean to keep tabs on you, but a few weeks ago you answered a question on reality TV shows. You gave a thorough answer to the question about why reality shows are cheaper to make, but then you seemed to skip questions about how much stars on “Duck Dynasty” and “Storage Wars” are paid. I always hoped you’d come back to those because I am very interested to learn the answers.

A: I didn’t mean to duck those questions because the numbers shed some interesting light on the ever-changing tastes of the American viewing public.

As I mentioned, some shows by their very nature offer big prizes to the winners while other participants must grovel for relative peanuts. On “Big Brother,” for example, the final survivor takes home a cool half-mil while the runner-up nets $50,000. And, of course, host Julie Chen, wife of CBS President and CEO Les Moonves, gets a healthy chunk of change for her pithy commentary.

But according to one recent contract, the others get relative chicken feed for enduring their ordeal — $750 a week, which comes to $4.46 an hour if you consider it a 24/7 job. Meanwhile, the network execs are piling up stacks of cash from a show in which they stuff a bunch of characters into a house for three months and let the cameras roll.

Sometimes, however, the networks will have to open up their wallets if a show catches the viewers’ fancy, and “Duck Dynasty” is a good example. According to published reports, the Robertson clan earned roughly $50,000 an episode during the first three seasons — pretty decent money from a network that didn’t know whether viewers were going to be fascinated, fall asleep or flee their living rooms.

But as audiences grew along with ad rates, the Robertsons decided they wanted a bigger piece of the pie. So before season 4 started, they essentially went on strike. Not wanting to lose this gold mine, A&E gave in and agreed to pay the family a reported $200,000 per episode to be split among nine adults and 11 kids.

Still, viewers can be fickle. After an amazing 11.77 million people tuned in for the start of that fourth season, “Duck Dynasty” lured only 2.51 million for the seventh-season finale last February thanks partly to all the controversy the family has generated the past couple of years. Still, when Willie and Korie’s son married last August to close out season 8, it was the highest-rated cable show that Wednesday night with 3.26 million, so you probably don’t want to bet against the clan being re-signed for a ninth season next year.

The same growth in revenue for all involved is also true of “Storage Wars.” When the show debuted, the main stars reportedly were paid $2,000 per episode, but during the first year, the audience more than doubled from 2.1 million to 5.1 million and even outperformed competing shows on NBC and ABC.

As a result, salaries rose commensurately. After settling a lawsuit with A&E before the fifth season, Dave Hester re-signed for $25,000 per episode with a 26-episode guarantee along with $2,500 a month for travel, a $125,000 expense account and a $25,000 signing bonus. Others also began to receive at least $25,000 an episode, so it looks like there’s gold in them thar abandoned storage lockers.

Participants on many other shows also have cashed in. Celebrity contestants on “Dancing with the Stars” take home $125,000 plus an additional $20,000 for every week they stay on, and the professional dancers have seen their pay quintuple to more than $5,000 a week. The “Pawn Stars” have made millions from their business profits alone. Last February, the Kardashians reportedly signed another three-year contract for $80 million with the E! network. The show, however, may be living on borrowed time with viewership plummeting from 2.5 million for the start of season 10 last March to just 1.29 million for the season 11 debut in September.

“Even when you think something about the Kardashians could be interesting, it’s not,” New York Times critic David Hinckley wrote in April. But I suppose as long as viewers keep tuning in, these shows will continue to find pots of gold at the end of their reality rainbow.

Today’s trivia

How many states, either in part or in toto, can say that they were once part of the historic Louisiana Purchase that the U.S. bought from France in 1803?

Answer to Sunday’s trivia: Legend has it that for his first major crime Henry McCarty — aka Billy the Kid — pulled off a pretty slick trick in more ways than one. When he was about 15, he stole several pounds of butter from a rancher and promptly sold it to a merchant in Silver City, N.M.. For this, he received a good tongue-lashing or a public spanking from the local sheriff, depending on the story you want to believe. As you might imagine, it did little good. On Sept. 4, 1875, Sombrero Jack Schaefer broke into a Chinese laundry and made off with two guns and $200 worth of clothing and blankets. Billy agreed to hide the loot, but the woman who had taken Billy in found it and turned Billy in. This time, the sheriff gave him his first taste of the slammer.

This story was originally published December 13, 2015 at 8:02 AM with the headline "Doctor and actor Wallachs were not related."