Central Casting is an American casting company with offices in Los Angeles, New York, Georgia, and Louisiana that specializes in the casting of extras, body doubles, and stand-ins. In popular usage the term "central casting" has come to denote an unspecified source of stereotypical types for film or television, as in a character being "straight out of central casting". History Los Angeles When the entertainment industry started to take off in the early 1920s, thousands of people flocked to Hollywood with hopes of becoming the next big star. These hopefuls were called "extras" because they were the extra people who filled out scenes. The main way to find work at this time was to wait outside the gates of studios, hoping to be hired on the spot. With little regulation on hiring film extras, many people were exploited while looking for work. In an effort to fix the employment issues and exploitation that plagued the industry, Will H. Hays commissioned several studies of the employment conditions in Hollywood, including one from Mary van Kleeck, a prominent sociologist with the Russell Sage Foundation. After reviewing the results of the studies, Hays adopted a suggestion of van Kleeck's and created the Central Casting Corporation in 1925 as a way to regulate the hiring of extras in Hollywood. Central Casting was formally established on December 4, 1925 as the Central Casting Bureau by Hays and the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). Hays had four main goals for Central Casting: to do away with the high fees extras were charged by private employment agencies, to ensure extras were paid legally, to discourage the influx of people flocking to Hollywood to seek employment as extras, and to provide steady employment to qualified extras. To carry out his vision, Hays hired Fred Beetson as president and on January 25, 1926, Central Casting officially opened its office in the Hollywood & Western Building in Hollywood. For the estimated 30,000 aspiring extras in Hollywood, Central Casting became the only source of extra work. In the first six months of operation, the agency registered more than 18,000 extras and made 113,873 placements. Many Hollywood legends started their careers with Central Casting, including Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, and Gary Cooper. In 1944, the agency introduced a second phone line, GArfield 3621 for men and GArfield 3711 for women. Though registration decreased due to World War II, the