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MODERN ACTING The Lost Chapter of American Film and Theatre

CYNTHIA BARON

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN SCREEN INDUSTRIES AND PERFORMANCE

Palgrave Studies in Screen Industries and Performance Series Editor Cynthia  Baron Department of Theatre and Film Bowling Green State University Bowling Green USA This series encompasses the spectrum of contemporary scholarship on screen performance and embraces productive tensions within film and media studies and between cinema and cultural studies. It features historical research that sheds light on the aesthetic and material forces that shape the production and reception of screen performances in different times, venues, and locales. The series also presents research that expands our understanding of screen performance by examining various types and registers of performance, including those outside the domain of conveying character. The series strives to offer new insights into film/media practice and history by exploring the tools and methods of screen performance practitioners as well as the shifting modes and significances of screen performance in changing social-technological environments.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14591

For E. R. B.

Cynthia Baron

Modern Acting The Lost Chapter of American Film and Theatre

Cynthia Baron Department of Theatre and Film Bowling Green State University Bowling Green, Ohio, USA

Palgrave Studies in Screen Industries and Performance ISBN 978-1-137-40654-5 ISBN 978-1-137-40655-2 DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-40655-2

(eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016942451 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover illustration: © Photofest, Inc. Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London

ALSO

BY

CYNTHIA BARON

Cynthia Baron, Diane Carson, and Frank Tomasulo, eds. More than a Method: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary Film Performance. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004. Cynthia Baron and Sharon Marie Carnicke. Reframing Screen Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008. Cynthia Baron, Diane Carson, and Mark Bernard. Appetites and Anxieties: Food, Film, and the Politics of Representation. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2014. Cynthia Baron. Denzel Washington. London: British Film Institute/ Palgrave, 2015.

v

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgements

xi

Introduction Part I

Making Modern Acting Visible

xiii 1 3

1

A Twenty-First-Century Perspective

2

Acting Strategies, Modern Drama, and New Stagecraft

19

3

Modern Acting: A Conscious Approach

41

4

Modern Acting: Obscured by the Method’s  “American” Style

61

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viii

CONTENTS

Part II 5

6

Acting and American Performing Arts

Developments in Modern Theatre and Modern Acting, 1875–1930 Shifting Fortunes in the Performing Arts Business

Part III

The Creative Labor of Modern Acting

85

87 111 135

7

The American Academy of Dramatic Arts

137

8

The Pasadena Playhouse

155

9

Training in Modern Acting on the Studio Lots

171

10 The Actors’ Laboratory in Hollywood

189

Part IV

Modern and Method Acting

217

11 Modern Acting: Stage and Screen

219

12 The Legacy of Modern Acting

243

Appendix

263

Bibliography

267

Index

279

LIST

Cover Fig. 1.1 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 4.1

Fig. 4.2 Fig. 5.1

Fig. 5.2

Fig. 5.3 Fig. 6.1

OF

ILLUSTRATIONS

Roman Bohnen in a camera test for The Hard Way (Sherman 1943). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. George Cukor and Ronald Colman on the set of A Double Life (1947). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 14 Josephine Dillon coaching actor Bruce Cabot in 1933. Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 43 Sophie Rosenstein coaching Dolores Moran for The Old Acquaintance (Sherman 1943). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 47 Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, and Noël Coward in Coward’s Design for Living (1933). Photo by Vandamm Studios© Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 63 Ensemble cast in the Group Theatre production of Odets’Awake and Sing!(1935). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 64 Holbrook Blinn and Minnie Maddern Fiske in Sheldon’s Salvation Nell (1908). Photography Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations 90 Beatrice Terry, Rose Hobart, and Eva Le Gallienne in Chekhov’s The Three Sisters (1926). Photo by Vandamm Studios© Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 92 Maria Ouspenskaya in the Hollywood production of Dodsworth (Wyler 1936). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 102 Stella Adler in a Paramount publicity photo from 1937. Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 119 ix

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. 6.2

Fig. 6.3 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2

Fig. 7.3 Fig. 8.1 Fig. 8.2 Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2 Fig. 9.3 Fig. 10.1 Fig. 10.2 Fig. 10.3 Fig. 10.4 Fig. 11.1 Fig. 11.2 Fig. 11.3 Fig. 11.4

Fig. 12.1

Frances Farmer and Roman Bohnen in Odets’ Golden Boy (1938). Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Publicity photo of the reconstituted Group Theatre in late 1938 or early 1939. Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. Edward G. Robinson in a Theatre Guild production of The Brothers Karamazov (1927). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. Kirk Douglas in a student production at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1941. Courtesy of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts Charles Jehlinger, American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Courtesy of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts Gilmor Brown with students at the Pasadena Playhouse. Courtesy of the Pasadena Playhouse State Theatre William Holden and Joseph Mankiewicz judging auditions at the Pasadena Playhouse. Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. Phyllis Loughton coaching a Paramount contract player in 1935. Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. Lillian Burns coaching actor Edmund Purdom in 1955. Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. Lela Rogers coaching Lucille Ball and other RKO contract players c. 1937. Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. Rose Hobart in a Universal publicity photo c. 1931. Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. Morris Carnovsky in a publicity photo for Dead Reckoning (Cromwell 1947). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. Roman Bohnen in a publicity photo for Of Mice and Men (Milestone 1939). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. J. Edward Bromberg in a Hollywood publicity photo c. 1942. Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. George Cukor and Katharine Hepburn on the set of Adam’s Rib (1949). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. Jean Arthur and Cary Grant on the set of Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks 1939). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. Josephine Dillon in an audio session with contract players c. 1937. Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. Lillian Albertson in a publicity photo for Peple’s The Silver Girl (1907). Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Universal contract players in a showcase scene directed by Rosenstein in 1951. Courtesy of Photofest, Inc.

128 130 139

142 149 161 166 174 175 177 196 198 207 209 223 224 228

231 245

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I first want to thank the Modern acting teachers whose ideas are at the heart of this book’s story. Their devotion to the art of acting is inspiring, and their willingness to labor in obscurity not only gained my respect long ago but also sparked my desire to let people know about their contributions to the history of American acting. All the teachers brought their own histories and temperaments into their work, and so throughout I have endeavored to let their unique wit and wisdom shine through. Research for this book was conducted over the course of the last twentyfive years, and it depends on another group of people who labor in obscurity, research librarians at archives across the USA. I have been aided by so many kind and engaged staff members that it seems best simply to recognize the invaluable assistance of people at: the American Academy for Dramatic Arts, the American Film Institute, the Huntington Library in Pasadena, the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Margaret Herrick Library, the New  York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Pasadena Playhouse, the Pasadena Public Library, Southern Methodist University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California. I owe special thanks to Photofest in New York, which is not just an image library, but also an invaluable resource for authors. I want to express my thanks to the students and faculty in the Department of Theatre and Film and the American Culture Studies graduate program at Bowling Green State University for supporting my work for more than fifteen years. I am grateful that the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and the University Film and Video Association have offered official and tacit recognition of my ongoing research. I sincerely appreciate xi

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the many teachers, colleagues, and collaborators who have served as guiding lights for this project. It is impossible to name them all, but people who have assisted at key moments and in key ways include: Martin Barker, Mark Bernard, Dennis Bingham, Jeremy Butler, Diane Carson, Christine Cornea, Thomas Elsaesser, John L.  Fell, LeAnn Fields, Krin Gabbard, Christine Gledhill, Barry Keith Grant, Christine Holmlund, Marsha Kinder, Peter Krämer, Alan Lovell, Cynthia Lucia, Mary Luckhurst, Rosemary Malague, Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Paul McDonald, James Naremore, Dana Polan, Lynn Spigel, Jörg Sternagel, Stephen Tropiano, Keri Walsh, Beckett Warren, and Pamela Robertson Wojcik. I want to express special thanks to Frank P. Tomasulo for his extensive comments on the manuscripts for both Reframing Screen Performance and this book. I owe a special debt to Sharon Marie Carnicke, who long ago shared with me the manuscript that would become the first edition of Stanislavsky in Focus, and whose generous collegiality most recently included time spent reading and discussing an earlier draft of this book. I want to thank Felicity Plester, Martin Shingler, and Yannis Tzioumakis for their contributions to the creation of the Palgrave Studies in Screen Industries and Performance series, and the team at Palgrave for taking this book through production. Most of all, I want to thank Emily Baron, who has graciously survived the whole multi-decade adventure, and offered assistance, guidance and support throughout. I am so grateful and know I am a really lucky mom.

INTRODUCTION

In twenty-first-century America, the various components of the performing arts industry (theatre, film, television, new media) depend on actors’ creative labor.1 Big-budget productions, from Hollywood blockbusters to Broadway shows with film stars, feature skilled actors whose cogent expressivity contributes to audiences’ emotional engagement. Cable and online offerings, from the nuanced characterizations in series television to the expanding archive of performing arts documents (backstage interviews, cult TV shows, Vines), make actors’ performances part of daily conversations and ways of imagining the world. To create computer-generated characters, animators study acting and often work closely with the actors whose vocal and motion-capture performances provide a foundation for conveying characters’ thoughts and temperaments.2 As is to be expected, the exercises and techniques that performers use to hone their skills and create characterizations tend to concern actors rather than audiences. The views of different acting teachers remain professional rather than public knowledge. For example, most contemporary actors are probably aware of approaches associated with Michael Chekhov, Jerzy Grotowski, and Tadashi Suzuki, just a sampling of the practitioners discussed in Alison Hodge’s anthology Actor Training (2010). By comparison, American audience members would probably have little familiarity with the work and ideas of these individuals. But if asked to identify an acting technique and acting teacher, people will invariably mention Method acting and Lee Strasberg. Method acting’s visibility in American society makes it a good starting point for considering other acting teachers and acting strategies important xiii

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in the 1930s and 1940s, for even general impressions about the Method are a way to begin exploring the strategies that Strasberg’s initial contemporaries saw as key to creating “truthful” performances. My project involves belated recognition of acting teachers such as Lillian Albertson, Josephine Dillon, Sophie Rosenstein, Charles Jehlinger (at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts), Gilmor Brown (at the Pasadena Playhouse), and the theatre expatriates, many from the Group Theatre, who formed the Actors’ Laboratory in Hollywood (1941–1950). My study examines well-known material pertaining to Method acting, as well as unfamiliar evidence provided by acting manuals, oral histories, and other archival records concerning American acting in the 1930s and 1940s.3 It explores Strasberg’s Method approach to actor training and the ideas of various acting teachers whose shared vision of the actor, acting challenges, and strategies for creating characterizations constitutes what they considered Modern acting. In the course of disentangling Modern acting from Strasberg’s Method, my discussions inevitably touch on acting techniques discussed by Russian actor-director Konstantin Stanislavsky and the two people best known for circulating his ideas in America, Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya. Modern acting could, at first sight, appear to be a highly ambiguous term. It might seem to suggest the acting styles that evolved in western theatrical productions from the 1500s forward, or perhaps the minimalist characterizations in modernist film and theatre productions, or even the performance of social norms in various iterations of modern life. Yet it can have quite a specific meaning. The acting teachers at the center of my study refer to Modern acting and modern actors when discussing their ideas about creating performances suited to modern drama (associated with playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekhov) and the new stagecraft movement, which in the USA featured work by designers such as Robert Edmond Jones, Norman Bel Geddes, Boris Aronson, and Mordecai Gorelik. For instance, Modern Acting: A Manual (1936) is the title of the comprehensive volume co-authored by Sophie Rosenstein, a University of Washington drama teacher who later became a drama coach in studioera Hollywood.4 Modern Acting: A Guide for Stage, Screen, and Radio (1940) is the title of the book by Josephine Dillon, best known as Clark Gable’s mentor and first wife, and whose work as a non-commercial Little Theatre director and acting teacher in Portland, Oregon, led to a career as a Hollywood drama coach starting in the 1920s.5 Stella Adler, who is

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generally identified as formulating one version of Method acting, but who, I believe, is best understood as a teacher of Modern acting from 1934 forward, explains that the ability to “communicate complex and subtle ideas, like those that appear in Strindberg, Ibsen, Shaw, and Arthur Miller,” is essential for a “modern actor,” whose work is grounded in the ideas of Stanislavsky rather than those associated with “‘the Method.’”6 Modern acting techniques represent one set of strategies American acting teachers formulated to facilitate performances keyed to the aesthetic priorities of modern drama and stagecraft, which emerged in the late nineteenth century, gained influence in the early twentieth century, and influenced American film and theatre in the 1930s and 1940s. Strasberg’s Method involves another set of techniques meant to address performing arts’ changing principles. In brief, Modern acting and Strasberg’s Method reflect contrasting ideas about the best way for actors to negotiate the challenges presented by modern playwrights’ interest in the nuances of everyday life, and modern designers’ drive to create productions with a unified aesthetic, often presented in increasingly intimate performance spaces, including motion picture scenes where little more than “the change of expression in the eyes of the actor” could convey a character’s “slightest change of mood or thought.”7 As subsequent chapters will illustrate, different ideas about ways to address challenges posed by modern drama and new stagecraft led Modern acting teachers and Strasberg to adopt opposing views on what constituted “real” emotion and how to create it during performance. For instance, Modern acting teachers recognized that personal associations could be useful for building characterizations. Sophie Rosenstein notes that “in the first rehearsals even the trained actor finds that recollection of specific experience clarifies action and feeling in the portrayal of his new role.”8 However, as rehearsals progress, the actor “will find that the proper emotions in the right degree of intensity now appear in response to the particular circumstances of the present play.”9 Moreover, from a Modern acting perspective, “truthful” emotion during performance occurs only when an actor is “concentrated entirely upon the life he is portraying.”10 By comparison, Strasberg makes personal experiences crucial to performance. His Method leads actors to use substitutions (formulated by themselves or their director) during performance that are “different from that set forth by the play.”11 Setting aside the Modern acting view that an actor should live the part and think “what the character is thinking,” Strasberg’s

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Method trains actors to relive personal experiences to make their “real feelings expressive on stage.”12

DESIGN AND DELIMITATIONS Why would my study of acting techniques center on the 1930s and 1940s, especially when two of the acting teachers, Lee Strasberg (1901–1982) and Stella Adler (1901–1992), gained visibility after this period, and when actors in twenty-first-century America still use Modern acting techniques and Strasberg’s Method? Because several histories of American acting focus on the 1920s, in particular the Moscow Art Theatre tours (1923, 1924), and then skip to Method acting in the 1950s, with the Group Theatre (1931–1941) presented as essentially a link between the Moscow Art Theatre and the Actors Studio in New York, where Strasberg served as artistic director from 1951.13 Perhaps influenced by Strasberg’s statement that the Method is “the summation of the work that has been done on the actor’s problem for the last eighty years,” the teleological dimension of many accounts portrays the 1930s and 1940s as a time of inactivity, a waiting period until vital developments come to light at the Actors Studio.14 At the same time, a number of feminist scholars have called attention to the contrasting positions of Strasberg and Adler, which took memorable form in 1934, when Adler presented fellow Group Theatre members with ideas on acting to which she had been introduced during a concentrated period of study with Stanislavsky.15 We will revisit this event, but to describe it now in the briefest terms, Strasberg chose not to attend Adler’s (August 7) lecture, instead delivering his own the following day, in which he announced, “I teach the Strasberg Method, not the Stanislavsky System.”16 To expand on existing insights about the Strasberg–Adler confrontation, I believe it important to note that the ideas Adler shared with her Group Theatre colleagues were articulated by other Modern acting teachers in the 1930s and 1940s, who also recognized that actors of the period were searching for ways to “feel the part.”17 For example, in her 1940s manual, Josephine Dillon shares the following exchange. A player asks: “how can we make the part real to the audience [unless we] feel the emotions of the role ourselves”; she responds by saying: “You will find that a deep, sympathetic understanding of the part is better than the reproduction of the emotional state of the character you are portraying.”18 Similarly, writing in 1936, Sophie Rosenstein explains: “A question which is often brought up in the classroom in regard

INTRODUCTION

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to relaxation is ‘If my character is tense and nervous, shouldn’t I be tense and nervous?’”19 Illuminating the Modern acting perspective, Rosenstein notes: “The answer is that there is a difference between the tenseness of the character and the tenseness of the actor portraying that character.”20 Making a comparable point about the limitations of using personal experiences as the basis for emotion in performance, in her 1947 volume Motion Picture Acting, Lillian Albertson (actor, theatre director, and Hollywood drama coach) observes: “Many times I have seen young actors in motion pictures try to lash themselves into a pathetic mood … to think of something real that will harrow their souls … In and out they go in an agonizing attempt to feel something.”21 Her acting manual outlines techniques for creating “real” emotion through script analysis and ongoing life study and actor training. The observations by Dillon, Rosenstein, and Albertson are a sign that the aesthetic values woven into modern drama and new stagecraft made portrayals featuring “real” feeling a priority for actors of the period. With this in mind, the 1934 confrontation between Strasberg and Adler need not be seen as Strasberg framed it—as a demand for “truthfulness of experience and of expression” versus an emphasis on “the rhetorical and external nature of acting.”22 We can also set aside the idea that it aligns Strasberg with emotion and Adler with action. Rather, the confrontation connects Adler to Modern acting; Strasberg’s emphasis on personal substitutions had dominated his teaching and directing with the Group Theatre members from 1931 to 1934, but the position Adler outlined coincided with that held by other Modern acting teachers in the 1930s and 1940s. Adler’s interest in circulating Stanislavsky’s ideas illuminates a period on the timeline of American acting history, one distinguished by the articulation of Modern acting principles. Her involvement in the study and teaching of acting strategies is noteworthy not for its singularity, but because it is indicative of the era. To note just a few publications or formal articulations of acting technique, Rosamond Gilder, a key Theater Arts staff member from 1924 to 1948, published Enter the Actress: The First Women in Theatre in 1931. Two years later, Richard Boleslavsky, known for his lectures that introduced Americans to Stanislavsky’s ideas, published Acting: The First Six Lessons. In addition, Madame Eva Alberti, head of the New  York College of Expression (also known as Alberti’s School of Expression), brought out A Handbook of Acting Based on the New Pantomime in 1933.22 An abridged translation of Stanislavsky’s An Actor Prepares appeared in 1936—which is the same year that Sophie

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Rosenstein’s acting manual and Pasadena Playhouse founder Gilmor Brown’s General Principles of Play Direction were published. Players at Work: Acting According to the Actors, with interviews conducted by Eustis Morton, appeared in 1937, and The Actor Creates by Aristide D’Angelo, an instructor at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, was published in 1939.23 Josephine Dillon’s manual came out in 1940, followed by Lillian Albertson’s in 1947. The Actors’ Laboratory in Hollywood held workshops between 1945 and 1947 to coordinate teaching in its various acting classes; the transcripts are at UCLA. The English-language publication of Stanislavsky’s Building a Character appeared in 1949 following his death in 1938. Transcriptions of Charles Jehlinger’s lectures at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts circulated among his students as early as 1918; they were compiled for limited publication in 1958 after his death in 1951. While the varied ideas in all this material cannot be boiled down to a single thought, they consistently point to the view that actors should expend labor on script analysis and craft ensemble performances to create the “perfect expression” of their own roles, which are seamlessly integrated into “the total theatrical illusion” of productions ranging from realist to romantic to classic dramas and comedies.24 In addition to recognizing the era’s engaged activity, my discussion also examines the 1930s and 1940s, in that the these two decades represent an identifiable period in America’s performing arts industry. During this time, theatre lost its leading position, and film reigned supreme—that is, until television became the nation’s primary performing arts provider, as TV ownership rose from “one-half of 1 per cent … to 84 per cent” of all households between 1948 and 1962.25 Commercial television transmission, available before World War II but withdrawn when the USA entered the conflict, quickly increased once it became legal again in 1946. By 1950, there were ninety-eight commercial TV stations; by 1953, there were 233 stations generating product over and above programming supplied by the three national networks, NBC, CBS, and ABC.26 In the 1930s and 1940s, material conditions in the performing arts industry led Modern acting principles to be circulated throughout the theatre and film sectors. Theatre could no longer use a substantial percentage of its highly trained workforce of actors. Concurrently, when combined with Hollywood’s assembly-line production system, the new pressures of sound cinema made actors with the expertise to create modern, living characters, and “real” emotion essential to the film industry. In sum, economic shifts in America’s performing arts business, changing

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industrial production conditions, and the era’s aesthetic priorities led to the articulation and wide dissemination of Modern acting principles during the studio era (the 1930s and 1940s). Although one might view theatre “as an isolated institution,” by considering theatre, film, and electronic media as components of America’s performing arts industry, it is possible to see that forces affecting US theatre in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries “went on to create the even more centralized motion-picture industry (and later the television industry).”27 Scholars have identified two significant moments of change leading up to the twenty-year period when commercial cinema dominated America’s performing arts industry. The first began in the 1870s, when local theatre companies started to find that they were unable to compete with new touring productions led by a handful of stars performing roles for which they were famous. The system of traveling companies led to increased centralization: New York became the hub of America’s theatre business, and booking agents, who arranged contracts between producers and theatre managers, rose to power. By controlling performance bookings in theatres across the country, and by promoting productions led by its own member Charles Frohman, the Theatrical Syndicate (established in 1896) monopolized the US theatre business until the 1910s, when the Shubert Corporation, another organization with enough capital to achieve vertical integration of production, distribution, and exhibition, gained ascendency. The transition that began in the 1870s—from a nationwide array of isolated stock companies, which offered a varied repertoire, to a centralized system of touring productions that delivered star performances and selected hit productions to audiences in the cities and the hinterlands—has been described as American theatre’s “industrial revolution,” because it so clearly reflected changes in other newly industrialized production sectors.28 The second development that shaped the period at the heart of my study culminated in the 1920s, when theatre could no longer compete with the less expensive entertainment offered by the new network of movie theatres, which provided ostensibly the same high-quality performing arts products supplied by the centralized touring productions that had led audiences throughout America to see themselves as consumers “entitled to ‘the very best.’”29 In this instance, the revolution transforming America’s performing arts industry rested on “a gradual change in the habits of theatregoers” nationwide; with “more opportunities for satisfactory entertainment from movies at a lower price,” people went to the

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theatre less often, and once the “movies had taken over the job of providing everyday entertainment … a play had to have extraordinary appeal if it was to make any money.”30 The drive to create productions with enough star power, prestige, and/or spectacle increased both costs and risks, and theatre productions “began to fall into categories of ‘hits’ and ‘flops.’”31 Shows that did not immediately attract large audiences were closed quickly to reduce loss on investment; this caused a “reduction in the number of theater weeks per season, beginning in 1926–1927.”32 The escalating financial risks led to fewer productions by the 1928–1929 season. Ronald Wainscott notes that while “the general theatrical decline—fewer Broadway openings and more theater closings—was gradual,” the figures are striking; there were “264 productions in 76 theatres” during the 1927–1928 season, but after 1938 “Broadway never reached 100 productions, and by 1940 the numbers were reduced to 69 productions in 32 theaters.”33 Developments affecting this segment of the country’s performing arts industry led to the diaspora of acting talent and Modern acting principles. My emphasis on the 1930s and 1940s as a particular era in the American performing arts industry, and as a time when the acting profession developed techniques well suited to modern drama, reflects my interest in exploring this lost chapter in the history of American acting from the standpoint of actors’ creative labor. So, rather than examine actors’ performances from the outside, aiming to identify salient features of acting styles or embedded cultural values, I try to address questions such as: how did actors of the period discuss their work; what types of aesthetic and material factors affected their working methods and working lives; what do the careers of actors and acting teachers reveal about the period? For me, exploring these questions has illuminated the fact that during the 1930s and 1940s, a number of individuals made tangible contributions to acting theory, formulating Modern acting strategies designed to facilitate actors’ efforts to address the challenges of modern drama, new stagecraft, and the diverse working conditions of the multifaceted performing arts industry. Examining actors’ experiences has also provided a window into larger developments, for over the course of these two decades, American actors were also American workers during the Great Depression, American citizens called to participate in World War II, and then members of an American industry targeted by Cold War anticommunists. Part I suggests ways to reimagine the performing arts industry in the 1930s and 1940s, and to see Modern acting as a coherent set of principles.

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Chapter 1, “A Twenty-First-Century Perspective,” outlines parallels between actors’ careers in the 1930s and 1940s, and today’s multidimensional performing arts industry, where actors find work in theatre, film, and television, sometimes adding voice work and motion-capture acting to their portfolios. Offering a glimpse of actors’ work in the 1930s, it notes the contrast between the silent era, when directors talked performers through a scene, and the sound era, when actors came to the set prepared to work without directorial input even between takes; taking the career of Ronald Colman as an example, the chapter also reveals the growing sense of professionalism in the acting community, a development suggested by actors following suit when writers and directors left the producer-dominated Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to form their own guilds in 1933. Chapter 2, “Acting Strategies, Modern Drama, and New Stagecraft,” sets the stage for examining Modern acting techniques by considering them alongside the perhaps more familiar strategies specific to Strasberg’s Method. (Note that Method style is analyzed in Chap. 4.) The chapter assesses Strasberg’s Method in relation to Stanislavsky’s ideas in order to clarify Strasberg’s position that the Method is distinctive because it departs from Stanislavsky. To shed light on Strasberg’s unique contribution, the chapter illustrates why the Method is not a derivative of Stanislavsky’s System, but instead rests on a different view of acting, actors, the relationship between actors and scripts, and the role of actors and directors. Chapter 3, “Modern Acting: A Conscious Approach,” considers the ideas of acting teachers who did not see a need to revise Stanislavsky’s work; it provides an introduction to techniques described by: Josephine Dillon, author of Modern Acting: A Guide to Stage, Screen, and Radio; Sophie Rosenstein, co-author of Modern Acting: A Manual; the 1945– 1947 workshops at the Actors’ Laboratory in Hollywood; and Stella Adler, member of the legendary Adler family of actors, who began her career as a child in Yiddish theatre, studied at and performed in productions by the American Laboratory Theatre, became an active member of the Group Theatre, appeared in Hollywood films, and in the 1930s began to combine work as an acting teacher with her career as an actor. As we will see, Modern acting techniques, which are designed to address the varied acting problems of building characterizations and developing the requisite concentration and physical ability to embody those characterizations, contrast with the Method’s more singular emphasis on addressing “the actor’s problem” to experience real feeling during performance.34 Thus,

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Modern acting teachers discuss an array of concerns, including: voice and body work; observation and life study; strategies for script analysis; and pantomime sense-memory improvisations to develop actors’ attention to details in their environment, a goal that differs from Strasberg’s emphasis on using sense memories to access personal experiences. Chapter 4, “Modern Acting: Obscured by the Method’s ‘American’ Style,” considers cultural developments that led Method acting to be seen as the only emotion-based, internal approach to contemporary performance. It explores tensions surrounding the influence British traditions have had on American film and theatre, and the attack on British and Anglo-American actors mounted by members of the Actors Studio starting in the late 1940s. The chapter reconsiders the careers of Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando, whose performances in the late 1940s and early 1950s seemed to embody a new “American” style, but who trained with Modern rather than Method acting teachers. It also explores ways in which Marilyn Monroe’s association with the Actors Studio contributed to Method acting’s visibility in American popular culture. Part II provides a context for the Modern acting techniques articulated in the 1930s and 1940s, by looking at the rise of actor training in America in the late nineteenth century, and how increased mass production in the performing arts industry led Hollywood to become the home base for Modern acting teachers, from Moscow Art Theatre expatriate Maria Ouspenskaya to Group Theatre members Roman Bohnen, Phoebe Brand, J. Edward Bromberg, and Morris Carnovsky. Chapter 5, “Developments in Modern Theatre and Modern Acting, 1875–1930,” outlines ideas about acting that proliferated in the USA during this earlier period when theatre practitioners developed increasingly formalized approaches to performance. Drawing on work such as James McTeague’s Before Stanislavsky: American Professional Acting Schools and Acting Theory 1875–1925 (1993), the chapter outlines work in some of the actor training programs that were established as the centralized touring companies diminished opportunities for young actors to learn their craft in America’s local theatre companies. It considers the contributions of the repertory companies led by Minnie Maddern Fiske and Eva Le Gallienne. The chapter also summarizes the ideas about acting circulated by Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya, who lectured and taught courses at the American Laboratory Theatre in New York. Chapter 6, “Shifting Fortunes in the Performing Arts Business,” briefly traces the careers of Henry Fonda and several other Hollywood studio-era

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stars to illustrate links between theatre and film as summer stock, resident theatres, and Broadway became training grounds and audition sites for actors who would eventually find secure employment in Hollywood. The chapter also analyzes developments in the Group Theatre to shed light on economic factors, contrasting ideas about the responsibilities of actors and directors, and the many connections between Broadway and Hollywood. The chapter’s material historiography considers ways that the careers of actors in the 1930s and 1940s were “influenced, even determined, by economic, industrial and technological factors” shaping the BroadwayHollywood entertainment complex.35 Part III provides a window into the professional world that circulated Modern acting techniques in the 1930s and 1940s. As theatre provided fewer opportunities for actors to learn their craft, the major Hollywood studios established their own drama schools, institutions such as the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New  York and the Pasadena Playhouse in Southern California became sources for credentialed actors, and the Actors’ Laboratory in Hollywood became a refuge for theatre expatriates, an adjunct to the studio drama schools, and a venue for the articulation of Modern acting principles. Chapter 7, “The American Academy of Dramatic Arts,” examines the aesthetic priorities and acting techniques circulated in the training program at one of America’s notable acting schools, which, between 1875 and 1925, contributed to the articulation of Modern acting principles and served as the training ground for a number of actors with prominent careers in theatre and film during the 1930s and 1940s. Chapter 8, “The Pasadena Playhouse,” provides a brief history of this resident theatre and identifies ways in which it figured into the careers of many actors in the 1930s and 1940s. The chapter also discusses the various components of its actor training program and the Modern acting principles articulated and circulated by founder Gilmor Brown and the other teachers at the Playhouse. Chapter 9, “Training in Modern Acting on the Studio Lots,” sheds new light on some of the industrial practices that emerged due to Hollywood’s transition to sound, with archival records revealing how the pressing need for actors who could build complex characterizations before coming to the set prompted Hollywood to hire a collection of acting experts in the 1930s. The chapter discusses the studios’ actor training programs and the careers of drama coaches, who trained young actors, and of dialogue directors, who met privately with actors to build characterizations.

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Chapter 10, “The Actors’ Laboratory in Hollywood,” offers a history of the organization (in existence from 1941 to 1950), which included Group Theatre members and actors from New Deal theatre companies, local drama schools, and the studios. Roman “Bud” Bohnen, who was especially active in the Group Theatre after it reorganized in 1937, led the Actors’ Lab until his death in 1949. This chapter elaborates on ideas discussed in Chap. 3 to provide a better picture of the Lab’s vision of Modern acting. It outlines the Lab’s actor training program, and traces the effect that Cold War politics had on the organization, including its erasure from American acting history. Part IV revisits Modern acting principles, developing points raised in the opening chapters to examine the underlying assumptions and legacies of Modern and Method acting. Chapter 11, “Modern Acting: Stage and Screen,” draws on interviews with various actors of the period to show how they used Modern acting strategies to build characterizations for both stage and screen productions. The chapter looks at material in Josephine Dillon’s Modern Acting manual and Lillian Albertson’s Motion Picture Acting to illustrate the stage–screen connections as well as the adjustments actors learned to make when working in film. Chapter 12, “The Legacy of Modern Acting,” analyzes changes in the performing arts industry that affected actor training programs and Americans’ perceptions about actors and acting. To consider once more why Modern acting, as a coherent set of practices, has been overlooked while Method acting became a part of American popular culture, the chapter examines the consequences of equating Modern acting with Stanislavsky’s ideas. To illustrate the differing legacies of Modern and Method acting, it looks at some of the Cold War perspectives that contributed to Method acting’s association with a certain form of “American” vitality. It also highlights a few examples that reveal the contrasting ways in which Modern and Method acting principles figure into the work of contemporary performance. Despite my efforts to establish a lucid context for Modern acting in the 1930s and 1940s, I often simply touch on subjects that have entire fields of inquiry devoted to them. For instance, many of the debates animating Stanislavsky studies are beyond the scope of this project. My comments highlight the significance of new stagecraft, but they skim the surface of research on Richard Wagner, the Meiningen Players, André Antoine, Harley Granville-Barker, Jacques Copeau, and others. Similarly, I point to the connection between modern drama and Modern acting, but cannot

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begin to incorporate insights from the scholarship on retrospective action in modern drama or on playwrights working in various countries between the 1870s and 1920s, especially when studies on authors like Henrik Ibsen or Eugene O’Neill constitute fields unto themselves. My focus on the 1930s and 1940s leads me to look only briefly at the preceding years; while my interest in illuminating actors’ working methods and economic realities means that I necessarily give short shrift to questions of acting style, scholars such as Martin Shingler, Ronald Wainscott, and Brenda Murphy are conducting research in these areas.36 My project offers a glimpse of the Little Theatre movement by discussing the Pasadena Playhouse, and gives substance to accounts of early American actor training programs by analyzing acting principles circulating at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. It traces the transition from local theatre companies to centralized performing arts production and explores the careers of actors and acting teachers whose professional lives illustrate connections between Broadway and Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s. Readers who are familiar with the material history of American cinema will see striking parallels between the American film and theatre industries in the first decades of the twentieth century, with moguls and monopolies featuring prominently in both segments of the performing arts; despite my interest in these matters, I can only touch on such developments covered in the respective studies of American theatre and American cinema. Given my focus on Modern acting, an account of the many individuals associated with Method acting—as teachers, actors, or cultural icons—is beyond the scope of the book. As with the field of Stanislavsky studies, I cannot address the debates that fuel writing about the Method as an approach to and/or style of performance. Yet my look at Modern acting should interest supporters and critics of the Method alike, especially since it considers the degree to which techniques outlined by Stella Adler dovetail with the principles articulated by Modern acting teachers such as Sophie Rosenstein, Lillian Albertson, and Josephine Dillon. The chapters that follow describe the acting theories and institutional alliances that created a bridge between Broadway and Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s. By analyzing working strategies outlined by acting teachers, and connections among the various segments of the performing arts business, the book aims to augment studies of film and theatre. Throughout, it suggests that the ideas and people important to Modern acting in the 1930s and 1940s belong to a lost chapter that warrants

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consideration, and that drawing attention to them can illuminate aesthetic priorities and material factors shaping actors’ work during the period and the threads of influence informing acting practices in today’s performing arts industry.

NOTES 1. To be consistent with gender neutral terms such as “director,” I use “actor” to refer to all actors. To minimize intrusion when quoting other authors, I have not changed their (dated) references to the actor as “he.” 2. See Derek Hayes and Chris Webster, Acting and Performance for Animation (New York: Focal Press, 2013); Ed Hooks, Acting for Animators (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2011); Angie Jones and Jamie Oliff, Thinking Animation: Bridging the Gap between 2D and CG (Boston: Thomson, 2007); and John Kundert-Gibbs and Kristin Kundert-Gibbs, Action! Acting Lessons for CG Animators (Indianapolis: Wiley, 2009). 3. I consulted records at: the American Academy for Dramatic Arts, the American Film Institute, the Huntington Library in Pasadena, the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Margaret Herrick Library, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Pasadena Playhouse, the Pasadena Public Library, the image library at Photofest in New  York, Southern Methodist University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California. 4. Modern Acting: A Manual was co-authored by: Sophie Rosenstein, a faculty member at the University of Washington in Seattle and director of two of its public theatres, the Penthouse Theatre and the Studio Theatre; Wilbur Sparrow, a faculty member and assistant dramatic director of these theatres; and Larrae Albert Haydon, one of the drama program’s graduate students, who had been an instructor at the University of Oklahoma and was the executive director of the Civic Theatre School in Portland, Oregon, when the manual was published. Haydon later joined the faculty at Montana State University (now the University of Montana, Missoula), where he led its theatre company, the Montana Masquers. During World War II, he organized recreational events for American service members; following the war, he worked for twenty-five years in public health (alcoholism treatment). Glenn Hughes, a faculty member in the English Department at the University of Washington, was named head of the Division of Drama when it was established in 1930. The Penthouse Theatre was one of the first theatre-in-the-round venues, and student shows were part of Seattle social life during Hughes’ tenure.

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5. The Little Theatre Movement emerged in the 1910s and gained momentum in the 1920s, with leading companies established in Chicago, Boston, and Pasadena. The movement included the Washington Square Players, which formed the basis for the Theatre Guild, and the Provincetown Players, which became a professional company after its move to New  York. The movement was a response to the perceived commercialism of Broadway and touring companies; its productions featured progressive themes and artistic experimentation. 6. Stella Adler, The Technique of Acting (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), 3, 6. 7. Josephine Dillon, Modern Acting: A Guide for Stage, Screen and Radio (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1940), 265. 8. Sophie Rosenstein, Larrae A. Haydon, and Wilbur Sparrow, Modern Acting: A Manual (New York: Samuel French, 1936), 15. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., 10. 11. Lee Strasberg, A Dream of Passion: The Development of the Method, ed. Evangeline Morphos (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1987), 86. 12. Ibid., 86, 6. 13. See David Garfield, The Actors Studio: A Player’s Place (New York: Macmillan, 1984); Steve Vineberg, Method Actors: Three Generations of an American Acting Tradition (New York: Schirmer, 1991); Foster Hirsh, A Method to Their Madness: The History of the Actors Studio (New York: Da Capo, 2001). 14. Strasberg, Dream of Passion, 85. 15. See Helen Krich Chinoy, The Group Theatre: Passion, Politics, and Performance in the Depression Era (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Rosemary Malague, An Actress Prepares: Women and “the Method” (New York: Routledge, 2012); Wendy Smith, Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931–1940 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990). 16. Qtd. in Robert Lewis, Slings and Arrows: Theater in My Life (New York: Stein and Day, 1984), 71. 17. Dillon, Modern Acting: A Guide, 259. 18. Ibid. 19. Rosenstein, et al., Modern Acting: A Manual, 83. 20. Ibid. 21. Lillian Albertson, Motion Picture Acting (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1947), 61. Several authors I quote make a liberal use of italics. To minimize notation, I identify only instances when I have added italics. 22. Alberti taught elocution at Dr. H. R. Palmer’s Summer School of Music in 1886, and at Columbia University in New York in 1915. The 1933 book is co-authored by R. Hyndman.

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23. Players at Work has interviews with: Helen Hayes, Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Alla Nazimova, Katharine Cornell, Burgess Meredith, Fred Astaire, and a chapter on the singing actor by Lotte Lehman. There were many other books from the 1930s and 1940s on the subject of acting, including: Alexander Magnus Drummond, A Manual of Play Production (New York: New  York State College of Agriculture, 1937); Herschel Leonard Bricker, ed., Our Theatre Today: A Composite Handbook on the Art, Craft, and Management of the Contemporary Theatre (New York: Samuel French, 1936); Samuel Selden, First Steps in Acting (New York: F. S. Crofts, 1947). 24. Brenda Murphy, American Realism and American Drama, 1880–1940 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 34. 25. Jack Poggi, Theater in America: The Impact of Economic Forces, 1870–1967 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968), 86. 26. Yannis Tzioumakis, American Independent Cinema: An Introduction (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006), 110. 27. Poggi, Theater in America, xvii. 28. Ibid., 27. 29. Ibid., 86. 30. Ibid., 84. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Ronald H.  Wainscott, The Emergence of the Modern American Theater, 1914–1929 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 163. 34. Strasberg, Dream of Passion, 85. 35. James Chapman, et al., “Introduction,” in The New Film History: Sources, Methods, Approaches, ed. James Chapman, et  al. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 5. 36. See Murphy, American Realism and American Drama; Martin Shingler, When Warners Brought Broadway to Hollywood (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); Arthur Gerwirtz and James L. Kolb, eds., Art, Glitter, and Glitz: Mainstream Playwrights and Popular Theatre in 1920s America (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004); Ronald H. Wainscott, The Emergence of the Modern American Theater 1914–1929 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997). For early studies of modern drama, see: Archibald Henderson, The Changing Drama: Contributions and Tendencies (Cincinnati: Stewart and Kidd, 1919); Storm Jameson, Modern Drama in Europe (London: W. Collins Sons & Co., 1920). For pertinent feminist studies, see: Patricia R.  Schroeder, The Presence of the Past in Modern Drama (Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1989); Gay Gibson Cima, Performing Women: Female Characters, Male Playwrights, and the Modern Stage (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).

PART I

Making Modern Acting Visible

CHAPTER 1

A Twenty-First-Century Perspective

Modern acting principles were actively explored and widely disseminated during the 1930s and 1940s, in part because technological and industrial developments in the performing arts made working in theatre and film, and in New York and Los Angeles, a common experience for actors. The artistic and logistical challenges actors faced during that period have notable parallels with those generated by the interrelated segments of the performing arts industry today, as actors must now be able to work effectively in: various genres and formats of film, television, and streaming media; lavish Broadway productions and intimate theatre spaces; and sound booths and motion-capture stages. For example, as behind-thescenes information about collaborations between actors and CGI artists suggests, an era of substantial industrial change can be a time when acting techniques warrant particular attention. Today, as in the 1930s and 1940s, actors negotiate the changing industrial demands of the performing arts industry, finding ways to apply and refine their craft in response to new staging practices and cultural-aesthetic priorities. Echoing patterns in the 1930s and 1940s, contemporary actors’ multifaceted careers in film, theatre, television, and streaming media are a sign of the expanding horizontal integration of the performing arts industry, as branded products such as The Lion King appear in different venues, and its various iterations travel across the theatre, film, television, and music industries. Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950) morphs into a Broadway

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 C. Baron, Modern Acting, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-40655-2_1

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musical running from 1994 to 1997; the big-budget musical Jersey Boys (2005–present) becomes a 2014 film drama directed by Clint Eastwood. Producer Scott Rudin develops projects for stage and screen; he has a 1983 Emmy for Best Children’s Program, a Tony for Passion (1994), an Oscar for No Country for Old Men (Coen 2007), and a 2012 Grammy (the Broadway cast recording of The Book of Mormon).1 Audiences’ eclectic interest in the various offerings of the performing arts industry suggests that the hierarchies that once gave priority to stage over screen, film over television, and theatre experience over home or mobile viewing are losing force. A performance like Julianne Moore’s in Far from Heaven (Haynes 2002) is now prized by highbrow cult connoisseurs, and James Gandolfini’s portrayal in The Sopranos (1999–2007) made him part of American culture. Performers’ diverse careers and audiences’ varied tastes lend visibility to acting in small- and big-budget films, as Jennifer Lawrence goes from Debra Granik’s indie gem Winter’s Bone (2010) to the Hunger Games franchise, and Viggo Mortensen moves from The Lord of the Rings trilogy to collaborations with cult film director David Cronenberg on dramas like A History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007). In an era of convergence and blurred boundaries, Hugh Jackman can play the Wolverine in the X-Men films and appear in Broadway musicals such as The Boy from Oz (2003–2004). Viola Davis can have success in film, television, and theatre. She has received: Oscar nominations for The Help (Taylor 2011) and Doubt (Shanley 2009); an Emmy, an NAACP Image Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her leading role in How to Get Away with Murder (ABC 2014); and Tony awards for her performances in King Hedley II (2001) and the 2010 revival of August Wilson’s Fences. Denzel Washington, her co-star in Fences, can appear in blockbusters and black independent films, receive Oscars for his performances in Glory (Zwick 1989) and Training Day (Fuqua 2001), and win a Tony for his role in Fences.2 Actors’ wide-ranging careers and the inclusive perspective of audiences make the first decades of the twenty-first century an ideal time to study performance. Developments in reception make it legitimate to explore the acting choices made by someone like Patricia Clarkson, whose body of work encompasses television programs such as Six Feet Under (2002–2005), independent films like High Art (Cholodenko 1998), and Broadway shows such as the revival of Bernard Pomerance’s The Elephant Man (2014–2015). Mechanical (and now digital) reproduction facilitates performance analysis. For instance, the interplay between Jake Gyllenhaal

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and Riz Ahmed in Night Crawler (Gilroy 2014) becomes more legible after several viewings; one can see more clearly how Ahmed’s expressive embodiment of the naïve assistant coordinates with details in Gyllenhaal’s portrayal that convey his character’s single-mindedness. Today, more than half a century since the first happenings, installation art, and other unscripted performance art pieces challenged prevailing norms for theatrical production, we have multiple avenues of inquiry open to us. The hierarchical binary that pit stage against screen has also weakened as various forms of mediated performance proliferate. A surge of cultural studies examining race, ethnicity, and postcolonial dynamics has enriched research on acting and, more broadly, performance by making the politics of representation a component of all ongoing research; for instance, today there are no barriers to exploring patterns that connect Peking Opera, Hong Kong films starring Bruce Lee, and Hollywood blockbuster performances that swing from minimalism to emotionalism.3 With sociology, anthropology, and neuroscience contributing to studies of performance, we can set aside the need to assess “great acting” and instead explore ways that performers’ use of recognizable social signs conveys character and illuminates cultural values.4 We now recognize that there are many registers of performance, as TV commercials, Warhol films, and performance art pieces serve as reminders that a character type is sometimes suggested simply by a costume or gesture.5 The insights made by the Prague School (1926–1948) into the distinctions between character, actor, and performance detail have been amplified by studies that articulate differences between actor, character, social type, performance detail, star image, and more.6 Star studies now consider the aspects of performance that convey characters’ experiences and contribute to stars’ recognizable idiolect.7 Other studies in film and media analyze connections between performance choices and the demands of different genres and program types.8 Through transcription and analysis of vocal and physical behavior, various studies contrast performances by hosts, guests, and audiences in trash-talk television shows (Jerry Springer, Ricki Lake) with the social problem/personal perspective talk show format popularized by Oprah Winfrey.9 There is now an entire field of Stanislavsky studies, enlivened by the work of scholars and practitioners who have “heatedly debated nearly every aspect of Stanislavsky’s legacy and passionately advanced numerous conflicting interpretations of his ideas.”10 Importantly, after the Russian archives were opened in 1991, researchers not only discovered

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the “extent of censorship that had been imposed upon Stanislavsky during the Soviet era,” they were also able to finally access “an abundance of records and uncensored materials documenting the authentic Stanislavsky and serving as a corrective in regard to his views on theatre.”11 While lively debates remain, archival material has led to scholarship such as Sharon M. Carnicke’s Stanislavsky in Focus: An Acting Master for the Twenty-First Century (second edition, 2009) and Jean Benedetti’s publications, which include a translation of Stanislavsky’s first two books on acting, now combined under the title An Actor’s Work (2008). There are also new research areas to explore in the twenty-first century, because decades of feminist critique (in theatre, film, and other disciplines) have clarified that cultural norms concerning gender and sexuality are a factor in all aspects and forms of performance—in daily life, in ordinary people’s selected and heightened performances on television, and in the countless portrayals of fictional characters in various types of film and theatre. Scholars such as Rosemary Malague have shown that in addition to coloring the choices of characters as written and directed, patriarchy has had an impact on actor training in America, with patriarchal values shaping the teaching methods of Lee Strasberg and Sanford Meisner insofar as they delved into “actors’ psyches, digging up buried memories, eliciting personal confessions, and demanding private displays” in their quest to fix “the problems” of actors, especially those of their female students.12 Patriarchy has also had an influence on popular accounts of American acting, for these, too, tend to be gendered all the way down, tacitly conveying the idea that what matters is men’s creative labor as actors and acting teachers. For instance, although it was Marlon Brando’s work with Stella Adler and Montgomery Clift’s collaboration with acting coach Mira Rostova that fostered the performances seen as marking a new “American” style of acting, accounts of mid-twentieth-century acting generally feature male names like Lee Strasberg, Harold Clurman, and Elia Kazan. The reality that gender plays a part in job opportunities is one reason that men have been seen as the major players. The American careers of former Moscow Art Theatre members Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya exemplify the contrast: after teaching at the American Laboratory Theatre in the 1920s, Boleslavsky would go on to a career as a Hollywood director, whereas Ouspenskaya found more modest work as a character actor and drama coach. Patriarchy’s impact on the history of American acting was once so naturalized that the important figures in the first half of the twentieth century seemed self-evident. However, the ongoing wave of interest in women’s

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creative labor makes this a good time to explore the ideas and careers of individuals whose work as acting teachers in the 1930s and 1940s placed them at the intersection of developments in Broadway and Hollywood. While it is difficult to depict the scope of recent scholarship even in film and media studies, it includes research by feminist scholars who are shedding new light on the work of costume designers, casting directors, television showrunners, and female film directors. The spirit of this work is encapsulated by anthology titles such as Reclaiming the Archive: Feminism and Film History (2010) and Indie Reframed: Women Filmmakers and Contemporary American Cinema (2016). Today’s expanding avenues of research should facilitate inquiries into the lost chapter of American acting, when Strasberg worked in the same obscurity as the Modern acting teachers of the period. (One might recall that he was largely out of the public eye from the mid-1930s to the early 1950s, when he was no longer part of the Group Theatre and was not yet associated with the Actors Studio.) A twenty-first-century perspective should make it easier to appreciate developments in the 1930s and 1940s, when economic and technological changes in the performing arts industry created a situation that led actors to piece together careers by working in theatre, radio, film, and later in television. Eclectic tastes, which today lead audiences to value Broadway musicals, indie films, Marvel Comic movies, and serial television programs, should open the way for seeing the history of American acting as one that involves both stage and screen, and as one shaped by such factors as the burgeoning employment opportunities sound cinema offered.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN ACTING Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s—one imagines sunlight and swimming pools, studio sets and camera cranes, cigar-smoking moguls, eager young starlets, and hard-drinking directors commanding movies with hundreds of extras. The collection of fabulous, overheated movies about Tinseltown play on these and other icons of studio-era Hollywood. Barton Fink (Coen 1991) decorates its bizarre story about a Clifford Odets type in Hollywood with characters like the William Faulkner figure who drunkenly bemoans his fate as an author of movie drivel. Capturing the cynicism of Nathanael West’s bitter novel, The Day of the Locust (Schlesinger 1975) frames Hollywood as a surreal hell blithely entrapping desperate Depression-era dreamers. In The Bad and the Beautiful (Minnelli 1952),

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the lavish sets, sweeping musical score, and over-the-top costumes present the story of a successful Hollywood producer as a male melodrama. In a studio-era version of an often popular movie product, A Star Is Born (Wellman 1937) gets to be racy and moralistic by turn as it presents Hollywood as coarse and cruel, driven to snap up fresh talent and callously dispense with aging stars. The inherent fun of these stories, and the way they support both left- and right-leaning suspicions about mass culture, makes it difficult to think of studio-era Hollywood as something other than a vast wasteland. The idea that Hollywood is inherently corrupt and corrupting has influenced various research areas, including the history of American acting. One might recall that while standard accounts consistently reference the Moscow Art Theatre tours in the 1920s, the creation of the Group Theatre in 1931, and the establishment of the Actors Studio in 1947, they do not discuss Hollywood drama coaches such as Josephine Dillon, Sophie Rosenstein, or Lillian Albertson. However, material such as their acting manuals reveals that a gap in the timeline of American acting can be a sign of overlooked evidence rather than inactivity. It might seem strange that people connected to studio-era Hollywood were not simply aware of Modern acting principles, but were able to articulate a body of techniques designed to help actors create “truthful” emotional performances. That the American film industry could play a useful role in the history of acting might sound preposterous at first blush, especially when one recalls that for many of the era’s theatre people, Hollywood symbolized greed and crass commercialism, whereas endeavors like the Group Theatre in New York represented art and integrity.13 Yet, especially after Hollywood made the transition to sound (1927–1934), “film and theatre professionals were bound together, whether desiring one another or not”; as Thomas Postlewait notes, “almost every major and minor playwright of the 1930s and 1940s worked in film at one time or another,” with the list including Elmer Rice, Clifford Odets, John Howard Lawson, and Thornton Wilder.14 In the autobiographies of a number of theatre people (including Group Theatre members Harold Clurman, Elia Kazan, and Robert “Bobby” Lewis), Hollywood epitomizes “temptation and evil” and symbolizes “all that is wrong with American culture.”15 The New York exiles excuse their time in Tinseltown by framing their apparent capitulation to commercialism as an instance when “personal cunning and talent triumphed over stupidity and decadence in Hollywood.”16 In the 1940s, Cheryl Crawford,

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a founding member of the Group Theatre and later the Actors Studio in New York, resisted working in Hollywood because it was “seducing her colleagues,” but she would later use the Oscars won by people who passed through the Actors Studio as evidence of its success.17 With film replacing theatre as the major sector of the American performing arts industry, the chance to earn a living and practice their craft led many actors to make the same ambivalent journey from New York to Hollywood. If one considers that the actors, directors, playwrights, and other theatre professionals who found work in sound cinema actually continued to apply the craft knowledge and experience they had acquired in theatre, it is possible to see how studying studio-era Hollywood enhances and extends an understanding of American theatre. In fact, as Postlewait observes, in the 1930s and 1940s “much of the history of Broadway occurred in Hollywood.”18 Extending that observation to include subsequent periods, Postlewait proposes that “the history of theatre since the 1930s cannot be separated from the history of Hollywood.”19 The “dynamic relationship” that emerged in the 1930s “between theatre and film, Hollywood and New  York” is reflected in actors’ careers.20 For example, Luther Adler (the brother of Stella Adler and son of respected Yiddish theatre actors Sara and Jacob Adler) is most often identified with his roles in Group Theatre productions such as Awake and Sing! (1935) and Golden Boy (1937). However, over the course of his career he worked extensively in film and television. Recognizing that Adler would apply his (theatrical) craft regardless of medium makes his performances in films like D.O.A. (Maté 1950) and TV shows like Naked City (1960–1962) worth considering alongside his roles in Group Theatre productions. Taking the same approach, rather than see Sylvia Sidney (married to Adler from 1938 to 1946) as a minor studio-era star, one could use her career as a window into the history of American acting, for she appeared in films from 1929 to 1996, in television programs from 1952 to 1998, and in theatre productions from 1927 to 1973, including the Group Theatre production of The Gentle People (1939).

STUDIO PUBLICITY VERSUS THE NEW DEMANDS OF SOUND CINEMA The disdain some theatre expatriates have had for Tinseltown is one reason studio-era Hollywood has been overlooked in accounts of American acting. Another is that Hollywood publicity designed to support its star

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system (that stars were playing themselves) sustained the idea that actors who worked in the movies knew and cared little about acting, depending instead on personality and good looks. Moreover, like Broadway, Hollywood did employ people for their physical beauty and athletic, comedic, and musical abilities, because it produced a range of entertainment, including films that required skilled performers with substantial experience—for example, in the song-and-dance sketches enjoyed by vaudeville audiences. Here, one might think of films like Top Hat (Sandrich 1935) or Shall We Dance (Sandrich 1937), which belong to the series of RKO musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, or consider the series of Marx brothers’ comedies, which includes films such as A Night at the Opera (Wood 1935), A Day at the Races (Wood 1937), and A Night in Casablanca (Mayo 1946). The studios successfully competed with Broadway by producing musical revues. They also used a handful of high-profile performers as commodities to entice audiences. Hollywood managed stars’ appearances on screen and off to ensure that they embodied recognizable types and cultural ideals. However, after Hollywood made the transition to sound, studio executives also recognized that actors who could consistently create modern, “truthful” character portrayals were a necessary part of an efficient and thus profitable production process. As we will discuss in later chapters, that industry-wide realization is reflected by the fact that Hollywood came to depend on drama schools on and off the studio lots. Contract players were put through intensive actor training programs; established actors could prepare for roles by working with private coaches. Oral histories (interviews with actors, coaches, and teachers), studio records, magazines, trade journals, newspapers, and acting manuals published in the 1930s and 1940s indicate that Modern acting principles were widely circulated in studio-era Hollywood. Does this mean that each and every actor working in film developed their roles in ways originally outlined by Modern acting teachers like Rosenstein, Dillon, and Albertson? I do not have sufficient evidence to say, but would imagine, for example, that the well-known performances of actors such as Groucho Marx and Ginger Rogers relied on other skill sets. Yet, I would also propose that the transition to sound cinema made Modern acting techniques especially useful for dramatic performances, because they facilitated actors’ ability to function as independent artists, able to build characterizations without rehearsals, maintain concentration in chaotic production settings, work with little direction, and create a coherent portrayal (which effectively

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conveyed the character’s changing thoughts and feelings as the narrative evolved), regardless of how or when scenes were filmed. Production practices in sound cinema differed greatly from those of the silent era. It is not simply that sync-sound productions required a “more regimented system of preparation and production [as] story ideas gave way to scenarios and then to shooting scripts and dialogue continuities.”21 The transition to sound created a fundamental change in the actor–director relationship, making actors’ individual preparation paramount. The changes in the production practices that accompanied the transition to sound are a study unto themselves, yet one can get a sense of the ways they affected actors by considering the observations of Gary Cooper and Ronald Colman, two actors whose careers spanned the silent and sound eras. Gary Cooper started his film career as an extra in 1925 and would later receive Oscars for his performances in Sergeant York (Hawks 1941) and High Noon (Zinnemann 1952). After appearing in some forty silent films, moving from extra to leading roles, Cooper was cast in The Virginian (1929) directed by Victor Fleming. His observations about this film illustrate the contrast between film direction in silent and sound cinema. Cooper explains: Like all directors of the silent days, [Fleming] was accustomed to talking his actors into doing what he wanted. “Do this, do that, and now smile as you turn and bow. Turn around. Take her in your arms. Bend her over a little more. Now smooch. Hold it. Ten seconds, twelve seconds. Cut. We don’t want to get this scene censored.” Now with a microphone picking up sound, he was stricken dumb. No matter how he strained and sweated to reach his actors, he could not do with mental telepathy what he could do with words.22

Ronald Colman’s experience in his first sound film, Bulldog Drummond (Jones 1929), also reveals the new level of independence that sound cinema required of actors. Describing the set, his biographer, daughter Juliet Colman, explains, “Suddenly all the usual clatter and verbal instructions that had accompanied old-style filmmaking were brought to complete silence for every take.”23 In addition, the lighting “reduced actors to pools of sweat within minutes,” lines could only be delivered where microphones were hidden on set, and in sum the production conditions “required far more concentration” than was needed for silent cinema.24 With film performances no longer guided by directors’ continuous instructions, to continue making profits, Hollywood had to turn to actors

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(in leading and supporting roles) who could take over a good percentage of the labor once done by film directors. The working conditions of sound cinema placed substantial logistical demands on actors, so to maintain its cost-efficient assembly-line production system, Hollywood hired actors able to develop their imagination and powers of concentration, and thus do the necessary independent preparation for performance. Put another way, from the beginning of the sound era forward, the industry hired actors who could import “theatrical” acting techniques or use ones articulated in the acting manuals by Sophie Rosenstein, Josephine Dillon, and Lillian Albertson. To expand slightly on Colman’s experiences as an actor (and matinee idol) in the silent and sound eras, one might note that his career included British and American theatre, as well as film, radio, and television. For Colman, Hollywood’s transition to sound presented few obstacles, because his training in theatre had prepared him to use his body and voice to convey characters’ innermost thoughts and feelings. This ability was noticed by critics; in a review of Bulldog Drummond, one commented: Colman “loses nothing by the transition [to sound] but rather gains a great deal. He has a cultivated and resonant voice and an ability to color words which will probably permit him a large range in his future career.”25 Colman’s formative experiences as an actor illuminate the twentiethcentury connection between theatre and film. As a young theatre actor, he studied the screen performances of Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, valuing the control, precision, and grace of their movements. Showing that a Broadway–Hollywood connection existed even before the transition to sound, Colman was cast in The White Sister (1923), starring Lillian Gish, after film director Henry King saw him in a Broadway production of La tendresse (1922), which also featured Ruth Chatterton, who would soon be under contract to the Warner Bros. studio. Colman’s work in The White Sister led to his contract with independent Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn. His subsequent roles in The Dark Angel (Fitzmaurice 1925) and Beau Geste (Brenon 1926) fostered his star image as the gallant gentleman, and made him as popular as John Gilbert, who grew up in theatre’s stock company system, often co-starred with Greta Garbo in silent films, yet did not remain a star after the coming of sound—not because of his voice, but due to the machinations of MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer. Critics’ assessment of Colman’s work also illuminates the theatre–film connection that emerged in the early twentieth century. Reflecting the reality that the priorities of new stagecraft permeated American aesthetic

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values during this period, Colman’s first leading role in The White Sister prompted a reviewer to say that Colman “gives a performance of quiet force and dignity [and] never seems to be acting, which makes his expression all the more natural and genuine.”26 Echoing that embrace of new stagecraft values, screenwriter Frances Marion describes Colman’s performance in The Dark Angel as noteworthy, because his “lack of posturing and his economy of gesture conveyed more … than the thrashing mode a lot of actors still indulged in.”27 Illustrating the era’s esteem for “truthful,” emotion-driven performances keyed to “realistic” situations, Marion notes that even “in the most melodramatic scenes, with others in the cast whirling around like windmills in a storm, [Colman] appeared convincingly calm on the surface, yet one sensed his deep-rooted emotions.”28 Colman’s fellow actors make comparable observations. Loretta Young appeared with him in The Devil to Pay! (Fitzmaurice 1930) and was later the host and often leading actor in the dramatic anthology television series The Loretta Young Show (1953–1961). She explains that he “never listened for cues, he listened for thoughts. When your thought was finished, he would answer that thought.”29 Highlighting the individual preparation required to do that, Raymond Massey, who co-starred with Colman in The Prisoner of Zenda (Cromwell 1937) and is best known for his role as Dr. Gillespie in the television series Dr. Kildare (1961–1966), points out that the “naturalness and ease” of Colman’s performances “were the result of meticulous preparation and technical skill.”30 Research on the character’s personal and social world was a crucial part of Colman’s preparation. Before portraying the lead character in Clive of India (Boleslavsky 1935), Colman researched the individual and the historical period in which he lived.31 He met with R. J. Minney (who had written a biography of Robert Clive and co-authored the play and film adaptations) to understand and empathize with Clive’s character and his reactions to key situations. This attention to independent research and character biography reflects the priorities of Modern acting teachers. Observations by Colman’s colleagues also shed light on the way an actor’s independent preparation might play out in production settings. Discussing script changes made before and during the production of The Dark Angel, screenwriter Frances Marion notes that Colman “always made excellent suggestions, but he refused to take any credit for them, although often these suggestions became the highlights of the finished picture.”32 Describing the process of working with Colman on Lost Horizon (1937), director Frank Capra explains: “He was not the kind to come right out

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and say, ‘I think this,’ but he would make suggestions—always sensible ones when we’d go over his part alone. We didn’t discuss things in front of other people.”33 Director George Cukor discovered that Colman knew his character so thoroughly that on A Double Life (1947), for which he received a Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Actor, Colman was able to go through the production process using “a mind of his own.”34 Cukor points out that Colman’s individual preparation did not make him a “difficult” actor, but instead thoroughly professional, “realistic and sharp, discreet, scrupulous [and able to make] a success of everything” (Fig. 1.1).35 One final aspect of Colman’s career warrants consideration, for it reveals the difference between studio publicity and the way some studioera actors viewed their work. In 1932, The Masquerader (Wallace 1933), which featured Colman in the dual role of journalist John Loder and his troubled cousin MP Sir John Chilcote, was due to be released. Without Colman’s knowledge, producer Samuel Goldwyn tried to generate publicity by inventing and circulating the story that Colman played the addicted cousin role “better after several drinks.”36 Furious at Goldwyn for fabricating this news item, Colman resolved never to work for him again. When Goldwyn would not release him from their agreement, Colman chose to

Fig. 1.1 George Cukor and Ronald Colman on the set of A Double Life (1947). Colman weighs suggestions offered by director George Cukor in a private conversation between takes

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jeopardize his career by informing the producer he would simply refuse to work during the two years left on his contract. Colman secured legal representation and initiated a $2 million libel suit against Goldwyn. After doing interviews in which he explained that Goldwyn’s publicity stunt had devalued him as an actor, Colman left Hollywood for a tour of countries, where he explored new business investments. Ten months later, Goldwyn released Colman from his contract. Colman then dropped his lawsuit and signed a contract with 20th Century Pictures (1932–1935), led by Joseph Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck. Colman’s walkout in 1932 has not garnered the level of critical and journalistic attention given, as we will see in Chap. 4, to Marilyn Monroe’s similar protest in 1955. Even the contractual battles that Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland fought with Warner Bros. have received more coverage than Colman’s risky decision to defend his reputation as an actor. Yet his objection to Goldwyn’s publicity stunt illustrates Modern acting’s emphasis on keeping a creative distance from one’s character. Thus, to fill a gap in the timeline of American acting, one might note that Colman saw the process of crafting and embodying a lifelike character different from himself as his professional duty, and as a primary marker of his abilities as a modern actor.

NOTES 1. All dates are from the Internet Movie Database and the Internet Broadway Database. Rudin productions also won Tony awards in 2016. 2. Davis and Washington have received many more honors and awards. They both have production companies; Washington has made a deal with HBO to produce ten August Wilson plays. 3. See Janelle G.  Reinelt and Joseph R.  Roach, eds., Critical Theory and Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007). This volume encapsulates contemporary research by featuring discussions of: performance analysis, postcolonial studies, critical race theory, theatre history and historiography, Marxist and post-Marxist studies, gender and sexuality studies, psychoanalysis, performance studies, and mediatized cultures. For case studies that connect Peking Opera to Hong Kong and Hollywood cinema, see: Cynthia Baron, “Suiting up for Postmodern Performance in The Killer,” in More than a Method, ed. Cynthia Baron, Diane Carson, and Frank P.  Tomasulo (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004), 297– 329; Cynthia Baron, “The Modern Entertainment Marketplace, 2000 to the Present,” in Acting, ed. Claudia Springer and Julie Levenson (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015), 143–167.

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4. Work by Prague School members is useful for studies in this area, because they identified (a) interactions between gesture-signs and gesture-expressions in performance and daily life, (b) the operation of four types of signs in performing arts productions: iconic, indexical, symbolic, and ostensive, and (c) distinctions between character, actor, and performance details. See Jan, Mukarovský, Structure, Sign, and Function: Selected Essays by Jan Mukarovský, trans. and ed. John Burbank and Peter Steiner (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978); Michael L. Quinn, The Semiotic Stage: Prague School Theater Theory (New York: Peter Lang, 1995); Cynthia Baron and Sharon Marie Carnicke, “Ostensive Signs and Performance Montage,” in Reframing Screen Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008), 89–112. 5. See Michael Kirby, “On Acting and Not-Acting,” in Acting (Re)Considered: Theories and Practices, ed. Phillip B. Zarilli (New York: Routledge, 2002), 40–52. Kirby’s essay was first published in 1972. 6. See Stephen Heath, Questions of Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981); David Graver, “The Actor’s Bodies,” Text and Performance Quarterly 17:3 (1997): 221–235. 7. In general terms, idiolect concerns a person’s distinctive use of language. Shifting that definition slightly, star studies has followed the lead of James Naremore, who uses idiolect to refer to “a set of performing traits that is systematically highlighted in films and sometimes copied by impressionists” (Acting in the Cinema [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988], 4). For a survey of trends and positions in contemporary star studies, see Martin Shingler, Star Studies: A Critical Guide (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 8. See Christine Cornea, ed., Genre and Performance: Film and Television (New York: Manchester University Press, 2010). 9. See Andrew Tolson, Television Talk Shows: Discourse, Performance, Spectacle (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001). 10. R. Andrew White, “Introduction: Stanislavsky: Past, Present, and Future,” in The Routledge Companion to Stanislavsky, ed. R. Andrew White (New York: Routledge, 2014), 1. 11. Ibid., 3–4. 12. Rosemary Malague, An Actress Prepares: Women and “the Method” (New York: Routledge, 2012), 48. 13. There are still some who see screen performers as behaving, rather than creating and laboring. Screen actors are—to use “industry parlance”— “above the line,” but they do not fit the white-collar model of professionals who direct below-the-line workers whose bodies or technical skills are supervised by the thinking-people who “create” the product. Screen performances are sometimes thought to be created by framing and editing

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15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

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choices. Yet screen acting involves the embodied selection and combination of legible signs; the minute details of actors’ vocal and physical expression are an integral component of a production, on a par with lighting, framing, editing, sound, and other non-performance elements. The openended connotations encoded into screen performance details acquire meaning and dramatic significance the same way they do in live performances—through their relationships with other formal details, their place in the narrative, and audiences’ personal and cultural backgrounds. Simple screen performances can be generated through an assemblage of elements that involve little agency on the performers’ part, but professional productions require actors who use their training, experience, and independent preparation to create telling vocal and physical expressions that are calibrated to the requirements of the script—and to the composition and duration of individual shots. Especially in leading roles, actors map out their character’s emotional journey in advance, so that their choices communicate the actions and counteractions of that journey even when scenes are shot out of sequence. Required to work without rehearsals, scene partners, or attentive audiences, screen actors master relaxation and concentration; with their performances mediated by an array of non-performance elements, screen actors learn how to coordinate their choices with the audiovisual details that will surround their performances in the finished film. Thomas Postlewait, “The Idea of Hollywood in Recent Theatre Autobiographies,” in The American Stage: Social and Economic Issues from the Colonial Period to the Present, eds Ron Engle and Tice L. Miller (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 247. Ibid., 243, 242. Ibid., 246. Ibid., 243. Ibid., 249. Ibid. Ibid. Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1988), 105. Qtd. in Doug Tomlinson, ed., Actors on Acting for the Screen (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994), 108. Juliet Benita Colman, Ronald Colman: A Very Private Person (New York: William Morrow, 1975), 84. Ibid., 85. Sync-sound speed (24 frames per second) initially required an increase in light for proper exposure; film stocks requiring less light would soon lead to a reduction in foot candle levels.

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25. Qtd. in ibid., 86. The review was published in the Los Angeles Times, August 15, 1929. 26. Qtd. in ibid., 43. The review was published in Motion Picture Classics, December 1923. 27. Qtd. in ibid., 54. 28. Ibid. 29. Qtd. in ibid., 105–106. 30. Qtd. in ibid., 156. 31. Research might reveal how Colman and Boleslavsky worked together, yet even existing information indicates that they both relied on Modern rather than Method acting principles. 32. Qtd. in Colman, Ronald Colman, 54. 33. Qtd. in ibid., 176. 34. Qtd. in ibid., 230. 35. Ibid. 36. Colman, Ronald Colman, 121.

CHAPTER 2

Acting Strategies, Modern Drama, and  New Stagecraft

Teachers as different as Josephine Dillon and Lee Strasberg have argued that actors must depend on technique rather than inspiration to deliver “truthful” performances, and at the same time ensure that their use of technique leads to something other than mechanical or imitative work. Articulating their shared view, in a lecture at the American Laboratory Theatre in New  York (1923–1930) Richard Boleslavsky notes that a twentieth-century actor “must be on the job like everyone else … You must have your technique as the musician his note and the painter his brush, and you must know how … to create a human soul.”1 But despite some common ground, the principles of Modern acting and the exercises specific to Strasberg’s Method represent contrasting ways to address the twin demands of modern drama and new stagecraft. In A Dream of Passion: The Development of the Method (1987), Strasberg looks back at his career and explains how his efforts to help actors negotiate “the task of acting” emerged from his interest in the “modern movements” in stagecraft that transformed western theatre in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.2 He observes that designer Adolphe Appia had “revolutionized the concept of stage lighting by calling light an additional actor on stage,” and that director Max Reinhardt had revealed staging’s creative dimensions, showing equal facility “directing a dance pantomime or a massive theatrical spectacle.”3 Strasberg attributes “the rapid development of the modern American theatre” in the 1920s to “the Theatre

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 C. Baron, Modern Acting, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-40655-2_2

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Guild, which helped elevate the American stage to the level of the best European theatre,” and the Provincetown Players, a Little Theatre group established in 1915 by playwright Susan Glaspell and George Cram Cook in Provincetown, Massachusetts, which then offered alternatives to melodramas and musical revues after it moved to New  York City in 1916.4 Strasberg’s interest in new stagecraft leads him to highlight the Provincetown Players in the mid-1920s, when designer Robert Edmond Jones, critic-producer Kenneth MacGowan, and playwright Eugene O’Neill led a reconfigured organization affiliated with the original group. Discussing the “modern movements” that influenced his ideas about acting, Strasberg explains how the ideas of Edward Gordon Craig provided “the strongest intellectual stimulus” for his own work.5 Referring to Craig as “the apocalyptic Englishman who was to revolutionize scenic design in the twentieth century,” Strasberg shares his appreciation for Craig’s view that scene design “must not simply define the background of the play or give an idea of the period in which it takes place [but must also] motivate and make logical the behavior of the characters.”6 Building on this to highlight another non-actor source of characterization, Strasberg offers his interpretation of Craig’s 1907 essay “The Actor and the Übermarionette.” He proposes that Craig’s “greatly misunderstood” piece does not devalue actors, but rather makes the point that an actor “must possess the precision and skill that the marionette is capable of” when manipulated by a skilled director.7 Strasberg’s sympathy with Craig’s ideas would lead to his focus on making actors responsive to directors’ input; discussing his unique emotional-memory exercise (considered later), Strasberg states that with this training, “for the first time the actor [is] capable of satisfying those demands for inner precision and definiteness which Gordon Craig was asking for when he demanded that the actor be a ‘Super (“Über”) Marionette.’”8 Taking a different path, Modern acting teachers value training that gives actors mastery of their psychophysical instruments and increases their abilities to explore the inner lives of characters in modern dramas, becoming artists able to contribute to the ensemble and requiring little guidance from directors to fulfill their role in the production. In the 1930s and 1940s, Modern acting teachers saw new stagecraft—which led to the replacement of canvas backdrops with evocative stage environments created by lighting design and multi-tiered sets—as creating new opportunities for directors and performers. In the chapter of her acting manual entitled “The History of Acting Is the History of Light,” Josephine Dillon

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reflects on staging developments; she points out that with the introduction of electric light, acting could become “more intimate and the speech more lifelike, as it became possible for the audience to see the actors and hear them without the great movements and shoutings of the early days out-of-doors.”9 Experience in productions grounded in new stagecraft values influenced the ideas of individuals who would become Modern acting teachers. In 1925, Pasadena Playhouse founder Gilmor Brown established a thirty-seat theatre-in-the-round venue known as Playbox Theatre. Sophie Rosenstein directed pieces in the fifty-seat theatre-in-the-round space that Glenn Hughes, head of the University of Washington’s School of Drama, established in the penthouse suite of Seattle’s Edmund Meany Hotel in 1932. Such experiences informed the Modern acting techniques these teachers distilled to help actors “bring the characters of the drama to vivid life,” without using the physical and vocal flourishes audiences had once appreciated in performances by stars such as James O’Neill, who became “so associated with the flamboyant and emotionally expressive title role in The Count of Monte Cristo that he found it difficult to cross back over into the legitimate drama he had performed earlier in his career.”10 The actor-centered techniques that Modern acting teachers such as Dillon, Brown, and Rosenstein developed to coordinate with new stagecraft demands share common ground with ideas expressed by actor Claude King (later a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild), who observed in 1922 that the revolution in design led by Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig had necessitated a parallel revolution in acting; as he put it, now when the curtain rises, the actor “has to be there, on the spot, to interpret the living part of the accumulated efforts of all concerned.”11 Articulating a core Modern acting position, King argues that this new emphasis on creating living, breathing, and recognizable but entirely individual people on stage required actors to “extend our human sympathies, intensify our human contacts, and cultivate a greater flexibility of mind in the direction of wonder and imagination.”12 Expressing another Modern acting view, King explains that “the actor who enlarges his vision will grow away from the traditional convention toward something which is truer, simpler, more modern, still retaining what is good in the older forms.”13 Highlighting the need for modern actors to build performances from details drawn from observed human behavior rather than personal habit, another actor’s portrayal, or a repertoire of conventional gestures, King proposes that an actor who approaches a role “in terms of his own per-

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sonality” or without reflecting on the character’s connection to social realities “may have a long road to travel before he attains to the simplicity, the integrity, or even the ‘groping sincerity’ which characterize the real artist.”14 King recognizes the director’s role in creating the stage picture, but emphasizes that actors working in new stagecraft productions are fully responsible for their characterizations. As he puts it, in modern theatre a director is like a “musical conductor preparing an orchestra for the playing of a symphony,” and an actor is like a well-trained musician, able to be part of a company that performs together as a team and at the same time “feel the significance of his role in relation to the governing idea of the play.”15 In addition to exploring the opportunities and challenges created by developments in new stagecraft, Modern acting teachers also devoted considerable attention to activities designed to enhance actors’ abilities to grasp and render modern drama’s complex character interactions. Circulating Stanislavsky’s ideas, they emphasized the value of script analysis—wherein actors explore and identify (a) characters’ given circumstances, (b) the scene-by-scene and overall problems they strive to solve, (c) the actions they take to address those problems, and (d) the units of action or beats that mark their changing strategies within a scene.16 Modern acting teachers found that by focusing on these aspects of a script, actors were better able to find the “keys to elusive dramatic actions suggested by the playwright.”17 Emphasizing the need for script analysis, in The Technique of Acting (1988) Stella Adler explains that modern actors must discover “the subtleties and mysteries that the playwright’s ideas contain,” and that a vital aspect “of the actor’s work is to find the universality and epic size of the playwright’s ideas.”18 Modern acting teachers made script analysis a priority because they saw “modern theatre [as] a theatre of ideas, a theatre whose purpose it is to make an audience think and learn about the larger questions of life.”19 As Adler notes, the “modern play questions life, questions what to do about it, questions how we must live.”20 Emphasizing this position, in Modern Acting: A Manual, Sophie Rosenstein argues: “The theatre today is no longer a place for sheer amusement. No longer is it content to be an opiate, to be an escape from the realities of existence. Today it is a source of knowledge and a means of communication between individuals and groups of individuals.”21 Adler, Rosenstein, and other Modern acting teachers of the 1930s and 1940s recognized that modern drama’s interest in two conflicting points of view (where “one character may be for an idea under discussion

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and another may be against it”) “entered the theatre with Ibsen,” who gained wide recognition due to plays such as Pillars of Society (1877), A Doll’s House (1879), Ghosts (1881), The Wild Duck (1884), and Hedda Gabler (1890).22 They often referenced Ibsen when discussing connections between modern drama and Modern acting; in her acting manual, Sophie Rosenstein examines the challenges presented by playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen, Eugene O’Neill, Anton Chekhov, Elmer Rice, and Oscar Wilde. In sum, Modern acting teachers understood that modern drama presented new challenges; now subtle details in actors’ performances had to convey ways in which past events and the characters’ previous experiences might shape their actions and reactions in the present. Modern acting teachers circulated strategies for negotiating contemporary playwrights’ practice of making dialogue lines rarely if ever disclose the dynamics of character interactions. In Modern Acting: A Guide for Stage, Screen, and Radio, Josephine Dillon explains that when building characterizations, actors must “reread the play, [going] over a thousand times the points in the story that are the focal points in the plot, the turning points which show character or changes in character.”23 The sympathetic knowledge of characters that actors develop from their intensive script analysis forms the basis for the “mental pictures” they create, and the “mental conversations” they imagine their characters might have; actors draft and then memorize their unscripted lines of silent dialogue “as carefully as the written dialogue.”24 Modern acting teachers discuss several reasons why script analysis is key to performances that convey the nuances of a modern drama and sustain the coherent stage picture required by new stagecraft. Rosenstein explains: “These silent lines which are so important in helping to prepare the actor for an entrance are equally important on stage.”25 These unscripted lines ensure that an actor maintains concentration and stays in character; by using silent, unscripted lines of dialogue, an actor “mentally digests and [silently] comments upon the material he overhears” in a scene.26 The silent lines (and mental images) that an actor develops are what make it possible for him/her to convey a character’s inner thoughts and feelings. An actor’s use of these strategies colors all lines of his/her dialogue, even when at first they seem unimportant or unrelated to the lines delivered by another character. While Modern acting teachers developed these and other techniques to help actors locate and subsequently portray what they had discovered in their independent study of modern dramas, Strasberg believed that actors’

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“interpretation of a part, the idea of a character and the theme of the play … tend to remain intellectual concepts and do not help to create the actor’s embodiment of a role.”27 In his view, script analysis had limited value, because an actor’s “instrument responds not only to the demands of the actor’s will, but also to all those accumulated impulses, desires, conditioning, habits, and manners of behavior and expression.”28 As a consequence, Strasberg sought to develop a solution to what he saw as actors’ overwhelming “technical problems” or limitations caused by “the stifling grip of habit and the inhibiting factors of nonexpression [sic] encouraged by social conditioning.”29 Thus, whereas Modern acting teachers sought to facilitate actors’ ability to delve into and convey the rich inner lives of specific characters in individual modern dramas, Strasberg focused on what he saw as “the peculiar, divided, dual quality of modern man” as he found it embodied in the actors with whom he interacted as a director and teacher.30 Modern acting techniques have thus provided actors with a toolkit of strategies for creating characterizations and performances, while Strasberg’s Method offered a series of exercises designed to “unblock areas of the individual that may be locked or inhibited.”31

THE UNIQUE FEATURES OF STRASBERG’S METHOD From the 1930s forward, Modern acting teachers have seen value in linking an actor’s work-on-the-self with work-on-the-role, and they have devoted extensive attention to creating actual performances. By comparison, Strasberg identified two separate stages “in the actor’s training,” and devoted himself to developing a sequence of exercises for stage one, the actor’s work on himself.32 Strasberg focused on the first stage of acting, because in his view an aspiring actor might be aware “of his physical attributes, such as his voice, speech, and movement patterns,” but have “little to no knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of his sensory and memory equipment.”33 Moreover, he believed that an actor has even less understanding of “the behavior of his emotions and the way in which he expresses them.”34 Given Strasberg’s paramount interest in eradicating such problems, in his passing mention of characterization, he offers no new or unique insights, but instead briefly references strategies central to Modern acting. Like Modern acting teachers, Strasberg believed that action “has always been the essential element in the theatre.”35 Echoing their views, he saw action as emerging from and reflecting characters’ intentions, and as dis-

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tinct from stage business that has to do with where an actor “moves, where he sits, where and how he reacts.”36 Discussing a scene in which a husband comes home from work and exchanges a few lines of dialogue with his wife, Strasberg notes that it would be played differently depending on the given circumstances. He observes that if the husband “has been fired and must share the news with his wife,” this reality will “direct his behavior long before the actual dialogue permits the expression of it.”37 However, if the husband thinks “he has discovered something suspicious about his wife,” his concerns about how to “find out if it is true … would result in quite different behavior on the part of the actor.”38 Expressing opinions shared by Modern acting teachers, in A Dream of Passion Strasberg emphasizes that actions “are not simply physical or mental, but physical, motivational, and emotional.”39 Echoing their views, he explains that actions (such as pleading, teasing, demanding, or coaxing) illuminate subtext, which is “the real meaning” of a dialogue line; playable actions also communicate the given circumstances that shape “the dramatic events and the actual physical events” of a scene.40 Expressing Modern acting ideas, he notes that when an actor grasps a scene’s core dramatic event, “he can begin to divide the scene into units of action [which] are related to the dramatic situation” and the scene’s “sensory reality.”41 These connections pale, however, for rather than stress the value of improvisation and analysis of dramatic action as ways to enter into the lives of fictional characters, as Modern acting teachers did, Strasberg states: as “important as action is, it comes into play only after the actor has been trained to respond and to experience.”42 Importantly, he would also redefine “given circumstances,” replacing Stanislavsky’s position—that these pertain only to the character and the fictional world—with his own view that given circumstances may or may not be related to the fiction, because they are simply “those events and experiences which motivate the actor to do what he comes on stage to achieve.”43 In Strasberg’s estimation, an actor’s “true task” is to find those motivating experiences, and, significantly, in his view this requires an actor to access and explore the “beads of his emotional memory.”44 Describing his desire to plumb “the storehouse of an actor’s memory,” Strasberg explains that locating a way for performers to find, capture, and relive bits of emotional memory “was the task I was to devote myself to in establishing the Method.”45 This search would lead him to “deal with the total human being, the way in which he thinks, feels, emotes, behaves, and expresses

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himself.”46 Recognizing the parallels between psychoanalysis and his approach to actor training, Strasberg avers that he never tried to eliminate “experiences or emotions,” and was “only concerned with pressures to the extent that they interfere with the execution of tasks the actor sets for himself.”47 He saw himself as helping “each individual to become aware of the deepest sources of his experience and creativity and to learn to recreate them at will in the process of achieving an artistic result,” something determined by directors, who are responsible for the overall vision of a piece.48 Strasberg focused on actors’ experiences because, in his view, “the correct interpretation of a play in no way guarantees the truthfulness of the performance.”49 From his perspective, a great performance takes place only when an actor is “able to relive an overwhelming experience and express it in performance.”50 Thus, Method training would center on actors’ personal experiences; as he explains: “Recreating or reliving an intense emotional experience at will was at the core of our work.”51 Strikingly, he would propose that this type of training was the only way an actor could become “capable of convincingly creating the necessary reality intended to expose and to reveal the idea of the play.”52 For Strasberg, tapping into private, often traumatic, experiences was the only way to trigger “real” emotion in performance. Seeing actors and directors as having separate tasks and responsibilities, Strasberg argues that teachers, such as Stella Adler, who work with actors to build characterizations “never really train actors, they simply coach them.”53 By comparison, he identifies his work, which mobilizes actors’ emotional memories, as training that allows performers to “make adjustments set forth by the director and still maintain truthfulness.”54 As evidence of this, in A Dream of Passion he reports that Peter Brook, “a director who constantly searches for a heightened style of production, has expressed his satisfaction with working with … Method actors,” because they are highly responsive to his demands as a director.55

STRASBERG’S IDEAS ON SENSE MEMORY AND EMOTIONAL MEMORY Strasberg’s reflections on ideas circulated at the American Laboratory Theatre led by Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya shed light on the priorities that would come to define his Method. He was inspired

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by some of their ideas and rejected others after his brief period of study there—he attended acting classes for a few months in fall 1924 and a couple sessions of Boleslavsky’s directing course in 1926.56 Strasberg rejected Stanislavsky’s vision of the actor as having a soul (vs. a psyche as defined by Freud), and framed Stanislavsky’s ideas as woefully outdated.57 He also rejected Stanislavsky’s belief that actors can find their reason for action in the character’s given circumstances. Discarding this Modern acting focus on grounding a portrayal in the problem a character has to solve, Strasberg concluded that “it does not matter what you think as long as you are thinking about something.”58 In his view, an actor did not need to focus on something that has “an exact parallel to the play or the character”; instead, what mattered was that “when the character experiences, the actor really experiences – something.”59 By comparison, activities related to sense memory piqued his interest. Strasberg notes that the audition for the American Laboratory’s training program involved an improvised scene, a monologue, and “what might be called a pantomimed exercise (actually one in sense memory) in which you were asked to handle an imaginary object.”60 Importantly, Strasberg’s reference to “pantomimed exercise” indicates that this is the term used in the 1920s (by American Laboratory teachers and their contemporaries). By calling it a sense-memory exercise, Strasberg reveals that modern pantomime exercises did not involve replicating conventional gestures, but were instead designed to increase actors’ sensitivity to and awareness of their surroundings, and to facilitate their ability to portray character interactions with imaginary objects. However, as we will see in a moment, Strasberg would repurpose sense-memory work, and link it directly to the emotional-memory exercise that became the cornerstone of his Method. In A Dream of Passion, Strasberg introduces his ideas about sense memory when he discusses the American Laboratory’s ways of defining affective memory. He notes that for Boleslavsky, “affective memory falls into two categories: analytic memory, which recalls how something should be done; and the memory of real feeling, which helps an actor accomplish it on stage.”61 After remarking on “confusion” at the American Laboratory about the categories, Strasberg explains: “In my own work, I divide affective memory into sense memory, which is the memory of physical sensation, and emotional memory, which is the memory of the experience of more intense responses and reactions.”62 For Strasberg, both aspects of affective memory offer “material for reliving on the stage”; the display of “real experience on the stage” depends on emotion accessed “through the

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memory of thought and sensation.”63 In other words, sense memory is valuable because it allows actors to retrieve emotional memories. Strasberg explains that during his (brief) time at the American Laboratory, all of the exercises involved analytic (or sense) memory unrelated to emotional memory; he notes that students were “introduced to many individual exercises involving imaginary objects—drinking tea, eating a grapefruit, putting on and taking off shoes”; they had to “differentiate between picking up pearls, nuts, potatoes, cantaloupes, and watermelons.”64 They also worked on sense-memory exercises that allowed them to explore actions colored by various motivations; for example, this work gave them the opportunity to feel the difference between hammering a nail into a wall to hang up a picture of a sweetheart and hammering in a nail from which to suspend a noose with which to hang oneself. Strasberg candidly reports that he had trouble performing such sensememory exercises. For instance, one scene called for him to enter a room and discover important papers scattered on the floor, some of which were glued together. He explains: “In picking up some of the glued papers I tried to show resentment and disappointment,” but that Ouspenskaya objected, saying, “‘No, now you are explaining to us what you feel … really feel it, and we’ll understand without your telling us, either by words or gestures.’”65 In another exercise, he “was to pass the half-open cage of a lion without arousing the animal”; he explains that Ouspenskaya’s “general criticism was that [he] tried to show the fear [he] felt of the lion, instead of trying to pass him silently.”66 Strasberg’s experiences at the American Laboratory and in working with actors led him to conclude that, on their own, sense-memory exercises would not lead actors to create truthful performances. Moreover, working with the imaginary circumstances of a scene or play was also insufficient, because in Strasberg’s view actors had a deeper problem—namely, “that almost all human beings have areas of inhibitions, self-consciousness, and embarrassment which make it difficult for them to express as fully on stage as they experience in private.”67 In his view, the social conditioning that hampers performers’ ability to be expressive takes a couple of forms: there are “actors who are inhibited from feeling emotion and those who experience very deeply and intensely, but have been brought up in an environment that did not encourage and develop their capacity to express this intensity.”68 Strasberg’s assessment of actors’ most pressing problem would lead him to develop a set of in-class exercises designed to help them overcome

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“unconscious inhibitions or locked-up sensations.”69 In his view, when actors’ inhibitions become unblocked, “a lot of sensations begin to pour through and begin to lead toward a fullness and vividness of expression.”70 Using this notion to characterize acting itself, Strasberg proposes that “the therapeutic value of art generally, especially of the acting profession, resides in the ability to share experiences and emotions that are otherwise locked and blocked.”71 The twelve to fifteen steps in Strasberg’s sequence of exercises, which actors perform for classmates to witness and for Strasberg (or another teacher) to critique, reflect his position that a performer’s behavior on stage is limited “not by his understanding of the role,” but instead by “habits of expression” caused by neuroses.72 The initial exercises involve performing interactions with personal, imaginary objects, starting with “whatever the actor drinks for breakfast: coffee, tea, milk, orange juice.”73 In another early exercise, an actor is asked to perform taking off and putting on underclothes; Strasberg sees this exercise as valuable because “these objects are close to very sensitive areas in both men and women.”74 While he argues that these exercises benefit the actor by exposing inhibitions, he also reports that watching students perform them gives him “an insight into the individual [he is] dealing with.”75 A subsequent exercise involves overall sensation; here, Strasberg asks actors to perform taking a shower, to develop their senses and “unblock areas of the individual that may be locked or inhibited.”76 From there, an actor creates and maintains the sensation generated by the shower scene and at the same time creates “an imaginary personal object”; this is the first time an actor is allowed to use vocal expression during a classroom exercise.77 Strasberg notes that the next “exercises continue to become further complicated when additional problems are added,” so that in addition to “the overall-sensation, personal object, and sound exercises, the actor would be asked to create physical activities which are part of a daily occurrence.”78 Strasberg explains that at this stage of an actor’s training, he tests the student’s “responsiveness to direction” by adding yet another detail or adjustment to the improvised performance.79 Increasing the pressure to expose and explore personal inhibitions, he then requires an actor to perform “a certain behavior in his life which he does only in private, and at no other time.”80 Here, the actor “starts by creating the place, the environment, the room in which the private behavior usually occurs.”81 Once he/she is able to create “the private moment with sufficient convic-

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tion and commitment,” Strasberg goes on to another in-class performance exercise that lasts “about an hour,” during which time the actor “creates the private moment and maintains it as he adds” elements from previous exercises, along with “the animal exercise” that requires students to “objectively imitate” the movements of an animal that Strasberg selects.82 These exercises lead to an in-class performance of the emotionalmemory exercise. He explains that throughout his career as a Method acting teacher he saw “much fear on the part of many people when they first faced the problem of performing the emotional-memory exercise  – fear of being carried away, as they put it, and of not being able to be pulled back.”83 Given actors’ need “to establish control over emotional expression,” Strasberg determined that performance of “emotional memory work [should be] preceded by extensive preparation.”84 To perform the exercise, “the actor is asked to recreate an experience from the past that affected him strongly”; specifically, the student is told “to pick the strongest thing that ever happened to him, whether it aroused anger, fear, or excitement.”85 Strasberg stipulates that the experience must be from “at least seven years prior to the time the exercise is attempted.”86 Recalling circumstances leading up to the intense experience, the actor “starts five minutes before the emotional event took place,” and “tries to recreate the sensations and emotions of the situation in full sensory terms.”87 The student describes “the sensations as he tries by sense memory to recapture” details about imagery, clothing textures, temperature, smells, surrounding sounds, qualities of voices, physical sensations in the body.88 Strasberg explains that as “an actor comes closer to the moment of intense emotional reaction, the body will often exert a counter tension to stop it [because] nobody likes to relive intense experiences.”89 Yet an actor must “be able to stay with the sensory concentration”; this demonstrates control and, in Strasberg’s view, makes it possible for the actor to subsequently recreate that emotion “at will.”90 While Strasberg would develop other exercises designed to counter stage fright and actors’ “verbal and movement patterns,” he saw his emotional-memory exercise as “central to many of the greatest moments in performance.”91 Presenting his exercise as the linchpin for connecting actors’ personal experiences and expression in performance, Strasberg describes it twice in A Dream of Passion. In the later part of his career, he also arranged demonstrations of actors performing the exercise; discussing these events, he remarks that on “every occasion, the observers were startled by the quickness and ease with which it was performed, and at the

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ease with which the actor could change from one emotion to another.”92 Strasberg saw the demonstrations of the emotional-memory exercise as evidence that he had improved on Stanislavsky by codifying a way to stimulate an actor’s “reality and emotion.”93

STRASBERG’S DECISIVE BREAK WITH STANISLAVSKY Despite the well-publicized lineage connecting Strasberg’s Method to the multifaceted System developed by Stanislavsky, Strasberg’s emphasis on actors’ need to mine psychological traumas constitutes a profound split with Stanislavsky’s modern view of the actor as a creative artist who builds characterizations and executes performances “by paying strict attention to the … ‘facts’ of the play.”94 Whereas Strasberg saw actors through a Freudian lens, Stanislavsky envisioned a secular but spiritual self, highly responsive to non-threatening activities that would sharpen concentration, attention, and observation, and develop an actor’s imagination and ability to create a bond with characters’ circumstances and challenges, which might have little connection to a performer’s experiences. Similarly, whereas Strasberg saw directors as responsible for interpreting a script, Stanislavsky made script analysis an essential part of actors’ work. Stanislavsky developed “a logical process of analysis for each segment of the play”: first the actor “examines the ‘given circumstances’ in order to describe the character’s situation, [which] poses a ‘problem’ [that] the character must solve through the choice of an ‘action’”; then, during performance, “the actor places his or her full attention on carrying out the required action, with the character’s emotions arising as a natural result of the action.”95 From Stanislavsky’s perspective, script analysis is what allows actors to establish “concentration on the events of the play during performance”; they need not dredge up personal experiences to display emotion, because study of the script leads them to “put themselves in their characters’ shoes, and begin to act as their characters”; this creative action simply and easily “calls forth experiences analogous with the role.”96 Concerning these analogous experiences, Stanislavsky discovered that personal associations could actually “threaten the actor’s focus on the play,” whereas “continual exposure to literature, art, people, cultures, and history” could spark performers’ imagination and thus facilitate their ability to understand, visualize, and embody their characters’ given circumstances, problems, and actions.97

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In opposition to Strasberg’s focus on exercises to break down inhibitions, Stanislavsky emphasized the value of exploring myriad forms of characterization. For Stanislavsky, using “the concepts of ‘problem’ (zadacha) and ‘action’ (deistvie)” to approach a script and a performance “comprise the heart” of an actor’s creative labor.98 In opposition to Strasberg’s position that self-expression is the basis of acting, Stanislavsky maintained that acting depends on a potentially enriching process of inquiry and discovery. In Stanislavsky’s view, by investing the substantial time required to explore and research characters’ realities and playwrights’ visions, actors establish their characters’ defining problem; from there, intellectual and emotional momentum gathers as they discover their characters’ through lines (spines) and dramatic actions for any given moment. Thus, “truthful” performances are ones in which each performer’s action is a “purposeful action aimed at solving a specific problem”; for example, even in an exercise, “opening a door” is not an action, whereas “opening a door in order to find out if an intruder stands outside is deistvie.”99 For Stanislavsky, script analysis makes it possible for actors to identify their character’s complex, evolving series of intention-laden actions; this preparation is the basis for a portrayal distinguished by vivid expressivity, for those “scored” dramatic actions color all the qualities in a player’s vocal/physical expressions during performance and thus reveal character and subtext. Stanislavsky’s vision of acting as an aesthetic, character-centered activity contrasts with Strasberg’s Freudian emphasis on eliminating actors’ socially induced inhibitions. Strasberg argued that actors must relive emotionally charged moments to deliver “real” emotion during performances, whereas Stanislavsky believed that imagination offered a way for performers to explore and empathize with their characters. In Strasberg’s Freudian view, the subconscious hinders creativity and actors must “overcome blocks and repressions in the psyche in order to free the means of expression”; by comparison, Stanislavsky’s study of yoga led him to see the subconscious as an easily accessed part of everyday life and “an infinite source for our imaginations.”100 While Strasberg saw the work of acting as designed to eliminate divisions between the actor’s and the character’s emotion, Stanislavsky found that “the actor’s fusion with character could not work in practice,” and that instead preparation and concentration make it possible for performers to maintain a distance from their characters and to experience “being on stage and being within the role” during performances.101 Actors’ dual experience—as themselves and as their characters—parallels the everyday

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experience of being aware of one’s feelings, especially in awkward contexts that illuminate the performative dimension of social behavior. Yet Stanislavsky saw acting as distinct from performance in daily life precisely because an actor creates a character distinct from him/herself. Moreover, Stanislavsky found that actors were able to maintain concentration during performance by letting their actions be infused with thoughts and feelings stored in the mental “filmstrip” they had created during their exploration of the script; significantly, these filmstrips would be filled with “eidetic images (videniia) of circumstances and predicaments … outside the actor’s personal experience.”102 This last point is significant, for it establishes a contrast with Strasberg and aligns Stanislavsky with Modern acting teachers. As noted earlier, Josephine Dillon and Sophie Rosenstein emphasize that creating mental pictures and unscripted lines of silent dialogue allows actors to embody and convey their characters’ rich inner lives. Lillian Albertson, who became a dialogue director at Paramount and then RKO after a career as an actor and director, also echoes Stanislavsky’s insight. In Motion Picture Acting, she explains: “make all the mental pictures you can in preparation of the scene … make your mental pictures as real as you possibly can in studying the part, then play from memory – the synthetic memories you have invented.”103 The substantial connection between Stanislavsky and Modern acting teachers is one reason to consider developments in American acting in the 1930s and 1940s—not from Strasberg’s perspective but in light of the vision of acting shared by Stanislavsky and the teachers who articulated the Modern acting strategies many performers used to negotiate the challenges posed by modern drama, new stagecraft, and production settings in the American performing arts industry of that period. Strasberg’s Method differs from ideas circulating before, during, and after the period in which he had a platform for his views—first at the Group Theatre from 1931 to 1934, and later at the Actors Studio, starting in 1951, and the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institutes in New York and West Hollywood from 1969 to 1982. As we have seen, his belief that actors’ expressivity requires reliving personal experiences differs from the Modern acting emphasis on research and observation; the exercises he promoted to break down actors’ inhibitions have no relation to the strategies that Modern acting teachers developed to build characterizations. Whereas Modern acting strategies lead performers to “think and behave as their characters would logically do in the circumstances” of the

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story, Strasberg encouraged actors to create “an inner life” unrelated to the fiction, but one that could prompt the behavior “needed by the scene or requested by the director.”104 Strasberg’s idea that acting involves use of personal experiences would lead him see non-Method actors as never doing the real work of acting.105 Strasberg’s Method promises to liberate actors, valorizing selfexpression and releasing performers from the labor of script analysis. By defining acting as reliving personal experiences actors can access once they are free of inhibitions, Strasberg simplified the problems posed by modern theatre. The singularity of his approach is captured by his book’s original title, What Is Acting: From Stanislavsky to the Method, which suggests the distance he travelled away from Stanislavsky.106 Strasberg’s observations throughout his book also reveal that while Stanislavsky and other Modern acing teachers approached performance challenges as actors, as “musicians” in the orchestra sharing ideas about ways to build characterizations and deliver performances that reflect their insights and ability to collaborate, Strasberg approached the challenges as a director, as a “music” teacher seeking to develop performers able to function as übermarionettes in productions shaped by a modern director. Strasberg’s position reflects the new stagecraft view that the director should be seen as the true artist of the theatre. As Helen Krich Chinoy explains, in the Little Theatre movement of the early twentieth century, “there had been much talk about the director as someone who would liberate the American theater from provincialism and commercialism and initiate a theatrical, social, and spiritual transformation.”107 Discussing Strasberg’s support for the notion that the director was a romantic genius able to create a “unified vision of a play,” she points out that in Edward Gordon Craig’s On the Art of the Theatre (1911), “Strasberg discovered not only the art of the theater but also the artist of the theater – the director.”108 Importantly, the position of Modern acting teachers reflects an opposing strand in the bundle of new stagecraft ideas, one associated with George Cram Cook and the Provincetown Players. As Chinoy clarifies, Cook “contrasted the unity imposed by the director who uses his collaborators as obedient instruments with the spiritual unity that springs from ‘one shared fund of feelings, ideas, impulses’ among a group of people.”109 It is this second view of theatrical unity that coincides with the modern perspective articulated by Claude King, who once compared directors to musical conductors and actors to well-trained musicians, able to contribute effectively to ensemble performances.

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NOTES 1. Richard Boleslavsky, “Boleslavsky Lectures from the American Laboratory Theatre,” in Acting: The First Six Lessons: Documents from the American Laboratory Theatre, ed. Rhonda Blair (New York: Routledge, 2010), 125. 2. Lee Strasberg, A Dream of Passion: The Development of the Method (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1987), 104, 26. Strasberg’s book borrows its title from the 1978 film A Dream of Passion by blacklisted director Jules Dassin. In the film, an actress (Melina Mercouri) interviews a woman (Ellen Burstyn) convicted of killing her children, as a way to prepare for her role in Medea. Dassin’s film garnered critical acclaim, including a Palme d’Or nomination at Cannes and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Film. The story dramatized Strasberg’s emphasis on links between traumatic experience and performance and his romantic notion of art as individual self-expression, a view at odds with Modern acting’s vision of art as collaboration. 3. Ibid., 27. 4. Ibid., 26. 5. Ibid., 27. 6. Ibid., 27, 28. 7. Ibid., 29. 8. Ibid., 151. See Olga Taxidou, The Mask: A Periodical Performance by Edward Gordon Craig (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998). Taxidou discusses Craig’s professed admiration for his mother, actress Ellen Terry, and his claims that women should be “banned from the stage” (90). Analyzing Craig’s notion that women must leave the stage “‘if the theatre is to be saved,’” Taxidou observes: “Craig’s Ubermarionette, lacking biological gender, still has ideological gender; he is most definitely a man” (95, 94). Strasberg’s high regard for Craig and his own use of women in examples of actors’ problems thus require the type of analysis found in Rosemary Malague, An Actress Prepares: Women and “the Method” (New York: Routledge, 2012). 9. Josephine Dillon, Modern Acting: A Guide for Stage, Screen and Radio (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1940), 264. 10. Walter Prichard Eaton, “Acting and the New Stagecraft,” in Theatre Arts on Acting, ed. Laurence Senelick (New York: Routledge, 2008), 5; Julia Walker, “‘De New Dat’s Moiderin’ de Old’: Oedipal Struggle as Class Conflict in Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape,” in Art, Glitter, and Glitz: Mainstream Playwrights and Popular Theatre in 1920s America, eds. Arthur Gewirtz and James L. Kolb (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 21.

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11. Claude King, “The Place of the Actor in ‘the New Movement,’” in Theatre Arts on Acting, ed. Laurence Senelick (New York: Routledge, 2008), 6; italics added. 12. Ibid., 7. 13. Ibid., italics added. See Brenda Murphy, American Realism and American Drama, 1880–1940 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Murphy describes the 1870s as “a period of transition”—when romantic star Edwin Forrest was replaced by: classical performer Edwin Booth; Matilda Heron, associated with “emotionalism”; and Joseph Jefferson, known for his “attention to detail in a unified characterization” (17, 18). The new generation included James A. Herne, E. H. Sothern, and Richard Mansfield. Murphy sees Mansfield’s “projection of personality… onto a character [as] one step in the move toward psychological realism in acting” (19). She explains: the ideas that “the character was a ‘person’ rather than a series of attitudes or emotions was important and one that was to be carried to fruition by such actors in the next generation as Minnie Maddern Fiske and George Arliss” (19). 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. See Cynthia Baron and Sharon Marie Carnicke, “Stanislavsky: Players’ Actions as a Window into Characters’ Interactions,” in Reframing Screen Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008). The chapter uses script analysis concepts to analyze a scene in The Grifters (Frears 1990). See also Cynthia Baron, “Stanislavsky’s Terms for Script Analysis: Vocabulary for Analyzing Performances,” Journal of Film and Video 65:4 (Winter 2013): 29–41. The article uses the vocabulary to explore scenes in Fargo (Coen 1996) and The Last King of Scotland (Macdonald 2006). 17. Gay Gibson Cima, Performing Women: Female Characters, Male Playwrights, and the Modern Stage (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 30. 18. Stella Adler, The Technique of Acting (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), 7, 116. 19. Ibid., 106. 20. Ibid., 116. 21. Sophie Rosenstein, Larrae A.  Haydon, and Wilbur Sparrow, Modern Acting: A Manual (New York: Samuel French, 1936), 128. 22. Adler, Technique of Acting, 106. 23. Dillon, Modern Acting: A Guide, 243. 24. Ibid., 9. 25. Rosenstein, et al., Modern Acting: A Manual, 61. 26. Ibid., 62. 27. Strasberg, Dream of Passion, 160.

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28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

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Ibid., 103. Ibid., 160, 102, 159–160. Ibid., 20. Ibid., 138. Ibid., 160. Ibid., 95. Ibid. Ibid., 75. Ibid., 76. Ibid. Ibid., 76–77. Ibid., 77. Ibid., 164. Ibid. Ibid., 78. Ibid. Ibid., 60. Ibid. Ibid., 104. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 173. Ibid., 114. Ibid. Ibid., 173. Ibid. Ibid., 174. Ibid. See Rhonda Blair, “Editor’s Introduction,” in Acting: The First Six Lessons: Documents from the American Laboratory Theatre, ed. Rhonda Blair (New York: Routledge, 2010), xi; Helen Krich Chinoy, The Group Theatre: Passion, Politics, and Performance in the Depression Era, eds. Don B. Wilmeth and Milly S. Barranger (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 54–55. See Strasberg, Dream of Passion, 67. Ibid., 68. Ibid. Ibid., 63. Ibid., 69. Ibid., 69–70. Ibid., 113. Ibid., 71.

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65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100.

Ibid., 72. Ibid. Ibid., 138. Ibid., 103. Ibid., 139. Ibid. Ibid., 140. Ibid., 102, 143. Ibid., 132. Ibid., 135. Ibid., 134. Ibid., 138. Ibid., 141. Ibid., 142. Ibid., 143. Ibid., 145. Ibid. Ibid., 146. Ibid., 115–116. Ibid., 116. Strasberg mentions that Method actors explore the emotionalmemory exercise early on “without demanding immediate and intense results” (148). These private experiments are entirely distinct from the classroom performance of the emotional-memory exercise that takes place only after the student has performed the preceding exercises to the teacher’s satisfaction. Ibid., 149. Ibid. Ibid., 115, 149. Ibid., 149. Ibid., 115. Ibid., 115, 149. Ibid., 152, 148. Ibid., 151. Ibid. Sharon Marie Carnicke, Stanislavsky in Focus: An Acting Master for the Twenty-First Century, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2009), 203. Ibid., 88. Ibid., 133. Ibid., 153, 152. Ibid., 90. Ibid., 91. Ibid., 161, 160.

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101. Ibid., 142. 102. Ibid., 166, 177. 103. Lillian Albertson, Motion Picture Acting (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1947), 63. 104. Carnicke, Stanislavsky in Focus, 204. 105. Strasberg, Dream of Passion, 5. 106. Ibid., xi. 107. Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 53. 108. Ibid., 54. 109. Ibid.

CHAPTER 3

Modern Acting: A Conscious Approach

Modern acting represents a key response to modern drama and new stagecraft, yet it is not part of popular discourse because it is not associated with a famous teacher or acting style. In addition, Modern acting teachers of the 1930s and 1940s often saw no need to assign a label to their approach, and some were in fact reluctant to do so; members of the Actors’ Lab, who came from the Group Theatre and elsewhere, eventually agreed to describe the strategies they employed as “a conscious approach to acting.”1 Other acting teachers would use the term “modern”: in The Technique of Acting, Stella Adler refers to modern actors, modern drama, modern technique, and modern theatre; in their books entitled Modern Acting, Sophie Rosenstein and Josephine Dillon explicitly use the term to characterize the techniques they discuss. More important than these minor variations, Modern acting teachers of the period all found that performers can and should address acting problems through conscious effort. For instance, in contrast to Strasberg, who saw actors’ unconscious inhibitions as the main obstacle to great acting, Dillon found that insufficient thought given to training and characterization was the primary impediment to “truthful” performance. She thus challenged actors’ unexamined use of mechanical systems of expression or mannerisms linked to stars, politicians, or stereotypes. Dillon begins her acting manual by stating that the book “contains no illustrations, no photographs of glamorous women and handsome men, no diagrams of anatomy, [and] no charts of sounds,” because these premodern guides

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 C. Baron, Modern Acting, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-40655-2_3

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lead to mechanical, imitative portrayals.2 In place of these, her book suggests ways for actors to develop: their imagination; the “mental pictures” that must color each moment in a performance; and the judgment and muscle sense to convey characters’ thoughts through the “tempo, pause, [and] rhythm” of performers’ own physical and vocal choices.3 Dillon’s manual explains that actors can avoid superficial performances if they develop a conscious awareness of themselves and take a conscious approach to creating characterizations. In her view, there are barriers to actors’ full expression of emotion, but these are not unconscious. Instead, the obstacles have to do with insufficient training and conscious effort. She argues that emotion-filled performances are possible when actors spend considerable time building their characterizations, and have developed both the physical-vocal skill and concentration to embody the different and unique characters they create through careful preparation. She proposes that Modern acting techniques help actors avoid the major stumbling block of presenting audiences with an image simply copied from elsewhere. Dillon was opposed to mechanical performances, and so insisted that actor training must eventually lead to a performer being “released and freed from the interference” of imitation.4 This view coincides with her sense that an acting coach is like a lapidary (a gem cutter), because he/ she simply “takes off the rough exterior and shapes the surfaces so [that] the jewel shines forth.”5 As she explains: an “acting coach has a great responsibility. To impose another personality on an actor, while coaching him, is wrong. My own ideal is to develop the individual’s own latent possibilities.”6 Throughout her career, Dillon worked with emerging and established actors during their process of script analysis. Private coaching was helpful for contract players in supporting roles, because rehearsals with all cast members were not part of the film production system. It was also useful for performers who secured Hollywood contracts without having had any theatre training. During these private rehearsal sessions, Dillon would focus on techniques that allowed the players to be independent creative laborers, able to identify their character’s circumstances, objectives, and dramatic actions. These rehearsal sessions ensured that actors understood their character’s thought processes and specific way of relating to the world. Here, we see Dillon with Bruce Cabot, best known for his role as Jack Driscoll, the ship’s first mate who saves the actress Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) in King Kong (Cooper and Schoedsack 1933) (Fig. 3.1).7 Dillon’s acting manual illuminates the working process central to her private coaching sessions. It explains that an actor’s training must include

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Fig. 3.1 Josephine Dillon coaches actor Bruce Cabot in 1933. Dillon envisioned Modern acting as an approach requiring thoughtful and engaged exploration of the script

sense-memory exercises, such as using one’s hands “as though they were touching satin; then as though they were touching a rough material; then old leather, then cactus.”8 It also highlights the thought actors should invest in improvised action, for Dillon gives priority to motivated sense-memory exercises, inviting performers to “imagine that you are touching the head of a loved child, or that you are blind and that you are touching the face of someone you know.”9 Dillon’s emphasis on the conscious intention behind any moment of a performance emerges in the many improvisations she outlines for actors to use as general exercises and vehicles for creating characters. She argues that “there must be thought” behind every gesture and expression in a performance, and notes that the “slightest move of one finger, with the right mental picture back of it and intense projection under it, will tell more story” than any conventional use of the hands or arms.10 To convey a character’s thoughts, an actor must create “mental dialogue” that captures the mental pictures he/she has developed.11 She explains that even for a screen test on an empty sound stage, an actor must demonstrate the ability to convey thought, and thus come prepared to look at various imaginary “objects in the room, letting the face react to the [imaginary] memories

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associated with the different objects.”12 She explains that in this instance, the devised dialogue might include silent lines such as: There’s the old Shakespeare. How well I remember the first time I read from it, how terrified I was, Lord forgive me. Well, I know better now – (looking further) I broke that chair one day, leaning back in it and laughing. Good gracious! The only antique in the place, and I would break it … – (looking on) Say! Who’s that coming?13

Dillon’s manual includes improvisations for a wide range of circumstances. A simple one concerns finding money on a sidewalk; here, she invites actors to explore different scenarios, such as looking for the person who lost the money, or checking to see if anyone else has noticed it. In a more complicated scenario, a family member “has gone on some simple mission, perhaps to the corner store for bread, and has said he would be back in ten minutes, but now, very much later has not returned.”14 Here, Dillon touches terrain associated with Strasberg’s Method, for she invites actors to “remember being present during such a scene.”15 Importantly, however, she asks actors to focus on what individuals think, feel, and do in these circumstances, to picture the reactions of the people around them. Dillon does not see this exercise as the linchpin of the actor training process, but simply an exploration of behavior in situations that involve concern or anxiety. She continually returns to the ideas that an “actor’s task is to analyze the emotion of the character to be portrayed, and study the best way to convey this emotion to the audience.”16 In Dillon’s view, a modern performance arises from the labor an actor expends both to analyze the “underlying emotions and moods in the character” and acquire the “technical skill” to deliver his/her conception of the character to the audience.17 Her desire to help actors address the challenges of conceptualizing and embodying characters thus contrasts sharply with Strasberg’s abiding interest in the question: “How can the actor make his real feelings expressive on stage?”18 Similarly, Sophie Rosenstein’s acting manual illustrates the key differences between Modern acting techniques and Strasberg’s Method even on its first page, which features a quote from John T. Nettleship’s Robert Browning: Essays and Thoughts (first published in 1868): the “essence of poetic art is being able to get outside one’s self, to stand apart, study and draw that other self, the imagined character of another, for the eyes and brain of the outside world of men and women to see and know.”19 In subsequent discussions, Rosenstein shows that actors can avoid

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“conventionalized and wooden patterns” when creating imagined characters if they use a Modern acting approach, which “stresses the importance of working from within out, or from the inner feelings to the outer manifestation.”20 Like Dillon, Rosenstein sees conscious thought as essential to an inner approach to character. She explains that a modern performance emerges from “analysis and synthesis”: the first step is to identify ways in which a character resembles and differs from oneself and others; the second requires an actor to “assimilate all this material and mold it into a plausible reality within the boundaries of the play.”21 Rosenstein outlines hundreds of exercises designed to facilitate performers’ work in building a characterization, which depends on an actor being able to “realize a prescribed role as the author has conceived it, and … enact that role so that the audience believes in its reality and individuality.”22 Rosenstein’s Modern Acting: A Manual includes brief chapters that highlight the importance of body work that fosters flexibility, coordination, and relaxation, and voice work that improves actors’ diction and tone production. The manual also contains exercises concerning sense memory, observation, visualization, and concentration, along with multiple chapters devoted to improvisation and characterization strategies well suited to modern drama. Notably, whereas A Dream of Passion highlights Strasberg’s signature emotional-memory exercise and spends considerable time on the twelve-to-fifteen-step process he developed to fix what he saw as actors’ primary problem (inhibition), Modern Acting builds chapter by chapter toward its description of a roughly twelve-step process for addressing “certain fundamentals” in building characterizations.23 In offering the outline, Rosenstein notes that there “are as many ways of approaching a part as there are actors,” yet she proposes that: All actors must understand the components of the individual to be portrayed, they must feel and think as the role demands, they must understand the nature of the play, the relation of the person to the others in the play, and the development of the character throughout the play.24

In contrast again with Strasberg, Rosenstein does not see social conditioning as hindering an actor’s ability to feel or express emotion, only that it tends to weaken the power of an individual’s imagination. As a consequence, she does not require actors to pantomime intimate personal behavior (e.g., showering) for the teacher and the class, but rather offers a variety of exercises designed to restore actors’ “capacity for accepting a

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given situation as truth.”25 These might involve reproducing the “exact movements” of a man eating soup after studying the person in order to understand “the possible motivation of every mannerism observed.”26 Or the performer might improvise a scene “suggested … by a character, a situation, or a mood” conveyed by a painting or episode in a novel—to reveal “what sequence of thoughts and feelings gave rise to the action.”27 In Rosenstein’s view, considerable time should be spent on reactivating imagination, and so in some of the additional exercises, pairs or groups of actors use unrelated words (comb, wine glass, magazine; pine tree, pagoda, balloon; radio, lemon, chimney) to create stories, which are then performed silently or with dialogue for the teacher and the class. Her observations about actors’ “reinstatement of past experience” also illuminate a significant difference between Modern acting and Strasberg’s Method.28 Rosenstein sees actors’ recollection of personal experiences as a way to spark their imagination and thus enter the characters’ worlds; by comparison, Strasberg devised his signature emotional-memory exercise to train performers able to generate the emotion required by a director. Rosenstein finds that use of even mundane sense memory (e.g., the sound of a car starting) when studying a script leads to “more individualization, plasticity, and naturalness” in performance, because it allows actors to draw on all of their resources during the labor-intensive process of building characterizations.29 She thus encourages performers to keep a diary of their sensory/emotional responses to “the shock of a door which was slammed, the smell of an apple pie cooking, [or] the feel of icy streets.”30 Then, to create characterizations, players should explore “emotion and feeling similar to those called for by the given dramatic situation and character” when doing script analysis—all the while recognizing that people’s necessarily limited experiences requires them to “draw on vicarious experiences from such sources as literature, painting, sculpture, and other transmitters of knowledge, as well as upon careful observation of the characteristic behavior of others.”31 In opposition to Strasberg’s notion that an actor should focus on personal experiences unrelated to the story to generate “real” emotion during performance, Rosenstein emphasizes that even during script analysis actors must leave behind any personal associations. Articulating a key Modern acting view, she explains: “Once we recall a former emotion we must sustain it [only] long enough to transpose it to the new situation. To do this adequately, we must no longer think of the circumstances which accompanied the real experience.”32 In contrast to Strasberg, Rosenstein finds that

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actors who do not “dispense with these recollected details” find themselves unable to embody unique, fully realized characters during performance.33 As she observes, visualizing details of personal experiences to “reproduce psychic reactions” is a minor part of a much more complex creative process that requires actors to “build” the imaginary world of the characters.34 For Rosenstein, imagination is at the heart of an actor’s creative labor, because “imagination, with its components of intensification of emotion, [and] visualization of aspects and transformation of environments,” is the only basis for a performance in which “nothing intrudes between the actor and his task” of embodying a character moment by moment (Fig. 3.2).35

Fig. 3.2 Sophie Rosenstein coaches Dolores Moran for The Old Acquaintance (Sherman 1943). For Rosenstein, Modern acting strategies strengthen an actor’s imagination and ability to embrace a script’s fictional reality

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MODERN ACTING: A SHARED PERSPECTIVE FOR ACTORS OF THE PERIOD Members of the Actors’ Laboratory in Hollywood (1941–1950) assumed that the era’s performers were familiar with Stanislavsky’s ideas, since his work had been the basis for courses at the American Laboratory Theatre (1923–1930) and Stella Adler’s acting classes after she had studied with Stanislavsky in 1934. Lab members saw themselves as approaching performance according to Stanislavsky’s Modern acting principles, and they worked from the premise that modern drama and new stagecraft required actors to move into the world of the character. They recognized there was no fixed method for generating “real” emotion; in their view, variations in characters, actors, and production circumstances meant that preparation for and execution of any performance would necessarily be slightly different. Mary Tarcai, who had studied at the American Laboratory Theatre and taught at the Neighborhood Playhouse for six years, led the acting program after the Lab moved to its permanent location in 1943. Files in the Actors’ Lab Collection contain substantial information about how its members understood the work of acting: their democratic structure led them to document their meetings and workshops; moreover, to establish and maintain course offerings for veterans attending classes as a result of the GI Bill, the Lab prepared detailed descriptions of its actor training program for the Veterans Administration. Mary Tarcai, described in a 1945 news clipping as the executive director of the Lab Workshop and “America’s leading specialist” in actor training, recognized that the acting faculty came from varied “schools of experience,” including the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (Hume Cronyn), the Moscow Art Theatre (George Shdanoff), the Neighborhood Playhouse (Richard Conte), and the Group Theatre (Roman Bohnen, Phoebe Brand, Morris Carnovsky).36 Her 1945 report on the Lab’s acting program reflects both her assurance that its faculty held a shared vision of Modern acting and her view that members’ different backgrounds created an opportunity for the Lab “to bring together the best acting and teaching experience” possible.37 Lab members examined the Modern acting strategies previously shared by Stella Adler and American Laboratory teachers in a series of working sessions between 1945 and 1947. The first session included: Mary Tarcai; actors Roman Bohnen, Janet Brandt, Phil Brown, J.  Edward

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Bromberg, Phoebe Brand, Morris Carnovsky, Hume Cronyn, and Rose Hobart; dancer-choreographer Jacobina Caro and dancer-mime Lotte Goslar; director Joseph Mankiewicz and his wife, actress Rose Stradner; Margaret Prendergast McLean, former head of the American Laboratory Theatre diction department; acting coach George Shdanoff; and Batami Schneider, actor, teacher, and wife of German director Benno Schneider. These faculty members “met for a series of eight sessions to think through and to discuss, from their experiences, what [they] should teach at the Lab and how [they] should teach it.”38 Their plan called for a series of workshops in the 1946–1947 season, with Will Lee and Jeff Corey leading the session on “the conscious approach to acting,” Phoebe Brand conducting the workshop on “sense memory and its values,” Daniel Mann and Art Smith focusing on “action,” Morris Carnovsky running the session on the “inner and outer aspects of characterization,” and other faculty in charge of subsequent sessions on improvisation, imagination, dramatic writing, and directing.39 The typed notes from the Lee–Corey session reveal that, for Lab members, a conscious approach to acting arises from a performer’s awareness that in daily life “thoughts and feelings … call forth this or that action as a response.”40 As Lab members put it: every person has “some kind of plan” and every person “WANTS something”; each day of a person’s life “is composed of little acts that are proposed to make this final thing happen”—and so the actual drama of any person’s life “consists of meeting obstacles and overcoming them, or being overcome by them.”41 Given this, in a modern performance, an actor must capture the reality that life involves “actions and interactions,” and show that characters are “varied in their developed differences, of emotion, sensitivity and understanding.”42 To create portrayals “organically related to life,” modern actors must locate the fictional “problems” that give them faith in the character’s circumstances and a deep connection with the overarching problem a character tries to solve.43 They must embody characters’ actions to create modern performances that reflect the reality that action is at the heart of lived experience. A conscious approach also requires actors to consider a script in light of its period, with “the author’s intention weighed and measured and studied for its truth.”44 It also leads actors to explore the physiological, sociological, and psychological aspects of the characters; these given circumstances color characters’ motivation and action. Thus, in building characterizations, modern actors must sensitize themselves to these factors in order

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to “respond with truth” during performance as they recall the “intellectual, mental analysis of the character” they have created during individual preparation.45 Improvisations, sense-memory exercises pertinent to a scene (not an actor’s personal life), and continued analysis of what makes a character “grope, find his way [and] struggle” are all important tools during preparation.46 As Lab members explain, a conscious approach “is not opposed to the inspirational technique per se because it inspires, develops imagination and faith in what one is doing, [and] makes it possible for actors to HARNESS those wonderful inspirations that have been known to appear sporadically.”47 For Lab members, a conscious approach to acting does not lead actors to use personal substitutions to generate emotion during performance. Instead, emotion in performance rises naturally when actors behave and speak as their characters; Phoebe Brand explains that acting does not involve reliving personal experiences, but rather means “to act – to do – to perform certain tasks [as a character] under certain circumstances.”48 She continues: “The author has given you certain things to do in certain circumstances. You do it. Then you sensitize the instrument so that [you] can do these things much fuller.”49 Articulating a key Modern acting principle, Brand states that during preparation and performance the actor should say: “these are the given circumstances and these are the circumstances in which I [as the character] find myself, and [so as the character] ‘What would I do?’”50 During the session on action, Brand reiterates the vision of acting that Lab members shared with other Modern acting teachers when she explains: “You find your action by saying ‘What does this character want  – in what circumstances does he find himself that makes him want to do something’ – you can check yourself along the line by asking ‘Is this his deepest desire?’”51 Seeing action as central to every performance, Lab members believed that an actor in a bit part should regard the time on stage or screen as “a moment” of the character’s life, where the particular problem and playable action for that character fits into the spine of his/her overall story.52 To prepare for performances driven by a character’s intention-laden actions, actors must study the script “point by point” to understand “the inner intentions of the character.”53 Then, to deliver “truthful” performances—as distinct from commercial star turns featuring heightened “mood and feeling”—a modern actor must focus on “what the character is ‘doing’, and try to put that ‘doing’ into motion.”54

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Notes from the session on action highlight that the “set of circumstances” will provide “a springboard for the action” of any character.55 This view also informs Brand’s session on sense memory, for she emphasizes that acting involves portraying characters whose circumstances shape their actions. As she explains, Modern acting does not simply involve “the ability to react to imaginary stimuli” per se, but rather “the ability to perform tasks under certain circumstances with reality.”56 Lab members focused on characters’ circumstances, problems, and actions for several reasons: identifying characters’ intention-laden actions during script analysis provided the basis for “truthful” performances, and embodying a character’s actions during performance facilitated an actor’s concentration and relaxation. As Brand notes, while the audience or the film crew can act “as a kind of magnet, drawing away the concentration of the actor,” when performers focus on their character’s actions, they are “able to concentrate,” relax, and stay in tune with fellow actors.57 For Lab members, the process of establishing and then focusing on a character’s problem and objective scene by scene is central to the labor of Modern acting. Embodying a character’s actions not only frees actors from distractions, it also allows them to incorporate props into a characterization grounded in actions and reactions. Brand explains that actors can “react and live on stage” or screen when they have trained themselves to be attuned to their surroundings and done the sense-memory work that integrates everything into their characters’ inner actions.58 Noting that actors, like most people, rush through daily life without pausing to notice the details of the world around them, Brand explains that to offset this habit, and to address the challenge of endowing unreal props with a sense of reality, performers must train themselves to feel what they touch, taste what they eat, and use all of their senses in a conscious way. Returning to a key point for the Lab, Brand argues that even acting exercises should involve intention-laden actions. As she explains, it is useless to teach “sense memory per se,” because as an actor “you must always know what you are doing and why you are doing it.”59 This position contrasts with Strasberg’s for two reasons. First, Brand finds that acting exercises are most useful when they focus on characterization, rather than actors’ inhibitions. Second, sense-memory exercises help players explore fictional circumstances; they should have nothing to do with an actor’s personal traumatic experiences. When grounded in Modern acting principles, sense-memory exercises aid actors’ efforts to create characters who are unique and different from themselves; they can also foster the atten-

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tion actors pay to one another and thus contribute to a vivid, integrated stage or screen picture.60 For Lab members, a conscious approach to acting is an alternative to the non-conscious model of stars who are “covetous of their bag of tricks and … inarticulate when [asked] to describe a plan or an approach to acting.”61 Actors who have “a keen sensitivity to life” and are able to “discern by observation of other actors the things that make a good performance” can create compelling characterizations, but the goal is to get beyond this “hit and miss process” so that they can consistently deliver “truthful” performances.62 Stella Adler would echo these views throughout her teaching career, which began at the Group Theatre in 1934, and continued at the New School for Social Research in the 1940s and then at the studios she established in New York in 1949 and in Los Angeles in 1985. Like Lab members, Adler emphasized the research and analysis (both intellectual activities) that made actors independent of directors. She saw life study, historical research, and script analysis as tools that actors could use to create characters distinct from themselves. She argued that performers should concentrate on their characters’ circumstances, beliefs, and experiences; as Malague points out, Adler’s “emphasis on the ‘given circumstances’ pushes actors to analyze the social, political, and economic environments that produce different kinds of ‘characters.’”63 Close study of the script also allows actors to identify the series of intention-laden actions (e.g., amuse, flatter, denounce) they will embody. Performers develop their characters’ sequence of actions—which are distinct from stage business (e.g., pouring a drink, packing a suitcase)—by analyzing each scene to determine how these characters would answer questions such as: who are you, what is your action, when is it happening, where is this happening, and, most importantly, why are you there and what are you there to do?64 In Adler’s modern conception of acting, performers have agency, for while they do not manage or direct other people, their intellectual connection with the script not only makes them the authors of their performances, it means that their creative labor (in preparing and executing those performances) does not depend on an outside authority. In Adler’s view, actors can and must use their imagination to reach beyond the limits of personal experiences; they can and must see script analysis as a way “to function as independent artists,” free from “dependence on directors (and teachers), [and thus empowered] to participate in the collaborative process.”65

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“TRUTHFUL” EMOTION: MODERN ACTING VS. THE METHOD Modern acting teachers of the 1930s and 1940s shared Stanislavsky’s view that actors might explore personal associations when studying a script, but that during performance, they must allow emotion to arise from the mental pictures they have created during script analysis. Like Stanislavsky, Modern acting teachers recognized that using “personal associations could threaten the actor’s focus” during performance; they also understood that imagination was a far more reliable source for generating the “analogous experiences” that enabled actors to embody characters in performance.66 Modern acting and the Method represent opposing paths to “truthful” emotion in performance; Modern acting teachers saw it emerging from actors’ embodiment of characters’ actions, whereas Strasberg believed it resulted from performers reliving personal experiences. Strasberg failed to acknowledge that Modern acting strategies led actors to experience their characters’ thoughts and feelings. Thus, he maliciously characterized Modern acting as an approach that emphasized “the rhetorical and external nature of acting,” whereas his Method demanded “truthfulness of experience and of expression.”67 By saying this, he led people outside the American acting community to believe that non-Method actors in the 1930s and 1940s did little more than deliver lines and manage props— whereas documents left by Dillon, Rosenstein, Adler, and the Actors’ Lab reveal that the era’s acting experts carefully outline a preparation process that entails identifying characters’ given circumstances, objectives, and intention-laden actions, and a performance process that involves maintaining a focus on the characters’ problems and actions scene by scene.68 Modern acting and the Method reflect differing philosophical perspectives. Strasberg saw actors in psychoanalytic terms. By comparison, Stanislavsky and other Modern acting teachers saw actors as artists, whose minds and bodies form an organic whole, whose inner lives are necessarily connected to the social world around them, and whose work could be enhanced by gently accessing the rich storehouse of creativity available to all human beings.69 From a Modern acting perspective, physical training is important, because minds and bodies are connected; increased coordination and flexibility allows an actor to portray a wider range of characters. Expanding one’s knowledge of art and the world increases a performer’s ability to empathize with characters; as Bette Davis explains in a 1946 Theatre Arts essay, “cultural and intellectual growth” are essential, because

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acting “is more than a technique,” it also depends on “artistic vision” that makes actors sensitive to characters’ experiences.70 From a Modern acting perspective, actors can easily empathize with individuals outside themselves; as Lab member Will Lee explains, for actors “our inner life is inseparable from the life around us.”71 They can also have a deep connection to experiences outside themselves, for, as Lab member Morris Carnovsky puts it, acting is as simple and profound as breathing, “there’s no taking in [of the character] without giving out – no reaction without action.”72 Modern acting has nothing to do with a Freudian view of human nature, and instead sees interconnections between actors’ minds and bodies, their conscious and subconscious resources, mental and creative work, inner lives and social environments. Modern acting emphasizes that learning about people, the world, and the arts is what allows performers to understand and represent characters different from themselves. Modern actors see each script as a window into the lives of other people; then, in performance, concentration on the characters’ chain of actions and reactions is what allows players to express the life breath of the characterization, the taking-in and the giving-out of the character as found on the page and as refracted through an actor’s best effort to distill and illuminate that character’s reality. The Method rested on an entirely different vision of acting and human nature. Strasberg saw actors as marked by divisions between mind and body, and between the conscious and unconscious mind. Thus, a Method actor did not learn about the world (to build empathy), but instead plumbed the depths of personal experience (to weaken internal barriers). A Method actor would not aim for autonomy (through individual script analysis), but instead for emotional malleability (through emotionalmemory exercises). While Modern acting teachers would see “real” emotion in performance as an uncomplicated by-product of preparation, it was the elusive goal of Strasberg’s Method, which assumed actors are necessarily cut off from their emotion. Modern acting and the Method reflect contrasting views about acting and actors’ agency. In Strasberg’s view, “by ‘getting at’ the core fear, inhibition, or psychological obstruction, an actor’s ‘problems’ can be ‘cured.’”73 As a director and later teacher, he demanded “‘true emotion’ from actors, often evoking … it himself, then judging the truthfulness of its expression.”74 Strasberg saw the director as the figure best able to identify the substitutions that would lead actors to behave as he desired (for in his mind, a director was necessarily male); he also saw the director

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as the author of the performance, responsible for getting out of the actor the performance he had in mind. By comparison, Modern acting principles are actor-centered. Emerging at the turn of the twentieth century in response to modern drama, actors “developed a new and more complex attitude toward the script and toward collaboration with the playwright.”75 As Gay Gibson Cima observes, responding “to the demands of Ibsen’s use of retrospective action, [modern actors] studied their scripts with care, finding keys to elusive dramatic actions suggested by the playwright … to be discovered and created onstage” by the actors themselves.76 The visibility of the Actors Studio in the 1950s turned a spotlight on actors in America, but the picture of acting that subsequently emerged discounted the conscious labor that modern actors invest into script analysis and vocal/physical training. Whereas Modern acting teachers of the period emphasized script analysis, Strasberg saw little value in the practice. He insisted that actors be able to easily access the memories that would make their performances suit a director’s vision, but Modern acting teachers made performers responsible for creating the character envisioned by the playwright. For Strasberg, authentic (romantic) acting involved the display of personal emotion, and so he expected performers to eliminate any inhibitions that might keep them from exhibiting this in performance. Taking an entirely different path, and one that is often overlooked, in the 1930s and 1940s Modern acting teachers recognized that modern drama and new stagecraft required actors to achieve a seamless and orchestrated embodiment of fully realized characters, and so they explored and developed preparation and performance strategies that allowed performers to enter into the experiences and worlds of their modern characters.

NOTES 1. “Teacher’s Course  – Fall 1946–1947,” Box 7, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection, Special Collections Department, University of California, Los Angeles. 2. Josephine Dillon, Modern Acting: A Guide for Stage, Screen and Radio (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1940), v. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., 200. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., 182.

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7. Cabot was on TV from 1951 to 1965 and in films from 1931 to 1971, often ones starring John Wayne. The 1933 photo of Cabot’s coaching session could be for any of the nine films in which he appeared that year. That he was a rising star at this moment is perhaps suggested by the fact that in Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005), Oscar-nominated actor Adrien Brody plays Jack, who is a screenwriter rather than the first mate. 8. Dillon, Modern Acting: A Guide, 82. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., 43. 11. Ibid., 42. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 122. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., 126. 17. Ibid., 129. 18. Lee Strasberg, A Dream of Passion: The Development of the Method (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1987), 6. 19. Qtd. in Sophie Rosenstein, Larrae A.  Haydon, and Wilbur Sparrow, Modern Acting: A Manual (New York: Samuel French, 1936), vii. 20. Rosenstein, et al., 3. 21. Ibid., 66. 22. Ibid., 65. 23. Ibid., 105. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid., 46. 26. Ibid., 20, 25. 27. Ibid., 42, 77. 28. Ibid., 2. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid., 7. 31. Ibid., 2. 32. Ibid., 29. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid., 34. 35. Ibid., 47, 48. 36. News clipping and “Report  – Mary Tarcai  – October 1945,” Actors’ Laboratory Collection. Tarcai’s report covers Lab courses with veterans and contract players from Universal and Fox. Shdanoff is associated with the Michael Chekhov technique, developed by Chekhov, who was involved in Stanislavsky’s initial work at the Moscow Art Theatre; in the west, Chekhov was known for his opposition to Stanislavsky’s early interest in

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37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

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emotional memory. The 1945 article, which identifies Tarcai as an acting expert, discusses the collegiality between male teachers and students, and mentions the “sprinkling of starlets sent over by the big studios for polishing [who were not] spared in the toughening-up process.” It highlights an occasion when Carnovsky was “coaching one of these girls on a scene where she was supposed to register shock and bewilderment,” and reveals that when she failed to do this to his satisfaction, “Carnovsky, who is the soul of gentleness and patience, flew into a tantrum.” After sharing details about his attack, it continues by saying: the “girl gasped and stammered as she tried to respond. Carnovsky cut in, his face beaming. ‘Now you look right, my dear,’ he purred. ‘Now you have the right facial expression, the right way of speaking. Do the scene that way.’” This report echoes anecdotes about Strasberg’s tirades at women, Boleslavsky’s work with Irene Dunne, and Boleslavsky’s interactions with “the Creature” in Acting: The First Six Lessons. “Report – Mary Tarcai – October 1945,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. “Teacher’s Course: 1945,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. Ibid. “Teacher’s Course: October 29, 1946,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. “Teacher’s Course: November 13, 1946,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. “Teacher’s Course: 1945,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. “Teacher’s Course: October 29, 1946,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. “Teacher’s Course: November 13, 1946,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. Ibid. Art Smith differed from Lab colleagues, believing bit players “should be able to use things from [their] own experience” to get into the “emotional pitch” required. Lab members discussed the need to avoid any and all emotional-memory exercises with returning veterans, for they were aware that vets had many traumatic memories. Ibid. Ibid.

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55. Ibid. 56. “Teacher’s Course: November 6, 1946,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid. 60. In Brand’s view, using sense memories to relive emotions associated with personal experiences led to scenes with odd pacing and actors disconnected from one another (Helen Krich Chinoy, The Group Theatre: Passion, Politics, and Performance in the Depression Era, eds. Don B. Wilmeth and Milly S. Barranger [New York: Palgrave, 2013], 60). By comparison, she and Lab members saw sense-memory exercises as essential to “training in concentration, relaxation and developing imagination,” because actors must relax to pick up an object, see what it feels like, put it down, remember what it felt like; this work thus enhances actors’ mind–body connection and helps them build characterizations (“Teacher’s Course: November 6, 1946,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection). 61. “Teacher’s Course: October 29, 1946,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 62. Ibid. 63. Rosemary Malague, An Actress Prepares: Women and “the Method” (New York: Routledge, 2012), 27. 64. Ibid., 99. 65. Ibid., 75. 66. Sharon Marie Carnicke, Stanislavsky in Focus: An Acting Master for the Twenty-First Century, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2009), 153. 67. Strasberg, Dream of Passion, 30. 68. Modern acting requires actors to ground performances in an understanding of a character’s physical, psychological, and sociological realities, whereas in Method acting a character’s given circumstances are replaced “by the actor’s biography, the character’s psychology by the actor’s psychology” (Robert Benedetti, Action!: Acting for Film and Television [Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001], 73). Modern actors trust that emotions suitable to a character’s actions and reactions will emerge from mental pictures created during script analysis, whereas Method acting requires actors to re-experience feelings related to events in their own lives. 69. Stanislavsky saw the subconscious “as a ‘friend’ to the creative process”; he believed that when actors were “puzzled by the work on the role they should ‘throw’ their ‘bundle of thoughts’ into the subconscious and allow the unconscious mind to do its work” (Carnicke, Stanislavsky in Focus, 225).

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70. Bette Davis, “On Acting in Films,” Theatre Arts 25 (September 1946): 639. 71. “Teacher’s Course: October 29, 1946,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 72. “The Craftsman,” January 1948, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 73. Malague, An Actress Prepares, 48. Strasberg consistently used “women as his examples to illustrate psychological, emotional, and behavioral problems” that he would then “fix” (26). 74. Ibid., 26. 75. Gay Gibson Cima, Performing Women: Female Characters, Male Playwrights, and the Modern Stage (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 30. 76. Ibid.

CHAPTER 4

Modern Acting: Obscured by the Method’s “American” Style

The idea that Strasberg’s Method could be a “continuation of” and an improvement on Stanislavsky’s modern approach to acting is one reason it has been the only approach widely equated with American performers who do the real work of acting.1 Yet, there are other reasons why Modern acting does not have the prominence of Method acting. In popular culture, as one might recall, the Method is associated with an authentic and uniquely American acting style.2 Overshadowing even Strasberg’s work, references to it usually call to mind portrayals of tough, moody, sexually potent male characters. Method acting has become associated with a handful of male stars, whose singular, florid performances stand out from the ensemble. In particular, characterizations that convey an “unresolved tension between an outer social mask and an inner reality of [sexual] frustration,” such as those by James Dean in East of Eden (Kazan 1955) and Rebel without a Cause (Ray 1955), are categorized as instances of Method acting.3 The flamboyant (white) male “solos” now identified with Method acting reflect aesthetic values that are quite different from those informing Modern acting; the ensemble quality of the performances in the Moscow Art Theatre productions that toured America in the 1920s are what garnered attention, and Modern acting techniques outlined by teachers in the 1930s and 1940s were designed to facilitate actors’ abilities to play as members of a symphony orchestra who seamlessly integrate their characterizations into a larger, coherent stage picture. As we will see, what constitutes the specific “American” dimension of Method acting also differs

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from the more broadly imagined vision of modern American acting that prevailed in that period. Before the Method style became the only authentic “American” style of performance, modern American acting had been associated with performances in productions as different as Design for Living (1933), a racy farce by British playwright Noël Coward, and Awake and Sing! (1935), a Depression-era drama by American playwright Clifford Odets, who started his career as a member of the Group Theatre. Design for Living opened in New  York, rather than London, which had stricter censorship regulation, with Coward starring alongside American-born Alfred Lunt and British-born Lynn Fontanne as a trio of upper-crust artistic types whose evolving attractions eventually scandalize even a longtime friend of theirs. Set in 1930s Paris, London, and New  York, the story was inspired by the “modern,” open relationships of Broadway couples such as Lunt and Fontanne, and Katharine Cornell and Guthrie McClintic. The premiere was directed by Coward, with scene design by his frequent collaborator Gladys Calthrop, a British set and costume designer who became the artistic director of the Civic Repertory Theatre (1926–1933) led by Britishborn Eva Le Gallienne. The play, which had a successful run on Broadway from January to May 1933, was immediately adapted; the bowdlerized 1933 Hollywood film, which eliminated the characters’ bisexuality and casual infidelity, was directed by Ernst Lubitsch, with Miriam Hopkins, Fredric March, and Gary Cooper in the leading roles. Although single images cannot represent entire productions, the collaborative and ensemble nature of the performances in Design for Living’s opening run is conveyed by the play’s extant production photos; the era’s modern aesthetic priority for performances that contribute to a coherent stage picture is suggested by an image of Alfred Lunt (on the left) with Lynn Fontanne and Noël Coward (Fig. 4.1). While relatively unknown in contemporary media society, Lunt and Fontanne, who married in 1922, were Broadway stars celebrated for their co-starring roles. They established their careers in stylish offerings such as The Guardsman, a commercial hit on Broadway from October 1924 to December 1925, and a critical success that enhanced the credentials of its producer, the Theatre Guild, which had been established in 1918 as a venue for non-commercial artistic productions of merit. The couple had leading roles in Broadway shows such as the 1930–1931 productions of Elizabeth the Queen by Maxwell Anderson, the 1936 productions of Idiot’s Delight by Robert E. Sherwood, and the 1938 productions of The Seagull

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Fig. 4.1 Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, and Noël Coward in Coward’s Design for Living (1933). The actors create a modern ensemble performance esteemed in the 1930s but later disparaged by Method proponents

by Anton Chekhov. Lunt and Fontanne were known for doing exhaustive script analysis and extensive rehearsal. Their labor-intensive process of building characterizations through improvisations (which allowed them to incorporate pantomimed sense-memory exercises and details from research and life study) led to their reputation as “the arch perfectionists of the theatre.”4 Actors, critics, and audiences consistently noted the couple’s ability to create characterizations that reflected observable contemporary life, with their performances often including complex dovetailing dialogue and sometimes featuring Lunt’s (signature) gesture of turning his back to the audience during moments of high emotion.5 For audiences of the period, modern American acting was also exemplified by performances in a production such as Awake and Sing!, a play about the troubled family dynamics of a working-class Jewish family in the Bronx in the 1930s. Odets’ play premiered on Broadway in 1935, and had a successful run from February through July. It was directed by Harold Clurman, with scene design by Boris Aronson, who would go on to win six Tony awards. The cast was drawn from Group Theatre members, with Luther Adler, Roman “Bud” Bohnen, J. Edward Bromberg, and Sanford

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Meisner in supporting roles. Again, a single image cannot capture the look or feel of an entire production, but as with Design for Living, photos from the 1935 production of Awake and Sing! suggest the ensemble nature of the actors’ performances. One features Group Theatre members John Garfield (standing), Morris Carnovsky (back to the audience), Art Smith, Stella Adler (in a gray wig), and Phoebe Brand (Fig. 4.2). Many of the original cast members appeared in the 1946 production of Awake and Sing! mounted by the Actors’ Lab in Hollywood and, as noted in Chap. 1, Luther Adler had a long career as a supporting player in film and television. Yet the acting careers of the other Group Theatre players would not last beyond the 1940s. Morris Carnovsky, Art Smith, and Phoebe Brand had their livelihoods interrupted or ended by the Cold War blacklist. The stress of being blacklisted led to the early deaths of Roman Bohnen (in 1949), J. Edward Bromberg (in 1951), and John Garfield (in 1952). Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner became known as Method acting teachers, with their work subsumed under Strasberg’s brand. These developments meant that the Group Theatre was seen as a first step in the creation of the Method style touted by Strasberg and Kazan, when in fact it was an acting company known for its modern ensemble performances.

Fig. 4.2 The Group Theatre production of Odets’ Awake and Sing! (1935). A modern ensemble performance respected in the 1930s and valorized by Method acting supporters

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With Strasberg and Kazan as its leading proponents, Method acting represented a new response to the challenges of modern drama and new stagecraft. In the 1930s and 1940s, Modern acting principles had prompted actors to take responsibility for understanding the underlying themes and overarching aesthetic of a production. These same principles led them to strive for ensemble performances devoid of star turns. However, especially as it gained influence in the 1950s, Strasberg’s Method enhanced directors’ control of the text and the stage picture, giving them the responsibility to locate substitutions that would prompt an actor to produce “the emotional reaction demanded of the character by the text.”6 Notably, the style of Method acting also reflected Strasberg’s long-standing interest in “finding a way of achieving [the] heightened expressiveness” that he had so appreciated in performances by various stars of the 1920s, a period when “great” performances by Jacob Ben-Ami, Giovanni Grasso, Pauline Lord, and Eleanor Duse created “a golden age of acting.”7 As envisioned by Strasberg and Kazan, star performances were not only legitimate but authentic as well, as portrayals in leading roles became prized for their intensity and “American” vitality. These priorities supplanted the ensemble character of performances in modern American theatre, as exemplified by dramas like Awake and Sing!, which explored the domestic lives of working-class ethnic Americans, and by productions like Design for Living, which was more closely associated with British talent and traditions.

COMPETING VISIONS OF AMERICAN ACTING The rhetoric surrounding Method acting in the 1950s that cemented its now seemingly natural association with American acting was not a unique development. Instead, it reflects one set of engrained tensions underlying American performing arts. As a British colony, the traditions of the mother country have been important in the USA.  Scholars have noted that “just as America imported its social and economic institutions from England, so it imported English drama and English professional players.”8 American theatre in the colonial period featured Shakespeare and other British playwrights; it depended on British models well into the late nineteenth century, prompting American editorials from the 1880s to complain that “our art, like our literature and drama, halts before the foreigners.”9 However, in the mid-nineteenth century, a rivalry did emerge between “cerebral” British actor William Charles Macready and “vigorous”

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American actor Edwin Forrest. The actors’ rivalry became a rallying point for their respective supporters, whose antagonisms broke out in the Astor Place Riot that took place in New York on May 10, 1849. The groups’ ostensible preferences for opposing acting styles reflected deeper cultural divisions; in the mid-nineteenth century, working- and upper-class audiences experienced theatre in separate venues. For example, the Bowery and Broadway Theatres in New York were for the “unsophisticated” audiences, who would champion Forrest’s dramatic stances and forceful acting style, while the Park Theatre and Astor Place Opera House were for those refined enough to “appreciate” the performances of visiting British stars like Macready, whose aristocratic demeanor made him the darling of the American gentry. Edwin Forrest was the first American performing arts figure whose career represented a challenge to England’s domination of the American stage; the Forrest–Macready opposition symbolized a constellation of antithetical values and made the Astor Place Riot a rebellion against the authority of British cultural traditions. As Valleri Hohman, Bruce McConachie, and others have shown, performing arts in America would continue to reflect differing equations between artistic merit and cultural-aesthetic traditions.10 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Yiddish theatre produced by Russian immigrants seemed to represent an admirable alternative to “the Syndicate-run commercialism” of Broadway.11 Leading figures of Yiddish theatre in the USA included playwright Jacob Gordin (1853–1909), who left Russia in 1891, and actor Jacob Adler (1855–1926), who moved to London and then New York after Yiddish theatre was banned in Russia in 1883. Yiddish theatre artists and their audiences fostered an “influx of Russian theatre and performance … by supporting Russian touring artists when they arrived in the United States.”12 This foundation, along with the massive publicity generated by Morris Gest and substantial financial support provided by Otto H. Kahn, helped to create a receptive audience for the Moscow Art Theatre in 1923 and its less noteworthy tour in 1924.13 Throughout the 1920s, US audiences associated Russian theatre artists with “technical proficiency, professionalism, bold experimentation, and artistic rigor.”14 Yet acclaimed visiting and immigrant Russian figures represent just one aspect of American performing arts in the first half of the twentieth century. By the late 1920s, American-born Minnie Maddern Fiske (1865–1932) was seen as “the finest actress of her generation,” and John Barrymore (1882–1942), son of British actor Maurice Barrymore and American actress Georgiana Drew (Barrymore), created performances

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throughout the 1920s that were valued for their subtlety and psychological depth.15 Productions of work by Irish-American playwright Eugene O’Neill and British playwright Noël Coward were critically acclaimed in the USA. The long-standing British influence on American theatre carried over to film. Sheridan Morley notes that “just as the American theatre had, since the early 1800s, drawn on London for its writers and often for its actors too, so now [with the coming of sound] would Hollywood.”16 In the 1920s, Hollywood was keen to hire British-trained actors whose legitimacy would improve cinema’s image. After the transition to sound, British actors became even more valuable, for they “possessed something of remarkable commercial and artistic worth, a clearly intelligible speaking voice, often stage-trained, readily understandable to American audiences.”17 In addition to making British actor Ronald Colman a studio-era star, Hollywood created prestige pictures such as Wuthering Heights (Wyler 1939) and Rebecca (Hitchcock 1940) to feature Laurence Olivier. British actor Cary Grant started his long career in American film as co-star to Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus (von Sternberg 1932) and Mae West in She Done Him Wrong (Sherman 1933). Charles Laughton’s American career playing larger-than-life figures began with his portrayal of Nero in The Sign of the Cross (DeMille 1932) and his title role in The Private Life of Henry VIII (Korda 1933). British actor Leslie Howard co-starred with many of Hollywood’s leading female stars, including Bette Davis in Of Human Bondage (Cromwell 1934) and Norma Shearer in Romeo and Juliet (Cukor 1936). After appearing in British and American silent films and a series of costume dramas requiring British actors, Basil Rathbone was cast in Hound of the Baskervilles (Lanfield 1939) and would go on to play Sherlock Holmes in another fourteen Hollywood films released between 1939 and 1946. Able to portray both suave suitors and cuckolded husbands in “modern” dramas about infidelity, Herbert Marshall was cast as the lover in the 1929 version of The Letter (de Limur) with Broadway star Jeanne Eagels, and as the husband in William Wyler’s 1940 remake of The Letter starring Bette Davis. Film adaptations of British novels, or recreations of moments in the Empire’s history, with British actors in the lead roles, often served as prestige pictures in studio-era Hollywood; Clive Brook, who worked in British and American silent cinema, not only portrayed Sherlock Holmes in Hollywood films released in 1929 and 1932, he also embodied the

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quintessential Englishman of the British Empire in films such as The Four Feathers (Cooper 1929) and Cavalcade (Lloyd 1932). With Errol Flynn often cast in the leading role, Warner Bros. released a series of costume epics and “merrie England” pictures to “establish itself as a fully-fledged major” studio.18 These films represented a small “proportion of overall production,” but were “a crucial element in the studio’s elaboration of a public image, both for the industry and for the public as a whole.”19 That British actors could embody the era’s notions of modern American acting is further suggested by the Oscar awards and nominations of the period. In 1930, George Arliss received two nominations for Best Actor, winning the Oscar for his leading role in the British Empire biopic Disraeli (Green 1929). That same year, Ronald Colman, still under contract to Samuel Goldwyn, was nominated for his performance as an amateur detective in Bulldog Drummond and as a charming thief in Condemned (Ruggles 1929). In 1934, Charles Laughton received an Oscar for The Private Life of Henry VIII, and a nomination went to Leslie Howard for Berkeley Square (Lloyd 1933), a time-travel love-affair story linking eighteenth-century England and twentieth-century America; the film was based on the play starring Howard in popular London and New York runs. In 1936, Victor McLaglen won an Oscar for John Ford’s look at the conflict between Irish Catholic nationalists and Protestant loyalists in The Informer (1935), and Charles Laughton received a nomination for portraying Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty (Lloyd 1935) starring Clark Gable. In 1939, the British were represented by the nominations of Robert Donat in the medical-ethics drama The Citadel (Vidor 1938), and of Leslie Howard in Pygmalion (Asquith 1938), an antecedent to the stage and screen iterations of My Fair Lady. In 1940, Donat would win an Oscar for Goodbye, Mr. Chips (Wood 1939), which traces the life of a boardingschool teacher in the UK from World War I forward. This same year, Laurence Olivier received a nomination for his role in Hollywood’s adaptation of the Emily Brontë novel Wuthering Heights. In 1941, Olivier was nominated again, this time for his performance in Rebecca, as the mysterious husband who seems preoccupied with his deceased first wife. In 1942, Cary Grant, known for playing cavalier characters, received a nomination for his sensitive portrayal of the emotionally vulnerable husband in the controversial domestic drama Penny Serenade (Stevens 1941). In 1943, Ronald Colman received another Oscar nomination, this time for his role in Random Harvest (Leroy 1942), about a British World War I vet whose amnesia (post-traumatic stress) causes him to be separated from

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the love of his life, played by British-born Greer Garson. Co-starring roles with Garson led to two nominations for Canadian-born Walter Pidgeon, the first for Mrs. Miniver (Wyler 1942), about a British family’s experiences during World War II, and the second for Madame Curie (LeRoy 1943), in which he played scientist Pierre Curie. In 1945, Cary Grant received another Oscar nomination, this time for None but the Lonely Heart (Odets 1944), a drama set in the slums of London, with Grant in the role of a drifter who returns home to help out his dying mother, played by Ethel Barrymore, whose performance garnered the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. In 1946, Ray Milland won an Oscar for Lost Weekend (Wilder 1945), about a writer tormented by his alcoholism. In 1947, the American film industry awarded Laurence Olivier an Honorary Oscar for Henry V (Olivier 1944) to recognize the film’s role in boosting morale among Allied forces during World War II. In 1948, Hollywood acknowledged Ronald Colman’s status as a leading actor of the period, presenting him with an Oscar for A Double Life, a drama about a Broadway star whose personality becomes increasingly influenced by the characters he portrays on stage. In 1949, Hollywood once again recognized a body of respected work, this time by awarding Laurence Olivier an Oscar for his performance in the leading role of Hamlet (Olivier 1948). In the 1940s, the principal figures in American theatre were also “overwhelmingly WASP [White Anglo-Saxon Protestant] in orientation and image”; as Bruce McConachie notes, “the northern European names of established stars – e.g. Lunt, Cornell, March, Fontanne, and Bankhead – still dominated theatre marquees.”20 Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were in the much-admired Theatre Guild production of O Mistress Mine, on Broadway from January 1946 through May 1947. In the 1940s, Fredric March garnered critical acclaim in both drama and comedy. In A Bell for Adano, on Broadway from December 1944 to October 1945, March played an idealistic Italian-American officer posted in a small Sicilian town during World War II. He also appeared in Years Ago, a comedy written by Ruth Gordon and directed by Garson Kanin, which had a successful run on Broadway from December 1946 to May 1947. Prior to this, March had co-starred with Tallulah Bankhead and his wife, Florence Eldridge, in The Skin of Our Teeth, the Pulitzer Prize-winning allegory by Thornton Wilder; the production, directed by Elia Kazan, had a November 1942 to September 1943 run and included Montgomery Clift in its cast. Tallulah Bankhead had leading roles in other celebrated comedies of the period—she starred in the Theatre Guild production of Foolish Notion,

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on Broadway from March to June 1945, and a revival of Noël Coward’s Private Lives from October 1948 to May 1949. Katharine Cornell, working with her husband, director Guthrie McClintic, enjoyed commercial and critical success as an actor and a producer in a series of Broadway offerings. She appeared with Judith Anderson, Ruth Gordon, and Gertrude Musgrove in a revival of Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters, which played from December 1942 to April 1943. Cornell then had the leading role in Lovers and Friends in a November 1943 to April 1944 run. She starred next in a revival of The Barretts of Wimpole Street, on Broadway from March to June 1945. Cornell’s credits during the period include the title role in a revival of Candida in 1946, a production that featured Marlon Brando as the young poet who falls in love with Candida, who is older and married. Cornell also played the title role in a well-regarded revival of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, on Broadway from November 1947 to March 1948. In a development that illuminates the subsequent celebration of an explicitly “American” acting style, a handful of WASP actors, directors, and producers were not the only individuals who enjoyed critical and commercial triumphs on Broadway in the 1940s. After the acclaim Elia Kazan garnered by directing The Skin of Our Teeth, he would go on to direct several popular productions, all of them starring Anglo-Saxon actors who would come to be implicitly or explicitly vilified by proponents of Method acting. For example, he directed the historical drama Harriet, starring Broadway veteran Helen Hayes as Harriet Beecher Stowe. With Hayes (known as the “First Lady of American Theatre”) attracting audiences, the show was on Broadway from March 1943 to April 1944. Kazan then staged the musical comedy One Touch of Venus, starring Mary Martin, later known for her stage and screen roles in Peter Pan; One Touch of Venus had an extremely popular 567-production run from October 1943 to February 1945. Next, Kazan directed Jacobowsky and the Colonel, a comedy starring Louis Calhern, a leading film and theatre actor since the 1920s. This was another commercial hit, with a 417-production run from March 1944 to March 1945. Even after establishing the Actors Studio in 1947, Kazan would direct Love Life, a musical featuring WASP stars Nanette Fabray and Ray Middleton, and a project he had discouraged Bobby Lewis from directing.21 However, beginning in 1945, Kazan would also start to depend less on established actors and plays so strongly associated with the AngloSaxon tradition. He directed Deep Are the Roots, a drama about racism in the postwar American South, on Broadway from September 1945 to

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November 1946. Kazan then directed All My Sons, Arthur Miller’s critique of war profiteering, in a popular run from January to November 1947. He went on to direct two extremely successful shows: A Streetcar Named Desire, which featured Marlon Brando and had an 855-production run from December 1947 to December 1949, and Death of a Salesman, with Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman in a show that had a 742-production run on Broadway from February 1949 to November 1950. Despite Kazan establishing his career as a director in dramas, comedies, and musical comedies starring WASP actors, in the 1950s—as if harkening back to the Astor Place Riot—Kazan and Strasberg would frame their observations about American acting in binary terms that contrasted authentic “American” traditions with inauthentic British or Anglo-American conventions. Tellingly, their rhetoric would mask the 1934 Strasberg–Adler confrontation that led Strasberg to acknowledge key differences between his Method and Stanislavsky’s modern ideas about script analysis, research, and character-centered synthetic memories to facilitate concentration during performance. With Method acting’s direct link to Stanislavsky open to debate, Strasberg and Kazan would instead emphasize that the “American” style of Method-trained actors represented an alternative to and an improvement on the supposed artificial, conventional, and commercial nature of British and Anglo-American acting. The rhetorical strategies Strasberg used to link Method and American acting indicate that he viewed his Method as the only legitimate approach to acting and that he recognized that actors known for their ostensibly Method acting performances could supplant actors associated with British or Anglo-American traditions. To secure the legitimate status of his Method, Strasberg took an active role in creating accounts of American acting. In the acknowledgments for Acting: A Handbook of the Stanislavski Method (1947, revised edition 1955), volume editor Toby Cole thanks Strasberg for his many suggestions on material to include, and for providing his notes “from the diary of Yevgeny Vakhtangov,” who, like Strasberg, believed that actors should use substitutions rather than script analysis to build performances filled with the emotions suited to a character’s experiences at any given point.22 With Strasberg shaping the design and selection of this seminal anthology, his Method would more easily be seen as “the summation of the work that has been done on the actor’s problem.”23 In his introduction to Cole’s anthology, Strasberg frames the history of acting so that Method acting becomes the authentic alternative to the prominent Anglo-Saxon tradition in American performing arts.

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Employing a strategy that the era’s anticommunists would use to disparage opponents, Strasberg begins his remarks by referencing the opinion of respected individuals. Intimating that the acclaim enjoyed by established Anglo-Saxon actors was unwarranted, because critics knew nothing about the real art of acting, Strasberg reports: “A few years ago, a study was made of the opinions held by the dramatic critics of outstanding American actors. These were compared with the opinions held within the profession.”24 Delivering the punch line, he states: “One of the illuminating results was the discovery that the high critical evaluation of one very respected actor was not shared by a good number of fellow craftsmen.”25 Strasberg follows this thinly veiled attack on Theatre Guild actor Alfred Lunt by citing a line from a Shakespeare play that criticizes actors who strut and bellow.26 Then, he quickly places himself beyond reproach, referencing a Molière satire about a rival theatre company to suggest that his remarks about the “very respected actor” involve no “personal jealousy or envy, but [simply] dissatisfaction with the principles exemplified in their art.”27 Operating in the powerful domain of innuendo, Strasberg provides no evidence about the date of the study, the “craftsmen” consulted, or the percentage of comments that constituted “a good number.” He continues in this vein, so that his condemnation of American actors’ attention to “vocal and physical expression” allows his essay, ostensibly on the history of acting, to mount a sustained attack on British (or Anglo-Saxon) actors valued by American audiences for their intelligible voices, collaborative, ensemble performances, and vivid characterizations.28 Especially after being named artistic director of the Actors Studio in 1951, Strasberg repeatedly identified the British style of acting as outdated. Echoing the position Strasberg established, subsequent proponents of Method acting would describe British acting as “external, cultivated, and manicured, like a well-tended English garden.”29 The British style was criticized for being poised, formal, and overly articulate, while the Method style was praised for being authentic “American” acting, physically active and associated with spontaneity, intensity, and defiant emotionality. Performances categorized under the rubric of Method acting were seen as a “realistic” alternative to the “beautifully rhythmed declamations of British actors, which [had] always had an appeal for Americans.”30 In a strategic move, Kazan also made Anglo-Saxon acting a focus of his attack on commercial theatre (of which he was a part). Rather than give credit to any of the WASP playwrights, actors, or producers who had been instrumental in his early achievements as a director, Kazan

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identified the Moscow Art Theatre as his primary influence; as he put it, the “Russian idea of the profound soul of the inconspicuous person also fits the American temperament. We have not got the burden that everyone should be noble or behave heroically, that the English used to have.”31 Strasberg and Kazan would also suggest that an “external approach” led British actors and their American imitators to rely on the conventions of nineteenth-century histrionic acting. They charged that while authentic performances arose from using Strasberg’s Method, British actors and their imitators employed conventional gestures and old-fashioned oration. Strasberg divided all performances into three categories: (British) ones based on rhetoric and external conventions; great performances arrived at through inspiration; and his “third approach” that allowed actors to consistently deliver great performances.32 Strasberg’s and Kazan’s attack on British acting was not simply a challenge to prevailing cultural-aesthetic values in American theatre and film. It also provided a safe and politically expedient way to position Method acting as explicitly “American” in the Cold War period, when members of the performing arts community lost their livelihoods for seeming to be un-American. Disparaging British acting made Strasberg’s and Kazan’s references to Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre look like signs of patriotism rather than communism. Their objections to the British style of acting helped make the working-class men in Kazan’s projects such as the stage and screen productions of A Streetcar Named Desire seem to be American figures rather than agents of class rebellion. The polemic against external, conventional British acting contributed to Method acting’s association with “American” authenticity and expressivity. The challenge to established British acting traditions bolstered the image of the Actors Studio as a bastion of American artistic and political freedom. The scornful comments about British acting and Anglo-Saxon traditions in American theatre have obscured the underlying connections between the modern ensemble performances in Design for Living and Awake and Sing! It is true that the characters belong to different socio-economic worlds. However, what distinguishes the characterizations in both the 1933 production with Lunt, Fontanne, and Coward, as well as the 1935 production featuring the Group Theatre actors is the modern way that the performances figure into the piece as a whole. Reflecting the priority articulated by Claude King in 1922, in both productions from the 1930s, the actors’ engaged and interactive performances supply “the living part of the accumulated efforts of all concerned” to create an aesthetically and

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thematically coherent stage picture.33 The focus is on creating characters who belong—as a team, as a whole—to their unique worlds; this emerges from orchestrated preparation that relies on actors’ labor, skill, and training in Modern acting techniques to facilitate players’ abilities to interact with one another in seemingly spontaneous chains of actions and reactions. By comparison, in a film like East of Eden, which is closely associated with Method acting, the intensity of Dean’s lead performance—especially the inner frustration it conveys—is what supplies the living part of the production. Dean’s portrayal stands out against the ostensibly flat canvas background created by the other characterizations. Rather than reflecting the values of Modern acting that prevailed in the 1930s and 1940s, Dean’s performance and Kazan’s film as a whole are grounded in another set of aesthetic values, ones more closely associated with those suggested, for example, by a performance such as Jacob Ben-Ami’s portrayal of the cuckolded playwright in Samson and Delilah, a play that ran on Broadway from November 1920 to March 1921, which Strasberg identifies as “the single greatest performance” he ever witnessed, because it “caught the peculiar, divided, dual quality of modern man.”34 As Strasberg explains, Samson and Delilah was memorable especially for the “solo” in the last act of the play—that is, when “Ben-Ami came on stage with an inner quiver running through his entire body, yet at the same time he seemed physically tired and hungry.”35 In a vivid gesture, Ben-Ami “picked up some food from the table” and devoured it with such relish that the “ferocity of his hunger mirrored the intensity” of the despair and jealously the character feels in losing the love of his wife.36 The heightened expressivity of a “star” performance such as this would become a valued feature of productions associated with Method acting.

REFRAMING THE WORK OF MONTGOMERY CLIFT AND MARLON BRANDO The much-discussed division between old-fashioned British acting and authentic “American” acting has led to some remarkable misconceptions. For example, performances by Montgomery Clift in films such as The Search (Zinnemann 1948), Red River (Hawks 1948), and From Here to Eternity (Zinnemann 1953) have been identified as examples of Method acting informed by substitutions that generate the emotional responses required by productions’ directors.37 However, Clift was openly opposed

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to Strasberg’s approach. From his perspective, actors closely associated with Strasberg “never created characters [and] instead merely played variations of themselves.”38 Clift’s career sheds light on the lost chapter of American acting, because it shows that a supposedly “Method” actor actually studied with someone maligned by Strasberg. Clift secured his first Broadway role in 1935 at the age of fourteen, and in 1939 was cast by actor-director Alfred Lunt as the idealistic resistance fighter in There Shall Be No Night. For the next two and a half years and 1,400 performances, Clift apprenticed with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, who saw him as “their best disciple” and someone who “could carry on in their tradition.”39 Clift credits Alfred Lunt “for his development as an actor,” because Lunt emphasized “the artist’s dedication to craft” and showed Clift how to create performances through the “accumulation of subtle details.”40 Working with Lunt and Fontanne, Clift developed his ability to use script analysis and improvisations conducted during extensive rehearsals to create “the thought processes, the specific character needs” and the subtext that would color each moment of a performance.41 Lunt even provided an unintended model for Clift’s performance in The Skin of Our Teeth, the Thornton Wilder play directed by Kazan that opened on Broadway in November 1942. During the play’s run, with Kazan more personally interested in Tallulah Bankhead (along with her understudy Lizabeth Scott), Clift sometimes “fell back into Lunt mannerisms”; on opening night, he is reported to have “sounded exactly like Alfred Lunt [who was known for his] Midwestern drawl, combined with an English accent.”42 Despite prevailing misconceptions, Clift’s “Method” performances were also shaped by his extensive work with acting coach Mira Rostova. Clift first met Rostova in 1942 when they were both cast in an experimental production directed by Bobby Lewis. Rostova, a Russian émigré and student of Lewis, worked with Clift on his part. Recognizing that “no one could dissect a role as shrewdly as Mira,” Clift then collaborated with her on developing his characterizations for the Broadway productions Foxhole in the Parlor (1945) and You Touched Me! (1945).43 His role in You Touched Me! led Howard Hawks to cast Clift in Red River (which wrapped in December 1946 but was not released until September 1948). For The Search, Clift put Rostova on salary as his coach and, working with her at night, he not only rehearsed but also rewrote all of his scenes.44 Referring to Rostova as his “artistic conscience,” Clift collabo-

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rated with her to figure out “every beat in every scene in restrained and poignant detail” in all of his films in the early 1950s, including From Here to Eternity, when she worked with him and Frank Sinatra.45 Following the release of The Search in March 1948, Clift became “a new hero to postwar audiences”; his performance suggested “a new kind of acting – almost documentary in approach.”46 However, despite Clift’s intensive work with Lunt, Fontanne, and Rostova, the “new kind of acting” has been linked to Strasberg’s Method; for example, Steve Vineberg uses The Search as evidence that he “was the first member of the Actors Studio generation to become a movie star.”47 Yet the films that established Clift as a star—The Search and Red River—had been shot before the Actors Studio opened in October 1947, and his relationship to the Studio was “tenuous at best.”48 Clift agreed to join Bobby Lewis’ workshop, participating in fall 1947 and spring 1948, but he never sought membership to the Actors Studio, and had left before Strasberg started teaching there intermittently in fall 1948. Clift is one of many actors whose careers have been linked to the Actors Studio, which became a touchstone in narratives of American acting largely because of Kazan’s phenomenal success in the 1940s and 1950s. In addition to his hits on Broadway in the 1940s, Kazan’s Hollywood films A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945) and Boomerang (1947) were well received. He also won an Oscar for directing Gentleman’s Agreement (1947); the film was named Best Picture, and Celeste Holm received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. In the 1950s, Kazan continued to have success on Broadway. Tea and Sympathy, a boarding-school drama with Britishborn Deborah Kerr, former Group Theatre member Leif Erickson, and British-American actor John Kerr as the young man suspected of being homosexual, was on Broadway from September 1953 to June 1955 in a 712-production run. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams’ steamy Southern drama with Barbara Bel Geddes, Ben Gazzara, and Burl Ives as Big Daddy, had a 694-production run on Broadway from March 1955 to November 1956. He also directed the popular productions of The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957–1959), with Eileen Heckart, Pat Hingle, and Teresa Wright; J.B. (1958–1959), with Raymond Massey and Christopher Plummer; and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959–1960), with Sidney Blackmer, Geraldine Page, and Paul Newman. While Elia Kazan is the “director most responsible for popularizing Method acting on stage and screen,” its association with an “American” acting style arises most specifically from Marlon Brando’s performance as

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Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, the production that ran on Broadway from 1947 to 1949, and the 1951 film that was also directed by Kazan.49 David Garfield notes that “the prime symbol of the [Actors] Studio actor was always to be the torn T-shirt and its prototype, Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski.”50 As Hal Hinson observes, “For most, the Method begins and ends with Brando. He and the Method are synonymous to the extent that his style has become the Method style.”51 While his “signature performance” as Kowalski initiated and defined “an entire style of acting,” Brando was in fact not mentored by Strasberg or Kazan, but instead by Stella Adler, Harold Clurman, and other figures who contributed to modern American performing arts.52 The collection of documents made available after Brando’s death in 2004 reveal that his seemingly natural or improvisational stage and screen performances were grounded in extensive individual script analysis and preparation; Brando “read books about the world of his characters, wrote pages of notes highlighting questions and problems,” and drafted revised scenes and dialogue sequences for each of his characters.53 As a young actor, Brando studied with Stella Adler. Biographer Susan Mizruchi notes that he enrolled in her workshops “at the New School for Social Research in the fall of 1943 because it was ‘the up and coming place.’”54 Revealing an interest in Modern acting’s attention to activities that (gently) encourage development of a flexible and expressive body, Brando also studied with American modern dance star Katherine Dunham. Reflecting Modern acting’s understanding that the process of building characterizations includes attention to myriad external details, Brando took makeup classes at the New School and would subsequently create characterizations in part by imagining the unique physical features of his characters. In 1944 and 1945, he would also spend considerable time as a guest of Stella Adler and (husband) Harold Clurman. As Mizruchi notes, “the New School atmosphere [of artistic freedom and attention to craft] was reinforced at the home of Adler and Clurman (now married), whose apartment on West Fifty-Fourth Street was a gathering place for the Adler acting clan.”55 The Broadway performances that established Brando as a serious actor predate his role in A Streetcar Named Desire. In his Broadway debut, he portrayed the teenage son of working-class Norwegian immigrants in I Remember Mama, which had a popular run of 713 shows between October 1944 and June 1946. Brando then appeared in the brief run of Truckline Café, directed by Harold Clurman, and in the popular Broadway

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production of A Flag Is Born, a play directed by Group Theatre member Luther Adler, which starred Paul Muni and advocated for a homeland for displaced members of the Hebrew religion. According to one salient backstage note from this period, during rehearsals for Truckline Café, Clurman found that Brando responded most effectively to a rehearsal exercise comparable to Stanislavsky’s method of physical action, wherein actors use physical behavior to access the emotional dimensions of their characters’ experiences. Working alone with Brando to craft the scene when his character admits to killing his wife, Clurman asked him to “shout his lines” to find the character’s inner experience at this moment. During the play’s run, in this scene Brando would capture “the character’s pain by crumpling himself into a childlike posture, turning his feet inward and hunching his shoulders as he began to cry.”56 Throughout his career, Brando identified Stella Adler, not Lee Strasberg, as his formative acting teacher. In his foreword to Adler’s manual, The Technique of Acting, he pointedly remarks that her approach to acting does not lend itself “to vulgar exploitations, as some other wellknown so-called methods have done.”57 In his autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me, Brando writes that in contrast to the adaptations of Stanislavsky taught by Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, Michael Chekhov, and others, “‘Method Acting’ was a term popularized, bastardized and misused by Lee Strasberg.”58 Despite all this, Brando’s performances in the era’s male melodramas have been seen as examples of Method acting. His portrayal in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire and subsequent performances in The Wild One (Benedek 1953) and On the Waterfront (Kazan 1954) captured Americans’ interest so completely that the Method style quickly came to be defined by the gestures, postures, and vocal choices he used to represent the characters in these films. The Method style also garnered attention due to Brando’s pre-eminent status in the 1950s. His official recognition included an Oscar nomination for his performance in A Streetcar Named Desire. For Viva Zapata! (Kazan 1952), Brando received an Oscar nomination, and was named Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival, and Best Foreign Actor by the British Academy. Julius Caesar (Mankiewicz 1953) led to another Oscar nomination, and another award for Best Foreign Actor from the British Academy. In 1955, Brando won the Oscar for On the Waterfront, and in 1958 garnered another nomination for Sayonara (Logan 1957).

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The acclaim that both Kazan and Brando enjoyed caused the Actors Studio to be identified as America’s premiere source of serious, professional acting. Strasberg became the only acting teacher known to the public, and he emerged as America’s first recognized acting expert when Actors Studio publicity reached its peak in 1955—that is, when Marilyn Monroe started taking classes at the Studio, Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint “had won Oscars for On the Waterfront and James Dean was creating a sensation in East of Eden.”59 Monroe threw American moviegoers into “a frenzy of excitement” by walking out on a studio contract to study with Strasberg.60 Her arrival at the Actors Studio coincided with the widely publicized release of The SevenYear Itch (Wilder 1955), which featured Monroe as the sex kitten who innocently tantalizes her middle-aged neighbor, as when a gust of air raises the skirt of her diaphanous white dress, accidentally revealing her thighs. In the 1930s, the Group Theatre had piqued the interest of the press, but the hyperbolic publicity surrounding Monroe’s involvement in the Actors Studio got Americans from coast to coast interested in actor training, and made Strasberg’s career a touchstone for significant developments in American acting. Rosemary Malague has shown that Strasberg was catapulted to fame by his association with Monroe, a connection subsequently fostered by the financial and legal bonds established between the two.61 In her 1961 will, Monroe left “all of her personal belongings and seventyfive percent of her estate (including future earnings) to Lee Strasberg”; after she “passed away in 1962, and until a court determined otherwise in 2008, Lee Strasberg and his family [also] controlled the rights to Monroe’s image.”62 The Strasberg family made millions of dollars through this arrangement; the Actors Studio also became a landmark due in part to her affiliation and patronage. As Malague notes, Strasberg’s insistence that Monroe see a psychoanalyst, and requirement that she do exercises that involved delving into private experiences, contributed to her emotional dependence on Strasberg and his second wife, Paula. The well-publicized Strasberg–Monroe relationship solidified the popular image of (Method) acting as psychotherapy sessions involving an all-knowing expert (teacher or director) and a performer with little agency. Strasberg’s position as “the most important American acting teacher of the twentieth century … whose pedagogy has been internalized by generations of actors and teachers” has led the history of American acting to be described in ways that align with his career and perspectives.63 As we have seen, this has involved framing Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift as

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Method actors, despite the fact that Brando studied with Stella Adler and Clift apprenticed with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. The priority given to Method acting has created other confusions. For example, Edward G.  Robinson’s gritty portrayal in Little Caesar (LeRoy 1931) has been seen as a harbinger of Method acting, rather than reflecting the training in Modern acting that he received at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts led by Charles Jehlinger. Lee J. Cobb’s memorable performances in the Broadway production of Death of a Salesman and the Hollywood film On the Waterfront are traced to his membership in the Group Theatre starting in 1935, while the experience he gained by appearing in productions at the Pasadena Playhouse from 1931 to 1933, including ones at the Playbox (one of the country’s first intimate, theatrein-the-round, flexible staging theatres), gets little notice. Once the Actors Studio became established as an icon in American popular culture, institutions such as the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York and the Pasadena Playhouse just miles from Hollywood would come to be seen as old-fashioned sites of inauthentic WASP acting. Despite mounting early productions of plays by Anton Chekhov, the Academy could seem to exemplify elite Anglo-Saxon privilege, with Franklin Haven Sargent, a Harvard University speech professor, serving as its first director, and Charles Jehlinger its artistic director from 1900 to 1952. Similarly, although the Playhouse staged the world premiere of William Saroyan’s Across the Board on Tomorrow Morning in 1941, it could also be seen as an inauthentic Anglo-Saxon institution, with its founder Gilmor Brown born in North Dakota and its patrons coming from the wealthy, white enclave of early Pasadena. After the Actors Studio gained prominence, institutions like the Pasadena Playhouse and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts would also be identified with shallow commercialism, whereas the Actors Studio would be associated with artistic merit. Method actors were seen as artists who valued truth and authenticity, with their commercial success thought to depend solely on the artistic merit of their performances. By comparison, although actors such as Lee J. Cobb and Frances Farmer appeared in Pasadena Playhouse productions, once the Actors Studio became associated with the real work of acting, the Playhouse seemed like a commercial venue, because it trained studio stars like Dana Andrews and Robert Preston, and its productions in the 1930s and 1940s “were regularly monitored by agents, producers and casting people.”64 In accounts that echo Strasberg’s perspectives, the recognition that various graduates of

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the American Academy of Dramatic Arts enjoyed on Broadway and in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s suggested a focus on commerce rather than art. Known as the “cradle to the stars” due to the success of graduates such as Spencer Tracy and Lauren Bacall, the Academy would become associated with the devalued side of the art-commerce hierarchy. In some accounts of American acting, the Method style in 1950s male melodramas is framed as an evolution from a “theatrical” to a “realistic” acting style, reflecting a progression from an unschooled or external approach to one informed by training in inner technique. The observable change in the repertoire of gestures, expressions, poses, and line readings that actors used to portray psychologically troubled characters has been linked to Strasberg’s emphasis on emotional memory and personal substitutions. Method acting has also been associated with a new generation of actors dedicated to their art and, for the first time in acting history, equipped with a scientific approach. Yet there are reasons to question these views. Despite the reality that breakthroughs make for good publicity stories, the idea that there had been limited attention to acting theory prior to the 1950s is, if you think about it, implausible. As the points made by Brando and Clift reveal, while their performances have been linked to the Method, their work actually reflects developments in Modern acting. Discussions in Parts II and III aim to uncover the more plausible narrative of this lost chapter of American acting.

NOTES 1. Lee Strasberg, A Dream of Passion: The Development of the Method (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1987), 6. 2. Steve Vineberg, Method Actors: Three Generations of an American Acting Tradition (New York: Schirmer, 1991), xii. 3. Thomas R.  Atkins, “Troubled Sexuality in the Popular Hollywood Feature,” in Sexuality in the Movies, ed. Thomas R. Atkins (New York: Da Capo, 1975), 114. 4. Lewis Funke and John E.  Booth. Actors Talk about Acting (London: Thames and Hudson, 1961), 41. 5. For an illustration of Lunt’s gesture, see: Cynthia Baron and Beckett Warren, “The Actors Studio in the Early Cold War,” in American Film History: Selected Readings: Origins to 1960, eds. Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann, and Art Simon (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), 471–485. 6. Strasberg, Dream of Passion, 90.

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7. Ibid., 13. 8. Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy, “Minnie Maddern Fiske,” in Actors on Acting, eds. Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy (New York: Crown, 1970), 584. 9. Lawrence Levine, Highbrow Lowbrow (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 214. 10. See Valleri J.  Hohman, Russian Culture and Theatrical Performance in America, 1891–1933 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Henry Bial, Acting Jewish: Negotiating Ethnicity on the American Stage and Screen (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005); Bruce McConachie, “Method Acting and the Cold War,” Theatre Survey 41:1 (May 2000): 47–69; Bruce McConachie, American Theater in the Culture of the Cold War: Producing and Contesting Containment, 1947–1962 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2005). 11. Hohman, Russian Culture and Theatrical Performance in America, 12. 12. Ibid., 40. 13. Ibid., 98. 14. Ibid., 1. 15. Daniel J. Watermeier, “Actors and Acting,” in The Cambridge History of American Theatre, Volume Two: 1870–1945, eds. Don B.  Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 469. 16. Sheridan Morley, Tales from the Hollywood Raj: The British, the Movies and Tinseltown (New York: Viking Press, 1983), 21. 17. Ibid., 9. 18. Nick Roddick, A New Deal in Entertainment (London: British Film Institute, 1983), 247. 19. Ibid. 20. McConachie, “Method Acting and the Cold War,” 61. 21. Lewis, initially interested in directing Love Life, consulted Kazan “to get his opinion of the musical’s merits” (David Garfield, The Actors Studio: A Player’s Place [New York: Macmillan, 1984], 70). Kazan seemed unimpressed, so Lewis decided not to direct it. Later, Kazan decided to direct the show; rather than consult Lewis, he made Cheryl Crawford tell Lewis he had taken the position. In response, Lewis left the Actors Studio; his resignation was announced in the New York Times on August 4, 1948. 22. Toby Cole, “Acknowledgments,” in Acting: A Handbook of the Stanislavski Method, ed. Toby Cole (New York: Bantam Books, 1955), 9. 23. Strasberg, Dream of Passion, 85. 24. Lee Strasberg, “Introduction,” in Acting: A Handbook of the Stanislavski Method, ed. Toby Cole (New York: Bantam Books, 1955), 10. 25. Ibid.

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26. Before publicity about the Actors Studio eclipsed interest in players from earlier periods, Alfred Lunt was seen as one of America’s greatest actors. See Helen Krich Chinoy, The Group Theatre: Passion, Politics, and Performance in the Depression Era (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Chinoy notes that Carnovsky learned his craft by performing “with some of the best actors of the day, Edward G.  Robinson, Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, and Clare Eames” (23). See Harold Clurman, The Fervent Years: The Story of the Group Theatre and the Thirties (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975). In the 1945–1955 epilogue to The Fervent Years, Clurman refers to Lunt as “America’s finest actor since John Barrymore”; the context of his reference clarifies that he is articulating a view shared by the theatre community (307). In the early 1930s, Clurman had criticized Lunt and Fontanne for participating in commercial theatre; Clurman dropped his youthful antagonism, but in the 1950s Strasberg promoted his position by disparaging Lunt, the era’s most respected actor (see Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 24). 27. Strasberg, “Introduction,” 10. 28. Ibid., 14. 29. Foster Hirsh, A Method to their Madness: The History of the Actors Studio (New York: Da Capo, 2001), 220. 30. Steve Vineberg, Method Actors: Three Generations of an American Acting Tradition (New York: Schirmer, 1991), 113. 31. Qtd. in ibid., 113. 32. Strasberg, Dream of Passion, 5. 33. Claude King, “The Place of the Actor in ‘the New Movement,’” in Theatre Arts on Acting, ed. Laurence Senelick (New York: Routledge, 2008), 6. 34. Strasberg, Dream of Passion, 20. 35. Ibid., 21. 36. Ibid. 37. Vineberg, Method Actors, 142–154. 38. Patricia Bosworth, Montgomery Clift: A Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 133. 39. Ibid., 79. 40. Ibid., 83, 84. 41. Ibid., 77. 42. Ibid., 94. 43. Ibid., 106. 44. Ibid., 126–130. 45. Ibid., 165, 182. 46. Ibid., 137, 138. 47. Vineberg, Method Actors, 143.

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48. David Garfield, The Actors Studio: A Player’s Place (New York: Macmillan, 1984), 65. 49. Rosemary Malague, An Actress Prepares: Women and “the Method” (New York: Routledge, 2012), 43. 50. Garfield, The Actors Studio, 151. 51. Hal Hinson, “Some Notes on Method Actors,” Sight and Sound (Summer 1984): 200. 52. Malague, An Actress Prepares, 58. 53. Susan L.  Mizruchi, Brando’s Smile: His Life, Thought, and Work (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014), xxiii. 54. Ibid., 32. 55. Ibid., 48. 56. Ibid., 52. 57. Marlon Brando, “Foreword,” The Technique of Acting, by Stella Adler (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), 1. 58. Marlon Brando, Songs My Mother Taught Me (New York: Random House, 1994), 81. 59. Vineberg, Method Actors, 100. 60. Maurice Zolotow, “The Stars Rise Here,” Saturday Evening Post 229:46 (May 18, 1957). 61. Malague, An Actress Prepares, 62–71. 62. Ibid., 70. 63. Ibid., 30. 64. Diane Alexander, Playhouse (Los Angeles: Dorleac-MacLeish, 1984), 49.

PART II

Acting and American Performing Arts

CHAPTER 5

Developments in Modern Theatre and Modern Acting, 1875–1930

Rather than the invention of a single individual, the principles of Modern acting articulated in the 1930s and 1940s by teachers such as Stella Adler, Josephine Dillon, and Sophie Rosenstein represent a coalescing of ideas that had developed over time. Modern acting in America thus has a varied background that includes work in repertory companies and a network of acting programs ranging from the well-known American Laboratory Theatre to obscure institutions like the Stanhope-Wheatcroft School, which served as an early artistic home for prolific playwright-director Rachel Crothers. Modern acting emerged alongside other developments in the performing arts. Describing some of them, Daniel Watermeier observes that: The period from the end of the Civil War to the onset of the Great Depression was the most dynamic in the history of the American stage. General economic prosperity and expanding urban populations fueled a demand for theatrical entertainment and an ever greater number of actors. Emerging young talents overlapped with waning older stars. Traditional and new acting approaches and dramatic material jockeyed for audience attention and critical recognition. The acting profession, long held in disrepute, gradually attained an unprecedented level of social respectability.1

The creation of the Actors’ Society of America in 1894 and the Actors’ Equity Association in 1916 reflected the field’s rising status and

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 C. Baron, Modern Acting, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-40655-2_5

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professionalism. Actors’ legitimacy in American society also increased due to the arrival of: recognized drama schools; theatrical clubs led by players such as Edwin Booth; and an “explosion of newspapers, photo engraving, and mass-marketed illustrated magazines [that] brought actors widespread public recognition and social prominence.”2 During this formative period, American theatre also offered women the opportunity to make visible contributions to public life; Watermeier notes that by “the turn of the century, actresses (or show women) comprised over 40 percent of the profession, far greater than the percentage of women in any other profession of the time.”3 Research by Vera Mowry Roberts confirms women’s increased participation. Her study of “ladymanagers” in nineteenth-century theatre shows that the substantial duties of the era’s theatre managers—“play selection, casting, directing, designing, and looking after finances”—were carried out by actors such as Anne Brunton Merry, Charlotte Cushman, Catherine Sinclair, and Mrs. John Wood (Matilda Vining).4 Roberts also highlights the careers of Laura Keene, who managed theatres in San Francisco and New  York starting in the 1850s, and Mrs. John Drew (grandmother of Lionel, Ethel, and John Barrymore), who ran the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia from 1861 to 1876. Volumes such as Women in American Theatre (1987), edited by Helen Krich Chinoy and Linda Walsh Jenkins, shed light on women’s contributions to late nineteenth and early twentieth-century theatre, and reveal that women’s involvement in American theatre is a study unto itself. Marking a change especially pertinent to American acting, from the 1870s forward theatre companies in cities across the country disbanded as touring companies based in New  York secured an increasingly larger percentage of theatre revenues. By 1900, there were more than 300 touring companies traversing the USA at any given time, and they delivered acclaimed plays with bigger stars and better scenery than local theatres could afford. American theatre reflected trends in other industrialized segments: a centralized system replaced unconnected producers; division of labor increased as play producing became separate from managing exhibition sites; there was a “standardization of product” as each play was performed by one company or various duplicate companies; and theatre syndicates (Frohman and Shubert) replaced local producer-managers.5

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REPERTORY COMPANIES: SITES FOR EXPLORING MODERN ACTING The transition to a centralized system increased the “national” dimension of American theatre; in the early nineteenth century, there were separate venues for Shakespeare and Bowery blood-and-thunder productions, whereas the new touring companies delivered the same “first-class” product to a range of audiences, and established a model film and television would follow.6 Yet the “standardization of product” prompted actormanager-directors like Minnie Maddern Fiske and Eva Le Gallienne to establish repertory companies that operated outside the theatre syndicate system. Their leadership role in American society was unusual, but it reflected an important trend in American theatre, for, as Chinoy notes in her introduction to Women in American Theatre, the “association of women with regional, institutional, little, art, and alternative theatres is striking.”7 Minnie Maddern Fiske was a model for American actors interested in addressing the demands of modern drama and the aesthetic priorities of new stagecraft. Mrs. Fiske, as she was known, provided a contrast to “personality” stars of the period, because her performances suited the era’s dramas that required “a more subdued, subtler, and introspective style.”8 She and her husband, critic and playwright Harrison Grey Fiske, staged one of the first American productions of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House in 1894. As a director, she “promoted careful ensemble playing, advocated a science of acting, and urged her actors to give attention to detail”; these priorities fostered the company’s ability to stage productions “that focused on ordinary people and, in particular, their inner, psychological lives.”9 Fiske was born into a theatre family; by the time she was in her teens, she had extensive stage experience. While initially associated with comedies and ingénue roles, in her twenties Fiske became known for her portrayals in dramas by Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, and George Bernard Shaw. The 1908 production of Edward Sheldon’s Salvation Nell, with Mrs. Fiske as Nell and Holbrook Blinn as her lover, Jim, garnered acclaim. Toby Cole and Helen Chinoy, in Actors on Acting, reference a contemporary review of Salvation Nell, which reports that in the first act “Mrs. Fiske, as the scrubwoman in the barroom, sat holding her drunken lover’s head in her lap for fully ten minutes without a word, almost without a motion. Gradually

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one could watch nothing else; one became absorbed in the silent pathos of the dumb, sitting figure.”10 The play, which was adapted for film in 1915, 1921, and 1931, explores two chapters in Nell’s turbulent relationship with Jim; the first ends with Jim going to prison and Nell pregnant and destitute; in the second, Jim, recently released from prison, wants to be with Nell but on his terms; despite still being in love, Nell resists until Jim considers reforming his life (Fig. 5.1). In a 1917 volume on acting by Mrs. Fiske, she argues that “exact technique,” which allows skilled actors to create performances with “indescribable iridescence” every time they are on stage, is what distinguishes them from amateurs who rely on convention or inspiration.11 Describing ways for a performer to become “a finely keyed instrument” able to create vivid characterizations in performance after performance, she states that an actor must start by training his/her voice until “it responds to your thought and purpose with absolute precision”; as she explains, she mentions voice work first because it is a tangible activity and one that a performer is “likely to forget.”12 She then discusses the need to develop one’s imagination, and knowledge and understanding of life. Presenting this dimension of acting in candid terms, she encourages performers to “stay away from the theatre as much as you can.”13 To illustrate her point,

Fig. 5.1 Holbrook Blinn and Minnie Maddern Fiske in Sheldon’s Salvation Nell (1908). The actors’ ensemble playing and embodiment of individuals transformed the melodramatic material into modern theatre

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she notes, “Imagine a poet occupying his mind with the manners and customs of other poets, their plans … their prospects, their personal or professional affairs.”14 Fiske warns that a performer who is absorbed by the “artificial world” of theatre “will know only the externals of acting,” and that an actor who “lets dust accumulate on his Ibsen, his Shakespeare, and his Bible … is a lost soul.”15 Highlighting the Modern acting view that conventionality, not personal inhibition, is the performer’s primary stumbling block, she gives actors concrete ways to build imagination and an appreciation of the world; Fiske writes: “Go into the streets, into the slums … the day courts and the night courts. Become acquainted with sorrow [learn about] the incredible generosity of the poor [go to] out-of-the-way corners, into the open country. Go where you can find something fresh to bring back to the stage.”16 She suggests that actors who study real people can see their characters as individuals rather than stock types; in her view, seeing characters as people is the basis for fully developed modern characterizations. Turning to challenges that actors necessarily encounter in production, Fiske notes that they “must ignore the audience’s very existence” to maintain their focus on the character’s immediate experience.17 Having emphasized the need for actors to create performances based on their sensitive appreciation of the character’s fictional environment and their own continually activated understanding of the world around them, Fiske makes the point that it is best for performers to pay “no attention to the other actors, unless they are real actors,” and “no attention, or as little attention as possible, to the director, unless he is a real director.”18 Her respect for actors’ ability to expand their awareness of the world, interpret scripts, and embody characters would become signature Modern acting views. Eva Le Gallienne, who established the Civic Repertory Theatre (1925– 1933), also created an environment that gave performers the opportunity to develop themselves as modern actors. In Chinoy’s introduction to Women in Theatre, she observes that Le Gallienne “turned against what she felt was the ‘stultifying effect of a successful engagement’ as a leading lady to try her hand at special matinees of ‘better’ plays.”19 As Chinoy notes, by founding the Civic Repertory Theatre, “the satisfactions of ensemble playing, repertory scheduling, low prices, and free training for performers replaced the triumphs she could have easily had as a star.”20 Capturing the actor’s altruist vision, biographer Helen Sheehy explains that from the outset Le Gallienne sought to create a “People’s Repertory Theatre, presenting the best plays – with fine acting & productions – at the

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lowest possible prices – that is the important part of the scheme.”21 Between 1926 and 1933, Le Gallienne directed thirty-two Civic Repertory Theatre shows and appeared in more than twenty-five. She directed productions of Ibsen’s The Master Builder and Hedda Gabler; Chekhov’s The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, and The Seagull; and Susan Glaspell’s Inheritors and Alison’s House. She also directed fanciful productions of Peter Pan, Twelfth Night, and her own musical adaptation of Alice in Wonderland (Fig. 5.2). Born in London, Le Gallienne began her American stage career in 1916 with small parts in Broadway shows. The Theatre Guild’s 1921 production of Ferenc Molnár’s Liliom, in which she starred opposite Joseph

Fig. 5.2 The Civic Repertory Theatre’s Production of Chekhov’s The Three Sisters (1926). Experienced Beatrice Terry, young Rose Hobart, and companyfounder Eva Le Gallienne (bottom right)

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Schildkraut, led to critical acclaim for Le Gallienne. In 1923, she starred in another Molnár play, The Swan, produced by Charles Frohman; the production had a highly successful 255-performance run and a month-long return engagement. Her commercial success prompted and allowed her to establish the Civic Repertory Theatre, an achievement that would later lead the New York Times to observe that she “came closer than any other person to endowing the United States with a permanent company performing repertory in the manner of the Old Vic, the Comedie Francaise [sic] and the Moscow Art Theater.”22 After the Civic Repertory Theatre closed, Le Gallienne continued to have a full acting and directing career. She established the American Repertory Theatre (1946–1948) with former Group Theatre member Cheryl Crawford and successful Broadway actor-producer-director Margaret Webster. Le Gallienne was active as a performer and director through 1983. The Civic Repertory Theatre provided an acting home for several performers, including J.  Edward Bromberg, who became a member of the Group Theatre and later the Actors’ Lab in Hollywood, and Josephine Hutchinson, who worked as a drama coach at Columbia in the 1940s. Le Gallienne mentored many young actors, including Rose Hobart, who became a member of the Actors’ Lab and in her memoire recalls that Le Gallienne taught her “about being totally real in performance.”23 Le Gallienne also coached Uta Hagen for her debut as Ophelia in the August 1937 production of Hamlet at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts, which Le Gallienne directed and also fulfilled her lifelong goal by playing Hamlet. Uta Hagen, who would have a successful career as an actor and acting teacher known for writing Respect for Acting (1973), explains that in addition to the company rehearsals, preparation for her role as Ophelia included: work on breathing and diaphragm control; fencing classes; exercise in dance workouts; reading Karl Mantzius’ six-volume History of Theatrical Art; time for independent script analysis; time alone on the set to walk and practice lines; and conversations with Le Gallienne, who inspired Hagen by “upholding a reverence for the theatre [and suggesting] that the theatre should contribute to the spiritual life of a nation.”24 Fiske and Le Gallienne are just two of the many women who shaped modern American theatre. As Le Gallienne demonstrated in an article for Smith College’s Alumnae Quarterly in 1931, designer Edward Gordon Craig’s view—that theatre could be an art only if women were eliminated from the stage—was completely off the mark, because “the modern theatre was in many ways the accomplishment of women.”25 Summarizing Le

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Gallienne’s article, Chinoy notes that the many achievements of women like actor-director Minnie Maddern Fiske, actor-director-activist Mary Shaw, and Neighborhood Playhouse founders Alice and Irene Lewisohn showed that women were “the ‘doers’ in the development of modern art theatre.”26 Reflecting on Le Gallienne’s insight that women had often articulated the aesthetic values and fostered the infrastructure that led American theatre into the modern era, Chinoy highlights the work of: playwright Susan Glaspell, who founded the Provincetown Players with husband George Cram Cook; Theresa Helburn, the longtime executive director of the Theatre Guild; and Hallie Flanagan Davis, who established the Vassar Experimental Theatre and the Smith College Theatre Department before heading the Federal Theatre Project. Chinoy also notes the work of Katharine Cornell, Lynn Fontanne, and Helen Hayes, actors who “freed themselves from being ‘commodities’ in the hands of producers” by heading their own companies, joining art theatres, and touring productions of “culturally meaningful plays,” such as There Shall Be No Night, Robert E. Sherwood’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about the widening conflict in Europe, which Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, and Montgomery Clift performed for audiences across the country between 1939 and 1941.27 The women who refined Modern acting principles in the 1930s and 1940s would continue the tradition in which women shaped modern American theatre.

THE RISE OF ACTING SCHOOLS IN AMERICA Modern theatre needed actors able to both develop socially specific, psychologically nuanced characterizations and execute performances that were seamlessly integrated into the acting ensemble and the physical aspects of the scene or stage image. These demands, combined with the decline of local theatre companies, led to a situation in which formal actor training came to be seen as a priority in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Thus, acting schools in the greater New York, Boston, and Philadelphia area became “a hotbed of activity concerned with the elusive principles that underlie acting, how it can best be taught, and the best means of teaching it.”28 In general, the schools established in the late nineteenth century rejected the older conservatoire method in which master teachers demonstrated how scenes should be played. Many did incorporate the premodern taxonomy of facial and gestural expression associated with François Delsarte

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into their actor training programs, but as James McTeague shows, what is notable is the degree to which a number of teachers “believed that the actor must identify with the character, think and feel as the character.”29 Thus, even the elocution schools founded by Charles Emerson and Samuel Curry circulated the Modern acting view that when the character’s “motive and objective were totally embraced by the actor as imaginatively real [the character’s thoughts and feelings] would find right and truthful expression.”30 Steele MacKaye, who had studied with Delsarte, was an early proponent of formal actor training, believing that it would help to “convert the theatre into an unsectarian temple, where both high and low would be brought together into sympathetic rapport; where the most opposite classes might learn to understand each other better, and to love and respect each other more.”31 He thus initiated a series of ventures between 1871 and 1884  in New  York City: the St. James Theatre and School, where he was the sole director and teacher during its six-month existence (1871–1872); the Union Square School of Expression, where he taught classes between 1877 and 1880; the Madison Square Theatre School, which he founded in 1880 and participated in until 1883; and the Lyceum Theatre and School, which MacKaye established with Franklin H.  Sargent in 1884 and was involved with until 1885. MacKaye’s visibility as an actor, director, playwright, theatre manager, and innovator in theatrical staging and lighting brought attention to the acting schools he established, in particular the Lyceum School of Dramatic Art, which became the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1892 (to be discussed in Chap. 7). As McTeague observes, after MacKaye founded the Lyceum, “the acting school concept swept America.”32 Some of the acting programs established in the late nineteenth century have only a tangential connection to developments in Modern acting. For example, popular playwright and director Dion Boucicault was hired to train actors at the (reactivated) Madison Square Theatre School in 1888. During his two-year tenure, he held the view that the “actor must be willing to subordinate himself to the character,” and actors should “approach a character ‘from the inside, not the outside,’” yet also proposed that “training in the principles of acting [need not include] training the imagination and the intellect.”33 Moreover, he encouraged use of conventional stage gestures, and insisted that “the actor always gestured with the upstage arm, knelt on the downstage knee, and never gestured across the body.”34 The Empire Dramatic School (1893–1897) served to support the Empire

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Theatre run by producer Charles Frohman, known for taking young players and grooming them to be stars. The Stanhope-Wheatcroft School (1897–1910), led by actor Adeline Stanhope (Mrs. Nelson Wheatcroft), encouraged an actor’s “natural growth” and staged work by emerging playwrights such as Rachel Crothers, but Stanhope used the premodern approach in which the teacher demonstrates how to perform a scene.35 At the National Dramatic Conservatory in New York (1898–1923), F. F. Mackay explained that an actor should “study emotion and its expression in great detail [but never] give over to emotional involvement during performance,” focusing instead on learning to “imitate the external signs of emotion to perfection.”36 The School of the Spoken Word, led by Leland Powers from 1904 to 1920 and by his wife, Carol Powers, until 1926, circulated the idea that a play should be “studied until the actor’s mind understands the thoughts and emotions the playwright intended,” but its training program focused on platform reading (where someone reads or tells a story for an audience) and “monoacting” (in which an actor performs all the characters in a story or play for an audience).37 Other schools in the late nineteenth century have a stronger connection with Modern acting. Charles Emerson, who founded the Boston College of Oratory in 1880 (which became the Emerson College of Oratory in 1890 and then Emerson College in 1936), held the view that thought leads to feeling and action. He sought to develop performers’ “intellect, sensibilities, will, imagination, and sympathy,” recognizing both that “thought creates form” and that “feeling becomes more acute … as the mind evolves.”38 Emerson saw oratory as including oral interpretation of speeches, poems, stories, and plays, and he stressed interpretation and communication—emphasizing that any performance should be faithful to the author’s ideas and effectively “give the thought” to the audience.39 His view that an actor must be the “servant and the interpreter of the character’s thoughts and feelings” is concisely outlined by McTeague, when he explains that: The actor must completely identify with the character as the playwright conceived him. Nothing less than complete surrender of self to the character could satisfy Emersonian beliefs. The actor must never acknowledge the audience; instead he must create the belief in the audience that he is someone else, so that they might completely empathize with the feelings, thoughts, and actions of the character. It was through surrender of self and

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complete concentration, through love of the idea and a desire to communicate that idea to the audience, that the actor was truly creative.40

The School of Expression in Boston, led by Samuel Silas Curry from 1885 to 1921, is another actor training program that shares common ground with Modern acting. Anna Baright, who had started her own School of Elocution and Expression, became a member of the faculty in 1886 when she married Curry; the school became a degree-granting institution in 1939; it took the name Curry College in 1943, and, like Emerson College, is still in existence. Curry’s school of acting, which was part of the parent institution, envisioned theatrical performance as “the revelation of the playwright’s ideas through the psychic and physical being of the actor,” who was not “the mere servant of the playwright, but an artist who brought the play to its fullest fruition through the art of acting.”41 Curry found that when an actor “really sees each scene, and feels the movement of the events and situations, [his/her] voice and body are freely and naturally modulated” during performance.42 Articulating a coherent set of ideas that would become integral to Modern acting, Curry proposed that during a performance: an actor’s feeling must arise from a “vivid understanding of relations and associations” conveyed by the script; that he/ she must focus on “the successive ideas [and] the imaginative situation” of the character; and that preparation leading to a deep understanding of the play’s “central idea” is what “stimulates the conscious actions, colors the voice, and brings [the] unity, freedom, variety and spontaneity” that distinguishes a true and natural performance.43

AMERICAN LABORATORY THEATRE: REPERTORY COMPANY AND ACTING SCHOOL The Moscow Art Theatre’s tour of America in 1923 fostered another repertory company and another site for actor training. Richard Boleslavsky, a Moscow Art Theatre member already in the USA, rejoined the company and offered a series of lectures. Inspired by the ensemble performances in the Moscow Art Theatre productions, patrons provided the funding to establish the American Laboratory Theatre (1923–1930), in which acting classes were taught by Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya, a Moscow Art Theatre actor who chose to remain in the States. The school offered courses in “voice, singing, eurythmics, fencing, ballet, art history, theatre

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design, and culture”; its speakers and visiting artists included designers Norman Bel Geddes and Robert Edmund Jones, director Jacques Copeau, philosopher Mortimer Adler, and George Pierce Baker, who established the well-known playwriting course at Harvard University in 1905 and the Yale School of Drama in 1925.44 The American Laboratory Theatre mounted eight productions between 1926 and 1928, many of them notable because of the later success of the actors and playwrights involved. The 1927 production of Big Lake was directed by American Laboratory actor George Auerbach, included Stella Adler in the cast, and was the first play produced by Lynn Riggs. Her successful playwriting career included Russett Mantle (1936), and the Theatre Guild production of Green Grow the Lilacs (1931), which provided the basis for the Rogers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!, on Broadway from 1943 to 1948 in its initial 2,212-show run. Boleslavsky directed the other seven American Laboratory Theatre productions. They included: Martine (1928), with future Group Theatre member Ruth Nelson in its cast; and The Straw Hat (1926), with Stella Adler and Robert H. Gordon, who appeared in Civic Repertory Theatre shows and became known for directing Broadway musicals such as Pins and Needles (1937–1940). Boleslavsky also directed the American Laboratory Theatre production of The Trumpet Shall Sound (1926), the first play produced by Thornton Wilder, known for writing Our Town (1938), on Broadway for 338 shows during its first run, The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), which had a 359-show opening run, and The Matchmaker (1955), a play that had a 486-show opening run and provided the basis for Hello, Dolly!, on Broadway from 1964 to 1970  in an initial 2,844-show run. Boleslavsky also directed Granite (1927) by playwright Clemence Dane, who wrote A Bill of Divorcement (1921), a play that had several film adaptations, including the 1932 George Cukor version featuring Katharine Hepburn and John Barrymore. Boleslavsky garnered even wider recognition in the 1920s for productions not affiliated with the American Laboratory Theatre. After arriving in the USA in 1922 with one of the many Russian musical revues promoted by theatrical entrepreneurs of the time, he secured the position of assistant director on The Miracle, a 1924 production directed by Max Reinhardt that had a 175-show run. Boleslavsky then went on to direct The Vagabond King (1925–1926), a musical produced by Russell Janney that ran for 511 shows on Broadway. Boleslavsky directed Janney-produced shows in 1927 and 1928, then found substantial success directing the musical version of

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The Three Musketeers (1928), a Ziegfeld production that had a 318-show run. Boleslavsky also directed Falstaff (1928) starring Charles Coburn, and Judas (1929) starring Basil Rathbone. Boleslavsky then moved to Hollywood. After working first as an uncredited director on Queen Kelly (von Stroheim 1929), he then directed twenty films, including: Rasputin and the Empress (1932), with Lionel, Ethel, and John Barrymore; Men in White (1934), with Clark Gable in the role created by Group Theatre member Alexander Kirkland; Clive of India, with Ronald Colman; Les Misérables (1935), with Fredric March and Charles Laughton; and The Garden of Allah (1936), with Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer. His final film, The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937), with Joan Crawford, William Powell, and Robert Montgomery, was completed by Dorothy Arzner after Boleslavsky died during the production at the age of forty-seven. For the American public, the 1920s Broadway musicals and Hollywood films of the 1930s were Boleslavsky’s most memorable achievements, but as references by other acting teachers of the period reveal, within the American acting community Boleslavsky was equally well known for writing Acting: The First Six Lessons and for the lectures he presented on behalf of the Moscow Art Theatre and at the American Laboratory. While his mixed portfolio of alternative and commercial productions does not reveal a coherent aesthetic vision, the lectures he presented in the 1920s are distinguished by the clear and continually reinforced set of ideas that anticipate those of Modern acting teachers of the 1930s and 1940s.45 Boleslavsky’s ties with subsequent Modern acting teachers is perhaps best illustrated by noting contrasts between his views and those of Lee Strasberg. For instance, whereas Strasberg saw the director as the artist of the theatre, Boleslavsky argued that the “theatre is the actor, and the actor is the theatre.”46 Although Strasberg considered actors’ inhibitions to be the primary obstacle to great performance, Boleslavsky took the Modern acting position that imitation was one major stumbling block; as he explained: the “trouble is that most of you repeat somebody else’s feelings … One good actor appears, John Barrymore, and then you have a generation of leading men trying to be John Barrymore.”47 Boleslavsky saw the “crazy outer rhythm created by man” as another obstacle to the “spiritual concentration” actors needed to embody characters. He recognized economic realities as yet another impediment to actors’ creativity; as he put it, “the constant struggle for our existence that subordinates us to

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those on whom depend our livelihood [absorbs] our whole mind in worries about our next meal.”48 Whereas Strasberg saw emotional expressivity as the singular distinguishing quality in a great actor, Boleslavsky held the Modern acting view that acting required: talent, an apt mind, knowledge of life, observation, sensitiveness, artistic taste, good education, expressive face and gestures, well-built body, dexterity, tenacity in work, imagination, self-control, and good health.49 Like other Modern acting teachers, Boleslavsky found that an actor should “educate his artistic taste and sensitiveness by frequent contact and study of all possible works of art … increase his knowledge of life by constantly training his observation [and work to develop] to the greatest extent the faculty of imagination.”50 Equally important, an actor must “train his voice by vocal exercises; his body by dancing, fencing, different kinds of sports … his speech  – by diction and enunciation.”51 In contrast to Strasberg’s Freudian perspective, Boleslavsky proposed that actors could “return to the great creative rhythm and spirit of humanity [only by] approaching nature”; he thus encouraged actors to: Cast your eyes at a piece of blue sky among the skyscrapers of Broadway and you’ll understand where the truth lies. Lend your ear to the beat of the surf and you will understand … the real key for the appreciation of music. Look at a rushing mountain brook or at a falling star and you’ll understand the meaning of speed.52

Boleslavsky’s ideas about other study material would link him to someone like Fiske rather than Strasberg, for he urged actors to explore the “Lord’s Prayer” until they understood “the vital significance of every one of its words,” and encouraged them to recite one of the “greatest pieces of world literature,” the Bible’s New Testament “Sermon on the Mount.”53 Boleslavsky did ask actors to make their spirits “sensitive and flexible” through private daily exercises that included: listening to their hearts beat; inhaling and exhaling their breath; reflecting on the details of the day; recalling the last time they were angry or irritated; searching their memories for happy or sad moments during the previous New Year’s celebrations; retaining a certain emotion they discovered when searching through their memories.54 However, whereas Strasberg required actors to do in-class performances of private experiences and argued that they should substitute personal experiences and circumstances for a character’s during performance, Boleslavsky took the position of Modern acting teachers by argu-

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ing that an actor’s lifelong efforts “to collect feelings” facilitated the work of building characterizations through script analysis conducted in “study at home.”55 Moreover, in contrast to Strasberg, Boleslavsky proposed that an actor could use “all kinds of means” to establish the feeling that would eventually color an action during performance, including “the actual lines of the author, [experiences] from his own life, recollections from books and finally his own imagination.”56 In addition, whereas Strasberg placed no emphasis on the study of scripts, Boleslavsky explained that returning to the actual lines of the script after exploring personal associations was “one of the most beautiful moments” of an actor’s work, for after developing “the shadings of his new feeling [he could begin] to pronounce in the solitude of his workroom the immortal words of the author,” and if “the right feeling” had been located, studying the script would then deepen and crystalize the feeling so that it would arise simply and naturally during performance.57 While Strasberg took Jacob Ben-Ami’s 1920 Samson and Delilah performance as a model for the heightened expressivity he sought to develop in actors, Boleslavsky saw human life as the basis for acting. He told students, “If you will go through your life, you will realize there is not a single moment when you do not act, [for] even when you are tired and want to rest, you act.”58 Drawing the connection between life and acting, he argued that when you “see a good actor you will realize what he is doing, what he is thinking,” because action “is the foundation of dramatic art”, and any action (in life or performing art) is colored by thought and circumstance—as he noted, “asking someone to give you a glass of water for a fainting relative” necessarily looks and sounds different from asking for “a glass of water to clean a strawberry stain on a white dress.”59 Throughout his lectures, Boleslavsky emphasized the Modern acting position that an actor should not think about “what he [as the actor] should play, but what he [as the character] should do, because action is one thing” that a performer can consistently embody and live in performance.60 As he explained in a 1927 article for Theatre Arts, it is by focusing on a character’s given circumstances, problems, and actions that an actor ensures he/ she will “never be in the position of being handicapped by the emotion itself or of becoming a [neurotic] from a too constant and too strenuous expenditure” of his/her “emotional forces.”61 Ouspenskaya would echo these views throughout her career as an acting teacher, beginning at the American Laboratory and then later at the drama schools she established in New York and Los Angeles. Ouspenskaya also worked as a character actor in American theatre and film, appear-

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ing in eight Broadway productions between 1924 and 1944, including the successful Garrick Players’ offering of The Taming of the Shrew, which opened in October 1927 and ran for 175 performances. She also gained notice for her roles as diminutive but powerful noblewomen in Dodsworth (Wyler 1936) and Love Affair (McCarey 1939); both performances led to Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress. She was in more than twenty films between 1929 and 1949, including prestige picture Waterloo Bridge (LeRoy 1940) and cult classic Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (Neill 1943) (Fig. 5.3).

Fig. 5.3 Maria Ouspenskaya in the film production of Dodsworth (Wyler 1936). Ouspenskaya’s career journey from Moscow to New  York and then Hollywood points to key developments in the period

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Press coverage of Ouspenskaya’s Hollywood films would emphasize her work with the Moscow Art Theatre; a 1939 article about Love Affair described her as a “link between Russian theatre and the screen.”62 Articles also highlighted her contributions as an acting teacher; a review of Love Affair referred to her as a “famed drama coach and … a star of the brilliant Moscow Art Theatre.”63 Another article about Love Affair told readers that Franchot Tone and John Garfield, both film stars who started at the Group Theatre, studied with Ouspenskaya at her Hollywood drama school, in which students “study diction first, before they can get going in dramatics.”64 In the early 1940s, articles about Ouspenskaya appeared in Family Circle and the fan magazines Movies, Modern Screen, and Screenland. All of them mention her Moscow Art Theatre background and dedication to acting; in some of them, Ouspenskaya discusses acting fundamentals and the ways that she prepared for her performances. Ouspenskaya offered classes at her Hollywood drama school from 1940 to 1942, and coached actors privately until her death in 1949. During her time in Hollywood, she declined requests to identify the actors with whom she worked. Yet in addition to noting Garfield and Tone, articles about her drama school mentioned: Eddie Albert, known for his role in the TV series Green Acres (1965–1971); Anita Louise, a child star in the silent era who had supporting roles in the 1930s and 1940s; and Anne Baxter, who is perhaps best known as the ambitious ingénue in All about Eve (Mankiewicz 1950) starring Bette Davis. When Ouspenskaya opened her drama school in New York in 1929, she made work on the voice, body, and imagination the cornerstones of actors’ training; when she moved her School of Dramatic Art to Hollywood in 1940, she made diction the starting point, but ensured that students did exercises to enhance their imagination. Anne Baxter recalls that during one improvisation session, Ouspenskaya made the suggestion, “you are the yellow flame of a candle, blowing in the wind, whispering to the dark beyond the window.”65 Other acting teachers used equally whimsical exercises to spark students’ imagination. Rosenstein’s acting manual outlines one in which students pass around a carnation, comparing their responses to and associations with its smell, and then improvise “a character suggested by the carnation”; in another, students describe the taste of lemon drops passed around in class, discuss any associations, and then improvise “a character suggested by a lemon drop.”66 A four-part series in American Repertory Theatre: The Art Magazine provides a concise view of the ideas Ouspenskaya shared with American actors; the series, “Notes on Acting with Maria Ouspenskaya,” was

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published posthumously from October 1954 to January 1955.67 In the series, she emphasizes that an actor’s instrument (voice and body) must be developed; from her perspective, “no matter what beautiful things you might feel, and how rightly you feel them, you cannot express them unless you train your instruments.”68 Highlighting a view shared by other Modern acting teachers, Ouspenskaya sees sense memory as important, because an actor “must be able to bring a living human being on stage who feels, sees, and hears.”69 Sense-memory exercises that develop a performer’s “five sense realities,” combined with in-depth script analysis, lead an actor to create performances in which every line seems to “come as a result of something that you [as the character] touch, smell, taste, see, or hear” and then respond to.70 Since stage and screen actors “have to see and hear things that are not really there,” they also use sense memory and imagination to build a character’s fictional world.71 Ouspenskaya explains that during the production of Love Affair, in the scene in which her character watches her grandson leave, she “was given a handkerchief on a stick to watch for his going down the hill.”72 If she had not done visualization exercises when developing her characterization, she could not have used the handkerchief as a stand-in for her grandson.73 Insisting that actors must “never imitate anyone else’s performance,” Ouspenskaya sees actor training as something that should awaken a person’s “imagination and curiosity” and foster “flexibility of body, voice and speech.”74 Actors must eliminate their own “every day behavior and posture, and build a person of another background and environment.”75 This process has multiple dimensions. She tells actors: “Try to find the bodies of your characters, so that if you had to run to a fire, you would run as your character.”76 She also explains that when building a characterization, an actor must “constantly return to the play and re-read it” in order to “establish the place, the other characters, your character, and what your character gives and gets.”77 Then, in performance, an actor can relax and be guided by the preparation that makes him/her always able to answer: “Who am I, where am I, what am I doing?”78 Ouspenskaya’s Modern acting position comes through in her discussion of emotion and action. In her view, “no matter how closely your present emotions coincide with the part, you must not use them.”79 In fact, she proposes that when “you are on stage you have no right to feel as you feel.”80 Even when tapping into feelings that have been developed and stored, during performance actors must “never recall the mood itself.”81

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Seeing emotion as arising from dramatic action, she advises actors to “be preoccupied not with yourself but with the action of the scene.”82 Like other Modern acting teachers, Ouspenskaya did not equate the work of acting with feeling the part, but instead with doing the script analysis and general development necessary to be able to “think ‘in the mind’ of the character.”83 As an Oscar nominee and credentialed acting teacher, Ouspenskaya would become a familiar figure in the Hollywood film community. In response to a request from The American Magazine, she wrote an article in 1940 on using acting techniques in business settings.84 This same year, a request from famed gossip columnist Hedda Hopper led Ouspenskaya to write a guest column that outlined the two-year program at her Hollywood drama school, which she explained offered courses in diction, voice, body movement, fencing, dancing, the allied arts, and methods for developing the imagination.85 The following year, an article by powerful gossip columnist Louella Parsons would describe Ouspenskaya as “one of the finest coaches in the business.”86 It would be foolish to say that a single idea connects Steele MacKaye’s St. James Theatre, Minnie Maddern Fiske’s 1894 production of A Doll’s House, and Maria Ouspenskaya’s School of Dramatic Art, which she moved to Hollywood in 1940. However, it would be equally foolish to ignore the historical connections that form the basis for Modern acting. The lectures and publications of these and other practitioners reveal shared ideas about actor training and strategies for creating performances; the work at repertory companies and acting schools of the period shows that practitioners actively explored ways for performers to participate effectively in modern American theatre; the careers considered in this chapter also point to the shift in the performing arts industry that made the repertory companies and acting schools at the Pasadena Playhouse and Actors’ Lab in Hollywood key contributors to the history of Modern acting.

NOTES 1. Daniel J. Watermeier, “Actors and Acting,” in The Cambridge History of American Theatre, Volume Two: 1870–1945, eds. Don B.  Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 446. 2. Ibid., 451. 3. Ibid., 447.

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4. Vera Mowry Roberts, “‘Lady-Managers’ in Nineteenth-Century American Theatre,” in The American Stage: Social and Economic Issues from the Colonial Period to the Present, eds. Ron Engle and Tice L.  Miller (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 31. 5. Jack Poggi, Theater in America: The Impact of Economic Forces, 1870–1967 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968), 26. 6. Ibid., 88. 7. Helen Krich Chinoy, “Introduction: Art versus Business: The Role of Women in American Theatre,” in Women in American Theatre, 2nd ed., eds. Helen Krich Chinoy and Linda Walsh Jenkins (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1987), 4. 8. Watermeier, “Actors and Acting,” 468. 9. Ibid., 469, 468. 10. Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy, “Minnie Maddern Fiske,” in Actors on Acting, eds. Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy (New York: Crown, 1970), 584. 11. Minnie Maddern Fiske, Her Views on Actors, Acting and the Problems of Production; as Told to Alexander Wollcott (New York: Century Company, 1917), 76–89, reprinted in Actors on Acting, eds. Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy, 584–587 (New York: Crown Publishers, 1970), 585. 12. Ibid., 585, 586. 13. Ibid., 586. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., 587. 18. Ibid. 19. Chinoy, “Introduction: Art versus Business,” 5. 20. Ibid. 21. Qtd. in Helen Sheehy, Eva Le Gallienne: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 140. 22. “Eva Le Gallienne, Actress, Is Dead at 92,” New York Times, June 5, 1991. 23. Rose Hobart, A Steady Digression to a Fixed Point (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1994), 45. 24. Qtd. in Susan Spector and Steven Urkowitz, “Uta Hagen and Eva Le Gallienne,” in Women in American Theatre, 2nd ed., eds. Helen Krich Chinoy and Linda Walsh Jenkins (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1987), 123. 25. Chinoy, “Introduction: Art versus Business,” 4; see Modern Acting Chap.  2, note 8 for observations on Craig’s position concerning women and modern theatre. 26. Ibid.

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27. Ibid., 5. 28. James H.  McTeague, Before Stanislavsky: American Professional Acting Schools and Acting Theory, 1875–1925 (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1993), ix. 29. Ibid., 243. 30. Ibid., 245. 31. Qtd. in ibid., 21. 32. Ibid., 182. 33. Ibid., 189, 188, 191. 34. Ibid., 195. 35. Ibid., 213. 36. Ibid., 248. 37. Ibid., 163, 159. 38. Ibid., 105, 103. 39. Ibid., 97. 40. Ibid., 99. 41. Ibid., 124. 42. Qtd in ibid., 125. 43. Qtd in ibid., 132, 133. 44. Rhonda Blair, “Editor’s Introduction,” in Acting: The First Six Lessons: Documents from the American Laboratory Theatre, ed. Rhonda Blair (New York: Routledge, 2010), xi. The “tightness of the ensemble” in the Moscow Art Theatre touring productions seemed to exemplify modern theatre (Laurence Senelick, “Introduction,” in Theatre Arts on Acting, ed. Laurence Senelick [New York: Routledge, 2008], xvii); American Laboratory patron Miriam Stockton saw European and especially Russian performing art “as the panacea for addressing the ‘ills’ of the [American] commercial theatre system” (McTeague, Before Stanislavsky, 251). 45. By comparison, Boleslavsky’s Acting: The First Six Lessons is a difficult read for many reasons, among them its suggestion that directors should provoke actors’ emotion. Boleslavsky used that approach when directing Theodore Goes Wild (1936); actor Melvyn Douglas reports that when Boleslavsky decided Irene Dunne “could not muster the proper amount of excitement for an important entrance [he] warned the cast and crew, then crept up behind her and fired a blank cartridge from a hand gun just below her buttocks” (qtd. in Doug Tomlinson, ed., Actors on Acting for the Screen: Roles and Collaborations [New York: Garland Publishing, 1994], 52). 46. Richard Boleslavsky, “The ‘Creative Theatre’ Lectures,” in Acting: The First Six Lessons: Documents from the American Laboratory Theatre, ed. Rhonda Blair (New York: Routledge, 2010), 82.

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47. Boleslavsky, “Boleslavsky Lectures from the American Laboratory Theatre,” in Acting: The First Six Lessons: Documents from the American Laboratory Theatre, ed. Rhonda Blair (New York: Routledge, 2010), 161. 48. Boleslavsky, “The ‘Creative Theatre’ Lectures,” 109. 49. Ibid., 103. 50. Ibid., 104. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid., 110. 53. Ibid., 112, 110. 54. Ibid., 104, 112. 55. Boleslavsky, “Boleslavsky Lectures,” 160, 127. 56. Boleslavsky, “The ‘Creative Theatre’ Lectures,” 117. 57. Ibid., 118. 58. Ibid., 164. 59. Boleslavksy, “Boleslavsky Lectures,” 164, 165. 60. Ibid., 174. 61. Richard Boleslavsky, “Fundamentals of Acting,” in Theatre Arts on Acting, ed. Laurence Senelick (New York: Routledge, 2008), 242. 62. “Love Affair,” Review, March 9, 1939, Box 9, Maria Ouspenskaya Collection, Special Collections Department, University of California, Los Angeles. 63. “Love Affair,” Hollywood Reporter, March 10, 1939, Box 9, Maria Ouspenskaya Collection. 64. “Love Affair,” Journal American, March 19, 1939, Box 9, Maria Ouspenskaya Collection. 65. Article in Family Circle, Box 8, Maria Ouspenskaya Collection. 66. Sophie Rosenstein, Larrae A.  Haydon, and Wilbur Sparrow, Modern Acting: A Manual (New York: Samuel French, 1936), 11. 67. The magazine was published by the American Repertory Theatre in Hollywood. 68. Maria Ouspenskaya, “Notes on Acting with Maria Ouspenskaya,” in Acting: The First Six Lessons: Documents from the American Laboratory Theatre, ed. Rhonda Blair (New York: Routledge, 2010), 186. 69. Ibid., 190. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid., 192. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid., 203, 184. 75. Ibid., 201. 76. Ibid., 202. 77. Ibid., 202, 205.

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Ibid., 204. Ibid., 196. Ibid., 193. Ibid., 197. Ibid., 199. Ibid., 202. Starting in the 1930s, The American Magazine (1906–1956) became known for publishing short stories and topical articles by high-profile authors. 85. Hedda Hopper column, 1940, Box 6, Maria Ouspenskaya Collection. 86. Louella Parsons column, August 2, 1941, Box 7, Maria Ouspenskaya Collection.

CHAPTER 6

Shifting Fortunes in the Performing Arts Business

Boleslavsky and Ouspenskaya’s journey from New  York to Los Angeles is indicative of actors’ response to developments in the performing arts industry in the 1930s and 1940s. The careers of actors who started in summer stock and resident theatres also illuminate ways that these changes affected the American acting community. This chapter explores the increasingly well-traveled paths connecting Broadway and Hollywood. It also considers key aspects of the Group Theatre (1931–1941), whose production record, behind-the-scene debates, and evolving organizational configurations illuminate the economic pressures affecting theatre, the financial deals linking New York and Los Angeles, the era’s differing views about the role of directors, and the contrasting ideas that would come to distinguish Modern and Method acting.

THE ACTING TALENT DIASPORA AND ITS CONTEXT As we saw in Part I, actors such as Ronald Colman and Gary Cooper made a seamless transition from silent to sound cinema. This was the case for others as well. For instance, Janet Gaynor, who started as an extra in silent films, received recognition for her work as an actor in the silent and sound eras. In 1929, she was awarded an Oscar for her performances in three silent films—7th Heaven (Borzage 1927), Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (Murnau 1927), and Street Angel (Borzage 1928). In the sound era, she received an Oscar nomination for the 1937 version of A Star Is Born

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directed by William Wellman. In the silent era, Carol Lombard appeared in dramas and Mack Sennett comedies; after the transition to sound, she became one of the leading stars of screwball comedy, beginning with Twentieth Century (Hawks 1934), co-starring John Barrymore. Greta Garbo won acclaim for her performances in silent films such as Flesh and the Devil (Brown 1926). Following the transition to sound, she went on to garner three Oscar nominations, the first for her initial sound films Anna Christie (Brown 1930) and Romance (Brown 1930), and two subsequent nominations for Camille (Cukor 1936) and Ninotchka (Lubitsch 1939). Despite these examples, theatrical venues would become the primary training ground and audition site for actors who went on to find work in studio-era Hollywood. After The Jazz Singer (Crosland 1927) became big news, Hollywood moved quickly from silent to sound production, and so there were soon few opportunities for working in silent cinema. In addition, the transition to sound made actors with theatrical training valuable, for they had learned to speak clearly but naturally, without regional accents unless called for by the part. They were also likely capable of the kind of script analysis needed to create performances that conveyed characters’ evolving inner experiences through the pitch, intonation, and rhythm of their words. Talking pictures appeared in 1927, but 1929 is the pivotal year; while the studios were releasing silent or partial-sound films at the start of the year, by December Hollywood had committed to a full slate of sound movies. This industry-wide decision shaped the practices of the major studios (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., and Radio-Keith-Orpheum), along with those of the minor studios that did not own theatres (Universal and Columbia), and the independent distribution company United Artists. By 1930, theatres no longer presented live shows and vaudeville skits before or between movies, and the efficient production-distribution-exhibition system for sound cinema assumed the form it would maintain for some twenty years. Meanwhile, theatre lost its position as America’s primary site of performing art. By the end of the 1920s, theatre’s “handmade” products had become increasingly expensive and financially risky; this development is often attributed “to the advent of talkies and to the stock-market crash, higher costs of production, high Manhattan rents, and the growing power of labor unions.”1 However, the number of Broadway productions had started to fall as early as 1926. In addition, stage offerings across the country had declined long before the crash. Between 1910 and 1925, the ven-

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ues for “legitimate productions outside the metropolitan centers dropped from 1,549 to 674”; and in these theatres, “Saturday nights were usually devoted to movies, and farces and musical comedies” rather than work by new playwrights.2 This trend would continue: in 1929, there were some 200 stock theatre companies in America, but by 1939 there were only five companies active in cities outside New York.3 Touring companies also declined in number: in 1930, there were around fifty-five touring productions, whereas in 1940 the number had dropped to around twenty.4 In this context, American theatre became a training ground and audition site for actors who would subsequently secure steady employment in Hollywood. A look at developments in theatre outside of New York City reveals that during this chapter in American acting, the dwindling number of resident theatres and touring companies prompted or forced many stage actors to reimagine their careers. The film industry benefitted, because theatre gave performers experience working in divergent production conditions and in creating performances suited to various venues, including the intimate spaces prized by the Little Theatre movement. Many had worked in star-driven touring companies as well as summer stock theatres in resort towns across the USA.  Others had gained experience in productions at resident theatres such as the Cleveland Playhouse, the Erie Playhouse, the Goodman Memorial Theatre in Chicago, the Pittsburgh Playhouse, the Seattle Repertory Playhouse, the Hedgerow Theatre in Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, and the Detroit Civic Theatre, founded by actress Jessie Bonstelle in 1925.5 In addition to training provided by the Washington Square Players (later the Theatre Guild) and the other leading resident theatres that emerged in the 1910s and flourished in the 1920s, actors learned their craft in a wide array of regional stock companies.6 Frequent change of bill, often involving a new play each week, was a basic component of stock company production. Players would perform one play in the evenings; during the day, they would rehearse the play to be staged the following week, in addition to doing three matinees per week. Pat O’Brien, who frequently played Irish cops or priests—as in Angels with Dirty Faces (Curtiz 1938)—and appeared in films from 1931 to 1981 and on television from 1953 to 1982, worked in stock after attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He amusingly recalls that doing stock meant studying for one play, performing in another, and trying to forget yet another.7 For aspiring actors, working in stock companies provided the opportunity to move from apprentice to secondary and even leading roles.

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During this process, “actors acquired skills by practicing, rehearsing and performing a wide range of gradually more demanding roles,” observing and working with more experienced actors, and training with voice and movement teachers.8 Character actor Ralph Bellamy, perhaps best known for his role as the unwelcome fiancé in His Girl Friday (Hawks 1940), was the president of Actors Equity from 1952 to 1964, and he appeared in theatre from 1922 to 1959, in film from 1931 to 1990, and on television from 1948 to 1990. Bellamy describes his work with traveling and stock companies as invaluable training, because he was able to study and work with experienced actors.9 In the 1920s, he worked with the Al Jackson Players in Madison, Wisconsin, as did comedic character actor Tom Ewell, best known for playing the distracted husband in The Seven Year Itch, which ran on Broadway from 1952 to 1955 and was remade as the 1955 Billy Wilder film starring Marilyn Monroe.10 After Ewell’s training with the Al Jackson Players, he did summer stock with the University Players; his career included work in theatre from 1934 to 1965, in film from 1940 to 1983, and on television from 1948 to 1986. Studio drama coach Phyllis Loughton (Seaton), who started as a child actor in the Jessie Bonstelle Company, eventually becoming stage manager, explains that the experience gained by working in a stock company is “unbelievable, there is nothing to replace it … it trains everything, your mind, your body, your memory [and you learn by] watching.”11 Discussing Bonstelle’s approach to a play’s final rehearsal, Loughton notes that she would have the cast start with the third act and work back to the beginning of the play so that players would come to opening night with an embodied experience of the interlocking actions their characters would undertake during each scene. George Cukor, who directed summer stock at the Cape Playhouse in Massachusetts in the 1920s, saw working in stock as the best training any director or actor could have.12 Established in 1927, the Cape Playhouse became known as the birthplace of the stars, after actors such as Humphrey Bogart and Gregory Peck had successful film careers following roles in its productions. In 1928, Bette Davis secured her first professional role in a Cape Playhouse production directed by Cukor, and she did summer stock at the theatre in subsequent seasons. She was in two Broadway productions in 1929, and was given a Hollywood contract after scouts saw her performance in Solid South (1930). Davis observes that stock was crucial for her as a young actor, because she had “the privilege of making mistakes and of playing parts that were way above” her; she emphasizes that young

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actors learned to portray a range of characters, in part by working with more experienced actors.13 The University Players (1928–1932), a summer stock theatre company in West Falmouth, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, garnered attention because it provided work for a number of actors who would eventually have highprofile careers, including Henry Fonda, James Stewart, and Margaret Sullavan. Fonda had been in productions at the Omaha Community Playhouse (co-founded by Dorothy Brando, Marlon’s mother), and had worked as an assistant stage manager at the Cape Playhouse. He had his first small role on Broadway in 1929; a leading role in the Broadway production of The Farmer Takes a Wife (1934–1935) led him to be cast in the 1935 Hollywood version directed by Victor Fleming. James Stewart appeared in Broadway shows from 1932 to 1935, and from there he was cast in The Murder Man (Whelan 1935) starring Spencer Tracy. Margaret Sullavan performed in theatre from 1926 to 1956, film from 1933 to 1950, and television from 1948 to 1954; she went from a series of Broadway productions between 1931 and 1933 to the leading role in the women’s picture Only Yesterday (Stahl 1933).14 Hollywood saw theatre’s rising stars as good investments; studio executives would give leading roles to young theatre actors because they had marketable value and could be trusted to deliver professional performances. The various components of American theatre production, which included amateur and professional resident theatres, stock companies, touring companies, and Broadway, provided the studios with a pool of highly trained and experienced talent/labor. Moreover, when Hollywood put these actors under contract, they were not only getting performers who had learned their craft and paid their dues before getting a chance to appear on Broadway, they were also getting actors who had been successful with critics and audiences. Hollywood signed Humphrey Bogart, Gregory Peck, Bette Davis, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, and Margaret Sullavan to contracts because these actors had a proven commercial track record. Yet marketability was not the only reason Hollywood valued Broadway actors. During the studio era, scores of films were based on successful theatre productions. Garbo’s first sound film, Anna Christie, was based on Eugene O’Neill’s play, which received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1922. Her second film, Romance, was adapted from the play by Edward Sheldon, who had earlier written Salvation Nell for Minnie Maddern Fiske. Men in White, a Sidney Kingsley play that received the Pulitzer Prize

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for Drama and provided the basis for the Group Theatre’s first commercial success in 1933, was quickly adapted by Hollywood, with Clark Gable and Myrna Loy starring in the 1934 film directed by Richard Boleslavsky. Golden Boy, written by Group Theatre member Clifford Odets, led to one of the Group’s most successful shows in 1937 and served as the basis for the 1939 Hollywood movie directed by Rouben Mamoulian that starred Barbara Stanwyck and Pasadena Playhouse actor William Holden. The studios saw the commercial value of doing film adaptations of successful Broadway shows. Yet they discovered that these presold commodities came with complications. Studies such as Gregory Black’s Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies (1994) show that Hollywood’s efforts to adapt stage productions led to ongoing battles with its own Production Code censors and often disappointed audiences who had expected the film to be comparable to the stage play. Casting decisions in studio-era Hollywood also reflected the prevailing view that stage actors were the performers best able to do long dialogue takes, whose voices were trained, and who had learned to speak with clear articulation. Actors who wanted to work in sound cinema often “had to launch themselves on the stage.”15 For instance, studio executives renewed the contract for silent star Mary Astor only after seeing her performance in a Los Angeles theatre production; Astor, best known for portraying Brigid O’Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (Huston 1941), would go on to win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in The Great Lie (Goulding 1941), which featured Bette Davis and George Brent. Actors who had been in silent films and had notable stage experience moved directly into sound cinema. For instance, Claudette Colbert, remembered for her role as the runaway heiress in Frank Capra’s 1934 film It Happened One Night, had been in silent films, but was quickly featured in early sound films because of her theatre experience, which included her debut at the Provincetown Playhouse in 1919 and several roles in Broadway shows throughout the 1920s. Similarly, William Powell, known for portraying the cavalier but charming retired detective Nick Charles in six films beginning with The Thin Man (Van Dyke 1934), was valued by studio-era executives because his background included a leading role in the acclaimed silent film The Last Command (von Sternberg 1928), as well as training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and experience in vaudeville, stock companies, and Broadway. Colbert and Powell were given leading roles in early sound films because of their resonant and expressive voices. In this connection, one might recall that

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in the studio era, British actors such as Clive Brook, Herbert Marshall, and Charles Laughton “were particularly valued in Hollywood for their low-pitched, well-modulated voices which registered with near perfection on the soundtrack” and on the ears of audiences whose tastes reflected norms prevailing on Broadway.16 Articles in the New York Times reveal the scope of Hollywood’s investment in theatrical talent. In “Broadway Finds a Home in Hollywood,” the opening sentence captures the connection between Hollywood and Broadway that developed after the transition to sound; critic Duncan Aikman writes: “not since the Emperor Constantine moved his capital from Rome to Constantinople and took the fourth century theatre with him has there been such a theatrical migration as from Broadway to Hollywood.”17 Another article, “Casting Audible Pictures,” explains that until a “roster of talking screen players” is developed, the tests to determine actors’ “voice qualifications” would make casting pictures a much longer process; discussing former Theatre Guild director Rouben Mamoulian’s first film, Applause (1929), the article describes the screen tests used to cast even the background players; it quotes Mamoulian as saying, “we were particularly fortunate in deciding to produce ‘Applause’ [when] most of the burlesque shows are closed for the summer, and New York is full of players … with plenty of idle time.”18 By 1931, the migration of acting talent from stage to screen had become an accepted fact. In “Acting for the Sound Film,” New  York Times critic Otis Skinner explains that the “traditional actor”—the stage performer who has been “schooled in the method of bringing life, emotions, and humor directly to an audience”—would soon be the dominant type of player on stage and screen.19 By 1934, articles were noting that actors who had gone to Hollywood were returning to Broadway for specific engagements; these players included rising stars Katharine Hepburn, Helen Hayes, and Miriam Hopkins, as well as established actors like Laura Hope Crews, Roland Young, and George M. Cohan. In “From Stage to Screen and Back,” New  York Times critic Walter Prichard Eaton emphasizes that “this re-entry of motion-picture players into the theatre has been interesting in more ways than one”—as he points out, Hepburn’s portrayals in Morning Glory (Sherman 1933) and Little Women (Cukor 1933) had made her a prestige performer, so that “on the bare announcement of her stage appearance in ‘The Lake’ seats were sold [out] eight weeks in advance.”20 Morning Glory itself serves as a reminder that the era took note of performances on stage and screen. The acclaim

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for Hepburn’s performance in the film gave her the credentials to be seen as a leading actor of the period. At the same time, the film’s first scene shows actress Eva Lovelace (Hepburn) admiring portraits of stage legends Ethel Barrymore, Maude Adams, John Drew, and Sarah Bernhardt in the foyer of a theatre agent’s office building. Once Hollywood made the transition to sound, scores of talent scouts came to New York searching for “actors who could speak intelligibly in front of a camera.”21 Actors as different as biopic star Paul Muni, leading man Cary Grant, and actor-director Orson Welles came to Hollywood after working in theatre. Other examples illuminate the era’s Broadway– Hollywood connection. For instance, after starring in Penny Arcade (1930) on Broadway, James Cagney and Joan Blondell were contracted to reprise their roles in the Warner Bros. adaptation entitled Sinner’s Holiday (Adolfi 1930). After appearing in the long-running Broadway production of Tonight or Never (1930–1931), Melvyn Douglas was cast in the leading role of the 1931 film adaptation co-starring Gloria Swanson. Douglas worked in theatre from 1928 to 1968, in film from 1931 to 1981, and on television from 1949 to 1977, receiving a Tony award, two Oscars, and an Emmy. A New Deal liberal gray-listed in the 1950s, Douglas transitioned from leading man to character actor when he returned to regular screen appearances in the 1960s.

THE GROUP: A WINDOW INTO THE ERA’S MATERIAL REALITIES AND ACTING DEBATES Even the careers of Group Theatre members (still most often identified with their desire to create a new American theatre) illustrate that fortunes were changing in the performing arts industry. In fall 1932, at the start of the Group’s second season, Franchot Tone—known for playing affluent playboys in films such as Dancing Lady (Leonard 1933) with Joan Crawford, and Dangerous (Green 1935) with Bette Davis—became the first Group actor to take a Hollywood contract. After the remarkable 1935–1936 season featuring Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing! and his pair of one-acts, Waiting for Lefty and Till the Day I Die, Odets and Group actors Phoebe Brand, J.  Edward Bromberg, Jules (John) Garfield, and Alexander Kirkland received offers from Hollywood.22 In fall 1935, when the Group’s productions of Nellise Child’s Weep for the Virgins and Odets’ Paradise Lost failed to achieve success, Bromberg, deeply respected and well liked by fellow Group actors, signed a Hollywood contract in order to support his family, and Odets took work as a screenwriter to “earn money

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for himself and the company and rescue his tarnished reputation.”23 Following their lead, actor Walter Coy left the Group and travelled to the west coast. Stella Adler, whose decision sent an implicit signal to all Group Theatre members, went to Hollywood in December 1936, after Johnny Johnson—the production meant to re-establish the Group’s presence in fall 1936—failed to attract the audience needed for a long run and essential income for the actors (Fig. 6.1). From this point on, many if not most Group members explored work in Hollywood or eventually relocated to Los Angeles to practice their craft. The process started in January 1937 when Harold Clurman and Elia Kazan traveled to Los Angeles to take positions “Odets had finagled for them.”24

Fig. 6.1 Stella Adler in a Paramount publicity photo from 1937. After leaving the Group Theatre, Adler co-starred in the romantic comedy Love on Toast (Dupont 1937)

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In February 1937, Luther Adler, Roman Bohnen, Phoebe Brand, Morris Carnovsky, (new member) Lee J. Cobb, and Ruth Nelson did screen tests, which included ones for Kazan and Walter Coy. The tests were connected to an agreement negotiated by Cheryl Crawford, the Group’s lawyer, and independent producer Walter Wanger; for a short time, the deal gave the actors advances against salaries for work in films they appeared in.25 The tests led Adler, Bohnen, Brand, Carnovsky, and Nelson to be cast in a film (based on an Odets’ screenplay) that was canceled before it went into production.26 However, once in Hollywood, Carnovsky was cast in Warner Bros.’ The Life of Emile Zola (Dieterle 1937) starring Paul Muni; Bohnen had a role in a Wanger production, 52nd Street (Young 1937); and Bohnen and Nelson got parts in another Wanger film, Vogues of 1938 (Cummings 1937).27 As Wendy Smith notes, before “the 1937 sojourn in California … Hollywood was largely an abstract concept” to Group members; after it, they recognized that the studios “offered long-term contracts and large salaries” even to supporting players.28 In April 1938, after passing on offers for three years, Garfield left the Group for a “two-picture deal with Warner Bros.”29 In 1939, Bohnen took a leave of absence from the Group for a role in the Hollywood film Of Mice and Men (Milestone 1939). This move was at odds with choices by members who had turned down offers; yet there was a growing consensus that the benefits of working together in the Group could not offset the strain created by their limited incomes and decisions to decline roles that would have helped their careers. By 1940, Clurman, Kazan, and other Group members were devoting a portion of their time to Hollywood.30 A major contingent of Group Theatre actors would spend the 1940s as active participants in the Actors’ Lab in Hollywood, an option made possible by their careers in film. A look at the nine and a half seasons of productions mounted by various incarnations of the Group Theatre, starting in fall 1931 and ending in winter 1941, reveal the challenges theatre companies faced during the 1930s. The Group’s economic track record points to the fact that theatregoers were attending only “the plays with the most outstanding reputations,” and that as a consequence “there was no longer room for a middling success” on Broadway.31 During its years of activity, the Group mounted nearly twenty-five new productions, a bold move, given the more circumspect approach of others; for instance, during the same period, Alfred Lunt was in ten productions and Katharine Cornell appeared in twelve. (See Appendix.)

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The expansive slate of Group Theatre productions left it vulnerable to the era’s sharp division between hits and flops. The Group had nine shows with substantial runs of more than ninety performances, but ten of its shows closed within weeks or even days of opening: in the 1931–1932 season, 1931– closed after twelve shows and Night over Taos closed after thirteen; the following season, Big Night had a seven-show run; in the subsequent season, Gentlewoman ran for twelve performances; in the 1935– 1936 season, Weep for the Virgins had nine shows and The Case of Clyde Griffiths had nineteen; between spring 1938 and fall 1941, the Group mounted four productions that closed after about twenty performances. By comparison, productions in the 1930s featuring Alfred Lunt were generally able to attract enough theatregoers to get beyond the ninetyshow mark, with even his less successful plays able to run for forty to fifty shows. Roughly half of the productions starring Katharine Cornell had sustained runs. Not counting two limited revivals, even her economically weakest productions ran for thirty, forty, or fifty performances. Yet Lunt and Cornell were having consistent but only modest commercial success. Cornell’s most popular production, No Time for Comedy, ran for 185 performances, while Lunt’s commercial hit of the period was Idiot’s Delight, which had a 300-show run. Group Theatre high points actually exceed these marks: Golden Boy, presented in the 1937–1938 season, ran for 250 performances; Men in White opened in September 1933 and ran for 351 performances. Group shows that did not immediately find an audience were quickly closed, because there was no cushion supplied by institutional support; the Theatre Guild did provide partial funding for the 1931–1932 season, but this ended when the Group “directors broke from the Guild in early 1932” to declare their artistic independence.32 From the start, Group shows were financed by various means. For example, The House of Connelly, the company’s first play, depended on funds from the Theatre Guild, playwright Eugene O’Neill, publisher Samuel French, wealthy Group actor Franchot Tone, and other benefactors.33 In addition, from the outset, the preponderance of box-office flops made it almost impossible for Group actors to earn a living in theatre. For instance, income—scarce because the 1932– 1933 season coincided with “the nadir of the Depression”—fell even more when the Group production of Big Night closed after only seven performances, to the extent that “members had to take jobs and handouts wherever they could find them.”34 Group actor Roman Bohnen, writing to his family in fall 1932, explains: “out of the 200 actors we know more

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or less 2 of them have worked this season”; writing in February 1933, he reports that “show business is almost at a standstill,” with very few plays in production and 30,000 actors looking work.35 The overwhelming challenges created by the US financial crisis and the dwindling chances for a sustainable career on Broadway would contribute to the complex interactions among Group members documented so vividly in comprehensive studies such as the 1990 volume Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931–1940 by Wendy Smith, and the 2013 posthumous publication of The Group Theatre: Passion, Politics, and Performance in the Depression Era by Group chronicler Helen Krich Chinoy. Their accounts illuminate many dimensions of the Group’s history, including confrontations that illustrate contrasting ideas about directors’ and actors’ respective roles. The actors came to see the directors as functioning best when they fulfilled the limited role of helping them to work collectively, but directors Harold Clurman and Lee Strasberg emphasized that productions required a “dictatorship.”36 Importantly, these two ideas would also inform the actors’ and directors’ divergent views about the best ways to approach performance. On the one hand, Group actors embraced the principles of Modern acting articulated by Stella Adler after her period of study with Stanislavsky in 1934. On the other, Strasberg in particular continually expressed the Method acting view that an actor’s primary duty is to “become ‘an IDEAL machine for transmission of emotion,’” with character interpretation best left to the director.37 Established in 1931, the Group was led by Clurman, Strasberg, and Cheryl Crawford, who functioned as its (theatre) directors, and as the officers of the corporation and owners of its properties. Chinoy notes that the original collection of “27 actors whom the directors themselves had inspired with [talk of] collective creative and social value … accepted the trio in charge.”38 At the outset, Group actors were willing to work without “contracts, without promises of particular casting, without any discussion of the power or authority of the leaders or the role of the governed”; moreover, they “committed themselves to work exclusively with the directors.”39 Stella Adler, Phoebe Brand, Ruth Nelson, Eunice Stoddard, and Clement Wilenchick had been members of the American Laboratory Theatre. J. Edward Bromberg had studied with Moscow Art Theatre member Leo Bulgakov. Morris Carnovsky, Walter Coy, Gerritt “Tony” Kraber, Gertrude Maynard, Sanford Meisner, Clifford Odets, Herbert Ratner, and Franchot Tone had been at the Theatre Guild, in roles from extra to featured player. Friendly Ford, Philip Robinson, and Art Smith came from

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the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, the training ground for Roman “Bud” Bohnen, who joined the Group the following year. William Challee, Mary Virginia Farmer, and Lewis Leverette came from the Hedgerow Theatre in Pennsylvania. Mary Morris had appeared in Provincetown Playhouse productions. Dorothy Patten had studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Robert “Bobby” Lewis and Paula Miller, later Strasberg’s second of three wives, had apprenticed in Eva Le Gallienne’s company. Margaret Barker, Sylvia Feningston, and Alixe Walker had been in a number of Broadway plays, including ones produced by Katharine Cornell.40 While the Group Theatre existed from 1931 to 1941, dynamics within the company fall into three distinct eras: the initial years when Strasberg’s workshops and productions dominate (1931–1934); the middle period when the actors try to articulate acting theory and influence production choices (1934–1937); and the final period when the Group reorganizes and Clurman, in the role of managing director, works with an Actors’ Council to coordinate an ostensibly more popular set of shows with Hollywood stars (1937–1941). Discussing the Group’s early years, Chinoy notes that the Group “rode a roller coaster of highs and lows”; members soon discovered that their challenges involved “finding the right plays or any plays, locating ‘angels’ and audiences, [and] negotiating an equitable organizational base.”41 In addition, Strasberg’s “personality, which seemed by turns withdrawn or outgoing, silent or hysterical, authoritarian or concerned … colored everything he did with his Group collaborators”; it affected the actors’ reactions as well.42 For example, in the spring of 1933, the Group met to discuss the actors’ interest in participating “more fully with the directors in running their theater.”43 Strasberg voiced the officers’ response, countering “the actors’ demands for democracy with his basic artistic credo: ‘In the theatre, the director with complete authority is an absolute necessity’”; and while he had “started off coolly analytical, [he] ended by screaming at the actors, ‘I don’t care what you say.’”44 Clifford Odets, not yet a respected playwright and so speaking as an actor, issued one of the first challenges to Strasberg’s authority by responding, “‘And I don’t care what you say.’”45 The confrontation prompted the directors to agree to the actors’ suggestions and hire a business manager and an audience development expert. These minor adjustments, however, did not address the actors’ concerns about the direction and operation of the Group. During their hugely successful 1933–1934 run of Men in White, the actors’ professional “disappointment and ideological disaffection grew so intense … that plans for

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‘some kind of breakaway to form a more vital theatre’ were considered.”46 Mary Virginia Farmer did leave “to put her energies into founding the more radical Theatre Collective”; Sylvia Feningston, Clifford Odets, and Molly (Thacher) Kazan taught classes at the Theatre Union, “a professional company that attracted working-class audiences by charging lowadmission and dramatizing proletarian subjects”; Elia Kazan, J.  Edward Bromberg, and director Lee Strasberg gave acting classes at the Worker’s Laboratory Theatre; Luther Adler and Robert Lewis contributed articles to the Workers’ Theatre magazine; director Harold Clurman wrote theatre reviews for the Daily Worker under the pseudonym Harold Edgar.47 To express their concerns directly to the Group Theatre directors, the actors submitted a letter outlining suggestions for “actor participation in acquiring plays from home and abroad … short meetings for reports about plays being considered, the company’s financial status, earnings, movies rights, and so on.”48 This time Clurman delivered the directors’ rebuff; in a meeting on April 5, 1934, his “long oration” concluded with a thorough “critique of the actors,” whom he charged with “capitalistic eagerness to ‘get ahead.’”49 Clurman, Strasberg, and Stella Adler then left to visit theatres in Moscow; the actors remaining in New York ran their own workshops throughout the summer of 1934. When Adler returned in August, the oftnoted confrontation between Adler and Strasberg took place. Between the summer of 1931 and the summer of 1934, Strasberg’s insistence that actors relive traumatic personal experiences had come to be seen as “a destructive burden,” because “almost everyone had a painful tale to tell.”50 Younger players such as Margaret Barker and Herbert Ratner were reduced “to a pulp”; even established performer Morris Carnovsky “wandered around like a white ghost after some emotional memory sessions”; and he also determined that a reliance on emotional memory “dissipated its effectiveness.”51 Robert Lewis, Sanford Meisner, and Phoebe Brand saw that Strasberg’s approach led to “a number of physical and emotional breakdowns among the members,” and they objected to Strasberg’s Method because it involved “‘digging into [one’s] subconscious life and not with a trained psychiatrist.’”52 By summer 1934, “the inner turmoil created by [Strasberg’s] confusing and painful obsession with emotional memory was undermining the confidence of the company in themselves and in their director.”53 Actors such as Stella Adler, Phoebe Brand, and Ruth Nelson, who had studied at the American Laboratory Theatre, had been alarmed “by the way Stanislavsky’s system was being interpreted by Strasberg” since

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1931.54 Thus, when Adler came back from studying with Stanislavsky in the summer of 1934, the confirmation that Strasberg’s focus on emotional memory had been a distortion of Stanislavsky’s ideas, and that actors could allow emotion to arise from and be “dependent on the sequence,” was “a great relief” to the actors who had studied at the American Laboratory Theatre and to the company as a whole.55 A letter by Roman Bohnen from that summer session reports that Stella Adler did “a scholarly job” sharing what she had learned about “the Stanislavsky approach to acting DIRECT from Stanislavsky himself”; he explains, “the material is truly exciting and inspires one to work on oneself to improve one’s acting equipment, which includes voice, of course, but primarily the senses  – of smell, touch, etc., imagination, etc.”56 To illustrate the Modern acting exercises Adler shared, Bohnen discusses an instance of actors creating truthful emotion in a scene by giving their full attention to the circumstances and tangible sequence of actions. Chinoy notes that “much in the Group changed after that fateful summer.”57 Adler began teaching workshops based on her study with Stanislavsky. The actors rejected Strasberg’s authority during rehearsals for the first play of the 1934–1935 season, Gold Eagle Guy. On one occasion, new member Jules (John) Garfield dared to “talk back to Strasberg”; even more strikingly, on another occasion, after Strasberg had reduced actor Margaret Barker “to tears with ‘a rage so absolute that he became unintelligible,’” fellow actor Ruth Nelson got up from her place on stage, and with her arms outstretched, walked to the front of the stage declaring, “Now I’m going to kill him.”58 Strasberg ran from the theatre and Clurman took his place for the remaining rehearsals. As Chinoy reports, “Strasberg’s dominance as the Group’s director ended with Nelson’s attack, [which was] a devastating blow following his loss of authority in the conflict with Stella.”59 By 1934, Group actors had not only challenged Strasberg’s authority as an acting teacher and a director; they had also challenged his authority as an artistic director able to determine the plays that would or would not be moved into production by the Group Theatre. Working without support or approval from the Group directors, the actors set about rehearsing a one-act play, Waiting for Lefty, written by Clifford Odets, who co-directed with Sanford Meisner. While Odets’ play is “the most famous theatrical realization of 1930s radicalism,” it is also worth noting that the script left room for the actors to improvise, and that throughout the rehearsal process they were relaxed and happy to be “working on their own without the

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intimidating presence of Strasberg.”60 The show provided an opportunity for the actors to exercise their creativity and ability to build characterizations; as directors, Odets and Meisner took the limited role of making it possible for the actors to work together effectively to create a coherent and vivid stage picture. Waiting for Lefty premiered on January 6, 1934, at the Civic Repertory Theatre “at an evening organized by the League of Workers Theatres”; at the play’s conclusion, the 1,400-member audience offered “applause so thunderous the cast was kept onstage for forty-five minutes to receive the crowd’s inflamed tribute.”61 The play was subsequently staged at a series of other benefits. Due to audience responses to Waiting for Lefty and pressure from the actors (led by Stella and Luther Adler), Clurman finally agreed to stage Odets’ Awake and Sing!—the production opened on Broadway in February 1935 and ran until July, with 184 shows. Awake and Sing! would become known as “the signature play of the Group Theatre.”62 The momentum created by the initial production of Waiting for Lefty also led to an official Group Theatre offering, with Waiting for Lefty paired with another one-act by Odets entitled Till the Day I Die. After the program featuring Odets’ two short plays opened in March 1935, it had a substantial run of 144 performances. The commercial and critical success of Awake and Sing!, along with the audience support for Odets’ one-acts, “revived the spirits and fortunes of the Group.”63 Moreover, as Chinoy points out, with “the Broadway triumph of radical plays by their own playwright, the Group members had made it in show business at the same time that they were no longer outsiders in the now widely recognized left theater.”64 During the summer of 1935, the actors increased their participation in day-to-day management of Group activities, and the three directors ostensibly withdrew. However, the power to determine the 1935–1936 season remained with directors. So, when their choices led to unsuccessful shows (Weep for the Virgins and The Case of Clyde Griffiths closed after a few shows, and Odets’ Paradise Lost had a modest run of seventy-three performances), the actors again found themselves with inadequate “opportunities to act [and this] continued to demoralize the company.”65 During the summer of 1936, Clurman became the managing director, with Strasberg and Crawford relinquishing their positions as officers, and there was a newly elected Actors’ Committee consisting of Stella Adler, Roman Bohnen, Morris Carnovsky, and Elia Kazan. Still opposed to substantive

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change, the directors kept control of season selection, and so the 1936– 1937 season opened with a Kurt Weill musical, Johnny Johnson, directed by Strasberg. As with Gold Eagle Guy and The Case of Clyde Griffiths, this show lacked “the emotional complexity, realism of detail, and improvisational vibrancy” of the productions Strasberg had directed in the early 1930s.66 When Johnny Johnson closed after sixty-eight performances, the Actors’ Committee produced a report that assessed ongoing problems and offered recommendations, including the need for transparency and change concerning the legal aspects of the Group Theatre. Chinoy observes that by touching on this “outlawed subject,” and by being candid about the strengths and weakness of the three directors, the December 1936 report prepared by Stella Adler, Roman Bohnen, Morris Carnovsky, and Elia Kazan exposed “the pressures and frustrations that had been mounting over the years.”67 The report precipitated a reorganization so substantial that, in many respects, the Group ended in the winter of 1936, not the winter of 1941. Clurman had initially suggested that the three directors respond by resigning.68 Strasberg and Crawford submitted their letters of resignation in March 1937, but Clurman decided to participate in a reconstituted Group. In a letter written on April 12, 1937, Bohnen tells his brother: “There will be a season next fall … we have had an inner reorganization and Clurman, Kazan, Luther Adler and I will be the New Group Inc.”69 The 1937–1938 season opened with Golden Boy, a play written by Clifford Odets, directed by Harold Clurman, and featuring Luther Adler as violinist turned boxer Joe Bonaparte, rising Hollywood star Frances Farmer as his love interest Lorna Moon, and Roman Bohnen as Tom Moody, Lorna’s boyfriend and Joe’s manager; the cast included Group members Phoebe Brand, Morris Carnovsky, Lee J. Cobb, Jules Garfield, Elia Kazan, Robert Lewis and Art Smith; Sanford Meisner was assistant director. The structure of the reconfigured Group remained stable during the Broadway and touring productions of the show; Bohnen’s papers include a program from the Chicago run of Golden Boy that opened in September 1938; it lists the Group staff as: Harold Clurman—director, Kermit Bloomgarden—general manager, and Council to the Director— Luther Adler, Roman Bohnen, Morris Carnovsky, Elia Kazan, and Clifford Odets (Fig. 6.2).70 The reconstituted Group recognized the value of maintaining its brand identity. Describing the “handsomely outfitted ladies and gentlemen”

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Fig. 6.2 Frances Farmer and Roman Bohnen in Odets’ Golden Boy (1938). With young film star Frances Farmer in the cast, Golden Boy became the New Group’s most successful production

attending the opening night of Golden Boy, Clurman notes that the Group had become “almost fashionable.”71 The production’s success, on Broadway from November 1937 to June 1938, also provided the basis for a development that warrants attention when considering the lost chapter of American acting, for this version of the Group acted on a previously discounted idea to make actor training a personally and economically enriching component of Group activities. Robert Lewis took charge of a Group Theatre School, which for one season (ten weeks) offered courses

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in acting, fencing, movement, and speech; this Modern (rather than Method) acting emphasis would underlie the ideas shared by the actors who “continued to teach in theaters, schools, and colleges in and around New York City: Bobby Lewis at Sarah Lawrence College, Sandy Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse, and Stella Adler at Erwin Piscator’s Dramatic Workshop at the New School for Social Research.”72 The new incarnation of the Group also had a much closer connection with Hollywood. In previous years, Group productions had sometimes depended on funding from studios or people connected to Hollywood. For instance, the financial package to mount Men in White in 1933 included money from Doris Warner, a member of the family that ran Warner Bros., and profits from the run may have included a percentage of the rights MGM paid to adapt Sidney Kingsley’s play.73 In fall 1935, Warner Bros. financed the production of Weep for the Virgins and MGM contributed funding to mount Paradise Lost.74 Such arrangements were not unusual; as Wendy Smith explains, “25 percent of the new plays on Broadway in the 1935–1936 season … had been financed with movie money.”75 What distinguished the New Group Inc. was its interest in casting “movie stars to attract an audience.”76 Frances Farmer was a suitable choice for the Group production of Golden Boy; along with the visibility created by her dual role in Come and Get It (Hawks 1936), she was keenly interested in the Group because she had studied with Sophie Rosenstein, who had encouraged Farmer to follow an acting career and arranged for her visit to the Moscow Art Theatre when she graduated from the University of Washington in 1935. Similarly, Eleanor Lynn, who was cast in the fall 1938 production of Rocket to the Moon by Clifford Odets, had appeared in a series of MGM shorts during the 1930s, but had started her career in theatre, appearing in summer stock and small Broadway roles, during which time she “studied the Stanislavsky system.”77 The addition of Farmer and Lynn to the Group Theatre is reflected in a photo taken in late 1938 or early 1939. In the back row, from left to right, the photo shows Art Smith, Walter Fried (company manager for The Gentle People), Sanford Meisner, Ruth Nelson, Lee J. Cobb, Leif Erickson (married to Frances Farmer), Roman Bohnen, Morris Carnovsky, Michael Gordon (a new member), and business manager Kermit Bloomgarden. A partial middle row, from left to right, shows Luther Adler, Phoebe Brand, and Harold Clurman leaning forward. The front, from left to right, shows Irwin Shaw (author of The Gentle People), Eleanor Lynn, Frances Farmer, Robert Lewis, and Elia Kazan seated (Fig. 6.3).

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Fig. 6.3 Publicity photo of the reconstituted Group Theatre in late 1938 or early 1939. An image of the New Group Theatre: some new faces present and some founding members visibly absent

The Group expanded its reliance on actors with Hollywood credentials for its next production, The Gentle People, which opened in January 1939. The show included Group regulars Roman Bohnen, Lee J. Cobb, and Elia Kazan, but it also featured three actors with Hollywood careers: Sylvia Sidney had recently starred in Dead End (Wyler 1937) with Humphrey Bogart and Joel McCrae, and You and Me (Lang 1938) with George Raft; Sam Jaffe had gained notice for his role as the High Lama in Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon; and Franchot Tone had rejoined the Group for the season, after receiving an Oscar nomination for his role in Mutiny on the Bounty, with Charles Laughton and Clark Gable. In 1939, the Group also considered additional connections with the studios; a piece by Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons shares the news that the Group Theatre was “looking for film material.”78 This venture did not reach fruition. The Group’s new reliance on Hollywood stars also failed to generate the

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commercial success required to sustain the company. Bringing Hollywood talent to New York did not provide solvency for the Group, but like so many others, its members found they could make a living and even garner critical acclaim by going to Los Angeles. For instance, after failing to be cast in the unproduced Walter Wanger film in 1937, Kazan directed the first of many films, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, in 1945. The declining fortunes of Broadway shows, touring companies, and stock companies reflected “a general increase in the cost of labor and a greater demand for entertainment.”79 As early as the 1910s, regional theatres had found it difficult to compete with the “low-priced, mass-produced entertainment” as movies became Americans’ everyday entertainment.80 By 1937, Hollywood still valued theatre as an audition site, but as noted by Sam Briskin, a vice president at RKO, the drop in stage productions was causing the “basic training schools for young players to crack.”81 As we will see, with Broadway “raided to the straining-point,” Hollywood turned to local venues such as the Pasadena Playhouse; studios established their own actor training programs, and would later send contract players to the Actors’ Lab in Hollywood.82 These programs were necessary once theatre, the traditional training ground, could no longer provide an ample supply of acting talent. Just as acting schools were established in the 1880s to offset the decline in stock companies, in the 1930s and 1940s, training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the Pasadena Playhouse, the Actors’ Lab, and studio drama schools became a way to offset the changes that made Hollywood, rather than Broadway, America’s primary performing arts venue.

NOTES 1. Jack Poggi, Theater in America: The Impact of Economic Forces, 1870–1967 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968), xvi. 2. Ibid., 29. 3. Ibid., 44. 4. Ibid., 30. 5. Ibid., 207, 107. 6. Ibid., 99–148. 7. Pat O’Brien, Interview February 2, 1975, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. 8. James H.  McTeague, Before Stanislavsky: American Professional Acting Schools and Acting Theory, 1875–1925 (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1993), xii.

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9. Ralph Bellamy, Interview May 18, 1977, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. 10. Vanessa Brown played “the Girl” in the Broadway production of The Seven Year Itch. She came to the USA with her parents, who were fleeing fascism. She worked in film in the 1940s and 1950s and on television from 1951 to 1990. 11. Phyllis Loughton Seaton, Interview July 22, 1979, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. 12. George Cukor, Interview 1966, Ralph Freud Collection, University of California, Los Angeles. 13. Bette Davis, Interview July 28, 1966, Ralph Freud Collection, University of California, Los Angeles. 14. Women’s pictures were a crucial component of studio-era Hollywood, which saw them as part of their commercial slate of Westerns, gangster films, war movies, and adventure films. Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Barbara Stanwyck were stars of the genre, which explored female protagonists’ experiences as lovers, mothers, and working women. These films have some connection with contemporary chick flicks, but the studio-era women’s pictures were often seen as legitimate drama by both studios and audiences. 15. Ethan Mordden, The American Theatre (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 135. 16. David A. Cook, A History of Narrative Film, 4th ed. (New York: Norton, 1996), 264. 17. Duncan Aikman, “Broadway Finds a Home in Hollywood,” New York Times, September 9, 1929. 18. “Casting Audible Pictures,” New York Times, June 9, 1929. 19. Otis Skinner, “Acting for the Sound Film,” New York Times, January 25, 1931. 20. Walter Prichard Eaton, “From Stage to Screen and Back,” New York Times, January 28, 1934. 21. Sheridan Morley, Tales from the Hollywood Raj: The British, the Movies and Tinseltown (New York: Viking Press, 1983), 80. 22. Wendy Smith, Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931– 1940 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 227–228. 23. Helen Krich Chinoy, The Group Theatre: Passion, Politics, and Performance in the Depression Era, eds. Don B. Wilmeth and Milly S. Barranger (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 145; see Smith, Real Life Drama, 247, 266. 24. Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 240. 25. Smith, Real Life Drama, 297. 26. Ibid., 297–300.

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27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

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Ibid., 305. Ibid., 334. Ibid., 333. Ibid., 404–405. Poggi, Theater in America, 84. Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 222. Ibid. Ibid., 81; see 173. Roman Bohnen, fall 1932 letter, Box 1, folder 9, Roman Bohnen Papers, 1918–1976, Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; Bohnen, February 1933 letter, Box 1, folder 10, Roman Bohnen Papers. Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 221. Ibid., 41. Ibid., 220. Ibid. See Smith, Real Life Drama, 30–31; see Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 24–28. Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 59. Ibid. Ibid., 223. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 228. Ibid., 174. Ibid., 227. Ibid., 228. Ibid., 102. Ibid. Ibid., 103. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 107. Bohnen, summer 1934 letter, Box 1, folder 11, Roman Bohnen Papers. Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 110. Ibid., 117. Ibid., 118. Ibid., 179. Smith, Real Life Drama, 197, 198. Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 84; see 232. Ibid., 118. Ibid., 182; see 167–183.

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65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.

Ibid., 233. Ibid., 114. Ibid., 239. Ibid., 240. Bohnen, April 12, 1937 letter, Box 1, folder 14, Roman Bohnen Papers. Golden Boy program, September 1938, Box 8, Roman Bohnen Papers. Harold Clurman, The Fervent Years: The Story of the Group Theatre and the Thirties (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 210. Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 152. Ibid., 227. Smith, Real Life Drama, 234. Ibid., 251. Ibid., 310. Ibid., 344. Louella Parsons, 1939 column, Box 7, Roman Bohnen Papers. Poggi, Theater in America, 84. Ibid. Sam Briskin, “Training Talent for the Movies,” Literary Digest (January 30, 1937): 23. Ibid.

PART III

The Creative Labor of Modern Acting

CHAPTER 7

The American Academy of Dramatic Arts

The American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which began as the Lyceum School founded in 1884 by theatrical innovator Steele MacKaye and elocution professor Franklin Sargent, arose alongside the wave of activity that led to the creation of landmark institutions such as the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (1861), the Moscow Art Theatre (1898), and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London (1904). Sargent would lead the Academy from 1885 until his death in 1923, after which Charles Jehlinger, who had graduated from the Academy in 1886 and returned as an instructor in 1898, took over and served as its director until his death in 1952. The Academy was first housed in New York’s Lyceum Theatre; in 1896, the institution moved to Carnegie Hall, and in 1963 relocated to its current home on Madison Avenue; the Academy established a West Coast branch in 1974, now on La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles. It is not surprising that the Academy was known as “the cradle to the stars” in the 1930s and 1940s; it provided training for Spencer Tracy, Kirk Douglas, Edward G. Robinson, Grace Kelly, and Lauren Bacall, who remain on the American Film Institute’s register of “50 Greatest American Screen Legends.”1 After the studio era, the Academy has figured into the careers of various prominent actors. Noting the year they completed their study, Academy actors include: Anne Bancroft (1950), John Cassavetes (1950), Gena Rowlands (1952), Robert Redford (1959), M. Emmet Walsh

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 C. Baron, Modern Acting, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-40655-2_7

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(1961), Dennis Haysbert (1977), Carrie-Anne Moss (1988), Paul Rudd (1991), Anne Hathaway (1993), Jessica Chastain (1998), and Luke Grimes (2004).2

FROM THE ACADEMY TO BROADWAY AND THEN HOLLYWOOD In the 1910s, the Academy provided an artistic home for a number of actors who would go on to have significant careers in theatre and/or film. Clare Eames (1918) quickly became one of the leading actors in 1920s American theatre, but her brilliant career was cut short when she died in 1930 at the age of thirty-six. Other graduates such as William Powell (1913), Edward G. Robinson (1913), Joseph Schildkraut (1913), Ruth Gordon (1914) and Frank Morgan (1914) enjoyed careers of remarkable longevity. Robinson was one of the first actors to move from the Academy to Broadway to Hollywood. He made his stage debut in 1913, and after serving in World War I was often in productions staged by Arthur Hopkins or the Theatre Guild (Fig. 7.1). Robinson appeared on Broadway from 1915 to 1930 in a commendable series of performances that included “the role of The Director in Sven Lange’s Samson and Delilah, which brought the great Yiddish Art Theatre actor, Jacob Ben-Ami, to Broadway for the first time.”3 Robinson’s first starring role as the gangster in The Racket (1927), a melodrama by Bartlett Cormack, demonstrated his ability to transform the sensational material into modern drama. Noting the critical acclaim Robinson received for The Racket, which had a commercially successful 119-performance run, biographer James Parish calls attention to the play’s review in Theatre Magazine, which described his performance as “a masterly creation of character.”4 The subsequent commercial and critical success of Robinson’s starring role in the gangster movie Little Caesar led him to work exclusively in Hollywood until the mid-1950s, when he was gray-listed for being a New Deal liberal. Robinson’s varied career would include work in film from 1916 to 1973 and on television from 1955 to 1971; he received a Tony nomination for his leading role in Middle of the Night (1956) and a posthumous Honorary Oscar. Reflecting his training at the Academy, Robinson’s interviews highlight the crucial importance of careful script analysis. He explains: “It is impossible to portray the reactions of a character you are creating in the movies or

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Fig. 7.1 A 1927 Theatre Guild production of The Brothers Karamazov. (left to right) George Gaul, Alfred Lunt, Morris Carnovsky, and Edward G. Robinson

on the stage unless you are thoroughly familiar with his mental and emotional reflexes, and have determined in your own mind what his reactions will be to any given circumstance.”5 Discussing his preparation for playing the fight promoter in Kid Galahad (Curtiz 1937), Robinson explains: I reconstructed his life … from the cradle to that big moment in his boxer’s dressing room at Madison Square Garden. I knew all his doubts and complexes, his strength and his weaknesses, his passions and his powers. I knew he was a fellow of terrible, quick temper, kept in control only by the self-discipline which enabled him to rise to the top of his own peculiar profession.6

While Robinson had a substantial Broadway career before moving to Hollywood, his fellow Academy graduate William Powell, who became known for starring with Myrna Loy in the Thin Man films (1934–1947),

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first “went through the subsequent familiar periods of stage, vaudeville, joblessness, touring companies … before finally being ‘discovered’ with the help of a good Broadway role” in 1922.7 Despite the initial commercial challenges in his career, Powell emphasizes the value of the training he gained at the Academy: I have never gone into a picture without first studying my characterization from all angles. I make a study of the fellow’s life and try to learn everything about him, including the conditions under which he came into this world, his parentage, his environment, his social status, and the things in which he is interested. Then I attempt to get his mental attitude as much as possible.8

A number of actors who studied at the Academy in the 1920s would have careers on Broadway and later Hollywood. They include: Thelma Ritter (1922), Spencer Tracy (1923), Pat O’Brien (1923), Sam Levene (1927), Rosalind Russell (1929), Claire Trevor (1929), and Agnes Moorehead (1929). Tracy quickly found work on Broadway, and his performance as Killer Mears in The Last Mile (1930) led director John Ford to cast him in the film Up the River (1930). Sam Levene, known for his Broadway comedies and noir films of the 1940s, would have a career that paralleled Robinson, Powell, and Tracy, for he also went from Broadway and then to Hollywood. In Levene’s case, his role in the Broadway comedy Three Men on a Horse (1935–1937) led to his leading role in the 1936 film directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Levene’s career would include work on Broadway from 1927 to 1980, in film from 1936 to 1979, and on television from 1949 to 1977. The career path of Academy graduate Thelma Ritter was rather different. After work in stock, radio, and on Broadway, she took time from acting to raise her children, then moved into film after her longtime friend, Hollywood drama coach Phyllis Loughton, suggested Ritter for a part in Miracle on 34th Street (1947) directed by Loughton’s husband, George Seaton. Ritter’s casting scenario points to the professional network that Academy graduates entered; it also reveals the more circuitous careers of women, especially those who did not fit the ingénue image—for example, Agnes Moorehead, best known as Endora in the TV show Bewitched (1964–1972), had worked in radio, earned a Master’s degree in English and public speaking at the University of Wisconsin, and taught English and drama at a public school in Wisconsin for five years before entering the Academy. After graduating from Jehlinger’s program, she continued

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to work in radio; her multi-venue experience prompted Orson Welles to ask her to join the Mercury Players in 1939; she went to Hollywood as a member of the cast of Citizen Kane (Welles 1941). Rosalind Russell also graduated from the Academy in 1929, but she followed a career path that approximated that of her male colleagues. After leaving the Academy, Russell found work in stock companies and in minor parts in Broadway shows before being cast in a supporting role in Evelyn Prentice (Howard 1934), a Hollywood film starring Academy graduate William Powell. The following year, Russell appeared in several films, including Rendezvous (Howard 1935), in which she had a leading role opposite Powell. Russell eventually became known for costarring with Cary Grant in His Girl Friday (Hawks 1940) and for her flamboyant leading role in the Broadway production of Auntie Mame (1956–1958) and the 1958 Hollywood adaptation directed by Morton DaCosta. In the 1930s, the Academy provided the starting point for the careers of TV star Robert Cummings (1932), and film actors Hume Cronyn (1934), Betty Fields (1934), and Jennifer Jones (1939). Cummings would become known for his role as host of the Bob Cummings Show (1955– 1959). Hume Cronyn, recognized by some audiences for his seniorcitizen roles in Cocoon (Howard 1985) and Cocoon: The Return (Petrie 1988), secured his first Broadway role in 1934. His career on Broadway continued until 1986; he and his wife Jessica Tandy were honored by a 1994 Lifetime Achievement Tony award. Cronyn gained notice for his role in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and he was in films until 1996 and on television until 2004. In the 1940s, the Academy was a starting point in the careers of Kirk Douglas (1941), Lauren Bacall (1942), Jason Robards, Jr. (1947), Colleen Dewhurst (1947), and Grace Kelly (1949). Telescoping developments in the 1940s by looking at the career of Kirk Douglas, one might note that after minor roles in stock and on Broadway, he enlisted in the navy in 1941 and served until he received a medical discharge in 1944. He returned to minor roles on Broadway, and was cast in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Milestone 1946) after Bacall encouraged Warner Bros. producer Hal Wallis to meet with Douglas during a talent scouting trip to New York. Robards would go on to receive a Tony award in 1959 and Oscars in 1976 and 1977; Colleen Dewhurst’s work was acknowledged by a 1961 Tony award. The Academy offered a starting point for many actors who went on to have visible careers in theatre, film, and television (Fig. 7.2).9

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Fig. 7.2 Kirk Douglas in a student production at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After graduating in 1941, Douglas secured a few small parts with Katharine Cornell’s theatre company

TRAINING IN MODERN ACTING AT THE ACADEMY Delsarte’s work had provided the initial basis for instruction at the Academy. Yet once Jehlinger returned as an instructor in 1898, “the basic teaching concept of the school [moved] from mechanical Delsartean diagrams to subjective naturalism,” and its approach was later seen as “strikingly similar to Stanislavski’s.”10 Discussing the shift at the Academy, theatre critic John Allen observes: Just what happened to Charles Jehlinger between the time in 1884 when he [began as a student at the Academy] and when he joined the faculty of the school is not clear. What is clear is the fact that when he did begin to teach he reversed completely the Delsartian approach and developed an ‘inner’ system which anticipated the theories of Stanislavsky in America by many years.11

Parallels between early work at the Academy and the Moscow Art Theatre are not surprising; as discussed in Chap. 5, there are connections between Stanislavsky’s ideas and those of Charles Emerson and Samuel Curry, who led two of the other acting programs established in the USA in the 1880s.

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In addition, as the Academy’s list of recommended reading (to be discussed in a moment) suggests, ideas about acting were being circulated in books by actors, directors, playwrights, designers, and critics starting in the 1880s and continuing through the 1920s. Even early on, Academy faculty ensured that students were exposed to the ideas of leading acting teachers. In the commencement speech for the 1915 graduating class, acclaimed British writer-director Harley Granville-Barker outlined some insights he had gained during a recent trip to the Moscow Art Theatre. Describing one, he explained that from Stanislavsky’s perspective: to study a play, and to study a part, and not merely learn it mechanically you should do this: You should first study the character; then when you come to the actual staging of the thing and you want to learn to work in with the other people you should set up in your mind certain milestones [for] that character and that part … he said if you will do that … you will find that your performance is really spontaneous.12

The verbatim notes that Eleanor Cody Gould transcribed in 1918 during her first year as a student at the Academy reveal common ground between Stanislavsky’s and Jehlinger’s early views about acting. Echoing Stanislavsky’s interest in actors “who understand the problems that face men and women in the world,” Jehlinger told the students in his rehearsal class: “There is no limit to the art of acting. You need the understanding of all human nature, the sense of beauty of an artist and poet, the rhythm of the dancer and musician, and mentality of a philosopher and scientist.”13 Taking a position shared by Stanislavsky about an actor’s relationship to a character, Jehlinger explained that the “secret of the whole thing is this: Yield to the character and let it take control of affairs”—and remember that the “emotion will handle itself if you just give in.”14 He insisted that students “develop a sensitive response to the character” and never “fail to make the transition from self to character.”15 Articulating ideas central to Stanislavsky and the teachers who circulated Modern acting principles in the 1930s and 1940s, Jehlinger told students in the 1918 rehearsal class: “Stop and ask yourself. ‘What would happen here in real life? I would do a thing this way – but how am I different from the character I am portraying? So – how would the character react to this?’”16 Gould’s notes from her 1919 rehearsal class with Jehlinger reveal that the value he placed on script analysis anticipates the view of subsequent

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Modern acting teachers. Noting that the “minute you go contrary to the author’s instructions, you defeat yourself,” Jehlinger told his students: “Your manuscript is a gold mine of information. Dig into it.”17 He saw careful script analysis as the work that enabled an actor to establish key factors, such as the age of the character, “his nationality, profession, social standing, temperament; his physical, emotional and mental qualities.”18 In Jehlinger’s view, commitment to the character as written is what allowed actors to avoid imitation and thus finally create characters with “individuality.”19 With Jehlinger’s permission, Gould returned to the Academy starting in 1934 to transcribe additional material from his rehearsal classes. Her notes from 1950 reveal that Jehlinger maintained his emphasis on script analysis as the basis for characterization. As he told these students: unless you study your text, “you cannot act. Preliminary study is seeking to learn the facts about your character. You have to go to the author to get these … Creating a character is like building a house. You have to accumulate the material with which to build it.”20 He also found ways to describe the pragmatic reasons for making individual preparation leading to full embodiment of character a priority. Noting that the “minute you are a character you are at ease as an actor,” Jehlinger explained: “Nature abhors a vacuum. If the character is not there, thoughts of stage business and cues rush in.”21 Jehlinger’s modern vision of acting shaped the Academy’s training program, which had forty-four graduates in 1931 and seventy in 1938.22 The school offered a two-year program; it screened students entering the first year and required actors to audition for the second year of training. In students’ initial year, they took classes in voice, movement, and makeup. In some exercises designed to enhance relaxation, they explored breathing techniques. Students also took fencing classes to improve their timing, balance, and body control. This work was designed to increase their physical dexterity, ability to express ideas in action, and capacity to embody a range of characters in their many states of mind. If students were accepted into the second-year program, they performed a different three-act play each week.23 In the 1930s and 1940s, students’ first encounter with Jehlinger would occur when they presented their audition-examination plays at the end of their year. Courses in improvisation and other subjects were taught by a faculty that included Edward Goodman, Arthur Hughes, Philip Loeb, and Aristide D’Angelo.24 Goodman was a co-founder of the Washington

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Square Players (1914–1918), which became the Theatre Guild; his career included work as a director for the Federal Theatre Project (1935–1939), and he wrote plays, short stories, and Make Believe: The Art of Acting (1956). Arthur Hughes, an actor on Broadway from 1923 to 1968, was a member of The Stagers, a theatre company that mounted productions between 1925 and 1927, many of them directed by Edward Goodman. Philip Loeb appeared in Theatre Guild productions, and in 1948 co-starred with Gertrude Berg in Molly and Me; the play, based on Berg’s radio program, led to the early CBS television show The Goldbergs (1949– 1957) starring Berg and Loeb, who was forced to resign in 1950 after his name appeared in Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television. Loeb, cast in only two shows during the next five years, committed suicide in 1955. D’Angelo, who graduated from Cornell University in 1923, was acquainted with Group Theatre members (his first wife, Evelyn, offered tutoring in voice and speech during the Group’s summer retreat in 1933); throughout D’Angelo’s teaching career, which lasted into the 1950s, he would highlight imagination as the key to performance, for he found personal substitutions to be something that “slowed down rather than freed” actors’ efforts to embody living characters.25 D’Angelo’s The Actor Creates sheds light on the approach to acting shared with Academy students in the 1930s and 1940s, and is seen by Academy graduates as “a reliable and valid picture of Jehlinger’s ideas.”26 The Actor Creates might be an allusion to translator Elizabeth Hapgood’s title for the book known to Americans as Stanislavsky’s An Actor Prepares; D’Angelo’s title certainly conveys his central premise—namely, that “acting is a creative art”—for while he argues that an actor’s ideas about a character “must have their roots firmly imbedded in the play,” he sees acting as “that process whereby the actor conceives the character and reveals him before the audience. Conception and revelation—the whole art can be summed up in those two words.”27 D’Angelo’s bibliography/reading recommendations point to the body of knowledge Academy teachers shared with students in the 1930s and 1940s. The list of twenty-five volumes begins with Aristotle’s On the Art of Poetry and several other books that were first published prior to 1900: William Archer’s Masks or Faces?; Constant Coquelin’s The Actor and His Art; Denis Diderot’s The Paradox of Acting; Henry Irving’s The Drama; George Henry Lewes’ On Actors and the Art of Acting; and François Joseph Talma’s Reflexions (sic) on the Actor’s Art. D’Angelo’s list includes: Brander Matthew’s On Acting (1914), William Gillette’s The Illusion of

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the First Time in Acting (1915); Luigi Pirandello’s play Six Characters in Search of a Author (1921); Joseph Jefferson’s autobiography (1923); The Art of Acting (1926), a volume with excerpts of writing by Constant Coquelin, Henry Irving, and Dion Boucicault; John Dolman’s The Art of Play Production (1928); and George Bernard Shaw’s The Art of Rehearsal (1928). The other books on D’Angelo’s list are mentioned or discussed at length in my study, and they are: Edward Gordon Craig’s On the Art of the Theatre (1911); Stanislavsky’s My Life in Art (1924) and An Actor Prepares (1936); A. M. Drummond’s A Manual of Play Production (1932); Eva Alberti’s A Handbook of Acting Based on the New Pantomime (1933); Richard Boleslavsky’s Acting: The First Six Lessons (1933); Modern Acting: A Manual (1936) by Sophie Rosenstein, Larrae A. Haydon, and Wilbur Sparrow; Our Theatre Today (1936), edited by Herschel L.  Bricker; Players at Work: Acting According to the Actors (1937), edited by Eustis Morton; and two books used at the Pasadena Playhouse: Problems of the Actor (1938) by Louis Calvert and General Principles of Play Direction (1936) by Gilmor Brown and Alice Garwood. The structure of The Actor Creates communicates its focus on acting as the creation and revelation of character: it opens with a substantial section on building characters through script analysis, private improvisation, and various stages of rehearsal; its second section addresses key questions about voice, movement, relaxation, concentration, and feeling; and it concludes with a summary that retraces the process of creating characters and performances. Similarly, D’Angelo notes that an actor must “make his body strong and healthy, his voice clear and resonant, and his speech incisive and articulate,” but he often revisits the idea that voice and speech “must serve the character and not the actor.”28 Script analysis should include improvisation to give “form and significance to the character’s background”—but this and all other preparation must be character-centered, for as D’Angelo explains: “Insofar as the actor identifies himself with the past, present, and imaginative life of the character and is sensitized toward everything that falls within the aura of his concentration on stage, the quality of his voice [and movements] will bear the stamp of truth.”29 In the view of Academy faculty, creating and revealing characters is the focus of an actor’s work, because characters and their conflicting desires are the driving force of modern drama. Noting that a character “is rarely alone,” D’Angelo observes that a character’s contact with other characters, objects, or his memory of experiences … creates desires [and conflict] follows in the fulfillment of desires.”30 Moreover, as D’Angelo explains: “Characters come to life only in relation to one another”—so fully embodied

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characterization depends on analysis of character relationships and a sensitivity to other performers, not substitutions that trigger actors’ emotion.31 Jehlinger and other Academy faculty saw character action and reaction as so fundamental to acting that one Jehlinger axiom appears throughout Academy-related documents. In Gould’s notes from 1951, it is phrased: “Be a slave to your simple law – ‘Continue and increase thought, theme and mood until something happens to change it.’”32 In the introduction to Gould’s notes, Frances Fuller (Academy president and former Jehlinger student) lists the maxim as: “never change thought, theme or mood until something occurs to cause that change.”33 D’Angelo frames it by saying: when an actor “is fully sensitized in character and toward situation he will continue, never break, thought, theme, and mood until something occurs to make him do so.”34 He explains that thought involves a character’s objectives; theme is reflected by the intention-laden actions a character performs to achieve his/her goals; mood concerns feelings tied to those plans. For instance, one character wants to gain another’s respect, but is anxious about succeeding, so starts by being deferential (arriving early for a meeting); if the other character’s behavior is welcoming, the first character’s mood might become relaxed and the theme/action might take the more direct form of sharing ideas or asking thoughtful questions. Capturing Jehlinger’s long-standing position, D’Angelo explains that a performance will reflect the ongoing interaction between characters only if “the character is the master and the actor an obedient servant.”35 Thus, rather than encourage actors to make their personal emotion expressive in performance, D’Angelo explains that an “actor’s constant subconscious intrusion of self” is a problem, because it prevents a performer from entering into and staying in character.36 As he points out, actors often “throw their own personal feelings upon the character to a point where the character is never fully or even partially realized,” while others “resort to ‘pumping’ or forcing the feelings.”37 D’Angelo proposes that such performances are no better than ones by actors who “rely upon an external technical pattern of movement and voice as a substitute for true, genuine, artistic expression.”38 To shed light on the “artistic expression” prized by Jehlinger and other Academy faculty, D’Angelo first notes that an actor’s emotion during performance has been theatre practitioners’ “most hotly debated” subject.39 After outlining a concise history of the debates, D’Angelo introduces the Academy position by proposing that a “clear distinction should be made between feeling in life and feeling in the theatre”: artistic feeling “springs from the imagination [while in general] life feeling springs from direct contact with life.”40 Marking the distinction, he observes that “the realization of character is a

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flesh and blood embodiment of an imaginative being [and so] the accompanying feeling must differ from that feeling derived from [one’s] life contact with people and things.”41 Despite the distinction, artistic feeling is “real,” it is crucial to modern performance, and it happens only “when the actor is in complete, imaginative rapport with the character.”42 D’Angelo explains that in a modern, authentic, ensemble performance, artistic feeling is what “stirs the actor to physical and vocal expression”; when “identification of actor and character is complete, he reveals the character through body and voice.”43

REFLECTIONS ON JEHLINGER’S “METHOD” AND TEACHING STYLE In a 1953 article on the Academy’s contributions to American acting, Theatre Guild co-founder Lawrence Langer argues that “the Jehlinger Method” was largely responsible for the many theatre, film, radio, and television actors able to fill “naturalistic, emotional roles” and play both dramatic and comedic parts.44 In a brief outline of “the Jehlinger Method,” Langer notes that it not only included courses in voice, speech, carriage, fencing, and dancing, “more than any teacher [Jehlinger] stressed the exercise of the imagination, and his teaching method, above all, was aimed at spontaneity of action and reaction on the part of the actor.”45 To build a role, an actor would recreate “the past life of the character to the extent that this will simplify and clarify, but not complicate, the acting of the role”; to be alive in performance, an actor would listen with such concentration that all speech and action emerged from the thoughts exchanged between the characters.46 Bernard Kates, a student at the Academy and an actor who appeared on Broadway from 1949 to 1966 and on television from 1949 to 1999, confirms Langer’s characterization of “the Jehlinger Method,” which Kates describes as “Jehlinger’s viewpoint,” and one “not basically different from Stanislavski’s viewpoint.”47 Illustrating the connection, Kates explains: “You never pleased Jehlinger until you were on the track to being the total character. Doing what the character would be doing in a specific situation under specific circumstances and surroundings.”48 Explaining that a summary could never capture Jehlinger’s complex “beliefs concerning acting and the artist,” Kates highlights a few ideas by saying that in Jehlinger’s view: No creation is possible without concentration. No concentration is possible without preparation. You must find out who and what your character is; live with the character’s attitudes to others in the play; with the character’s habits of thinking and living. The great lesson: to eliminate self; to serve the

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character freely and gladly. Then relax to it. Emotion will play itself … Give the character freedom to be what he is and to do what he wants to do … In creating the character, you must remember that the character always comes from some place, from doing something, to someplace, to do something.49

Kates also discusses Jehlinger’s style of teaching, a topic featured in so many student anecdotes that even outsiders knew that Jehlinger was seen not only as “the artistic conscience” of its many graduates but also “the guiding thunder” of the Academy during his half-century of leadership (Fig. 7.3).50 Kates sees Jehlinger’s approach as an “antidote against the artificiality

Fig. 7.3 Charles Jehlinger: feared and loved by young actors at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts for fifty years

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of theatre”; he recalls that Jehlinger might “pounce” on any aspect of a student’s performance, but argues that Jehlinger was a “great teacher” because he “inspired his students with the feeling that what they were learning  – if faithfully applied  – would lead them to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow – artistic satisfaction and fulfillment.”51 In Hume Cronyn’s autobiography, the actor discusses his period of study at the Academy in the 1930s, recalling that Jehly (Jelly)—as students referred to him in conversation but never to his face—was “a sort of mythic figure,” and that trial “by Jehly was traumatic.”52 Cronyn remembers that Jehlinger “had an explosive energy and a total intolerance of fakery,” but that he made everyone better actors, because his critiques exposed students’ habit of “demonstrating (ultimate sin), not being.”53 Kirk Douglas, a student at the Academy from 1939 to 1941, points out that Jehlinger “worked in different ways with different students,” and that in his case, Jehlinger put an end to his easy time as a “darling of the [first-year] directors” by halting a second-year performance at Douglas’ initial entrance on stage.54 He recalls that after “a scolding from Jelly, you were never unprofessional again,” and that over the course of the second year he came to see that Jehlinger was “working against a certain glibness [he] had, a quick facility, a lack of depth.”55 Douglas remembers that Jehlinger would “make you work things out for yourself [and] just as you thought you were going crazy, you finally figured out that what he wanted was truthful behavior.”56 Jehlinger’s threatening tactics represent a departure from the supportive stance used by other Modern acting teachers—and a connection with Strasberg, another man of small stature. Yet Jehlinger’s views on acting and the vision of acting found in The Actor Creates by Academy faculty member Aristide D’Angelo make it clear that the Academy program was grounded in Modern rather than Method acting principles. The successful stage and screen careers of various Academy actors led many of the era’s aspiring students to study at the Academy: Hume Cronyn chose the Academy because Spencer Tracy, Edward G. Robinson, William Powell, and Rosalind Russell were among its graduates.57 Kirk Douglas wanted to attend because he had heard that “even the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art [in London] had been patterned after it.”58 Looking beyond the more visible actors, when one considers the hundreds who studied there during the 1930s and 1940s, it becomes clear that the Academy played a key role in circulating Modern acting principles in the American acting community.

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NOTES 1. Gerard Raymond, “125 Years and Counting: The American Academy of Dramatic Arts Celebrates a Special Anniversary,” Backstage (November 26/December 2, 2009): 6. The AFI’s list of “50 Greatest American Screen Legends” includes deceased actors and living performers whose first screen appearance was before 1951. 2. The Academy includes actors who studied for one or two years in its list of Academy actors. 3. James Robert Parish, The Cinema of Edward G. Robinson (New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1972), 17. 4. Qtd. in ibid., 19. 5. Qtd. in Doug Tomlinson, ed., Actors on Acting for the Screen (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994), 471–472. 6. Qtd. in ibid., 472. 7. Juliet Benita Colman, Ronald Colman: A Very Private Person (New York: William Morrow, 1975), 44. 8. William Powell, “Personal Quotes,” Internet Movie Database, accessed January 24, 2016, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001635/bio. 9. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Yale Drama School, the University of Washington, and the Goodman Memorial Theatre in Chicago had acting programs. In Los Angeles, acting courses were offered by: the Bliss Hayden School, the El Capitan College of Theatre, the Marta Oatman School, the Max Reinhardt Theatre Workshop, and the Neely Dixon Dramatic School. 10. Homer Dickens, “The American Academy of Dramatic Arts,” Films in Review (December 1959): 597, 598. 11. John Allen, “Seventy-Five Years of the American Academy,” New York Herald Tribune, December 6, 1959. 12. “Barker on Stanislofsky (sic),” New York Times, March 21, 1915. 13. Ibid.; Eleanor Cody Gould, “Jehlinger in Rehearsal: Notes Transcribed from Classes, 1918–1952,” 1968, American Academy of Dramatic Arts Papers, New York. Gould’s document does not have page numbers. 14. Gould, “Jehlinger in Rehearsal.” 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid.

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22. “Dramatic Arts School Graduates 44 Pupils,” New York Times, March 17, 1931; “Dramatic Art Class of 70 is Graduated,” New York Times, March 15, 1938. 23. Pageant Magazine, January 1946, “Actors and Actresses Training to 1959” clipping file, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, CA. 24. See Hume Cronyn, A Terrible Liar: A Memoir (New York: William Morrow, 1991), 95; see Kirk Douglas, The Ragman’s Son: An Autobiography (New York: Pocket Books, 1988), 65. 25. Lawrence Langer, “Students at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts Are Told: Mean More Than You Say,” Theatre Arts (July 1953): 29; see Helen Krich Chinoy, The Group Theatre: Passion, Politics, and Performance in the Depression Era (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 82; D’Angelo was later married to actor Mae Madison from 1935 to 1960. 26. Jim Kirkwood, “A Report on Charles Jehlinger: The Man, The Teacher: Seminar in Theories of Acting,” November 8, 1960, American Academy of Dramatic Arts Papers, New York. Kirkwood explains that in his view, and based on his conversations with other graduates, D’Angelo’s book provides the best view of Jehlinger’s ideas. The edition of D’Angelo’s book that is still available was published in 1941; its copyright date is 1939. 27. Aristide D’Angelo, The Actor Creates (New York: Samuel French, 1941), vii, 6, 4. 28. Ibid., 43. 29. Ibid., 11, 46. 30. Ibid., 14. 31. Ibid., 25. 32. Gould, “Jehlinger in Rehearsal.” 33. Ibid. 34. D’Angelo, The Actor Creates, 24. 35. Ibid., 23. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., 61. 38. Ibid., 61–62. 39. Ibid., 54. 40. Ibid., 56. 41. Ibid., 60. 42. Ibid., 59. 43. Ibid., 59, 60. 44. Langer, “Students at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts,” 28. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid., 29.

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47. Bernard Kates, Letter to Frances Fuller, May 1, 1956, American Academy of Dramatic Arts Papers, New York, 1. 48. Ibid., 5. 49. Ibid., 2. 50. Allen, “Seventy-Five Years of the American Academy.” 51. Kates, Letter to Frances Fuller, 2, 5, 4, 3. 52. Cronyn, A Terrible Liar, 95. 53. Ibid. 54. Douglas, The Ragman’s Son, 74, 65. 55. Ibid., 76. 56. Ibid. 57. Cronyn, A Terrible Liar, 90. 58. Douglas, The Ragman’s Son, 59.

CHAPTER 8

The Pasadena Playhouse

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Pasadena Playhouse was a showcase for emerging talent, and it became known as “a stepping stone to the movies.”1 Actors understood that affiliation with the Playhouse gave them valuable credentials. Agents, talent scouts, casting directors, and studio drama coaches recognized that the Playhouse was a source of trained actors. The path from the Playhouse to Hollywood began in the late 1920s. Randolph Scott, who starred in Westerns from the mid-1940s to his last appearance in Ride the High Country (Peckinpah 1962), was signed to a contract in 1929 after Paramount talent scouts saw him in a Playhouse production. For Robert Young, remembered for his leading roles in the TV shows Father Knows Best (1954–1960) and Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969–1976), training at the Playhouse in the late 1920s led to work with a touring company, where he was seen by MGM scouts and signed to a contract in 1931. Dana Andrews, known for his portrayals in Laura (Preminger 1942) and The Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler 1946), started at the Playhouse in 1936 with a minor role in Antony and Cleopatra. Later that year, Playhouse director Frank Fowler gave Andrews a leading role in Paths of Glory. Screen tests at MGM, Paramount, and Warner Bros. followed, but Andrews was not offered a contract. Yet Hollywood scouts continued to monitor his work, and after appearing in twenty more Playhouse shows, Andrews secured a contract with producer Samuel Goldwyn in 1938. His career would come to include work in film, television, radio, and theatre.

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For Robert Preston, known for the Broadway production of The Music Man (1957–1961) and the 1962 film adaptation, appearances in Playhouse productions led to a Paramount contract in 1938. After supporting roles in Hollywood films, Preston found notable success on Broadway, winning Tony awards in 1958 and 1967. Gig Young, who won an Oscar for his performance in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (Pollack 1969), was signed to a contract with Warner Bros. in 1940 after appearing in Playhouse productions; Young later married drama coach Sophie Rosenstein in 1950. Eleanor Parker, who received three Oscar nominations in the 1950s and is best known for playing the Baroness in The Sound of Music (Wise 1965), was signed by Warner Bros. in 1941 after training at the Playhouse. Before coming to Pasadena, she had worked at the Cleveland Playhouse and the Rice Summer Theatre in Massachusetts. Raymond Burr, known for his starring roles in Perry Mason (1957–1966), Ironside (1967–1975), and the Perry Mason TV movies (1983–1993), secured a Hollywood contract in 1946 after appearing in Playhouse productions for three years. The career of character actor Don DeFore, known for his supporting roles in The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952–1957) and Hazel (1961–1965), further exemplifies the professional network of which the Playhouse was a part. DeFore entered the Playhouse drama program in 1935. Composer Oscar Hammerstein was so impressed by Where Do We Go from Here?, a 1938 comedy featuring DeFore and other Playhouse actors, that he produced it on Broadway the same year. DeFore stayed in New York, and his supporting role in James Thurber and Elliott Nugent’s Broadway comedy The Male Animal (1940) led to a contract with Warner Bros.; DeFore was cast in Warner Bros. films starting in 1941, and he reprised his role in the studio’s version of The Male Animal (Nugent 1942). Lloyd Nolan’s career also shows how the Playhouse figured into actors’ livelihoods. Nolan started at the Playhouse in 1927, and after training there for two years secured a role on Broadway. Following appearances in a series of shows, including the successful Broadway production of One Sunday Night, Nolan secured a Paramount contract in 1935 and went on to roles in a series of Hollywood films, including war films such as Bataan (Garnett 1943). Like many of his peers, Nolan also had a career in television, appearing in a variety of programs from 1951 to 1985. He would also find success on Broadway, returning to theatre to take a lead-

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ing role in the acclaimed production of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (1954–1955). The Playhouse was a training ground for actors who became stars or featured players in the studio era. The dissertation by Playhouse alumnus Gail Shoup reveals that “for every ‘name’ credited to the school” there were many others employed because of their work at the Playhouse.2 In addition to offering case studies, it includes a 1940 survey, which showed that 42  % of the Playhouse’s graduates had found employment “in the theatre or related fields: 63 as actors, 24 as directors, 19 as technicians or designers, 18 in radio,” 21 as teachers, and 6 as playwrights.3 The number of successful graduates increased when the survey included people who participated in Playhouse productions but were not specifically enrolled in its School of Theatre.4 The Playhouse was a crossroads for executives in search of talent and actors in search of employment. The studios knew that regional and travelling companies had been the traditional training ground for actors and recognized that in the 1930s and 1940s, “there were few sources of trained talent, especially on the West Coast.”5 Thus, the Playhouse’s steady stream of shows offset the increasingly limited number of stock and touring company productions. The transition to sound made the Playhouse especially important; in this environment, it had “a product to offer and Hollywood studios were grateful, [essentially] competing with each other for the better graduates.”6 Supported by its patrons, the Playhouse took on the expense of developing talent, and it provided the studios with experienced actors who had demonstrated the ability to connect with audiences. The Playhouse put all actors through a rigorous course of instruction and then gave its seal of approval to a select few. Leading roles in Playhouse productions reflected the assessment of its directors and especially the appraisal of its founder and artistic director Gilmor Brown. Some Playhouse actors came to be known as “Gilmor’s boys” because they were regularly cast in the mainstage productions seen by studio executives. Robert Young, Dana Andrews, Robert Preston, Gig Young, and Raymond Burr were among Brown’s protégés. Victor Mature, whose leading role in Samson and Delilah (De Mille 1949) led him to be cast in a series of sword-and-sandal epics, was one of Gilmor’s boys; George Reeves, remembered for starring in The Adventures of Superman (1952–1958), was another.

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Yet Randolph Scott, Eleanor Parker, and Don DeFore benefitted from their time at the Playhouse without Brown’s sponsorship. Several other actors not mentored by Brown also secured Hollywood contracts. After appearing in Playhouse shows, William Holden was signed to a Hollywood contract in 1937; cast in the role played by Luther Adler in the Group Theatre’s production of Golden Boy, Holden went from the 1939 film to other leading roles in the 1940s and 1950s, including Sunset Boulevard. Barbara Rush was signed to a contract with Paramount in 1950 after talent scouts saw her in a Playhouse production; she appeared in Hollywood melodramas such as Bigger than Life (Ray 1956) and had a career in television from 1954 to 2007. Gloria Stuart received offers from Paramount and Universal in 1932 after scouts saw her in a Playhouse production; in the 1930s, Stuart had leading roles in a collection of films, including three directed by James Whale, and was active in the creation of the Screen Actors Guild. In the late 1940s, she left Hollywood for a career in art, but returned to acting in the 1970s, a move that included her portrayal of Rose in the opening and closing scenes of Titanic (Cameron 1997). The Playhouse was comparable to resident theatres such as the Dallas Community Theatre and the Goodman Memorial Theatre in Chicago. However, its prolific output of high-quality productions and its proximity to Hollywood made it a particularly significant contributor to developments in the 1930s and 1940s. The Playhouse provided a venue for the studios to test script material and for talent scouts to find writing and acting talent that could be brought into the studio system. The transition to sound led actors to audition for Playhouse productions in an effort to prove their suitability for sound films. It also gave actors who had signed Hollywood contracts the opportunity to continue working in theatre. As a crossroads linking film and theatre, the Playhouse played a key role in circulating Modern acting principles.

THE STATE THEATRE OF CALIFORNIA In 1916, actor-director Gilmor Brown established an acting company at the Savoy Theatre in Pasadena. Josephine Dillon, who would go on to have a career as a Modern acting teacher, was a leading actor in the company. In 1917, Brown added local volunteers to the company, which was now named the Community Players. This group staged a few one-acts

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at the Pasadena Shakespeare Club, but soon moved back to the Savoy Theatre, which they renamed the Pasadena Community Playhouse. The community theatre idea caught on quickly, for although Pasadena was decidedly conservative, it also had a record of civic activity and a collection of wealthy and interested patrons. Brown effectively promoted the venture, and he created a rapport with the community by contributing to numerous municipal events, which included his presentations on Russian, European, and American theatre for lecture programs arranged by Pasadena patron Marguerite Bowlby. In 1925, the Pasadena Community Players moved to the location that would be the eventual home of the Pasadena Playhouse. In 1936, generous sponsorship from local patrons funded the construction of an 800-seat mainstage theatre and a six-story complex that housed three smaller theatres, administrative offices, classrooms, gyms, a wardrobe department valued at $35,000 in the 1930s, and facilities for radio and television productions; the Playhouse set up its first television studio in 1935. The Pasadena Playhouse was named the official State Theatre of California in 1937. That same year, it became the first theatre in America to stage all thirty-seven of Shakespeare’s plays. The Playhouse sometimes mounted more than sixty plays a year, staging almost 2,600 productions and hundreds of world premieres in the first forty years of its existence. The theatre maintained its reputation as a valuable part of the community by presenting classics, popular favorites, and experimental work. In 1925, Brown established the Playbox, one of the nation’s first intimate theatre-in-the-round production spaces. Shows created for the thirty-seat theatre influenced staging practices across the country and provided actors with some of the best experience for working in film and modern theatre. Many of the Playhouse’s pioneering activities also greatly strengthened the bond between the Playhouse and Pasadena. Its 1928 production of O’Neill’s Lazarus Laughed brought the Playhouse substantial acclaim and at the same time enhanced the civic profile of Pasadena; with the production’s masks and costumes created by volunteers and its 250-member cast filled by local residents, the theatre secured its status as a respected and beloved part of the Pasadena community. The Playhouse School of Theatre, which started as a summer art colony workshop, was formally established in 1928. In its first year, there

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were about twenty students; by 1939, there were some 200 students in the school’s various three-year programs, which offered certificates and degrees in acting, directing, technical design, playwriting, and theatre administration. The demands of sound cinema had led Hollywood to see this as “an era when schools for training actors were really a necessity.”7 Thus, in addition to establishing their own drama schools, the studios saw value in the Playhouse’s actor training program. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Playhouse emphasized the values of new stagecraft and its priority for ensemble performances. In typed notes for a lecture, Brown writes that “the most interesting development in modern stagecraft has been the work of the new Russian artistic treatment” exemplified by the Moscow Art Theatre.8 The School of Theatre’s annotated “Bibliography of Books on Dramatic Technique and Stage Technique” includes Stanislavsky’s My Life in Art, a book published to accompany the Moscow Art Theatre’s 1924 tour of the USA; the annotation describes Stanislavsky as “probably the greatest of the modern directors.”9 Like modern American directors from Minnie Maddern Fiske to Harold Clurman, Gilmor Brown valued ensemble performances well suited to productions informed by new stagecraft aesthetics. For Brown, modern theatre contrasted with star-driven productions that featured “the emotional expressiveness of a lead player,” who would command audience attention while the other players were supposed to “stand six feet away and do their damnedest.”10 The earliest Playhouse productions were influenced by premodern staging conventions. As longtime Playhouse member Oliver Prickett explains, the blocking in these shows would create “a focal accent on the actor who carried the load at that particular moment.”11 This actor would be upstage, “practically hanging on the back wall,” while the other players would be arranged in diagonal lines on either side of stage; these lines, which started at the edge of the stage and met at the back wall, were supposed to direct audience attention to the lead actor positioned upstage.12 However, Playhouse staging practices had evolved by the mid-1920s. Performances in the intimate Playbox Theatre and on the mainstage no longer included “built” entrances and exits. Instead, actors moved in and out of the stage space as if entering and leaving a room in daily life. Scenes were no longer blocked with one actor upstage and the others positioned to funnel attention to that figure. Actors played to an invisible fourth wall, allowing audiences to witness their interactions and private moments (Fig. 8.1).

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Fig. 8.1 Gilmor Brown with students at the Pasadena Playhouse. Brown saw Modern acting’s script-centered approach as key to portrayals in modern, intimate performance spaces

TRAINING IN MODERN ACTING AT THE PLAYHOUSE At the Playhouse, training to perform in modern theatre required actors to develop an understanding of its many aspects. The school’s library included books on makeup, costume, scenery, scene design, lighting, stage management, theatre management, theatre history, and costumes and manners of world cultures in different periods. Anne MacLennan Wray, who graduated from the Playhouse in 1942 with a Masters in Theatre Art, recalls that voice training was grounded in texts such as First Principles of Speech Training (1928) by Elizabeth Avery, and The Pronunciation of Standard English in America (1919) by George Philip Krapp. Actors studied Dressing the Part: A History of Costume for the Theatre (1938) by Playhouse instructor Fairfax Proudfit Walkup. Performers also read

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Modern Theatre Practice: A Handbook of Play Production (1938) by Hubert C.  Heffner, et  al. To expand their knowledge of theatre history, they read The Theatre: Three Thousand Years of Drama, Acting, and Stagecraft (1939) by Sheldon Cheney, who founded Theatre Arts magazine to support the Little Theatre movement.13 The school’s library also included Richard Boleslavsky’s Acting: The First Six Lessons, Stanislavsky’s An Actor Prepares, and Josephine Dillon’s Modern Acting: A Guide for Stage, Screen, and Radio. Playhouse alum Anne Wray explains that actors saw two additional volumes as especially important: General Principles of Play Direction by Gilmor Brown and Alice Garwood, and Problems of the Actor by British actor Louis Calvert.14 General Principles of Play Direction and Problems of the Actor reveal that in the 1930s and 1940s, the Playhouse contributed to the articulation and circulation of Modern acting principles. Louis Calvert explains that actors must “have a notion of the entire play before they begin study of their own part.”15 Brown and Garwood concur; they also note that the next step of preparation involves analysis, wherein actors examine their character’s role in the narrative and the primary reason for their inclusion in the story. Both volumes provide detailed guidelines, yet, as Calvert notes, these steps should not to be taken as a “technique for acting,” because “what is one man’s meat is another’s poison.”16 Calvert points out that actors should take “the same course the author had to follow,” developing a comprehensive understanding of the character, and then an outline of the character’s actions in individual scenes and over the course of the play; actors should then return to the script to check and revise their choices.17 The two volumes thus suggest that preparation involves an initial analysis of the script to understand the story and then the character. Deepening their analysis, actors must develop an understanding of their characters that is so complete that they can comprehend even the “thoughts the character does not express.”18 Brown and Garwood argue that script analysis leads to a clear understanding of the character’s social reality, so that actors can make the right choices about posture, walk, social gestures, and dramatic actions. They also explain that script analysis is what makes it possible for actors to develop the tempo and tonal qualities in their vocal expressions, and the physical qualities in their gestures and movements that in performance convey the character’s unique temperament, and evolving desires, strategies, and responses.19 Both volumes explain that the next step in building characterizations requires actors to improvise their speeches, while thinking, walking, and

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gesturing as the character. They note that during this phase of preparation, there can be value in finding and exploring points of contact between oneself and the character, but only to create lifelike bits of stage business, not emotion. Discussing the subsequent step of preparation, Calvert states that actors must then “get back into the atmosphere of the play” to check and solidify the series of intention-laden actions that will structure their performances in each scene.20 In the 1930s and 1940s, actors at the Playhouse learned that these steps of preparation were the best strategy for remaining in character on stage, enabling them to speak and act as if their character were encountering the events of the story for the first time. Brown and Garwood explain that actors must “think the character’s thoughts or at least know what the character would be thinking the entire time on stage [because it is] ‘thought continuity’ [that] keeps the player in character and adds to the richness of the character.”21 To be part of an ensemble production, an actor’s entrance must convey the character’s experience of coming into an actual place, as the character in his/her particular situation; to live the part during an exit, an actor must picture the character’s destination and his/her reason for going.22 To perform in a modern, orchestrated, ensemble production, actors must always “listen to what is said, then take an instant to grasp its meaning, then out of the thousand things [the character] might say in reply, [seem to] select words that fit best.”23 Anne Wray points out that Playhouse teachers and directors emphasized the need to be conscious during performances, listening to and thinking about the meaning of the lines spoken by the characters. Wray explains that actors learned to let emotions emerge from the experience of embodying a character’s actions, a process that allowed performers to maintain a dual focus (as themselves and as the character). As described by Brown and Garwood, “the ideal for an actor [is] ‘a warm heart and a cool head.’”24 Echoing this, Calvert explains that being clearheaded allows actors to maintain concentration and hold on to the conception of the character developed in the long process of preparation.25 He notes that while actors will necessarily feel “the various emotions” of their characters, they must also be able to convey their characters’ thoughts and feelings in different production settings (mainstage versus intimate theatre spaces).26 As Calvert observes, passion “must be kept under a certain control” so that an actor can convey the character’s social reality and inner life to the audience.27 Outlining the modern approach that involves feeling a character’s emotions while maintaining the distance required to express the character’s

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thoughts and feelings, Brown and Garwood state that there are “two halves to an actor’s mind. One is occupied with [oneself], the actor,” and using that half, a performer governs his/her movements and makes adjustments on stage while “the other half becomes the character.”28 Amplifying this observation, they explain: the two halves should be in nice adjustment. If [the actor] prevails at the expense of [the character], the actor may give a technically satisfactory performance but it will probably be unreal and unconvincing. If [the character] prevails too greatly, [the actor’s] performance is apt to be uncertain and unreliable.29

Like Calvert, Brown and Garwood emphasize that actors must live the part in performance, and at the same time not lose themselves in the character to the point that they become cut off from the rich characterization they have “so carefully built up during rehearsal.”30 For actors studying or working at the Playhouse in the 1930s and 1940s, creating and executing performances according to Modern acting principles started with script analysis designed to locate the character’s inner life and social environment. Additional steps of preparation led to a comprehensive understanding of the character and a well-rehearsed plan to convey the character’s responses to the evolving events of the story. Once in performance, Modern acting strategies helped actors establish and maintain contact with other actors on stage. To foster the bond integral to ensemble performances, Playhouse actors developed their ability to preserve a split focus; this allowed them to use the emotions that emerged during performances to color and enrich their vocal and physical expressions, and at the same time bring their own preparation and the work of their fellow actors to bear on their performances. Actors at the Playhouse explored Modern acting strategies within a larger, integrated curriculum of study that included courses in fencing, costuming, and theatre history. Moreover, all classes made actual production experience central. Students were in rehearsal three to four hours a day, five days a week, and courses were organized so that research directly related to play production. Maudie Cooper, a student at the Playhouse, recalls: during the month of working on a Greek play, “we would be studying the makeup of the Greeks, the manners and customs of the Greeks, the techniques that were used in staging a Greek play, [and] voice production for a Greek play.”31 At the Playhouse, exposure to theatre of different

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styles and periods was designed to expand actors’ understanding of art and society. It also illuminated the unique demands of modern theatre and new stagecraft, and the need for Modern acting strategies that fostered players’ cogent and imaginative participation in contemporary stage and screen productions. As a 1947 school catalogue explains: the Playhouse offered “a new and comprehensive theatre training” to prepare actors for work in “modern theatre,” which reflected “the new art of the director, the new range of scenic design, the entirely new art of stage lighting, the media of cinema, radio and television, and the psychological extension of the art of acting.”32

THE PLAYHOUSE AS A MAJOR CENTER FOR TALENT DEVELOPMENT The Playhouse had an important role in the lost chapter of American acting because it introduced actors to Modern acting principles and gave them an opportunity to secure steady employment. Actors of the period sought to be in Playhouse productions because they would be seen by talent scouts and casting directors. They understood that “every single studio was covering all of the productions at the Playhouse with a scout or two.”33 Playhouse director Lenore Shanewise recalls that Paramount’s talent scout Milton Lewis “made a point of coming to every student production.”34 Universal executive Ed Muhl required his talent scouts to attend Playhouse productions; Warner Bros. executive Irving Kumin, a frequent visitor to the Playhouse, is reported to have hired “over seventy Playhousers in 1938 alone.”35 Kumin would watch actors develop, and then “when he felt they were ripe, that they had gotten pretty solid training, he plucked them out and gave them parts in pictures.”36 Studio executives asked Playhouse directors for input on casting decisions. Shanewise recalls that Hollywood casting directors often asked her for talent recommendations.37 Gilmor Brown responded to casting inquiries, and stayed in close contact with talent scouts and studio executives; his professional address book includes comprehensive, typed lists of the phone numbers for agents, casting offices, and studio executives.38 Film industry people saw the Playhouse as a resource, and so served as its patrons and publicists. Hollywood director and American Academy of Dramatic Arts graduate Cecil B.  DeMille sometimes sent film actors to the Playhouse to learn Modern acting principles; in 1935, he helped sponsor a Midsummer Festival at the Playhouse. 20th Century Fox president

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Spyros Skouras and executive Buddy Adler supplied copy for Playhouse promotion materials, sharing their view that the Pasadena Playhouse was a “major center for talent development.”39 Hollywood writers, directors, stars, and critics supported the Playhouse by serving as adjudicators in the school’s periodic scholarship auditions, which were performed for panels made up of Playhouse personnel and Hollywood professionals. A photo from 1950 shows some of the professionals asked to review a round of scholarship auditions. The photo features Jerry Asher, a columnist who wrote for Photoplay in the 1940s and 1950s under the pseudonym Cal York; Oscar-winning writer-director Joseph L.  Mankiewicz, best known for All about Eve; Brenda Marshall, a Warner Bros. contract player recognized for her roles opposite Errol Flynn in films such as The Sea Hawk (Curtiz 1940); and her husband, Hollywood star William Holden, who studied at the Playhouse before co-starring with Barbara Stanwyck in Golden Boy. Other members of the panel included: Bette Davis, the winner of two Academy Awards for Best Actor; Stanley Kramer, the Oscar-nominated producer-director; and Anne P. Kramer, Kramer’s wife, who also had an acting career in late the 1940s/ early 1950s (Fig. 8.2).

Fig. 8.2 Joseph Mankiewicz, William Holden, and others judge auditions at the Pasadena Playhouse, a repertory theatre, school, actors’ showcase, and vital source of talent for Hollywood studios

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Teachers at the Playhouse directed students’ attention to the complex process of Modern acting, and proposed that the only reason to become an actor was the conviction that one had a place in the theatre. Yet Brown also promoted Playhouse actors, especially the actors known as “Gilmor’s boys.” A 1935 catalogue for the School of Theatre reveals the complex relationship between the school and the theatre, for it tells potential applicants that “second year students are eligible for parts in Main Stage productions [and that] these plays are attended by a paying public which frequently includes talent scouts from stage and screen.”40 Another 1930s brochure for the school mentions various stars who had been in Playhouse shows, anchoring this copy with a photo of Broadway and biopic star Paul Muni. It encourages experienced actors to audition for Playhouse productions, noting that “many professional players have found that the shortest road to Hollywood frequently lies through Pasadena.”41 The brochure groups students in the School of Theatre together with actors cast in Playhouse productions as it highlights a few “graduates”: Douglass Montgomery, whose work in Playhouse productions led to roles in Broadway shows in 1925 and from there an MGM contract in 1930; Anne Shirley, a child star in the 1920s who was rediscovered in a Playhouse production and subsequently cast in Anne of Green Gables (Nichols 1934) and Stella Dallas (Vidor 1937); and Randolph Scott, mentioned earlier, who secured a Paramount contract after appearing in Playhouse productions for three years, including six roles on the mainstage in 1929 and 1930.42 Marketing strategies for the School of Theatre reflect perceptions about the Playhouse. Yet another 1930s catalogue has the phrase “leading showcase for talent” across the top of a page—and the quote is from an article in Stage Magazine. Elsewhere, the catalogue quotes an article in Stage and Screen Weekly—this piece argues that for the previous five years the Playhouse had been “the greatest single source of … talent and personality for the screen.”43 An article in Variety from the same period announces that the Playhouse is “12 to 1 the greatest single contributing source of stage and screen talent.”44 Today, the bond between the Pasadena Playhouse and studio-era Hollywood must be demonstrated. Yet in the 1930s and 1940s, it was common knowledge that the Playhouse was a center for talent development; affiliation with the Playhouse conferred legitimacy on an actor and helped the studios promote films. A biographical sketch of Dana Andrews generated by publicists at 20th Century Fox in the 1940s highlights that he is “another Pasadena Playhouse graduate”; a bio by RKO from

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the same period points out that Andrews came to Hollywood from the “famed Pasadena Playhouse.”45 Passing references such as these suggest the degree to which the era’s performing arts professionals recognized the Playhouse’s role in developing modern actors’ ability to negotiate what is now called “the rapidly evolving landscape of contemporary performance practice.”46 Decades later, the Playhouse continues to offer classes, mount productions, and maintain connections with the Pasadena community. Like the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the Pasadena Playhouse was one of the sites in which Modern acting principles were circulated, tested, and refined in the 1930s and 1940s. By looking more closely at the Academy and a crossroads like the Playhouse, the rich collection of ideas, individuals, and developments important in the lost chapter of American acting become more visible. Whereas conventional accounts suggest that actors who found work in studio-era Hollywood were oldfashioned hams who did little more than memorize their lines, examining the role that the Academy played in the careers of the period’s stage and screen actors reveals that many performers entered their profession with substantial training, and that they were cast in Broadway shows and then Hollywood films only after an apprenticeship period that involved considerable formal training and work experience (in stock and touring companies). The professional links between the Playhouse and Hollywood point to the era’s growing respect for acting and the increased professionalism of acting in general. By identifying the principles of Modern acting articulated by teachers at the Academy and the Playhouse, it becomes clear that their emphasis on embodying the character as found in the script, on a script-centered approach to preparation, and on a dual focus in the execution of performance parallels the views of Modern acting teachers such as Josephine Dillon and Stella Adler. Thus, with or without direct contact, Modern acting teachers found shared solutions to the challenges presented by modern drama and new stagecraft.

NOTES 1. Pasadena Playhouse brochure, Pasadena Playhouse Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. 2. Gail Shoup, “The Pasadena Community Playhouse: Its Origins and its History from 1917 to 1942” (PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1968), 282. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., 292.

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5. Ibid., 294. 6. Ibid. 7. Maudie Prickett Cooper, Interview with Bernard Galm June 13, June 16, July 5, and July 18, 1973, University of California, Los Angeles, Oral History Collection, transcripts 1982, 40. 8. Gilmor Brown, Lecture Notes, Pasadena Playhouse Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. 9. Pasadena Playhouse School of Theatre, Annotated Bibliography, Pasadena Playhouse Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. 10. James Naremore, The Magic World of Orson Welles (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1989), 265. 11. Oliver Prickett, Interview with Bernard Galm March 6, March 13, March 27, April 3, April 17, April 24, 1973, University of California, Los Angeles, Oral History Collection, transcripts 1982, 171–172. 12. Ibid., 172. 13. Anne MacLennan Wray, Interview with Cynthia Baron July 20, July 27, 1995. To locate material on the reading list, see: George Philip Krapp, The Pronunciation of Standard English in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1919, reprinted 2015); Fairfax Proudfit Walkup, Dressing the Part: A History of Costume for the Theatre (New York: F.  S. Crofts, 1947); Hubert Crouse Heffner, Modern Theatre Practice: A Handbook of Play Production (New York: F.  S. Crofts, 1936, reprinted New  York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1973); Sheldon Cheney, The Theatre: Three Thousand Years of Drama, Acting, and Stagecraft (New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1929, reprinted 1973). 14. General Principles of Play Direction was reprinted in 1947, Problems of the Actor in 2012. 15. Louis Calvert, Problems of the Actor (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1938), 63. 16. Gilmor Brown and Alice Garwood, General Principles of Play Direction (Los Angeles: Samuel French, 1937), v. 17. Calvert, Problems of the Actor, 77. 18. Ibid., 65. 19. Brown and Garwood, General Principles of Play Direction, 117–118. 20. Calvert, Problems of the Actor, 72. 21. Brown and Garwood, General Principles of Play Direction, 105. 22. Ibid., 35–38. 23. Calvert, Problems of the Actor, 115. 24. Brown and Garwood, General Principles of Play Direction, 119. 25. Calvert, Problems of the Actor, 73. 26. Ibid., 123. 27. Ibid., 134.

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28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46.

Brown and Garwood, General Principles of Play Direction, 119. Ibid., 199. Ibid., 119. Cooper, Interview with Bernard Galm, 33. Studying theatre history, students learned that classic and romantic period plays generally involved fullfront or one-quarter positions; contemporary comedies or dramas would require one-quarter or profile positions to maintain connection with audiences and simulate behavior observed through an invisible fourth wall; naturalistic plays would involve one-quarter, profile, three-quarter, and full-back positions. Pasadena Playhouse School of Theatre Bulletin, April 1947, Pasadena Playhouse Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. Cooper, Interview with Bernard Galm, 82. Lenore Shanewise, Interview with Bernard Galm March 27, March 28, April 17, April 18, 1974, University of California, Los Angeles, Oral History Collection, transcripts 1980, 132. Diane Alexander, Playhouse (Los Angeles: Dorleac-MacLeish, 1984), 59. Ibid. Shanewise, Interview with Bernard Galm, 131. Gilmor Brown, Address Book, Pasadena Playhouse Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. Pasadena Playhouse 1957 brochure, Pasadena Playhouse Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. Pasadena Playhouse School of Theatre 1935 Catalog, Pasadena Playhouse Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. Pasadena Playhouse brochure, Pasadena Playhouse Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. Pasadena Playhouse brochure, Pasadena Playhouse Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. In 1925, Douglass Montgomery was in Amethyst at the Playhouse theatre, and in Playboy of the Modern World at the Playbox, with Lurene Tuttle, an original member of Gilmor Brown’s Pasadena Community Players. Shoup, “The Pasadena Community Playhouse,” 294. Article in Variety, Pasadena Playhouse Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. 20th Century Fox and RKO bios of Dana Andrews, Pasadena Playhouse Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. “Acting Program,” School of Theatre, California Institute of the Arts, accessed January 23, 2016, https://theater.calarts.edu/programs/acting. Cal Arts explains that, to keep pace with twenty-first-century developments, its training program is not limited to “preparing actors for repertory theatre companies,” a situation parallel to American performing arts in the 1930s and 1940s.

CHAPTER 9

Training in Modern Acting on the Studio Lots

In the 1930s, Hollywood began to hire experienced stage actresses as dialogue directors, to work with players on individual roles, and as drama coaches, to lead training programs for contract players. These mentors guided performers’ efforts to develop a conscious approach to acting, and they facilitated actors’ preparation for dramatic scenes in films directed by men more comfortable with action and spectacle. Most of the women who held these positions were leading figures in the articulation and circulation of Modern acting principles in the 1930s and 1940s. The labor of dialogue directors and drama coaches differed from the work of talent scouts. While talent scouts assessed the commercial appeal of potential contract players, dialogue directors and drama coaches worked with actors to build characterizations and deliver lifelike performances. Dialogue directors and drama coaches also differed from the specialists in dancing, singing, horseback-riding, firearms, sword-fighting, diction, and dialect; whereas diction coaches corrected regional accents and dialect coaches assisted actors in producing accents for specific roles, dialogue directors and drama coaches helped performers analyze scripts to understand and embody their characters’ inner lives and social realities. Hollywood’s investment in acting experts began in the early 1930s. For example, Paramount hired actor-director Lillian Albertson as a dialogue director in 1933; she would become the talent director at RKO in 1943, and subsequently publish her insights on Modern acting in Motion

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 C. Baron, Modern Acting, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-40655-2_9

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Picture Acting, which will be discussed in Chap. 11. The studios’ interest in acting specialists and organized training programs reflects their recognition that acting, like any other aspect of production, required trained professionals. The drama schools also represent an extension of existing practices, for the studios had always been places where performers developed their ability by working in supporting roles and being mentored by experienced actors. Thus, following the approach used at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Pasadena Playhouse, the studio drama schools combined coursework and production experience. For instance, the 20th Century Fox program established in 1936 offered courses on dramatic analysis and screenings followed by class discussion, yet actors also did production work to gain concrete experience. Lynn Bari, who had supporting roles throughout the 1930s and 1940s, explains that the Fox drama school was located next to the screen-test stage, and that hours spent with other actors doing screen tests gave her a good sense of working in film; she notes that the school’s students were also used in matte shots, camera tests, uncredited bit parts, and voice-over work.1 In 1933, Paramount also hired Phyllis Loughton as a dialogue director and drama coach. Loughton had been an actor and stage manager in the company led by Jessie Bonstelle, who established what became the Detroit Civic Theatre in 1928. Loughton, who also worked with renowned director-designer Norman Bel Geddes, was the first female stage manager in New York. Paramount put her in charge of its talent department, where she trained contract players and prepared them for screen tests, directing many of them herself. She located small parts for her students and collaborated with them as they developed characterizations for specific films. Loughton put on three stage productions a year for Paramount executives, with the roles filled by actors in the drama school. Contract players in the training program were in classes four to five hours a day, sometimes working with diction experts, ballet instructors, voice teachers, singing coaches, etc. In Loughton’s view, “the training of a person who wants to be an actor takes a lot of things … you’ve got to move your body, use your voice, know how to think as well as speak, [and how to] be the character, not yourself.”2 Screen tests were an important aspect of actor training in the studio drama schools. They represented an occasion when actors worked with coaches one-on-one, sometimes for weeks, on material selected especially for them. During the screen-test shoot, actors would receive input from the cinematographer and the director, who was often their coach. When

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the test was ready to be screened, the actor would watch it with the coach, the director, and the cinematographer, and then listen to their analysis of the work. Marsha Hunt, who had supporting roles throughout the 1930s and 1940s, recalls that at Paramount Phyllis Loughton worked with her for three weeks to prepare for a screen test; Loughton then directed the test, which featured Hunt in three scenes.3 Loughton also worked as a dialogue director brought in to help actors who were having trouble “putting the characters together.”4 If the production budget allowed, she would rehearse with the principal actors a week before production began. Loughton also met with actors during the course of a production, because lighting, rigging, and other technical demands created some additional time to continue the in-depth script analysis needed to “find the character.”5 Loughton helped established performers at Paramount, MGM, and other studios prepare for specific roles. She directed scores of screen tests, including those for William Holden, from the Pasadena Playhouse, and Dorothy Lamour, known for The Road to Morocco (Butler 1942) and other “road movies” starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. During Loughton’s career as an acting expert, she privately coached established actors such as Claudette Colbert, Olivia de Havilland, Paulette Goddard, Fred MacMurray, Ray Milland, and Ann Sothern (Fig. 9.1). In 1935, Republic Pictures, an independent Poverty Row studio known for releasing early John Ford Westerns and other low-budget films, hired Lillian Burns, an actress who had worked with the Belasco Company in New York.6 In 1936, Burns moved to MGM, where she became a powerful figure by combining the roles of talent scout and drama coach. Burns explains that before she was hired by the studio, actors had received training in diction, body movement, and special skills (dancing, firearms, etc.), but that she was the first person at MGM to be so fully involved in casting and rehearsing actors.7 She had input when it came to hiring and casting, and sometimes functioned as an uncredited director, devoting considerable time to preparing actors for films directed by people who had limited knowledge of Modern acting.8 She mentored several MGM stars from the beginning of their careers, including: Judy Garland, Ava Gardner, Van Heflin, Lana Turner, Janet Leigh, Van Johnson, and Debbie Reynolds. Burns would interview potential contract players, and hold staged readings twice a week. She would then arrange for screen tests for selected actors. After they were signed to a contract, she would oversee their development as actors and work with them on specific roles. To develop actors’ ability to use Modern acting techniques, she guided their exploration of

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Fig. 9.1 Phyllis Loughton coaches a Paramount contract player in 1935. Loughton helps the actor develop the breathing and diaphragm control needed to embody a range of characters

individual scripts, helping them build characterizations grounded in study where the scripts served as the blueprint for their performances. Script analysis led to rehearsals of individual scenes performed on Fridays in Burns’ office, which functioned as a “little theatre” arranged like a living room with a piano, fireplace, and mantel. Burns did not see her work with contract players as teaching, for, as she put it, “I don’t believe you can teach acting … you can teach voice, you can teach diction, you can teach body movement,” but there is no recipe for acting, for “bringing to life another living, breathing human being.”9 She believed that drama schools had “their place,” but that by the time actors were under contract, it was more appropriate to work with them individually.10 Like Phyllis Loughton at Paramount, Burns trained young players and coached leading actors on specific roles. In his 1986 oral history interview, MGM executive Al Trescony recalls that after working with her, established actors created performances “that even surprised them.”11 He explains that Burns not only prepared “most of our stars for their

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specific roles … often she would be asked by the heads of other studios to work with their stars”; he adds that she was respected “because of her talent and feared because she leveled with everyone.”12 Whether mentoring young actors or collaborating with established stars, Burns saw that her central task was to “take a script and break it down with them.”13 In other words, during this stage of preparation, actors must identify the underlying meaning of the script as a whole, and analyze their characters’ role in the story. Working according to Modern acting principles, performers would study the script to understand the characters’ given circumstances, objectives, and actions. Guided by Burns, they would examine the script scene by scene to locate key moments in their characters’ inner life and the series of actions informing their interactions with other characters (Fig. 9.2).

Fig. 9.2 Lillian Burns coaches Edmund Purdom in 1955. Burns works with the actor to identify the intention-laden actions his character will perform in a scene

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In 1935, the same year Burns started at Republic, Universal hired Florence Enright to be their drama coach. Enright had been a founding member of the Washington Square Players (1914–1918), the basis for the Theatre Guild established in 1918; she also appeared in a series of Broadway productions between 1915 and 1919, and in several films during the 1930s. In 1936, she was hired to establish the drama school at 20th Century Fox; in 1940, she was succeeded by Helena Sorrell, who coached Hollywood actors into the 1950s. While at Fox, Enright guided contract players in their study of performance by screening and leading the discussions of actors’ work in completed films. Like Lillian Burns, Enright worked privately with leading players at various studios, helping them develop characterizations for specific roles. During her career, she coached actors under contract to Paramount, RKO, and Samuel Goldwyn. Virginia Mayo, who secured a contract with producer Samuel Goldwyn after appearing in the Broadway musical comedy Banjo Eyes (1941–1942), explains that throughout her film career, she worked with Enright to build her characterizations; Mayo recalls that because of her thorough preparation with Enright for The Best Years of Our Lives (1947), director William Wyler needed to make only a few suggestions about bits of stage business.14 In 1937, RKO hired Lela E.  Rogers to mentor its contract players. After working as a reporter in Missouri, in the 1910s Rogers found work in Hollywood as a screenwriter; during World War I, she enlisted in the US Marine Corps and worked as a publicist. In the 1920s, she managed the vaudeville career of her daughter, Ginger, “writing new song-anddance numbers … and cranking out her costumes on a portable sewing machine.”15 A determined stage mother, Rogers “was press agent, financial manager and teacher,” and she advised Ginger to study “painting, sculpture, tennis, geography, history, and the Great Books.”16 Rogers became a founding member of Hollywood’s self-appointed anticommunist organization, the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, established in 1944. Rogers did not introduce RKO players to the Modern acting strategies of identifying a character’s given circumstances, objectives, and actions. However, she did encourage actors to develop their ability to interpret characters; as one RKO player recalls, she “made us read good literature to improve our English and expand our understanding of character.”17 Barbara Hale, known for her role as Della Street in the Perry Mason television series, notes that Rogers required students to be at the studio

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for an eight-hour day. They attended formal classes and visited different departments on the lot; Hale recalls that people in the ceramics, fashion, and music departments became some of her best teachers. RKO contract players regarded even small parts as opportunities to learn; they all understood that “if you could get into anything to learn your trade, you did.”18 Rogers saw herself as her students’ advocate. She offered advice on makeup, grooming, and poise; studio executives “disliked, respected, and feared” Rogers, because she counselled actresses to avoid the sexual advances of agents and studio executives.19 She would also intervene on an actor’s behalf; countering the assessment of RKO producer Pandro Berman that Lucille Ball had no potential, over the course of two years, Rogers remade her physical image, had her work with a voice teacher, and coached Ball as she prepared for specific roles (Fig. 9.3). In 1938, Warner Bros. hired Sophie Rosenstein, author of Modern Acting: A Manual, to lead their drama program, known as the Warner Bros. Studio Theatre. Rosenstein began her career as an actress and studied with Josephine Dillon. She received a Master’s degree in Theatre from the University of Washington, and then served on its theatre faculty for ten years. She was interested in left-leaning theatre groups, including the

Fig. 9.3 Lela Rogers directs a rehearsal for a drama school production with Lucille Ball and other RKO contracts players c. 1937.

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Group Theatre, and saw the Moscow Art Theatre 1923 and 1924 touring productions as offering a model of modern, ensemble acting. Rosenstein’s program addressed the talent department’s duties: to audition, screen-test, and then coach contract players. Like Lillian Burns at MGM, Rosenstein combined the roles of talent director and drama coach. She would scout talent at local venues such as the Pasadena Playhouse and audition actors who were brought to Warner Bros. by agents, casting directors, and studio executives. Rosenstein would make an initial assessment of a performer’s ability, experience, and commercial appeal. She then worked with the actors she had selected, rehearsing with them until they were ready to do an informal reading of a scene for a Warner Bros. casting director. After each Saturday reading session, a few actors would be selected to do screen tests. Rosenstein would then rehearse with them for a week or even a month to prepare for the tests, which she then directed. Based on her assessment of the test, some actors entered Rosenstein’s training program. The Studio Theatre at Warner Bros. was designed as a laboratory, able to facilitate the study and experimentation necessitated by the various dramatic and production demands actors encountered. Rosenstein ensured that players understood the principles of Modern acting, which led them to ground performances in study of the script. Working with actors as they progressed through the steps of building characterizations, Rosenstein created opportunities for them to rehearse scenes and learn to create and assimilate stage business. To sharpen their imagination and sensitivity to fellow actors, students improvised various scenes they had studied. To expand their awareness of different acting styles, contract players performed scenes from contemporary films and from dramas ranging from Shakespeare to Moss Hart, known for his musicals, screenplays, and collaborations with George S. Kaufman. Some established Warner Bros. actors worked with Rosenstein to build their characterizations for specific films, working scene by scene to understand the character’s given circumstances, objectives, and actions. Actors in Rosenstein’s training program would study one film a month, viewing them on analytic projectors that allowed her to analyze performances by stopping, slowing, and reversing the film. Rosenstein would discuss contrasts and parallels between actors’ physical and vocal choices. She would run the picture without sound to show how gestures, poses, postures, facial expressions, and the qualities in actors’ movements through space revealed a character’s disposition, social situation, and changing

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inner experience. She would run sound without picture to illustrate how intonations and inflections conveyed the underlying meaning of a dialogue line. The Letter, a 1940 Warner Bros. film starring Bette Davis, James Stephenson, and Herbert Marshall, was the first production Rosenstein’s students viewed using the analytic projectors. Rosenstein screened the film for her students and then discussed selected scenes with them; she made it possible for them to attend the film’s preview, so they could see how the audience responded to the film and to those scenes in particular. Rosenstein also arranged for the film’s cast members to discuss their working methods with the students, sometimes accompanied by the projection of scenes from the film. Her use of analytic projectors to facilitate actors’ understanding of performance expanded on Josephine Dillon’s use of sound recording equipment in her work with young players (see Chap. 11). It formalized actors’ long-standing practice of studying exemplary performers, and anticipated the widespread use of screenings in subsequent actor training programs. Rosenstein’s belief that actors could sharpen their abilities by analyzing completed performances reflects the era’s assumption that young performers prospered from exposure to experienced players. A number of actors who found work in studio-era Hollywood describe the insights they gained from their working relationships with leading players. For Barry Sullivan, who had roles on Broadway starting in 1936 and in Hollywood films beginning in 1943, it was leading man Alan Ladd who, during the production of And Now Tomorrow (Pichel 1944), showed him how to make the adjustment from stage to screen by taking Sullivan to study the rushes, where he would “point things out, make suggestions.”20 Illustrating the role of mentorship and the reality that actors of the period were often required to function as independent creative laborers, Sullivan notes that Ladd, perhaps best known for 1940s thrillers like The Blue Dahlia (Marshall 1946), “was the first person who ever told [him] anything about making movies.”21 Similarly, even though Mary Astor, known for her role in The Maltese Falcon, had been cast in small film parts starting in 1921, it was during the production of Beau Brummel (Beaumont 1924) that fellow actor John Barrymore led her to see that she must “Think! The camera’s a mind reader. Don’t let your thoughts wander.”22 Barrymore’s advice during the film was crucial, because he showed her that before doing any scene an actor must methodically review its given circumstances and the

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relationship between the characters, so that the underlying significance of their interaction could be conveyed by the smallest details, including the way an actor might say “pass the butter.”23 Rosenstein brought the various aspects of her training program with her when she moved to Universal in 1949 to lead their Talent Development Program. During her tenure, students focused on script analysis, improvisation, study of existing performances, and exercises to enhance relaxation, concentration, and vocal and physical expression. A 1952 memo that Rosenstein wrote to Universal executive Edward Muhl captures some of her thoughts on actor training. Written shortly before she passed away, the memo argues for the value of the Talent Development Program, because “no matter what stage of experience an actor has attained, he is faced with the problems of filling in the gaps of his histrionic education, of extending his range, and of maintaining his standards.”24 Rosenstein believed that the drama program should avoid a curriculum “devised along pure academic lines,” offering instead something “elastic, suited to the individual needs and desires of each actor.”25 Rosenstein emphasized that Universal’s actors should be able to participate in any or all aspects of the development program and that courses should be offered year round. She understood that developments in modern theatre required actors to work in a range of production contexts and dramatic forms: location shooting, Cinemascope, and live dramatic television shows all had specific demands; biblical epics and contemporary psychological dramas required different approaches to physicalizing characters. As she explained: “since the demands upon an actor are constantly changing … a clearinghouse for experiment and study” is essential; the program should prepare actors for the “practical demands of screen acting,” and make it possible for them to meet “the highest standards of performance in the theatre and motion picture.”26 Rosenstein required contract players to be at Universal all day, five days a week. Her students used playback and other resources in the studio’s sound department to enhance their vocal training. Voice classes met once a week to read a scene on a recording stage; after listening to the recording, Rosenstein and her students would analyze the vocal choices. Contract players also worked with personal trainers at the studio gym and with specialists in dance, singing, and so on. Acting workshops, the heart of the program, met several mornings a week and involved group participation. Students did improvisations and performed scenes from selected plays and films. Once a week, Rosenstein would screen a film for study

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and discussion. Directors, producers, costumers, makeup artists, and other production experts gave lectures and answered questions. During her time in Hollywood, Rosenstein sought to address the studios’ need for drama programs that developed young talent and extended the range of established players. Her work with actors was grounded in Modern acting, which valued voice and body work alongside the study of theatre, literature, the arts, history, and psychology. Like other teachers of Modern acting, Rosenstein regarded actors’ understanding of their characters as the real work of acting. She saw Modern acting as a laborintensive approach, grounded in script analysis that clarified the meaning of the story, the style of the narrative, the characters’ circumstances and the problems they had to address, and the obstacles created by characters’ conflicting objectives. Like other Modern acting teachers, Rosenstein would argue that script-centered preparation is what allows actors to (a) relax and concentrate during performance, (b) function as independent artists needing little guidance from directors, and (c) collaborate effectively with directors and fellow actors, continually deepening their insights into the character when discussing or rehearsing scenes.

GENDER AND MODERN ACTING TEACHERS The careers of the studio drama teachers illuminate the bond that existed between theatre and film in the 1930s and 1940s—once Hollywood decided to hire acting experts, the studios selected women with theatre experience to fill the positions. The drama coaches’ delimited careers also reveal the challenges women faced in the era’s performing arts business; acting experts such as Phyllis Loughton, Lillian Burns, and Sophie Rosenstein were hired to nurture young talent and facilitate the performances of leading actors. They had no other options, yet what they accomplished within those limits is noteworthy. The women who held the dual position of talent director and drama coach did have considerable influence in hiring and casting decisions. By shaping so many performances, the drama coaches were key contributors to acting in the period. For example, Joan Leslie, who had leading roles in 1940s films including Rhapsody in Blue (Rapper 1946), explains that throughout her career she prepared for parts the way Rosenstein had taught her.27 Similarly, Janet Leigh, known for her role in Psycho (Hitchcock 1960), recalls that she would draw on the training she received from Burns for every role.28

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Yet the women who ensured that young contract players understood the principles of Modern acting and helped established actors build lifelike characterizations had to be satisfied with uncredited influence. Despite working in a directorial capacity, they were never hired to direct feature films. As early as 1942, Rosenstein made it known that she “felt an ambition to become a motion picture director” at Warner Bros., but she never got further than directing screen tests.29 Loughton also wanted to direct, and felt confident she could handle the task after serving as an uncredited director on so many individual scenes. She once requested a directing assignment, and an executive agreed; months went by but no scripts were sent for her to review, and when she inquired about the offer to direct, the executive responded: “Well, you were pregnant [then], what else could I say to you.”30 Lillian Burns had also hoped her successful work with actors would lead to directing feature films. In an oral history interview, Burns remarks that she might “never have been great with the camera, but Mr. Cukor wasn’t either.”31 She also sums up the situation of the women who directed hundreds of scenes but never a complete film when she recalls that MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer once told her, “if you had been a man, you could have run the studio,” and then adds, “but I wasn’t.”32 The resistance these women met when they tried to advance to the position of full-fledged director suggests that studio executives did not see them in this role but instead as performing a function that carried connotations of women’s work. Modern acting principles were a mystery to (male) executives, talent scouts, and casting directors, and so they could assume that a drama coach was little more than an invisible, behind-thescenes source of support and advice. They could see the drama coach position as a pink-collar job, akin to a waitress, beautician, or retail clerk, whose labor was meant to ensure a pleasant and positive experience for others. Thus, while leading actresses might have had Cinderella-like pinkcollar jobs, drama coaches were asked to operate as fairy godmothers, materializing only when needed and only in private. Studio drama coaches played a role that has certain parallels with contemporary casting directors, who often “attribute their success [to] their aptitude for playing the feminine roles of wife, mother, hostess, and girl Friday.”33 In studio-era Hollywood, “casting was often housed in offices near those of other planning departments such as publicity and advertising, all of which were headed up by male executives and supported by a largely female clerical staff,” but in the post-studio era, when casting decisions no longer reflected a studio’s slate of contract players, casting came

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to be seen as a field that required the ability to listen, manage tensions, organize, nurture actors, support directors’ visions, and perform other “feminized duties,” to the point that by 1980 “women dominated the field.”34 These requirements have led Erin Hill to suggest that studio-era drama coaches: made daily use of the female-associated skills that today’s casting directors describe, such as intuiting actors’ ‘rightness’ for roles, nurturing actors, performing emotionally as acting teachers, and participating in the decisionmaking process through influence and solution delimitation, rather than direct commands.35

Put another way, the work of both studio-era drama coaches and contemporary casting directors can be said to involve “emotional labor,” as Arlie Hochschild describes it in The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (2012), which is often invisible and underrated. The drama coaches’ Modern acting view that characterizations should reflect the demands of the script also contributed to their erasure—whereas they might have garnered notice if they had insisted that actors perform in a style associated with their “brand.” In this regard, the women who helped performers develop characterizations using Modern acting strategies are akin to costume designers, for whom the “job is to visualize a character through a costume that should go unnoticed by the audience because it looks organic to the personality of the character.”36 Whereas fashion designers aim for a signature style, “costume designers see their role as serving the character and the script.”37 As Miranda Banks observes, the “invisibility of costume designers’ labor” means that they are often “marginalized on the set and in the press,” and that it is not a coincidence that this field, which is “traditionally dominated by women, has also been underappreciated, undercompensated, and … labeled ‘women’s work.’”38 There are many reasons the labor of studio-era drama coaches has been underappreciated. In contrast to the specialists who taught dancing or boxing, acting strategies are complicated and difficult to describe for non-actors. Moreover, as teachers of Modern acting, their task was to help create performances that seemed to emerge naturally from the actors themselves. The better the coaches did their job, the more invisible their work became. Moreover, in contrast to the talent scouts and publicists who were in contact with the public, the coaches did their work inside studio walls, behind the closed doors of the dressing rooms and the nondescript offices that served as rehearsal spaces in the 1930s and 1940s.

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As token laborers in a male-dominated industry, and as women working during the Depression, who might be seen as “taking jobs away from male breadwinners,” the studio drama coaches were required to maintain a “low social profile.”39 This requirement dovetailed with the intangible nature of the work itself, for a drama coach’s conversation with an actor about a moment in a particular scene might be the key to the performer’s entire conception of the role, but it could easily go unnoticed in a production setting distinguished by massive sound stages filled with state-of-theart production equipment. A job first filled by women, the position of drama coach remained a woman’s occupation throughout the 1930s and 1940s, because “once a job is labeled ‘male’ or ‘female,’ the demand for labor to fill it is sexspecific” unless there is a disruption in the labor system.40 A disruption of substantial proportion did occur, and it was accompanied by a new gender label for the position of acting expert. The end of Hollywood’s contract player system, and thus its need for studio drama schools, coincided with Strasberg’s new fame as Marilyn Monroe’s acting guru. The change in gender label was attended by other significant shifts. Strasberg not only worked from an entirely different set of assumptions about acting, his teaching style also contrasted with the approach associated with professionals like Phyllis Loughton or Sophie Rosenstein, for whereas Strasberg set himself the task of breaking down actors’ personal inhibitions, the Modern acting teachers sought to build up performers’ insight, imagination, and understanding of character.

NOTES 1. Lynn Bari, Interview August 18, 1986, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. See Kirsten Pullen, Like a Natural Woman: Spectacular Female Performance in Classical Hollywood (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014), 69–79. These pages offer a brief overview of actor training programs in the studio era. 2. Phyllis Loughton Seaton, Interview July 22, 1979, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. 3. Marsha Hunt, Interview August 12, 1983, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX.  Lizabeth Scott, known for 1940s noir roles, recalls that Sophie Rosenstein spent considerable time preparing her for an early screen test; Scott was eventually signed by Paramount (Lizabeth Scott, Interview July 27, 1984, and May 30,

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4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14.

15.

16. 17.

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1985, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX). Loughton, Interview July 22, 1979. Ibid. “Poverty Row” studios produced films “destined for the low part of double bills in the 1930s and 1940s” (Yannis Tzioumakis, American Independent Cinema: An Introduction [New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006], 10). While Poverty Row studios were known for doing Westerns and other action-adventure films, Monogram and Republic also sought to produce “prestige level” films (64). In contrast to Hollywood’s A- and B-level films “aimed primarily at adult urban audiences,” Poverty Row audiences included: “lower classes and ethnic immigrants . . . children and juveniles [and an] urban audience in the American Southern states [interested in] singing cowboy westerns starring country music stars” (75, 76). Lillian Burns Sidney, Interview August 17, 1986, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. Ibid. Ibid. Lillian Burns Sidney, Interview 1945, Gladys Hall Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, CA. Al Trescony, Interview August 20, 1986, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. Ibid. Burns Sidney, Interview 1945. Virginia Mayo, Interview November 30, 1973, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. See Ron Davis, The Glamour Factory (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1993). Davis touches on studio drama coaches on pages 82–91. Framing Florence Enright as best known for having no studio affiliation, he describes her and Elsa Schreiber as “distinguished Los Angeles drama teachers who specialized in screen acting” (89). He notes that Josephine Hutchinson “was a coach for a time at Columbia,” and that her successor at Columbia was Natasha Lytess, “who eventually worked privately with Marilyn Monroe” (85). Kay Noske, “Lela Rogers: Mrs. Rogers’ Neighborhood,” Movie Star Makeover, June 28, 2011, http://moviestarmakeover.blogspot. com/2011/06/mrs-rogers-neighborhood.html. Ibid. Ibid.

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18. Barbara Hale, Interview July 19, 1984, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. 19. Noske, “Lela Rogers.” 20. Qtd. in Doug McClelland, Forties Film Talk (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1992), 175. 21. Ibid. 22. Mary Astor, A Life on Film (New York: Delacorte, 1971), 53. 23. Ibid., 54. 24. Sophie Rosenstein, “Memo to Edward Muhl: April 4, 1952,” Box 6291/19686, Talent School Files, Universal-International Collection, Cinema-Television Library, University of Southern California. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. Joan Leslie, Interview August 13, 1984, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. 28. Janet Leigh, Interview July 25, 1984, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. 29. Sophie Rosenstein, “Memo: January 6, 1942,” Drama School File, Warner Bros. Collection, Cinema-Television Library, University of Southern California. 30. Loughton, Interview July 22, 1979. 31. Burns Sidney, Interview August 17, 1986. 32. Ibid. 33. Erin Hill, “Recasting the Casting Director: Managed Change, Gendered Labor,” in Making Media Work: Cultures of Management in the Entertainment Industries, eds. Derek Johnson, Derek Kompare, and Avi Santo (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 143. The term “girl Friday” refers to capable female personal assistants, and arises from the idea of a “man Friday,” a servant or personal assistant, a concept drawn from Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe. In the story, Crusoe has been alone on a desert island for twenty-four years when he discovers that cannibals have come ashore with captives. Crusoe helps one captive escape and makes him his servant, whom he names Friday for the weekday they met. 34. Ibid., 153, 157. 35. Ibid., 155. 36. Miranda J. Banks, “Gender Below-the-Line: Defining Feminist Production Studies,” in Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries, eds. Vicki Mayer, Miranda J. Banks, and John Thornton Caldwell (New York: Routledge, 2009), 91. 37. Ibid., 94. 38. Ibid., 91.

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39. Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 251; Margaret Andersen, Thinking about Women (New York: Macmillan, 1985), 130. 40. Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 3. Oliver Hensdell, from the Dallas Community Theatre led by Marjo Jones, was hired to work with contract players; while he did not direct, several male screen-test directors did become film directors, including Lillian Burns’ husband, George Sidney.

CHAPTER 10

The Actors’ Laboratory in Hollywood

The Actors’ Lab (1941–1950) was an acting school, non-profit theatre company, and sanctuary for performers working as supporting players in Hollywood. The group formed in response to the realities of the performing arts business; Lab documents explain that “the influx of Broadway folk to Hollywood, the long between-picture interims and the isolation from other craftsmen made the need for some community of craft activity apparent.”1 Identifying a view expressed by the many Lab members she interviewed, Delia Nora Salvi observes that it was “more than just a workshop or theatre; it was also their social life and refuge.”2 She concludes that “Lab people not only clung together out of a shared artistic belief, but also out of a need for spiritual and human fulfillment.”3 Jeff Corey, a character actor and later an acting coach, describes the Lab as the “in place” to be in the 1940s; it was “the hub of theatre activity [because] everyone used to come to see the Lab plays – Freddie March, Danny Kaye, the whole Hollywood community.”4 After renting studios in a few Hollywood locations, in 1943 the Lab moved to its permanent home at 1455 North Laurel Avenue, a site that included a house that had been converted into a theatre with a small stage and a rehearsal room, and an adjacent building with rooms that could be used for classes.5 The modest workspaces were tucked behind the legendary Schwab’s drugstore on Sunset Boulevard, and the alley between the Lab and Schwab’s “became the favorite ‘hanging out’ place for members,

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students, and Lab friends.”6 It was a setting where “friends met, social plans were made, ideas, discussions, and philosophical arguments were expressed”; one could learn almost as much “in the ‘alley’ as in class or on stage.”7 The documents in the Actors’ Lab Collection shed light on the group’s contributions to the war effort, its teaching and production programs, and the factors that led to its dissolution in 1950.8

THE ACTORS’ LAB AND ITS ERA An article by Joe Papirofsky (stage director Joseph Papp) in the January 1948 issue of “The Craftsman,” a mimeographed newsletter for students and Lab members, lists some of the key members of the Actors’ Lab. They included: Group Theatre actors Roman Bohnen, Phoebe Brand, J. Edward Bromberg, Morris Carnovsky, and Art Smith; Mary Tarcai, an acting teacher from the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, and director Daniel Mann, who studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse; Will Lee, co-founder of the socially engaged Theatre of Action in New York and an actor in Group Theatre productions; and Curt Conway, a late addition to the Group Theatre. Noting that other people “too numerous to mention” also contributed to the Lab, Papirofsky observes that its members fostered “‘truth’ in film acting” and kept “alive the theatre tradition of which they were a part.”9 He adds that a “sprinkling of Federal Theatre, Theatre Guild, and Hollywood Theatre Alliance” members also participated in Lab activities.10 The Federal Theatre people included: (Mary) Virginia Farmer, a member of the Group Theatre active in the Los Angeles chapter of the Federal Theatre Project (1935–1939); Jeff Corey, who had been in a Living Newspaper showcase produced by the Federal Theatre Project; and Jacobina Caro, who had been a choreographer for the Works Progress Administration. The Theatre Guild people included: Phoebe Brand, Morris Carnovsky, and Art Smith, who were in Guild productions before joining the Group Theatre. Some of the Lab’s most dedicated members had been part of the shortlived Hollywood Theatre Alliance (1939–1941), one of the many Popular Front theatre companies active in the 1930s in Hollywood.11 The Alliance had formed to replace the Federal Theatre Project when it was dissolved in 1939 by US Congress members opposed to Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. It gained recognition (and notoriety) for its left-leaning musical revue Meet the People, which played for a year in Los Angeles starting in

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December 1939, and on Broadway from December 1940 to May 1941.12 Screenwriter Helen Slote (Levitt) and actors J.  Edward Bromberg, Jeff Corey, Mary Davenport, Jody Gilbert, and Herman Waldman belonged to the Hollywood Theatre Alliance; these founding members of the Lab were “active in the direction and work of the [actor training] Workshop and the Actors’ Lab theatre” through 1947.13 Richard Fiske, born Richard Potts, was another Hollywood Theatre Alliance member important to the Lab in its early years. He had participated in the discussions that led to its formation, and had chaired one of its first executive boards.14 Like many actors of the period, including Lab members Jeff Corey, Will Lee, and Herman Waldman, Fiske fought in World War II.  He was killed in 1944, but his influence continued, in part because he had brought fellow Columbia contract player Lloyd Bridges to the initial Lab meetings. Bridges, father of actors Jeff and Beau Bridges and known for his leading role in Sea Hunt (1958–1961), often served on the Lab’s executive boards. Actor Mary Davenport, the first wife of blacklisted writer Waldo Salt and a founding member of the Lab, contributed to its activities throughout the 1940s. Jody Gilbert, known for her roles as a plus-size character actor, was an original Lab member whose work with the group and her unfriendly testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) led her to be blacklisted in the 1950s. One of the first acting classes offered by the Lab in 1941 was taught by Jules Dassin, who began as an actor in Yiddish theatre and became known for directing noir thrillers; as a blacklisted exile, he directed the acclaimed heist film Rififi (1955). Roman Bohnen, J. Edward Bromberg, and Virginia Farmer also taught an early set of classes offered by the Lab in 1941. Dancer and choreographer Jacobina Caro led one of the first body work classes, as did someone listed as Gerry Chanin (possibly a pseudonym).15 The disbanding of the Group Theatre in 1941 provided an impetus for its members to create new organizations. The Lab’s egalitarian structure, emphasis on civic engagement, and pragmatic Hollywood location built on actor-centered trends in the Group. This approach contrasted with the director-centered theatre that Group members Elia Kazan and Robert Lewis envisioned in 1941, when they enlisted Group associate Molly Thacher (Kazan’s wife) as a producer-reader in an attempt to produce plays in New York. That effort failed, but Kazan and Lewis were successful in 1947, when they partnered with Group director Cheryl Crawford to establish the Actors Studio as an apolitical workshop to develop actors

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responsive to directors’ demands. The Actors Studio model represented a more prudent choice, given Cold War developments such as the October 1947 congressional hearings on alleged communism in the motion picture industry, which led to the November 1947 “Waldorf Statement” that established the blacklist in the film and television industries.16 By comparison, the left-leaning affiliations of the creative professionals associated with the Lab made them subject to blacklisting, a development that altered their careers and place in the history of American acting. Perusing the lists of Lab officers feels like a tawdry replication of HUAC or Tenney Committee “research,” but sharing a few snapshots of the group’s membership illuminates the continuity of its core members and the breadth of its professional contacts. For example, by 1942 Roman Bohnen, J.  Edward Bromberg, Morris Carnovsky, and Daniel Mann were the directors of the actor training program, Gerry Chanin continued to teach body work classes, and the Lab began to invite guest speakers. The eclectic group of guests who covered “motion picture acting problems” included: Jules Dassin, Michael Gordon (Group Theatre), Joan Hathaway (dialogue director), Anthony Mann (film director), Irving Pichel (Pasadena Playhouse actor, film director), Irving Reis (film director), Sophie Rosenstein (Warner Bros. coach), Vincent Sherman (Theatre Guild actor, film director), and Frank Tuttle (film director).17 In 1944, Roman Bohnen was chairman, actor Sam Levene was vice president, actor Larry Parks was treasurer, and screenwriter Helen Slote was executive secretary. The executive board included: John Berry (film director), Lloyd Bridges, Phoebe Brand, Phil Brown (actor), Morris Carnovsky, Hume Cronyn (American Academy of Dramatic Arts), Jules Dassin, Edward Dmytryk (film director), Jody Gilbert, Ruth Nelson (Group Theatre), S.  Sylvan Simon (film director), Art Smith, Gloria Stuart (Pasadena Playhouse), Mary Tarcai, and Irene Tedrow (actor). By 1944, the Lab had more than 500 audience-sponsors, whose support of Lab Theatre productions covered the cost of the shows and made it possible to award a few scholarships for students enrolled in its courses. The actor training program offered three levels of acting classes, an advanced refresher course for professionals with extensive experience, and courses in voice and body work. The Lab provided individual coaching for screen tests and specific roles; it also organized forums “on questions of interest and importance to the actor” led by “leading members” of the theatre and film industry.18

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As of 1946, Roman Bohnen remained chairman; board members included: Phoebe Brand, Lloyd Bridges, J.  George Bragin (attorney), J.  Edward Bromberg, Phil Brown, Morris Carnovsky, Hume Cronyn, Rose Hobart (Civic Repertory and American Laboratory Theatres), Sam Levene, Daniel Mann, Larry Parks, Abraham Polonsky (writer-director), Anthony Quinn (actor), Art Smith, Mary Tarcai, George Tyne (actordirector), and John Vernon (actor). The increased number of actors on the 1946 board reflects the Lab’s efforts to expand its actor training program to accommodate returning veterans. By the following year, Lab classes “in the various phases of acting, direction, makeup, speech, set designing, as well as fencing” had been taught by more than fifty “professional artists” who earned their living in film and theatre.19 In 1948, Roman Bohnen continued as chairman. With the Actors’ Lab now labeled a communist front by the Tenney Committee, the board represented the most committed or left-leaning members. The group included: J.  George Bragin, Phoebe Brand, Lloyd Bridges, J.  Edward Bromberg, Phil Brown, Morris Carnovsky, Hume Cronyn, Michael Gordon, Rose Hobart, H.  S. Kraft (writer-producer), Will Lee, Daniel Mann, Joseph Papirofsky, Abraham Polonsky, Anthony Quinn, Waldo Salt (screenwriter), Art Smith, Mary Tarcai, George Tyne, John Vernon, John Wexley (screenwriter), and Mervin Williams (actor). A study unto itself, the number of board members whose lives were impacted by the HUAC and Tenney Committee hearings suggests why the Lab itself became a target for anticommunists. Eventually viewed from the outside as little more than a communist front, the Lab was actually a bustling site for training in Modern acting. Although it offered classes only on a part-time basis during the war, in 1942 Sophie Rosenstein sent a few Warner Bros. contract players to Lab classes. The group included Lynne Baggett, Juanita Stark, and Dolores Moran (pictured in Chap. 3), who had brief Hollywood careers in the 1940s, and Eleanor Parker, who had been at the Pasadena Playhouse and went on to enjoy a long career (1942–1991) that included three Oscar nominations.20 For the fiscal year ending June 1944, income from tuition and USO tours was a modest $17,500, but after the Lab moved to a full-time schedule of classes in 1945, income from tuition alone rose to $38,000 for the fiscal year ending June 1946. With the war over, the Lab began to offer year-around courses for both seasoned professionals and

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contract players. In 1945, Lab members trained RKO contract players for three months, and worked with veterans whose training was subsidized by Paramount. The Lab also provided training for actors at MGM, Republic Pictures, and the erstwhile James Cagney Studio. Starting in 1945, Universal and 20th Century Fox began sending contract players to the Lab for training. The connection between the Lab and 20th Century Fox caught the attention of industry analysts. A Hollywood Reporter article observed that Fox might close its school and send all its contract players to the Lab; other pieces in the Hollywood Reporter and the Los Angeles Times discussed the “joint effort” of the training programs at Fox and the Lab.21 While not noted by the press, Marilyn Monroe was one of the contract players sent by Fox to study at the Lab between March and May 1947.22 Mary Tarcai, head of the Lab’s actor training program, characterized the relationships with the studios as difficult but worthwhile.23 On the one hand, the Lab had no say in the students sent to its classes, and members were concerned that the studios saw the courses as “a testing ground” for deciding whether or not to continue an actor’s contract; on the other, the tuition put the Lab’s actor training program “on its feet financially,” and faculty could see that participation in the courses had “a marked influence on some of the people.”24 Following the war, the Lab also worked with more than 200 veterans. Between 1945 and 1948, it received over 3,000 applications from veterans wanting to enroll in courses. Audie Murphy, a war hero who went on to a Hollywood career, attended Lab classes and was later in the Universal talent program led by Sophie Rosenstein. Character actors William Phipps, James Anderson, and Neville Brand were among the veterans who attended Lab classes through the GI Bill. Phipps, who made his film debut in Crossfire (Dmytryk 1947), recalls that his time at the Lab included “courses in pantomime [i.e., sense memory], fencing, speech and body work,” and that in addition to “classroom exercises, students acted out scenes from famous plays.”25 In 1947, there were twenty contract players and almost ninety veterans in Lab classes; income from tuition for the fiscal year ending in June 1947 was $70,000; the following year it peaked at $72,000. As its work with veterans suggests, the Lab belonged to its historical moment, and its philosophy was colored by members’ response to the rise of fascism and the war in Europe and the Pacific. The Lab’s 1941

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“Statement of Policy” reveals its members’ interest in fostering actors’ understanding of society in a time “when the preservation of democracy and democratic culture was a matter of life or death.”26 Lab members saw themselves as citizens, and they rejected the image of the actor as a colorful figure “inhabiting an ivory tower above the petty affairs of daily life.”27 Their interest in a democratic society shaped their “Constitution,” which identified the Lab as a place where theatre craftsmen (as they put it) could work together for artistic self-improvement, the elevation of the craft of acting, and the good of the community.28 On December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on American ships in Pearl Harbor, Lab members held an emergency meeting in which they organized blood donations and started plans for the group’s contributions to the war effort. Notes from this meeting show that members were determined to make the Lab’s theatre work “as effective an instrument … as a war [munitions] plant was in its way.”29 That same evening, Lab members continued with their plan to stage the second act of Clifford Odets’ Paradise Lost, which had been produced by the Group Theatre in 1935. The simple production, featuring Jeff Corey, Jody Gilbert, Will Lee, and character actors John Kellogg and Elliott Sullivan, was presented using only “a twenty-four watt amber bulb” for illumination.30 In directing the piece, Roman Bohnen’s aim was not to produce “the most finished presentation,” but instead create an opportunity for the actors to appreciate the “experience of having given a truthful performance in a play along with other truthful performances.”31 Like other Lab members, he saw this type of experience as important for actors seeking to “train themselves in a ‘conscious approach to acting’ [because it] permanently endows the actor with the comprehension of what [his/her] goal should always be”.32 Lab members made other notable contributions during the war. Between 1942 and 1946, they organized USO shows, formed two of the first Hospital Units to tour America, and provided training for enlisted personnel assigned to produce shows for the US armed forces. Rose Hobart, who starting teaching at the Lab in 1941, was especially active.33 Between 1943 and 1945, she was a member of a Lab-organized USO company that presented shows at US military bases throughout the Aleutian Islands in the Alaska Territory.34 After the war, Lab members produced a radio series for the Veterans Service Center and continued their civic engagement by working with hundreds of veterans in Lab courses (Fig. 10.1).

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Fig. 10.1 Rose Hobart in a Universal publicity photo c. 1931. Hobart left Broadway for leading roles in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and other Hollywood films

TRAINING IN MODERN ACTING AT THE LAB The Lab’s wide range of classes (from script analysis to fencing) was designed to “make the actor aware of his instrument, develop his imagination, help him think creatively and to start giving him the ability to help himself when he has an acting job.”35 These goals reflect the priorities of other Modern acting teachers. For Lab members, actor training included voice and body work that made a performer more flexible, versatile, disciplined, and thus able to embody a range of characters. Members

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believed that actors must continually work on their physical and vocal expressivity, their understanding of art and society, their methods for entering the life of the character, their sensitivity to performance choices by fellow actors, and their capacity to work effectively in various production settings. Lab members saw independent script analysis as the basis for all performances. In their view, “truthful” characterizations emerged from study of the characters’ given circumstances, problems, and actions. The script gives actors the impression that shapes the expression they create in performance, for acting involves the use of one’s mind and body to incorporate an idea indicated by the author. In a performance, the character in the script passes through the prism of the actor, and so becomes colored by the actor’s physical, emotional, and cultural individuality. For this reason, Lab members believed that the performer’s “soul” must be enlarged and made sensitive in order for the actor to serve as a prism that both illuminates and distills the richness of the character as written. As Morris Carnovsky explains in his article for the January 1948 issue of “The Craftsman,” great roles give actors “thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls”; they are images that crystallize “fundamental realities,” and players should allow themselves to be “shaken” by the characters and the realities they illuminate (Fig. 10.2).36 Giving priority to a humanist rather than a psychoanalytic conception of the self, Lab members created courses in speech and voice that built on the assumption that actors’ work in these areas could be “guided, directed and controlled by mind, spirit, [and] soul,” because each person “possesses these great attributes.”37 From the Lab’s perspective, the best training in speech and voice “liberates these factors,” so that an actor can fully communicate with fellow performers and audiences.38 Moreover, seeing an actor’s work on the self and on the role as a coherent whole, Lab members developed training that focused on ways to apply “the technical knowledge of speech, voice, [and] intonation to characterization so they will become definite means of revelation of character in art as they are in life.”39 Lab members’ view that actor training can and should build on the positive, healthy connection between mind, body, and spirit also informs their ideas about the role of fencing courses. As they explain: “It is not our plan to make fencers, but through this process of training, we hope to improve and create a consciousness in the individual which will without doubt carry over into other phases of life and especially into acting.”40

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Fig. 10.2 A publicity still for Dead Reckoning (1947) with Morris Carnovsky, who appeared in Hollywood films starting in 1937

Fencing courses can increase actors’ “sensitivity of body movement,” and most importantly enhance their natural ability “to act or react spontaneously from observation rather than from anticipation.”41 These courses sharpen actors’ observational skills and sensitivity to surroundings; they also make performers more conscious of how it feels to react spontaneously in daily life. Lab members saw fencing courses as one of many ways to gently make actors conscious of the remarkable mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual capacities people possess. The Lab offered courses in the history of drama to illustrate connections between art and society, and to show ways that even contemporary

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performance styles reflect developments in dramatic history. Course topics included: acting styles in different regions; the way American acting from 1900 to 1925 had been affected by national and world events; the conception of character in different periods and styles of drama; developments in guilds and unions for actors; the phases of film production and ways to address the challenges of working as a bit player in Hollywood. Students were encouraged to read the complete works of William Shakespeare. Lectures on the history of acting were grounded in Masters of Drama (1940) and Producing the Play (1941) by respected critic-historian John Gassner. Students explored scene design using New Theatres for Old (1940) by Mordecai Gorelik, who created the designs for the Group Theatre productions of Men in White (1934) and Golden Boy (1937). Students at the Lab studied voice, diction, and dramatic interpretation using Good American Speech (1933) and Oral Interpretation of Forms of Literature (1936) by Margaret Prendergast McLean, who led the Department of Diction at the American Laboratory Theatre from 1924 to 1930. McLean also taught diction and oral interpretation at Maria Ouspenskaya’s Studio of Dramatic Art in Hollywood, starting in 1940; documents in the Margaret Prendergast McLean Collection housed at Colorado State University indicate that she worked as a speech and dialect coach for studio contract players from the 1930s through the 1950s. There were also a few select books that Lab members considered “the better books regarding our craft”; these included Stanislavsky’s An Actor Prepares and Boleslavsky’s Acting: The First Six Lessons.42 Students also read a volume entitled Handbook of Acting, presumably a precursor to the Toby Cole anthology Acting: A Handbook of the Stanislavski Method. The Lab also served as a resource for established actors making the transition to film, by offering advice on ways to work with new props, hit quickly established marks, and interact with actors they might meet only a few minutes before a scene is filmed. For instance, Leo Penn (father of actors Sean and Chris Penn), who worked in television after being blacklisted in the 1950s, shared his insights in a mimeographed essay circulated by the Lab. In it, he explains that actors working in Poverty Row films would receive essentially no direction, but that they had the opportunity to deepen their characterizations if they studied the rushes from their first day of shooting, just as he had done when he was cast in The Fall Guy (Le Blog 1947).43 The Lab also offered courses on the adjustments actors had to make when moving from theatre to film; these often included screenings, with introductions to the film and post-screening question and answer sessions led by members of the cast. Edward G.  Robinson,

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John Garfield, and Orson Welles exchanged ideas with students and faculty at the Lab during these courses. Akim Tamiroff, Larry Parks, and Marc Lawrence also provided guest lectures. The Lab’s popular Monday night film course held in various studio screening rooms would sometimes attract 200 people.44 The Lab also coordinated with the Hollywood Film Society to organize film series that would introduce students to film history, and in 1947 offered courses where students’ scenes were recorded on 16 mm film. The Lab’s focus on actor-centered pedagogical activities led to a professional distance between its members and the three directors in the Group Theatre (Lee Strasberg, Cheryl Crawford, and Harold Clurman). In 1944, Strasberg proposed that he direct a Lab-sponsored production of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan (1923), which premiered as a Theatre Guild production starring Winifred Lenihan, a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Strasberg wanted Jennifer Jones in the leading role; she had won an Oscar for her performance in The Song of Bernadette (King 1943) and become a major star under the tutelage of producer and later husband David O. Selznick. The production would thus be informed by the aesthetic and economic policies of commercial theatre. Lab members rejected Strasberg’s idea, informing him that he would “have to work from the bottom up” and be a team player if he wanted to participate in Lab events.45 Cheryl Crawford contacted Roman Bohnen to gauge his interest in the American Repertory Theatre (1946–1948) she was establishing in New  York with actor-manager Eva Le Gallienne and director Margaret Webster. Bohnen replied to Crawford’s invitation to participate by explaining that he would rather continue building on his five-year stake in the “groundwork” for the Lab, which he described as creating a “body of talents that are much stronger than the original Group nucleus of talent.”46 Clurman gave a few lectures at the Lab, but had no role in the production or training programs, especially after he published his account of the Group Theatre years in The Fervent Years (1945). As Wendy Smith notes, his book “caused a lot of bad feeling [because] it seemed to be essentially the story of how Harold Clurman created the Group Theatre all by himself.”47 She notes that a “lengthy, unpublished essay by Bud Bohnen revealed how wounded he was by the way Clurman subtly downplayed everyone’s contributions to the Group but his own.”48 Bohnen’s papers in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts contain several drafts of the essay. In one draft, he writes:

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Harold Clurman’s book, The Fervent Years, really ought to be reviewed by those artists whose dedication to the essential “groupness” provided the author a ten year arena in which to exercise his innocence … For it must be called a kind of appalling innocence – in the Don Quixote tradition – when a man becomes so preoccupied with a self-driven quest to achieve astral clarity on all subjects of art and culture and so driven to share that clarity that he finally imagines the act of expounding his beliefs to constitute the sober act of organic leadership. The cardinal function of leadership is to release the creative energies of those led. It isn’t that Harold failed in this task; he never even undertook it. Thus, the book exposes, not Clurman’s preoccupation with the problem of the Group, but his preoccupation with the problem of himself … I have been talking with many of the actor-artists who could review this book so well. Most of them, having for ten years submerged themselves into the Group Ensemble seem to be a little amazed now to find “star emphasis” turning up in a book at this late date. … One regrets that it is not a useful piece of theatre work [and] one could deeply wish that the book didn’t protest that the “fervency” for theatre-pioneering is a youthful aberration or maladjustment akin to the thunderous involvements of adolescence … I venture this comment on the book strictly as an appraisal of performance. Next time I see Harold, I shall remind him that his actors for ten exciting years never allowed themselves to erect their performances from so self-indulgent a base.49

As these remarks and the cover image of Bohnen’s camera test for The Hard Way (Sherman 1943) suggest, his ability to be a supporting player in ensemble productions did not reveal a lack of passion or personality, but rather reflected his thorough commitment to Modern acting, which entailed a conscious decision to submerge himself in his characters and their world.

POLITICS AND THE DEMISE OF THE ACTORS’ LAB In 1945, Ben Jonson’s Elizabethan comedy Volpone became the Lab’s first theatrical success; a Variety review observed that the Lab seemed “bound for Broadway.”50 This same year, a Life magazine article announced that “some of the most skillful acting” in American stage productions was “being done in Hollywood by some part-time refugees from the movies.”51 In 1946, the Lab leased the Las Palmas Theatre and reopened their production of Volpone. They followed with productions of Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing!, with John Garfield in the leading role, and The

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Inspector General directed by Michael Chekhov.52 All of this work led the Christian Science Monitor to describe the Lab as a company respected by theatre critics and film producers alike.53 Home of the Brave, one of the 1946 productions featuring veterans, was invited to play an engagement at the Geary Theatre in San Francisco; this Arthur Laurents play would be made into the 1949 film with African American actor James Edwards as the veteran whose experiences teach psychiatrist Jeff Corey a great deal about racism in America. In 1947, a Lab production featuring Jessica Tandy in Tennessee Williams’ Portrait of a Madonna was described as one of its “knockout one acts” and taken as evidence that the Lab provided a venue for actors to do quality work.54 In 1947, the watershed period of the HUAC hearings, Universal and 20th Century Fox stopped sending contract players to study at the Lab. As Salvi notes, in the Cold War era, “it was probably inevitable that the Lab’s philosophy and approach to the art of theatre would make it vulnerable to criticism and attacks.”55 With the Lab’s membership comprising actors from the Group Theatre, the Hollywood Theatre Alliance, and the Federal Theatre Project, the anticommunists in Hollywood, the California State Senate, and the US House of Representatives did not give much credence to the fact that Lab members such as Will Lee had served in the armed forces or that Lab member Rose Hobart had spent two years doing USO shows overseas. Instead, as opponents of New Deal labor policies gained momentum, their left-leaning politics made them targets for anticommunists beginning in 1945. In October of that year, the Lab fell out of favor with Warner Bros. when a few members joined a picket line of employees engaged in a bitter strike with the studio. Warner Bros. responded by demanding the immediate return of the props the Lab had borrowed for a production of A Bell for Adano. In a subsequent meeting, it was agreed that the individuals who joined the picket line should have first consulted other Lab members, who could have reminded them that their participation in strike activities at Warner Bros. would put the production in jeopardy. A month later, in the Hollywood Reporter’s November 9 “Rambling Reporter” column, James Henaghan warned both Hollywood and the Veterans Administration about sending students to Lab classes. He claimed that “people of repute” believed that the Lab was dominated by individuals who were “as red as a burlesque queen’s garters.”56 Henaghan argued that the Lab’s political affiliations were a matter of “public concern,” because “the major studios [were] paying weekly fees to the Lab

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to train young players, and the school [was] accredited to teach veterans under the G.I. Bill.”57 In his view, studio and taxpayer money was going to people who openly supported communist agitators (allegedly responsible for strikes) bent on destroying the way of life valued by groups such as Hollywood’s Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, which was formed in 1944 to coordinate with other anticommunist organizations. The column concluded by saying that “a denial of the communistic affiliations of members of the faculty is due and vital to the Lab itself.”58 In February 1948, the Tenney Committee gave official sanction to Henaghan’s insinuations; with the hearing chambers emptied of all observers, Richard Combs, the committee’s legal counsel, read his “finding” into the official record. The report “concluded” that the Lab’s Department of Public Education certification was dangerous, because it meant “any veteran attending the institution could demand that he be given GI money and the government would have no alternative under the law except to give it to him.”59 By simply reading this statement into the record, the Tenney Committee “confirmed” that the Lab was using taxpayer dollars to spread communist influence. That same month, American Mercury, a magazine that provided a forum for conservatives in the 1940s, published an article by Oliver Carlson, a “technical witness” who had offered testimony about communism in the motion picture industry for the HUAC hearings in October 1947.60 The article states: “In pumping its propaganda into Hollywood, the [Communist] Party has been aided considerably by two ‘fronts,’ known, respectively, as the People’s Educational Center and the Actors Laboratory, Inc.”61 Carlson proposes that the Lab’s “primary function apparently is to draw ambitious young actors and actresses into the orbit of Communist front organizations.”62 He alleges that “Communist Party literature is always available at the Actors Lab, and the organization has frequently donated funds and talent to help put across pro-Communist demonstrations.”63 To introduce a section that catalogs the Lab’s numerous communist affiliations, Carlson tells readers that the “list of sponsors and directors of the Actors Laboratory comprises a representative crosssection of Hollywood Stalinism.”64 Carlson’s full comments on the Lab are featured in the Fourth Report of the Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities: 1948: Communist Front Organizations.65 This document quotes its 1947 report, saying that letters “received by agents of this committee indicate

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that the Actors’ Laboratory Theater has access to the mailing lists of the Communist Party.”66 The report offers its summary of the hearings that followed from the subpoenas it issued to Will Lee, who was required to appear on February 18, 1948, and to Rose Hobart, Roman Bohnen, and J. Edward Bromberg, who were summoned to appear on February 19 at the Assembly Chambers of the State Building in Los Angeles. Stating that Hobart’s “testimony followed the usual, evasive and argumentative pattern set by Communists who have been brought before the committee,” it concludes, “there is no doubt concerning Rose Hobart’s Communist connections.”67 The report makes brief remarks about Bohnen and Bromberg’s lack of cooperation, and ends by saying: “Like all of the other Communists who had appeared before the committee in this phase of its investigation, Will Lee refused to answer whether or not he had been, or was, a member of the Communist Party.”68 California State Senator Jack B. Tenney had been collecting “evidence” about communist activity since 1941, and he shared this material with HUAC when it started its investigation of Hollywood in 1945.69 When US Congressman John Rankin announced in July 1945 that HUAC would be examining the communism threat in Hollywood, Tenney contributed by highlighting “evidence” in his committee’s 1943 and 1945 reports, which led him to believe that “Congressman Rankin is guilty of understatement in his announcement that Hollywood is full of Reds.”70 Bolstered by HUAC’s involvement, Tenney stepped up his investigations of Hollywood during the next two years. In March 1947, HUAC asked him to be an expert witness, and so he testified at length “regarding the communist infiltration in California.”71 While sporadic criticism of the Tenney Committee began to appear in late 1947, its public hearings concerning the Lab took place when Tenney was at the height of his career. The timing of his subpoenas (February 13, 1948) suggest that they were also a dramatic gesture designed to coincide with the opening night of the Lab’s production of Declaration, which compared HUAC and other anticommunists to the Federalist Party that in 1798 had backed the contentious legislation known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. Scripted by soon-to-be blacklisted writers Janet and Philip Stevenson, Declaration, directed by Daniel Mann and featuring a cast of fifty including Lloyd Gough as Thomas Jefferson, represented an equally dramatic gesture given that the studios had established a blacklist following the October 1947 HUAC hearings. Valorizing the early DemocraticRepublican Party led by Thomas Jefferson, Declaration claimed the moral

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high ground for twentieth-century individuals who challenged political organizations that appealed to domestic security concerns as a way to discredit opponents. The production, staged on weekends from February 13 to March 7 and nightly from April 13 to the end of the month, received favorable reviews, including the assessment in an article in the February 18 issue of Variety that Declaration “was ripe for Broadway, a definite asset to any theatre season.”72 The Tenney Committee sought to eliminate what it deemed a communist front by discrediting its members in the eyes of the film industry and the Veterans Administration. Yet lacking evidence that the Lab was using studio money to spread communist influence or taxpayer money to convert US veterans to Stalinism, the committee resorted to the standard anticommunist method of asserting individuals’ guilt by association. The charges read into the record during the hearings suggest that Will Lee was subpoenaed because someone named William Lee had written an article for People’s Daily World (the official newspaper of the Communist Party USA); Hobart had lectured on the history of craft guilds and unions; Bromberg had spoken at the People’s Education Center (allegedly a communist front); and Bohnen had performed a monologue at the SotoMichigan Jewish Center (claimed to be a communist front because it rented films from the People’s Education Center). Charges read into the record by the Tenney Committee not only led to the blacklisting of the four individuals, they also provided legal cover for subsequent attacks on the Lab. As Hearst columnist Lee Mortimer noted at the time: “the beauty of Tenney’s publications is that the citations may be repeated or republished without fear of civil or criminal action because they are official reports of a legislative body.”73 The Lab’s 1948 “Exuberanza” Labor Day fundraising event drew hostile comment from “Rambling Reporter” James Henaghan at the Hollywood Reporter; syndicated columnist Hedda Hopper denounced the Labor Day event in a September 6 piece, which argued that Lab members’ “corny idea of being liberal will eventually lead them into trouble,” because it was the kind of behavior that “leads to race riots.”74 Hopper’s objection to the event’s absence of segregation overlooks the fact that the Lab’s acting classes included a racially mixed collection of veterans. Yet, with the event held in the Schwab drugstore parking lot at the corner of Laurel Avenue and Sunset Boulevard, onlookers found incidents to castigate. A passing moment in which African American actress Dorothy Dandridge and light-skinned Hispanic actor Anthony Quinn

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danced together provided fuel for Hopper, and later served as “evidence” of Dandridge’s un-American affiliations, because her willingness to violate racial boundaries allegedly confirmed that her presence at the Lab event was neither innocent nor coincidental; by comparison, Marilyn Monroe’s time at the Lab was never associated with un-American activity.75 On September 8, 1948, an article in the Los Angeles Examiner sealed the Lab’s fate. Entitled “Justice Department Labels Actors’ Lab Theatre a Communist Front,” the column reviewed the Tenney Committee’s “evidence” that the Lab was a front for communism: (a) the four people subpoenaed had refused to answer questions about their political affiliations; (b) the Lab had staged Sean O’Casey’s A Pound on Demand and Irwin Shaw’s The Shy and the Lonely; (c) Lab member Jacobina Caro had once been married to Sidney Davison, who taught at the People’s Education Center; and (d) Lab members had performed two Russian plays, Anton Chekhov’s The Bear and The Evils of Tobacco at the Soto-Michigan Center.76 It did not matter that the Lab focused on actor training, civic duty, and non-profit theatre, or that the political affiliations of some of its members made them more logical candidates for investigation than the four people subpoenaed. In October 1948, as a result of the Tenney investigation, the Internal Revenue Service revoked the Lab’s non-profit, tax-exempt status.77 By the end of 1948, “the effects of the Tenney Committee hearings had become very evident”: attendance at Lab productions had declined, as people wanted to avoid association with the group, and there were fewer students in the acting classes.78 Roman Bohnen, J.  Edward Bromberg, Rose Hobart, and Will Lee discovered they were no longer eligible for roles in films. Hobart stayed in Los Angeles, and eventually cleared her name. Will Lee became known for portraying the grocer Mr. Hooper on Sesame Street from 1969 until his death in 1982. On February 24, 1949, Bohnen, who was appearing in a Lab production of Distant Isle, collapsed on stage at the end of the second act; he had suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of forty-seven.79 The curtain was closed and the audience was asked to leave. Lab members frantically contacted colleagues, but once the confusion receded and “an ambulance had removed Bohnen’s body,” they remained “huddled together [as an] immense sense of futility settled upon them.”80 Based on her interviews with Lab members, Salvi concludes that the “death of no other person could have had such an effect.”81 Bohnen had been “the force behind all the activities of the Lab, its natural-born leader, unanimously adored and respected by students and faculty.”82 He had “taught, directed, produced,

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lectured, acted, organized, advised, inspired, and mediated,” and was the only person able to keep “all opposing factions together.”83 Summing up members’ perceptions, Salvi explains that when “Bohnen died, the spirit of leadership and the soul of the Lab died with him” (Fig. 10.3).84 Lab members organized a Memorial Assembly for Bohnen in early March, and the “overwhelming” turnout for the event held at the El Patio Theatre celebrated his vision for a national “theatre, unencumbered by commercial considerations, in which there could be the free expression of ideas, made available to one and all.”85 By May 1949, Lloyd Gough

Fig. 10.3 Roman Bohnen in a publicity photo for Of Mice and Men (1939). Bohnen became known for his well-crafted character roles in a collection of Hollywood films

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had assumed Bohnen’s role as chair of the executive board, and over the course of the year, the Lab was able to mount two plays and a series of student workshop productions. Yet, for the fiscal year ending June 1949, income from tuition had dropped to $2,100, and the Lab was $4,500 in debt, after having set a record in 1948 by ending the fiscal year $3,000 in the black. Following unexpected and spurious complaints from the Department of Public Education, and a new set of federal requirements that would have precluded professional productions by the Lab, in August 1949 members voted to be “officially withdrawn from the veteran training program.”86 The fall 1949 classes failed to enroll a sufficient number of students, and the Lab closed its school and declared bankruptcy at the end of 1949. Hoping to continue as a theatre company, on February 8, 1950, Lab members opened The Banker’s Daughter, a musical by Henry Myers and Edward Eliscu, who created Meet the People for the Hollywood Theatre Alliance. After the show closed on May 6, 1950, a group of Lab members traveled back to New York to find work. The official statement that the Lab was a communist front would affect people’s lives throughout the 1950s. For a number of individuals called before HUAC, their association with the Lab was used as a key piece of “evidence” against them. J. Edward Bromberg was required to testify before HUAC on June 26, 1951. After the Tenney Committee hearings in 1948, he had developed a heart condition, which worsened in the months leading up to and following his HUAC appearance. On December 6, 1951, he suffered a heart attack and died at the age of forty-seven. At the time, he was in rehearsals for a London production of The Biggest Thief in Town by blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo (Fig. 10.4). The multidimensional actor training program that Lab members created in the 1940s certainly warrants inclusion in any historical account of American acting. Narratives centered on the Actors Studio in New York, which identify work in the studio era as an evolutionary stage in acting, fail to acknowledge that an unprecedented amount of time, expertise, and energy was spent on actor training in Hollywood. Broadway’s decline made Hollywood a site of important work, especially for practitioners interested in demystifying the craft of acting. The Lab offered its students and members an opportunity to develop their talent beyond what was expected of them in roles as supporting players. While one can only speculate, it seems the Lab could have functioned as a school and theatre for some time had it not been labeled a communist front organization. Had it

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Fig. 10.4 J. Edward Bromberg in a Hollywood publicity photo c. 1942. Bromberg appeared in more than fifty films starting in 1936

remained active, the Actors Studio might now be seen in a different light, with Method acting understood as an acting style like any other, rather than the first authentic approach to acting.

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NOTES 1. “Notes on the Actors’ Lab Origins and Early Plays,” Box 3, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection, Special Collections Department, University of California, Los Angeles. 2. Delia Nora Salvi, “The History of the Actors’ Laboratory, Inc. 1941– 1950” (PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1969), 36. Salvi interviewed: George Boroff (1965), Phoebe Brand (1964), Morris Carnovsky (1964), Jacobina Caro (1964), Jeff Corey (1964 and 1969), Kay Cousins (1964), Virginia Farmer (1964), Rose Hobart (1965), Russell Johnson (1964), Robert Karnes (1964), Will Lee (1965), Daniel Mann (1966), Mary Tarcai (1965 and 1966), and Marjorie Winfield (1968). 3. Ibid. 4. Qtd. in Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle, eds., Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 185. 5. Salvi, “The History of the Actors’ Laboratory,” 46. In December 1940, Hollywood Theatre Alliance members met to discuss the need for an organization to help actors address “the aridity of their acting lives in Hollywood” (27). This led to the creation of the Actors’ Lab in January 1941, which first offered classes at the Alliance’s home, the Music Box Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. The Alliance dissolved after its last performance of Meet the People in May 1941. Following a few months in a studio space on Vine, the Lab relocated to a loft on Franklin Avenue, where it remained until 1943, and then moved to its permanent location on Laurel Avenue (30). 6. Ibid., 36. 7. Ibid. 8. The collection includes material stored by Lab member Robert Karnes, which Salvi located during her research. Her 1969 dissertation draws on: the collection; her interviews with Lab members; the Mary Virginia Farmer files; her memory of seeing Lab performances of All My Sons (1948), A Pound on Demand (1948), The Banker’s Daughter (1950); and her study with Jeff Corey and Anthony Quinn, which focused on script analysis, understanding a character’s inner life and motivations, sense-memory exercises, and improvisations to make the character’s motivations one’s own (Salvi, “The History of the Actors’ Laboratory,” 4). She notes that Anthony Barr, known for teaching and writing about film acting, was in a 1953 production of The Big Knife directed by Kay Cousins (4). 9. “The Craftsman,” January 1948, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection.

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10. Ibid. 11. Saverio Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism: Film and Politics in the Age of the New Deal (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001), 110. 12. The Hollywood Theatre Alliance included: Dashiell Hammett, Lillian Hellman, Langston Hughes, and Ira Gershwin; J.  Edward Bromberg served as chairman; screenwriter Henry Blankfort was executive director; director Robert Rossen and lyricist Henry Myers were board members (Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism, 110–112). Minutes from a meeting of the “Actors’ Council” on February 27, 1941 show there was an overlap between the HTA and the Lab during the first half of 1941; the reorganization meeting included: Cy Enfield, Mary Davenport, Natalie Barnes, Isabelle Gibbs, Victor Killian, Jody Gilbert, Marjorie McGregor, Ed Max, Frances Sage, Lucian Preval, Joan Storm, Lucy Land, Maurice Murphy, Richard (Dick) Fiske, and Florence Paige. 13. “Notes for General Background,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. Helen Slote was married to writer Alfred Lewis Levitt; they published as Tom and Helen August during the blacklist and wrote for television into the 1970s. 14. Salvi, “The History of the Actors’ Laboratory,” 38. The executive board elected in September 1941 included Araby Colton, Jeff Corey, Louise Craig, Will Lee, Virginia Mullen, George Kilgen, and Herman Waldman. 15. “Notes on the Actors’ Lab Origins and Early Plays,” Box 3, and Actors’ Lab brochure 1941–1942, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. Jacobina Caro’s first husband was killed in World War II; her second husband, Sidney Davison, was a member of the People’s Education Center, regarded by the Tenney Committee as a communist front. Gerry Chanin is listed as a body work instructor, but over the years I have not been able to locate information about this individual. 16. For information on the blacklist, see: Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–1960 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); McGilligan and Buhle, eds., Tender Comrades. 17. Actors’ Lab brochure, 2nd season 1941–1942, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 18. Actors’ Lab brochure, 3rd season 1942–1943, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 19. “Notes on the Actors’ Lab Origins and Early Plays,” Box 3, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 20. Once Roman Bohnen, Vincent Sherman, and Art Smith had appeared in a few Warner Bros. films, studio publicity generated the 1942 article “Warner Bros. Personnel Loom Large on the Actors’ Laboratory Roster.” See

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21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

Drama School File, Warner Bros. Collection, University of Southern California. Hollywood Reporter and Los Angeles Times 1945 articles, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. See David Garfield, The Actors Studio: A Player’s Place (New York: Macmillan, 1984). Garfield mistakenly sees the Lab as “the first large-scale introduction of the Method on the West Coast,” and thus interprets Monroe’s decision to study with Strasberg as evidence that the Lab introduced her to use of personal substitutions (256). Yet accounts suggest that in leaving Natasha Lytess, her personal coach from 1948 to 1955, Monroe sought a more respected teacher; 20th Century Fox executive Darryl Zanuck had warned Monroe about her dependency on Lytess, recommending that she “destroy this Svengali before it destroys you” (qtd. in Rudy Behlmer, Memo from Darryl F. Zanuck: The Golden Years of Twentieth Century-Fox [New York: Grove Press, 1993], 206). It is not clear how Lytess, an émigré actor who studied with Max Reinhardt, had worked with Monroe. The Max Reinhardt Workshop (1938–1941), which is reported to have “supplied the studios with well-trained bit players and sharpened the acting skills of established stars,” offered classes by various people: “William Dieterle taught ‘Film Directing,’ Henry Blanke ‘Film Production,’ Karl Freund and Rudolph Maté ‘Experimental Camerawork,’ John Huston ‘Screenwriting,’ Edward G. Robinson and Paul Muni ‘Acting,’ and Samson Raphaelson ‘Dramaturgy’” (Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism, 110). Reinhardt himself used the conservatoire method of demonstrating how he wanted an actor to perform a scene, and he sometimes provoked emotion through his own behavior—for example, by spitting at an actor. See J.  L. Styan, Max Reinhardt (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982). “Workshop Report: August 18, 1946,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. Ibid. Qtd. in Joe Collura, “William Phipps: Staying the Course,” Classic Images (October 2014): 74. “Statement of Policy,” Box 3, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. “Notes on the Actors’ Lab Origins and Early Plays,” Box 3, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. “Constitution,” Box 3, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. “Actors’ Laboratory Meeting: December 8, 1941,” Box 3, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. Salvi, “The History of the Actors’ Laboratory,” 40. Ibid.

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32. Ibid. See Mel Gordon, Stanislavsky in America (New York: Routledge, 2009). Gordon discusses the December production in his chapter on the Actors’ Lab, and says that it revealed the Lab’s “conscious approach to acting” (116). He observes that its “truthful performances” reflected the actors’ “personal experiences,” meaning their experience of listening and reacting to one another during performance, since they “shunned Emotional Recall” as a way to create emotion (116, 117). Gordon includes an outline of Lab acting exercises; his chapter draws on: a 1945 Lab prospectus; transcripts from the Lab’s 1946 film series; a 1947 article in Salute magazine; Salvi’s dissertation; and interviews with Phoebe Brand, Morris Carnovsky, Jeff Corey, Michael Gordon, Jay Leyda, and Benjamin Zemach (121). 33. Rose Hobart, A Steady Digression to a Fixed Point (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1994), 114. 34. Ibid., 118, 134. 35. “Veterans Administration Letter: October 24, 1945,” Box 5, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 36. “The Craftsman,” January 1948, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. Lab training fostered independence; actors used script analysis to build performances that could be adjusted to integrate with work by other performers in the ensemble and a director’s vision of a production. The Lab’s vision of the actor as a prism—which does justice to the character in the script when players expand their “souls” and develop the suppleness of their bodies and voices—fits with its emphasis on the study of art, culture, and history, and active participation in voice and body work. 37. “Plan for 18 Month Course, January 1947,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. “Suggestions for Fall Curricula: May 14, 1942,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 43. Leo Penn, “Stanislavski and a Ten Day Shooting,” Box 9, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 44. Clipping from Variety, 1945, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 45. “Production Committee Report,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 46. Roman Bohnen, Letter, Box 3, Roman Bohnen Papers. 47. Wendy Smith, Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931– 1940 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 423. 48. Ibid.

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49. Roman Bohnen, Notes, Box 3, Roman Bohnen Papers, 1918–1976, Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. 50. Life, July 9, 1945, 93–97, Box 17, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 51. “Volpone,” Variety, May 30, 1945, Box 17, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 52. The Lab invited Michael Chekhov to direct a 1946 production of The Inspector General (The Government Inspector), Nikolai Gogol’s surreal satire on nineteenth-century Russia. Roman Bohnen, Bill Watts, Phil Brown, Morris Carnovsky, and J. Edward Bromberg helped facilitate communication due to Chekhov’s limited English. The production did not enjoy critical success and Lab members determined it had limited pedagogical value, because Chekhov simply dictated voice and body choices to recreate the external appearance of previous productions. 53. Christian Science Monitor, July 27, 1946, Box 17, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. See Dwight Thomas and Mary Guion Griepenkerl, Theatre Arts on Acting, ed. Laurence Senelick (New York: Routledge, 2008), 257–260. The 1947 article discusses the Lab’s plays and philosophy. 54. Harold Salemson, “Stars Trading Quantity for Quality,” Federal Press, August 1, 1947, Box 17, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 55. Salvi, “The History of the Actors’ Laboratory,” 70. 56. James Henaghan, “Rambling Reporter,” Hollywood Reporter, November 9, 1945, Box 17, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid. 59. Jack B.  Tenney, Fourth Report of the Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities: 1948: Communist Front Organizations (The Senate, March 25, 1948), 347. 60. Oliver Carlson, “The Communist Record in Hollywood,” American Mercury (February 1948): 135. 61. Ibid., 138. 62. Ibid., 139. 63. Ibid. 64. Ibid. 65. Tenney, Fourth Report of the Senate Fact-Finding Committee, 104–106. 66. Ibid., 104. 67. Ibid., 105. 68. Ibid., 106. Salvi’s dissertation includes the statements Lab members would have read at the Tenney hearings had they been allowed; the hearing transcripts also provide a more complete picture than offered by the summary in the Tenney Committee’s 1948 report.

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69. Edward L.  Barrett, The Tenney Committee: Legislative Investigation of Subversive Activities in California (New York: Cornell University Press, 1951), 30. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid., 31. 72. Salvi, “The History of the Actors’ Laboratory,” 192. 73. Qtd. in Stefan Kanfer, A Journal of the Plague Years (New York: Antheneum, 1973), 94. 74. Qtd. in Salvi, “The History of the Actors’ Laboratory,” 200; see Hedda Hopper’s column, September 6, 1948, Box 17, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 75. Marguerite H. Rippy, “Commodity, Tragedy, Desire: Female Sexuality and Blackness in the Iconography of Dorothy Dandridge,” in Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness, ed. Daniel Bernardi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 186–187. 76. Barrett, The Tenney Committee, 365. 77. Salvi, “The History of the Actors’ Laboratory,” 211. 78. Ibid., 206. 79. Bohnen was born on November 24, 1901, and died on February 24, 1949; see the unpublished biography by his brother, Arthur, in the Roman Bohnen Papers. 80. Salvi, “The History of the Actors’ Laboratory,” 208. 81. Ibid. 82. Ibid., 64. 83. Ibid., 65. 84. Ibid., 208. 85. Ibid., 209. 86. Ibid., 220.

PART IV

Modern and Method Acting

CHAPTER 11

Modern Acting: Stage and Screen

The views about Modern acting articulated by individuals such as Stella Adler, Charles Jehlinger (American Academy of Dramatic Arts), Gilmor Brown (Pasadena Playhouse), Sophie Rosenstein (Warner Bros. and Universal), and members of the Actors’ Lab in Hollywood reflect a remarkably coherent set of ideas about building characters and executing performances. Acting manuals, interviews, and other records also indicate that actors working in the 1930s and 1940s saw screen performance as essentially connected to acting in theatrical venues of various types. For instance, Lizabeth Scott, known for 1940s noir films such as Dead Reckoning (Cromwell 1947), explains that “acting is acting is acting. A character has to be approached the same way,” whether one is working in theatre or film.1 Hume Cronyn, who studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and taught courses at the Actors’ Lab in Hollywood, echoes this view. In a 1949 article in Theatre Arts, Cronyn writes: “the difference between acting for the screen and acting for the stage is negligible and the latter is … the best possible training for the former.”2 The difference is insignificant and unimportant, because the actor’s “business [in film], as in theatre, remains with the character he is to play and this will require his full powers of concentration.”3 Bette Davis expresses this same view in a 1946 Theatre Arts article. She demystifies the stage–screen opposition by explaining that while theatre and film require actors to make certain minor adjustments, the process of building characters is the same. She observes

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that while “it is axiomatic that a screen actor works in a medium that has its own, its special technical demands … this is not a qualitative distinction, it is merely quantitative.”4 Given her experience on Broadway and in Hollywood, she finds that “the art itself is not different … there does not exist one kind of acting for the stage, another for films.”5 As Davis notes, an actor’s adjustments to the specific demands of a production context are “merely quantitative,” because stage and screen actors all “work with the same tools. Our craft requires slight modifications in them, that is all.”6 Actors working in studio-era Hollywood consistently emphasize the connection between film and theatre, pointing out that any acting venue has specific demands that performers must address. Thus, whereas an early theorist such as Walter Benjamin imagined that shooting out of sequence required actors to play themselves to create convincing performances, actors of the period actually emphasize that the demands of Hollywood sound cinema required them to depend even more heavily on their training and (theatrical) experience.7 Cronyn explains that while working on his first film, Shadow of a Doubt, “it became obvious that in theatre terms there was to be practically no rehearsal.”8 Recognizing this, he spent substantial time doing individual preparation. He thoroughly analyzed the script, explored his character’s relationships to the other characters, and developed ideas about his “character’s background and his action throughout the story.”9 He imagined details in his character’s wardrobe and “tried an extension of the theatre’s prop and dress rehearsal routine” by imaginatively “choosing” his character’s house and workplace in the town where the film was being shot.10 He used a notebook where he would record, amend, and recheck “character fundamentals.”11 In sum, he learned that an actor working in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s had to take charge of building a full characterization in order to “step before the camera with a clear and logical plan of what you would like to do and how you would like to do it.”12 MGM drama coach Lillian Burns confirms that the studios required actors to be self-reliant, just like all of the other talented, experienced craftspeople they hired. She explains that actors were simply expected to arrive on set fully prepared and in complete command of their performances. She points out that the limited time for on-set rehearsal meant more, not less, individual labor for actors. Burns notes that while journalists and audiences “say it’s so easy [to act in film, it is not because] you don’t go over and over it [with a director and fellow actors] as you do on stage.”13

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In addition, (stage) actors working in studio-era Hollywood had to create pitch-perfect performances in intense dramatic scenes, often without interacting with fellow actors in advance or in the actual scene. To illustrate this, Burns cites the example of the biopic Madame Curie, in which Greer Garson, as scientist Marie Curie, has so thoroughly prepared for each action and reaction in the character’s evolving experience that when required to portray Marie’s response to news of her husband’s death, Garson “sat absolutely quiet, didn’t talk for ten minutes, then walked to a drape and broke down and sobbed”; Burns observes: “to walk into that on a cold morning, that takes doing.”14 When discussing this example, Burns does not explain how Garson was able to express the character’s grief. Yet, given her emphasis on script analysis as the basis for embodying characters’ emotion, I believe Burns saw Garson’s work in this scene as evidence of the actor’s thorough exploration of the character as found in the script. Recall that Garson came from the tradition of Anglo-Saxon actors vilified by Strasberg for failing to deliver “real” emotion in performances. Thus, while Garson might have substituted a personal experience for the facts of the text, retrieving and reliving “a highly charged moment from [her] life in order to recreate [the] necessary emotional state,” it seems more likely that she followed the Modern acting approach, creating “truthful” emotion by concentrating on the character’s actions and reactions in the scene.15 Keep in mind that while today Method techniques might seem like a simple and straightforward way to address the “conditions of film work that fragment, disrupt, and essentially deconstruct the experience of performing,” for actors who used Modern acting strategies to build characterizations, producing emotion was not seen as a major obstacle to overcome.16 Like Stanislavsky, actors acquainted with Modern acting found that emotions suited to their character’s experience would arise naturally once they had done the work necessary to enter into the world of their character. It seems that many actors who came of age in the 1930s and 1940s would have been stunned by Strasberg’s view that when “the actor is capable of giving to the director anything he wants, then … the acting problem [is] solved.”17 For actors of the period, there was an emphasis on participating as members of the ensemble, as skilled musicians in the symphony orchestra. One might recall that actor-directors such as Minnie Maddern Fiske and Eva Le Gallienne were active during the performers’ formative years. Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, and Eugene O’Neill were leading figures in modern drama. Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon

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Craig were recognized as major forces behind the new stagecraft movement. Thus, while directors such as David Belasco, Charles Frohman, and Max Reinhardt were known for shaping scores of theatrical productions, Broadway offerings generally reflected the input of multiple individuals, with playwrights, producers, and stars having substantial authorial status. A similar situation existed in studio-era Hollywood. There were some director-units (Ernst Lubitsch, Josef von Sternberg) and some independent producers (Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick), but it was primarily a studio-producer system, with each season’s production schedule organized around stars and genres. As some will recall, in the 1950s French auteur critics argued that the director, rather than the screenwriter, should be seen as the true author of a film. This shift in perspective has led even studio-era productions to be seen as occasions for analyzing directors’ authorship; studies now trace the visual and thematic auteur signature in a director’s body of work, with Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, and Howard Hawks among the first to be featured in discussions of American auteur directors. Despite the authorial role now assigned to studio-era directors, interviews and acting manuals suggest that in the 1930s and 1940s, actors believed they were responsible for creating their characterizations. It was also their job to develop their minds, bodies, voices, and souls in ways that would allow them to relax, concentrate, use their preparation, and be receptive to spontaneous amendments generated by fellow actors, directors, or the concrete details of the production. Interactions between studio-era actors and directors are difficult to generalize, because they differed from film to film. As we have seen, someone like Ronald Colman always made suggestions, but did so in private. Similarly, in the course of working together on eight films between 1932 and 1952, Katharine Hepburn and director George Cukor would develop a foundation for an open and professional exchange of ideas and opinions (Fig. 11.1).18 By comparison, a production such as Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks 1939) is reported to have been difficult for various reasons, among them the ongoing disagreement between Howard Hawks and Jean Arthur, who had opposing conceptions of Arthur’s character.19 The tensions created by Hawks’ and Arthur’s failure to reach a consensus is suggested by a behindthe-scenes photo of a moment on the set (Fig. 11.2). One might expect experienced actors and directors to have professional differences of opinion. In the case of Only Angels Have Wings, Hawks and Arthur were both established professionals with careers starting in

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Fig. 11.1 George Cukor and Katharine Hepburn engage each other in discussion on a break during the production of Adam’s Rib (1949)

the silent era. Hawks had just directed the well-received film Bringing up Baby (1938), with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. Arthur had garnered acclaim for her performances in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Capra 1936), with Gary Cooper, and You Can’t Take it with You (Capra 1938), with James Stewart. Thus, whether finding herself in a collaborative or difficult situation, Arthur worked from the assumption that actors, not directors, built characterizations and tackled the challenges of embodying characters. Modern acting strategies such as exhaustive script analysis and improvisations involving pantomimed sense-memory exercises had initially helped actors deliver performances suited to theatre productions informed by

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Fig. 11.2 Jean Arthur and Cary Grant on the set of Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks, 1939). Jean Arthur, Cary Grant, and director Howard Hawks work through conflicts on set while the crew waits

new stagecraft aesthetics. A grounding in Modern acting would also help actors incorporate the minor adjustments required to work effectively in film; with their process for building characterizations and executing performances informed by Modern acting principles, actors were able to explore stage-screen adjustments. For example, Julie Adams, a student of 20th Century Fox drama coach Florence Enright, explains that Enright enhanced her abilities to use script analysis to build characterizations and introduced her to modifications for film. For instance, she showed Adams that “when you are in a two-shot … you look at someone’s down stage eye [to pull] your eyes further around” to the camera.20 In addition, Adams recalls: Enright “gave me eye exercises so that my eyes would stay open in outside shots … taught me [how] to keep my face still for close-ups, and how to use [my] eyes” without moving them too much.21 Actors of the studio-era epoch use almost prosaic terms to discuss a key difference between acting on stage and screen: the simple fact that performers needed to adjust the size of their gestures and the volume

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of their vocal expressions to suit specific frame selections. Rather than describing, as theorist Walter Benjamin suggests, an inexplicable emptiness due to working without an audience, actors in the 1930s and 1940s seem interested in exploring the gestural and vocal adjustments required by the different production contexts. For example, performers new to film remarked on their discovery that “shades of feeling could be made intimately visible by minute contractions of a muscle.”22 As Actors’ Lab member Leo Penn explains, rather than feeling disoriented or forced to use personal substitutions, players found that “acting in the movies [was] the same as acting anywhere,” and that despite using different “projection,” they used the same “energy,” because the transition was “like going from a big to a small theatre.”23 Some stage actors valued acting in studio-era films, because it allowed them to include small, seemingly insignificant pieces of stage business in their performances. As described by Bette Davis, “while the process of acting is basically the same [in film and theatre], the screen is a fantastic medium for the reality of little things.”24 Discussing the infamous party scene in All about Eve, Davis notes that she was able to convey Margo Channing’s rising anger simply through the intensity of her gestures as she took one piece of candy after another from a glass jar on the piano.25 Hume Cronyn echoes Davis’ observation. He explains that “it may take a little time and some guidance for the stage actor to become accustomed to the degree of projection which will be most effective on screen, but the technique of film acting is no unique or mystic formula.”26 Moreover, Cronyn explains: in film, “a whole new range of expression is opened to the actor. He can register, with a whisper, a glance, a contraction of a muscle, in a manner that would be lost on stage. The camera will often reflect what a man thinks, without the degree of demonstration required in the theatre.”27 As these comments by Davis and Cronyn suggest, the new range of articulation did not arise from “natural” expressions or personal feelings being captured on film, but instead emerged from physical and vocal choices suited to the character, the scene, the framing, and recording conditions. Actors working in studio-era Hollywood set aside the extra “degree of demonstration required in the theatre,” not because they discovered that film was an inherently naturalistic medium, but instead because, as drama coach Josephine Dillon explains, “the size of the actor from the viewpoint of the audience” is so much greater in films projected in movie theatres.28 As she points out, in this exhibition context, even movements in the mus-

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cles of an actor’s face could be “proportionately huge and ridiculous if exaggerated, or as large as sometimes used in real life.”29 Dillon’s 1940 acting manual illustrates the era’s shared acting concerns, as it devotes substantial sections to voice training and exercises designed to make performers’ bodies more flexible and expressive. Discussing specific considerations for film performance, Dillon explains that actors should make the face their first area of consideration, and learn to keep their eyes under their conscious control. She notes that “the very first work in studying for the screen is relaxing the face, and learning to make … subtle and controlled expressions.”30 To avoid distracting movement in film images projected in theatres, actors had to learn how to make their eyes expressive while letting “the rest of the face remain, for the most part, in repose.”31 In addition, performers “must learn to hold the eyes open [because in daily life people often hold] the eyes partly closed”; when projected, anything less than wide-open eyes gives the impression that the character is not fully awake.32 Dillon also notes that while “ordinarily one’s glance goes from one object to another in small, quick moments,” to convey a character’s thoughts, players must learn how to move their eyes smoothly from one object to another.33 By making conscious use of eye, head, and body movement, an actor could convey a character’s thought process to audiences and lead them to feel like “they were thinking along with” the character.34 To illustrate this, Dillon explains: “if an actor turns his eyes toward an object without moving his head, then follows this movement of the eyes by turning the head toward the object, then follows this movement of the head with that of the hand or whatever the story calls for,” his/her background work in script analysis will be communicated and audiences will be able to see the character’s evolving series of thoughts.35 Appearing in films in the 1930s and 1940s required actors to expand on the work they had done to integrate their performances into the lighting and scene design of new stagecraft productions. Conventional and unfocused choices had to be eliminated. Discussing the need to create performances suited to close-ups projected on large theatre screens, Lillian Burns notes that actors coming into film learned to “project from the eyes instead of just the voice”; she remarked that a camera is “what I have termed a ‘truth machine.’ You cannot say ‘dog’ and think ‘cat’ because ‘meow’ will come out if you do.”36 Dillon’s discussion of “thought conversation” amplifies the point that close-ups of an actor’s eyes, when projected on huge theatre screens,

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necessarily (and sometimes inadvertently) convey the thoughts and emotions informing his/her experience at any given moment. Dillon points out that while “the dialogue ascribed to the persons in the play [or film] conveys what the other [characters] are to believe,” actors must develop and memorize lines of internal dialogue, because these will color “the expressions in the eyes and the body [which] show to the audience what the character in the play [or film] is actually feeling and thinking.”37 As noted earlier, she emphasizes that because “the expressions of the eyes … represent the emotions of the part played, the actor should, in studying the part, improvise the probable mental conversation of the person portrayed, and memorize them as carefully as the written dialogue.”38 Dillon’s comprehensive manual also covers the vocal adjustments required to make the transition to film (or radio), for as she explains, modern “speakers must … study the possibilities of the microphone and adjust themselves to its limitations and demands.”39 She proposes that screen actors need to develop the ability to “deliver a steady resonant tone which will write on the sensitive diaphragm [of the microphone] with a toneline so firm and well defined that it can be amplified to any needed volume.”40 More specifically, “the best way to speak into a microphone, whether for radio or talking pictures, is to have a steady flow of voice in which the vowels are formed automatically and controlled by the ear, so that the consonants are firm and light and have the explosive quality necessary to send the word on its way.”41 She observes that achieving this in a screen performance is especially complicated, because of the additional need to avoid distracting movements of the lips or facial muscles; she notes that after watching the rushes of his first film, a successful Broadway actor discovered that “what he had always considered correct diction had distorted his face into grotesque grimaces.”42 Dillon points out that a person tends to be “conscious of the words he thinks instead of hearing his actual tone.”43 She thus encourages actors to “listen carefully to your own voice.”44 To facilitate this exploration, she outlines various independent exercises, including one in which an actor listens to a tone he/she has used, then tries to “find its pitch on a piano or other musical instrument.”45 Dillon also worked with actors making the transition from stage to screen, and would record their readings or performances so that she and the actors could analyze their vocal and physical choices (Fig. 11.3). Despite her careful attention to adjustments needed for work in sound cinema, Dillon emphasizes that inflection (variation of tone and pitch) is

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Fig. 11.3 Josephine Dillon in an audio session with contracts players c. 1937. Dillon would use “new technology” to help actors expand their ability to portray characters different from themselves

not only “the most difficult part of speech,” it is the key to any performance, because the “audience reacts to inflection.”46 The “rise and fall” in an actor’s vocal expression convey the character’s thoughts, feelings, and temperament; cadence and voice quality illuminate “the emotion lying behind the words.”47 In Dillon’s view, actors cannot identify the inflections and qualities of voice suited to a characterization by relying on an external approach to character. Instead, articulating a central Modern acting principle, Dillon explains: “If you understand and feel in sympathy with the person you are portraying, and are using your voice … properly, you will unconsciously fit the quality of your voice to the part.”48 Dillon balances this statement with her emphasis on observation and life study; as she insists: “Hear the tones mothers use in speaking to children when comforting them … Listen to men in parks arguing about politics, and note the different qualities of voice, indicating so clearly the impulsive,

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unthinking speaker, and the speaker who is baiting the others.”49 From Dillon’s perspective, Modern acting requires constant attention to the surrounding world. Actors should read newspapers, expand their vocabulary, and listen “to everything”; they should continue to train their voices and means of expression; and they must always do careful script analysis in order to “understand characters sympathetically.”50 She explains that when an actor commits to these things, “you will arouse your audiences to respond to the emotions you are conveying in your speech.”51

BUILDING CHARACTERS AND PERFORMANCES Dillon identifies script analysis as the basis for connecting training and characterization, and for linking inner experience and outward expression. As she explains, the challenge to delivering dialogue that has meaning and conveys character “is a mental problem primarily [because] the voice if properly prepared will reproduce automatically the mental picture” the actor has created during individual preparation and consultation with the director.52 She encourages actors to read “your story so thoroughly that you feel yourself acquainted with the characters … as though they were life-long friends.”53 Doing this leads to “a deep interest and concern for the people of the story” and to mental pictures that are “clear and definite.”54 These mental pictures should cover the “period in the lives of the characters up to the time the play opens, and well on into their lives and the events that probably happened to them in the period after the play ends.”55 As Dillon notes, only “with a complete picture of the probable life of the character can the performer portray any section of that life properly.”56 The mental pictures must capture the actor’s deep, sympathetic understanding of the character’s mistakes, stupidities, and “loveable weaknesses.”57 Dillon explains that once these images are formed, an actor must practice the character’s probable actions “until you reproduce your mental picture of the character accurately and without any apparent strangeness.”58 Dillon’s view that actors could and should explore their characters’ lives to the point that they could even write lines of dialogue that conveyed the subtext of a character’s interactions is quite telling, for it highlights the fact that Modern acting led performers to assume they would invest a great deal of individual labor in building characterizations. Seen as professionals with agency, experience, and autonomy, they were supposed to know how to break down a script to identify a character’s given circumstances, problems, and actions. In addition to “scoring” the inner

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actions and reactions of their characters’ experiences, modern actors were expected to do the improvisational pantomimed sense-memory exercises that would allow them to interact with props, costumes, and settings in ways that illuminated their character’s inner experience throughout the course of his/her interactions with other characters in the fiction. While Dillon notes that actors must train themselves so that their eyes, faces, voices, heads, shoulders, and ways of walking, sitting, standing convey their characters’ inner lives, her primary point is that actors need to ground performances in script analysis. She argues that they must train themselves to “analyze each scene,” searching for “the stimulus” of the character’s action or thought.59 Articulating a core Modern acting precept, Dillon explains that intensive script analysis is the key to understanding a character’s responses and motivations, and that deep knowledge of the character is the best and only basis for “your outward expression of the character’s experiences.”60 Lillian Albertson’s Motion Picture Acting echoes Dillon’s observations about building characterizations. Her acting manual provides information about the Modern acting principles she shared as a dialogue director at Paramount starting in 1933 and as talent director at RKO from 1943. One might note that her career also exemplifies the groundbreaking lives of the women who served as studio-era drama coaches. Albertson (1881– 1962) was first cast in stock company productions in San Francisco and Los Angeles; traveling to New York, she made her Broadway debut in The Silver Girl (1907) (Fig. 11.4). She then secured the leading role in Paid in Full (1908), one of the major successes of that season. From there, she appeared in Broadway productions such as The Talker (1912), Moloch (1915), The Devil’s Garden (1915), The Six-Fifty (1921), and Malvaloca (1922). In 1923, Albertson “established a headquarters in Los Angeles for the production of Broadway hits, concurrent with their New  York runs.”61 As she explains, the contracts for these shows, produced by her husband, Louis Owen Macloon, “precluded the touring of the Eastern companies beyond Denver; so, for a good many years, most of the first-class productions seen throughout the West” were ones she directed.62 In 1933, Albertson and Macloon divorced, and she began another chapter in her career, this time as a Hollywood drama coach. Albertson’s volume begins with a chapter on the “Similarities and Dissimilarities in Stage and Screen Acting.” Discussing the adjustments for acting in film more briefly than Dillon, Albertson summarizes her

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Fig. 11.4 A publicity photo for the 1907 Broadway production of The Silver Girl with Lillian Albertson

views on stage–screen modifications by saying: “learn to use your body gracefully, naturally, and form a habit of doing it all the time. Then you can forget it and think about the part.”63 Reflecting the priorities of other Modern acting teachers, Albertson qualifies her statement, noting that great performances depend on three things: (a) an actor’s subtle interpretation of the script and character; (b) an actor’s highly developed ability to

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concentrate and use concentration to put his/her imagination at his/her disposal; and (c) an actor’s highly trained body and voice, which is able to communicate the subtle shades of characters’ thoughts and feelings.64 Like other Modern acting proponents, Albertson argues that the script is the basis of an actor’s performance. Tellingly, this view was not limited to acting teachers or acting manuals. Discussing the era’s shared ideas on acting, Bette Davis explains that “without scripts none of us can work. It’s the beginning of the work.”65 Hume Cronyn emphasizes that the actor’s first task is to “establish the facts”; he notes that “it’s surprising how much information is contained in the text, how many questions are answered by careful re-reading.”66 Amplifying this point, Cronyn stresses that an actor’s “own creative work should be based on the fact and suggestion supplied by the author, rather than on independent fancy.”67 Drama coach Lillian Burns also makes this point by saying, “the writer – that’s the seed.”68 In another formulation of this view, MGM contract player Janet Leigh, later known for her appearance in Psycho, explains that by using material in the script, actors begin to give their characters life, “establishing a complete person, a complete life,” including where the character went to school, what he/she liked to wear, what that character would do in at a particular moment given their relationships with their parents, brothers, sisters, and so on.69 Leigh recalls that through working with Burns, she learned that “you give that person a real [identity], so that wherever you happen to start the story you are coming from somewhere; you know where this person’s been, why this person reacts the way she does.”70 Leigh emphasizes that understanding the character’s world is essential, because the character’s way of reacting “may not be your way of reacting.”71 Cronyn echoes this point. Illustrating the core connection between Stanislavsky’s work and Modern acting principles, Cronyn explains that an actor’s own responses are immaterial, and that performers must always ask: “if I were this kind of person in this situation, what would I do? How would I feel, think, behave, react, etc.?”72 Discussing this key precept of Modern acting, Albertson declares that “before performance comes interpretation [which depends on] the strictly intellectual analysis of a role,” a process in which actors study the script to locate the character’s given circumstances by asking: “what made this person feel the way he or she does, and do the things they do?”73 She notes that dialogue does not supply “all the motives” for their behavior, and so actors must also study characters’ actions to understand them.74 For performers using Modern acting techniques, imaginatively filling in

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details about characters’ stories involved a thoughtful process of entering into their world. Like other Modern acting teachers, Albertson recognizes that performances are not simple transcriptions of a script, but that instead an actor’s physical, psychological, and sociological makeup colors each part. Like Actors’ Lab members, she understands that an actor is a prism through which a character (as written) is refracted or altered. Recall that for members of the Actors’ Lab in Hollywood, “the material of life, provided … by the playwright, [always] passes through the prism of the actor.”75 Thus, any performance is colored by “the actor’s individuality, experience, point of view and capacity for understanding, wit, etc.”; they note that performances are also “always conditioned to the circumstances of the theatre, the audience, fellow-actor, vision of the director.”76 Echoing the perspective articulated by Actors’ Lab members, Albertson notes that “the author supplies the material” and actors, for better or worse, bring their “own personalities and physical appearances” to the part.77 From the perspective of Modern acting teachers, actors move beyond their limitations by expanding their understanding of history, art, and the world around them, and by continually honing their skills as performers (through voice, body, and improvisational sense-memory work). For modern actors, this process has nothing to do with breaking down psychological inhibitions or mining personal experience for emotional triggers, but instead means increasing one’s sensitivity to and knowledge of the outside world, and continually exploring the undeveloped dimensions of one’s expressivity. Modern acting requires actors to move outward, beyond their own experiences, to expand their social or cultural limitations. It also allows performers to discover how they might give new life to a character that has been portrayed many times or seems quite conventional on the surface. As members of the Actors’ Lab explain, the goal for actors of their era is to incorporate “in sensible terms and by means of the actor’s personal equipment an impression or image previously indicated by the author.”78 For Albertson, members of the Actors’ Lab, and other professionals involved in teaching Modern acting, “the aim is always to preserve … the life of the character” as found in the script.79 An actors’ task is to embody the character to the best of his/her ability; thus, training that makes a performer’s body and voice better able to embody a range of characters is crucial. To build unconventional performances, actors must combine their study of the script and research into the social world of the

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character with a candid assessment of how they can best embody that character. Albertson explains that once actors have fully absorbed a character’s worldview, they must portray him/her using their “own physical tools”; she warns, “Don’t try to make your voice, face, or body conform to any actor’s mannerisms.”80 Albertson explains that actors need to take ownership of their characterizations, and portray their characters from their “own point of view.”81 This does not mean that they should substitute personal experiences for their characters’, but instead that actors must do deep-level script analysis, exploring the characters’ world so thoroughly that they understand and empathize with them. Discussing this aspect of Modern acting, Morris Carnovsky explains that “the act of incorporating the image [of the character in the script] does not mean imitating what I see in my mind’s eye, a character that I see outside myself.”82 Instead, what makes a performance an act of creative labor is the point of view implicitly suggested by a performance; it is the distillation of the role into a coherent entity that audiences can understand. In other words, script analysis and research into a character’s world leads to an understanding of that character; an actor’s performance becomes the embodiment of their unique and strongly felt insights into the character and his/her world. Albertson’s description of the insights actors glean from script analysis illuminates how Modern acting creates emotion-filled performances without using personal substitutions. She explains that when studying a script, performers must develop “mental pictures” that make the chain of actions and reactions come “alive in [their] memory.”83 Actors then use these filmstrip images as guideposts in their performances; focusing on the interlocking chain of character interactions allows them to be relaxed, concentrated, and alive during performance. Albertson encourages players to “make all the mental pictures you can in preparation of the scene – and the more graphic the better.”84 As noted earlier, when she discusses the role that mental images play in performances, she explains: “make your mental pictures as real as you possibly can in studying the part, then play from memory – the synthetic memories you have invented.”85 One might recall that the approach Albertson outlines here is shared by Stanislavsky. To understand one actor’s conception of the Modern acting process, consider observations by Jessica Tandy—known for her Tony Award-winning portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1948) and her Oscar Award-winning performance in Driving Miss Daisy (Beresford 1989)—who has discussed how she prepared for and

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then enacted her portrayal in the Actors’ Lab production of Portrait of a Madonna (1947). Tandy explains that she prepared for the role as she always did, by reading and re-reading the script, then looking for points of contact with her own experience and doing research to develop a full life and background for the character. She notes that during the performance, she never recalled or relived a personal experience. Instead, the emotions that colored her physical and vocal expression were the result of seeing (in her mind’s eye) the mental pictures she had created in her study of the script. She explains that her ability to move from one moment or speech to another depended on following the series of mental pictures she had created during her process of individual preparation.86 Discussing actors’ use of mental pictures, Albertson emphasizes the importance of developing the ability to concentrate. She explains that “through concentration you learn to use the creative acting imagination, and concentration is something that can be developed.”87 Echoing points made by the Actors’ Lab, Albertson finds that concentration is key to performance, because this is what “enables you to shut out every thought but the scene and the character you are portraying.”88 She tells actors that by concentrating fully on the character’s problems, actions, and reactions, which are embedded in the mental pictures created during preparation, “you develop the mood that must ‘color’ every action and every word you speak.”89 Albertson reminds actors that “spoken words mean practically nothing unless mood colors them,” and notes they can test this by reading a magazine ad several different ways, first as if they are annoyed, then with all the sadness they can muster, and then as if what they are saying is absurd.90 For actors using Modern acting techniques, the emotion that would color their physical and vocal expression does not arise from reliving or tapping into personal experiences. Instead, thoughts and feelings result from concentrating on the mental pictures one has created, and these are grounded in an actor’s intellectual analysis of the script, a process that requires the performer to make decisions about what a character would do in a given circumstance. Because these are synthetic memories invented by actors during their study of the script, they can be activated by “opening one’s mental notebook,” and then dropped the moment a scene or shot is completed.91 Discussing this process, Albertson points out that “as your powers of concentration increase, you will be able to turn mood on and off as readily and as surely as you turn on a faucet and get water, and turn it off to stop the flow!”92

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Echoing Stanislavsky’s interest in parallels between the actor and the yogi, Albertson explains that the type of concentration she is describing is “a bit like the sensation a mystic experiences when he ‘goes into his silence.’”93 She adds: “I’m no ‘mystic,’ but I know this  – the ability to retreat into your own depths and to feel any emotion the instant you want to feel it, is the greatest protection from distracting influences that any actor can have.”94 In her view, concentration keeps actors focused on their characters’ problems and actions, and makes it possible for them to access the mental pictures that prompt the thoughts and feelings that must color their postures, movements, gestures, and vocal inflections. Concentration is essential in Modern acting, because it helps actors maintain a dual focus (as the character and as the actor in the production situation). Actors’ Lab member Morris Carnovsky makes this point by saying: “I always think of the actor as not only doing, but standing aside and watching what he is doing, so as to be able to propel himself to the next thing and the next thing and the next.”95 Josephine Dillon also highlights the need for a dual focus. She notes that “to submerge one’s self into the emotion of the part being played would be to put the actor at the mercy of his emotions and make him incapable of using the skillful technique” that studio-era Hollywood productions in particular required.96 Other practitioners of the period confirm the need to maintain a dual focus. Lenore Shanewise, Pasadena Playhouse actor, director, and teacher, recalls an occasion when she became immersed in the character’s feelings. By the end of the evening, she was convinced she had given one of her best performances, until her fellow players asked her what had gone wrong that night.97 Similarly, Bette Davis notes that after appearing in one of her first plays in New York, she came home and told her mother that she had been marvelous, but that after a moment of dead silence, her mother informed her that it had been one of her worst renditions of the role; Davis learned that “you can’t allow yourself to enjoy it that much [because then] you have lost control.”98 Albertson reiterates the value of maintaining a dual focus. As she points out, when actors base their performances on an “agonizing attempt to feel something,” they are invariably disturbed by the realities of performance and production context.99 By comparison, Modern acting techniques, such as drawing on the moodpatterns and voice-patterns embedded in mental pictures constructed during individual preparation, are “much surer and far less wearing on the nervous system.”100

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Albertson’s observation about some actors’ efforts to feel something by drawing directly on personal experiences illuminates a couple of points. First, due to prevailing aesthetic values, actors of the period sought to create performances colored by emotion, and attempted to avoid portrayals that depended on conventional gestures and oration. Second, records left by Stella Adler, Lillian Albertson, Lillian Burns, Josephine Dillon, Phyllis Loughton, Sophie Rosenstein, the Pasadena Playhouse, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and the Actors’ Lab in Hollywood contain a repeated emphasis on script analysis that suggests they saw this practice as key to the era’s most advanced techniques, and as distinct from strategies employed by novice performers.101 Recall that Sophie Rosenstein saw personal substitutions as useful for players doing their first exercises in characterization or trained actors doing their initial study of a script. Albertson touches on the contrast between Modern acting and unschooled acting when she questions the soundness of an approach that involves “living the part.” She remarks: “maniacs do just that. They identify themselves completely with the roles in which their own disordered brains have cast them, and live those roles up to the hilt.”102 Articulating a Modern acting perspective, she explains that “Actors do not live parts. They merely seem to live them.”103 She points out that audiences, rather than actors, are meant to “suffer the pangs and tribulations of the character being portrayed.”104 In Albertson’s view, to generate these and other experiences for audiences, actors must develop the skills to relax, concentrate, and do script analysis, life study, voice and body work, and character-centered sense-memory exercises. The priority Albertson places on portrayals that are tailored to the narrative and the production’s overarching aesthetic contrasts with the premium that Strasberg placed on heightened expressivity. Thus, whereas Strasberg highlights selected performances from the 1920s’ golden age of acting, Albertson values a more eclectic collection of performances. For instance, she calls attention to John Barrymore’s performances both in Hamlet and in light comedy roles.105 She highlights the careers of Minnie Maddern Fiske and Holbrook Blinn, who co-starred in the 1908 production of Salvation Nell. Albertson also points to the performances of Broadway stars Ethel Barrymore, Katharine Cornell, and Helen Hayes. Turning to film stars, Albertson explains that actors should study the work of Ingrid Bergman and Rosalind Russell, because their performances “are as different from each other as day and night,” but are “great because they are both so utterly simple and downright.”106 Identifying Bergman’s and

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Russell’s ability to create unique characters, Albertson notes that “each achieves her great affects without ‘screwing up’ her face and wrinkling her brows.”107 Emphasizing the actors’ ability to work from the inside out, using qualitative changes in their bodies and voices to express their character’s inner experiences, Albertson argues that “it would be impossible to find more expressive faces anywhere, or voices more responsive to their every mood.”108 Published in 1947, Albertson’s acting manual offers a summation of the era’s principles of Modern acting that encouraged actors to: (a) use the script as a score or blueprint that supplies the actor with the life of a character that he/she then works to embody; (b) explore inner features (a character’s psychological and social history) and outer features (physical appearance, apparel choices) to build characterization; (c) remember the importance of remaining cool-headed and avoiding the seemingly straightforward path of generating emotion in performance by tapping into personal experiences; and (d) understand that voice and body work are essential, because an actor’s mind and body form an indivisible unity. Strasberg would reject each of these principles. According to his Method, (a) the script represents a point of departure; (b) substituting personal experience for the character’s experience is the only legitimate way to build a performance; (c) tapping into personal experiences during a performance is the single guarantor of truthful expression; and (d) the actor’s primary task is to break down psychic inhibitions and resistance to the suggestions of teachers and directors, because these suggestions allow performers to get beyond the socially constructed duality of their conscious and unconscious minds.109 While Method acting remains the only “brand” recognized by the general American public and still has its staunch supporters, Strasberg’s views do not have the currency they did in the 1950s. By comparison, actors continue to employ Modern acting strategies to build characterizations and work effectively in a range of production environments. The next chapter considers the different legacies of Modern and Method acting.

NOTES 1. Lizabeth Scott, Interview July 27, 1984, and May 30, 1985, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. 2. Hume Cronyn, “Notes on Film Acting,” Theatre Arts 35 (June 1949): 46. 3. Ibid.

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4. Bette Davis, “On Acting in Films,” Theatre Arts 25 (September 1946): 634. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968), 231. 8. Cronyn, “Notes on Film Acting,” 45. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., 46. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., 47. 13. Lillian Burns Sidney, Interview 1945, Gladys Hall Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, CA. 14. Ibid. 15. Sharon Marie Carnicke, “Lee Strasberg’s Paradox of the Actor,” in Screen Acting, eds. Alan Lovell and Peter Krämer (New York: Routledge, 1999), 83. 16. Ibid., 86. 17. Qtd. in ibid., 79. 18. Hepburn and Cukor worked on: A Bill of Divorcement (1932), Little Women (1933), Sylvia Scarlet (1935), Holiday (1938), Philadelphia Story (1940), Keeper of the Flame (1942), Adam’s Rib (1949), and Pat and Mike (1952). Philadelphia Story was based on the Broadway production in which she starred; Hepburn purchased the rights to the play, and selected Cukor to direct the film. Noting that preparation for a role is “a long process,” Hepburn explains: “I have the script on my mind for weeks, sometimes months. First, I read it over once  – quickly. I don’t attempt to remember every scene accurately … I build up from my hazy recollection of what I’ve read. I do that until it’s almost time to start work. Then I read the script slowly and carefully, and find out what each scene is really like. That way, I make myself super-conscious of what the author put into each scene” (qtd. in Doug Tomlinson, ed., Actors on Acting for the Screen: Roles and Collaborations [New York: Garland Publishing, 1994], 254). 19. John Oller, Jean Arthur: The Actress Nobody Knew (New York: Limelight, 1997), 110–112. 20. Julie Adams, Interview July 19, 1984, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. 21. Ibid. 22. “Acting for Motion Pictures,” Theatre Today c. 1947, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. Special Collections Department. University of California, Los Angeles.

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23. Leo Penn, “Stanislavski and a Ten Day Shooting,” Box 9, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 24. Qtd. in Joseph McBride, Filmmakers on Filmmaking: The American Film Institute Seminars on Motion Pictures and Television: Volume Two (Los Angeles: Tarcher Press, 1983), 106. 25. Ibid. 26. Cronyn, “Notes on Film Acting,” 46. 27. Ibid. 28. Josephine Dillon, Modern Acting: A Guide for Stage, Screen and Radio (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1940), 3. 29. Ibid., 4. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid., 5. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid., 11. 35. Ibid., 11–12. Dillon explains that screen actors must relax their eyes “inside the head, where the muscles and nerves of the eyes come together”; during production, they should close and relax their eyes “many times a day, and always before being photographed,” because this increases expressivity and counters the eye strain caused by studio lights (7). 36. Lillian Burns Sidney, Interview August 17, 1986, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. 37. Dillon, Modern Acting: A Guide, 9. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid., 176. 40. Ibid., 177. 41. Ibid., 197–198. 42. Ibid., 210. 43. Ibid., 185. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., 187. 46. Ibid., 225, 226. 47. Ibid., 227, 228. 48. Ibid., 228. 49. Ibid., 229. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid., 239–240. 53. Ibid., 240. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid., 241.

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56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

76.

77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

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Ibid. Ibid., 242. Ibid. Ibid., 90. Ibid. Dillon notes that after analyzing scripts, you “begin to notice the reactions of the people around you in your daily life, and you will observe the differences in sequence in their action and thought, as shown in the expression of their eyes and faces, and in their movements” (90). She adds that with study, “it is not difficult to see whether the course of their action is outside of themselves or within themselves, and whether it is related to their immediate surroundings or has its cause in memory associations” (90). Lillian Albertson, Motion Picture Acting (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1947), 103. Ibid. Ibid., 22. Ibid., 67. Qtd. in McBride, Filmmakers on Filmmaking, 107. Cronyn, “Notes on Film Acting,” 48. Ibid. Burns Sidney, Interview August 17, 1986. Janet Leigh, Interview July 25, 1984, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. Ibid. Ibid. Cronyn, “Notes on Film Acting,” 48. Albertson, Motion Picture Acting, 65. Ibid. Course Outline for Veterans Administration, Box 5, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection, Special Collections Department, University of California, Los Angeles. Ibid. For Lab members, the performance is a third element: first is the character as found in the script, second is an inner model an actor has in his/her mind. Diderot discussed an inner model drawn from the script or source of inspiration; see Joseph Roach, The Player’s Passion (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996). Albertson, Motion Picture Acting, 66. Course Outline for Veterans Administration, Box 5, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. Ibid. Albertson, Motion Picture Acting, 122. Ibid.

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82. Morris Carnovsky, The Actor’s Eye (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1984), 68. 83. Albertson, Motion Picture Acting, 63. 84. Ibid. 85. Ibid. 86. Jessica Tandy, Interview February 3, 1947, Box 9, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. 87. Albertson, Motion Picture Acting, 53. 88. Ibid., 55. 89. Ibid. 90. Ibid., 56. 91. Ibid., 57. 92. Ibid. 93. Ibid., 59. 94. Ibid. 95. Carnovsky, The Actor’s Eye, 38. 96. Dillon, Modern Acting: A Guide, 7. 97. Lenore Shanewise, Interview with Bernard Galm March 27, March 28, April 17, April 18, 1974, University of California, Los Angeles, Oral History Collection, transcripts 1980. 98. Qtd. in McBride, Filmmakers on Filmmaking, 107. 99. Albertson, Motion Picture Acting, 62. 100. Ibid. 101. There might have also been actors who rejected the study and training required by Modern acting. 102. Albertson, Motion Picture Acting, 48. 103. Ibid. 104. Ibid., 49. 105. Ibid., 82. 106. Ibid., 85. 107. Ibid., 84. 108. Ibid. 109. Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Gena Rowlands, and Joanne Woodward, all associated with the Method, say they do not use substitutions (Tomlinson, Actors on Acting for the Screen, 402, 406, 481, 556, 597). Woodward also explains: “I always have to know what a character looks like because to me, having studied with Martha Graham, so much that goes on inside is reflected outside; it has to do with the way you move. So I generally start with the way a character moves” (597).

CHAPTER 12

The Legacy of Modern Acting

As we have seen, during the 1930s and 1940s, actors’ working lives were affected by evolving employment opportunities in the American performing arts industry, as many found that their careers would necessarily involve both theatre and film. New professional positions also developed, as the studios began to hire drama coaches to train young actors, and dialogue directors to work with individual actors on specific parts. To ensure a steady supply of actors able to perform efficiently in the assembly-line and sound-film production system, Hollywood also established working relationships with institutions like the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the Pasadena Playhouse, and the Actors’ Lab in Hollywood. The studio drama schools and the institutional alliances between Hollywood and the outside actor training programs were all part of the film industry’s process of production—that is, until the 1950s, when the studios began to eliminate the risks and expenses of their contract player system.1 As the studios withdrew from production in the 1950s, they dissolved their actor training programs and institutional alliances. This move created substantial change in the working lives of the acting professionals who had established careers in or related to studio-era Hollywood. Other events also contributed to shifts in the era’s acting community—for example, Modern acting lost many of its leading teachers. Maria Ouspenskaya died in 1949; Sophie Rosenstein and Charles Jehlinger, head of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, passed away in 1952; Charles Prickett, general manager of the Pasadena Playhouse, died in 1954; and after a decade of

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poor health, Gilmor Brown, founder and artistic director of the Playhouse, passed away in 1960. In addition, the Actors’ Lab in Hollywood closed in 1950 due to anticommunists’ successful efforts to discredit the acting company and drama school.2 In response to the US government’s long-standing efforts to end the monopolistic practices created by the film industry’s vertical integration (production-distribution-exhibition), Hollywood relinquished control of exhibition, its most financially vulnerable sector in the emerging age of television. The studios also increasingly outsourced production to independent units, focusing instead on distribution, the most lucrative and risk-averse component of the entertainment business. Hollywood became the venue for financing and distributing (film and television) products supplied by independent companies led by individual stars, directors, and producers. At the same time, the Supreme Court decision that allowed Roberto Rossellini’s Il miracolo (1952) to be shown in New York moved conceptions of American cinema a step closer to auteur cinema, for its ruling determined that “movies were a ‘significant medium for the communication of ideas’ and were, therefore, protected … by both the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”3 The emerging status of American auteur directors reflected changes prompted by European art cinema and the so-called “demise” of the studio system. Between 1954 and 1962, seven of the films that received the Academy Award for Best Picture were produced independently. By the 1950s, memorable Broadway events from the 1920s, such as John Barrymore’s Hamlet or the Moscow Art Theatre tours, no longer provided a reference for actors entering the profession. Even Stanislavsky’s influence had waned after the Soviet government placed him under house confinement in 1934; he passed away in 1938, and the Soviet censors in control of his extant writings ensured that a central premise of his System—“that there is an indissoluble link between mind and body, spirit and flesh”—was removed from any publications that reached the West.4 Thus, when the Actors Studio in New  York became the center of public attention in the mid-1950s, it was possible for Strasberg to present his Method as a breakthrough in American acting. Moreover, with the studios’ established relationships with the Pasadena Playhouse and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts disrupted, there was an opportunity for a new vendor—the Actors Studio, and later the Lee Strasberg Institutes in New York and Los Angeles—to supply credentialed actors for Hollywood and Broadway productions.5 Universal continued to fund its Talent Development Program, which had been established by Florence Enright in 1935 and restarted by Sophie

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Rosenstein in 1949. Its acting workshops were grounded in the same principles of Modern acting that Rosenstein taught at the Warner Bros. drama school she started in 1938, and the program served as a training ground and showcase for performers from a range of backgrounds. For example, it included actors such as Gale Storm, who had been in dozens of low-budget films released by Monogram Pictures in the 1940s and would go on to a successful career in television; Jack Kelly, who was cast in radio shows and Los Angeles theatre productions in the 1940s and would become best known for his role as Bart Maverick in the ABC series Maverick (1957–1962); and Ava Norring, an émigré from Hungary who had minor roles in a few Hollywood films in the early 1950s. These actors were featured in a showcase for Universal producers and directors in 1951, in a scene from the 1933 Broadway play One Sunday Afternoon by James Hagan, which was adapted several times by Hollywood and presented on the CBS Ford Theatre Hour in 1949 (Fig. 12.1).

Fig. 12.1 Universal contract players in a showcase scene directed by Sophie Rosenstein in 1951. When led by Rosenstein, the talent development program was grounded in Modern acting principles

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After Rosenstein died in 1952 (at the age of forty-five), actor training at Universal offered a mélange of views drawn from both Modern acting and Strasberg’s Method. Estelle Harman, who had worked with actors at the University of California, Los Angeles, was hired as Rosenstein’s replacement. Harman shared Rosenstein’s interest in script analysis, but also introduced the practice of using personal substitutions to achieve emotion in performance; she would go on to establish the Estelle Harman Actors Workshop, which offered classes until just before her death in 1995. Universal also hired Katharine Warren, who became known for her role as Roxanne in Broadway and touring productions of Cyrano de Bergerac during the 1930s, and then appeared in film and on television starting in the late 1940s/early 1950s; reflecting Modern acting priorities, Warren worked with actors as a voice and diction coach.6 In 1954, Jess Kimmel became head of the Talent Development Program; Kimmel embraced Strasberg’s vision, describing acting as “the projection of one’s personality through a given set of circumstances,” but his assistant, Jack Kosslyn, who taught many of the acting classes, worked according to Modern acting principles.7 Kosslyn had studied with George Shdanoff and at the Actors’ Lab in Hollywood, and thus his work with performers centered on visualization exercises, where actors formed distinct mental pictures to build characterizations, and on sense-memory exercises to increase their awareness of and ability to interact with physical objects in performance; when Universal’s Talent Development Program dissolved in the mid-1950s, Kosslyn established his own workshop and showcase, the Mercury Stage.8

COMPLICATIONS OF THE STANISLAVSKY RUBRIC The changing industry and evolving cultural trends fostered a new view of actors as personalities best understood in Freudian terms. These developments were accompanied by an ostensive move from one set of acting principles to another; whereas priorities in the 1930s and 1940s highlighted an actor’s responsibility to embody the character as found in the script, the 1950s shifted attention to eliminating psychic barriers that might impede their expressivity. However, by itself, even a full-blown change in prevailing acting approaches would not explain why developments in Modern acting in the 1930s and 1940s became invisible to subsequent generations. A major contributing factor is that Modern acting techniques have been subsumed under Stanislavsky’s ideas. Given the common ground, it is not incorrect

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to identify Modern acting techniques with Stanislavsky. Yet this alignment not only erases the work of American teachers, many of them women, it has also led Modern acting principles to become completely obscured— due to the profound degree to which Stanislavsky’s contributions have themselves been subsumed under Strasberg’s Method. In other words, developments in Modern acting have been obscured by the Stanislavsky label, a problem compounded by the fact that Stanislavsky’s insights are often mistakenly incorporated into Strasberg’s brand. There are other good reasons to separate Modern acting from the Stanislavsky label. Doing this could foster research on materials generated by American acting teachers, in ways that momentarily set aside the ongoing debates surrounding Stanislavsky’s work. Scholarship that recognizes Modern acting as a coherent body of principles, articulated by American teachers searching for conscious techniques to generate “truthful” emotion during performance, could provide a useful corrective to the idea that it was Strasberg’s Method that led to a new type of actor. Referencing Modern acting, rather than Stanislavsky, to describe the approach articulated by teachers such as Adler and Rosenstein would make it possible to “name” the collection of non-Method techniques that actors today continue to use as they negotiate dramatic narratives and evolving staging practices. Confusion about the suitable labels for acting techniques began with Modern acting teacher Stella Adler and Method acting teacher Lee Strasberg, who both sought to legitimize their work by aligning themselves with Stanislavsky. In Adler’s case, she had questioned, but had been unable to challenge, Strasberg’s training and direction for three years— until 1934, when she effectively contested his authority by showing that his interpretation of Stanislavsky was at odds with Stanislavsky’s actual views. One might note that Adler was able to overturn Strasberg’s interpretation only after she could reference notes from her period of study with Stanislavsky. That Adler needed to cite Stanislavsky directly is significant, for it reveals that her credentials as a respected actor and an actual member of the acting company at the American Laboratory Theatre where Strasberg studied only briefly were not enough to debunk Strasberg’s selfappointed role as the authority on Stanislavsky within the Group Theatre. It makes sense that throughout her career as a Modern acting teacher, Adler would reference Stanislavsky. She was not only in sympathy with his ideas; his work had given her a way to oppose Strasberg’s approach to actor training, and so she would most certainly continue to empha-

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size her affiliation with Stanislavsky. While that move gave her credibility, it also failed to distinguish her approach from Strasberg’s—because he too presented his work as building on Stanislavsky. Strasberg would highlight and, at the same time, disown his affiliation with Stanislavsky, fostering the impression he was Stanislavsky’s heir, but also someone who had located much-needed correctives to Stanislavsky’s work. As noted earlier, Strasberg opens A Dream of Passion with the statement that his Method is “a continuation of and an addition to the Stanislavsky system in Russia,” a claim that blithely obscures the key division between Modern and Method acting: Stanislavsky and other Modern acting teachers encourage actors to ask themselves, if I were the character, what would I do in the fictional situation, whereas the Method leads performers to relive personal experiences to produce the emotions deemed suitable for the scene.9 In American popular culture, Strasberg’s significantly more visible ownership of the Stanislavsky legacy has created a situation where, despite her adamant opposition to Strasberg throughout her career, Adler continues to be seen as a Method acting teacher. Identifying Adler this way masks the important distinctions that separate her work from Strasberg’s. Moreover, accounts of American acting that categorize Adler as a Method, rather than Modern, acting teacher also obscure the crucial fact that her approach reflects the vision of Modern acting articulated by teachers such as Lillian Albertson, Sophie Rosenstein, and Josephine Dillon. Allowing Modern acting techniques to stand on their own would foster research that could continue to disentangle them from Strasberg’s Method. Recognizing distinctions between Modern and Method acting priorities might also clear the way for exploring the body of acting principles articulated and circulated in the American acting community in the 1930s and 1940s, and for recognizing that a lively and crucial period of activity predates Strasberg’s “breakthrough” in the 1950s. Including volumes like Sophie Rosenstein’s Modern Acting: A Manual (1936) and Josephine Dillon’s Modern Acting: A Guide for Stage, Screen, and Radio (1940) in discussions about American acting could facilitate studies less focused on star teachers and less concerned with what has been seen as a personal feud between Strasberg and Adler. Modern acting will remain hidden—and the history of its development in the 1930s and 1940s will remain buried—as long as Method acting is seen as both affiliated with and distinct from Stanislavsky. It seems vital to recognize that Strasberg’s approach is unique and delimited; it was Strasberg who discarded Stanislavsky’s central tenets, whereas Modern act-

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ing teachers of the 1930s and 1940s circulated his core beliefs. Turning to the present, the many ways in which Modern acting techniques contribute to “truthful” emotion-filled performances will continue to remain invisible as long as American popular culture circulates Strasberg’s uncompromising rhetoric that actors using any approach other than his Method are not doing the “real” work of acting. The creative labor of even contemporary performers will remain a mystery until audiences become acquainted with the idea that an actor, in order to create a particular performance, might use not just Modern or Method acting strategies, but also ones offered by Michael Chekhov, Jacques Lecoq, Joan Littlewood, Joseph Chaikin, or those articulated by any number of thoughtful teachers whose ideas are still unknown in a culture in which audiences consistently equate serious acting with Method acting.

METHOD ACTING AND AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE Turning to factors outside the domain of nomenclature, there is also value in looking more closely at factors surrounding the unusual prominence that Method acting first gained in the 1950s. To expand on factors explored in Chap. 4, consider that the rapid ascendency of Method acting in the early Cold War period garnered a great deal of public attention, and that its popularity had the concomitant effect of making anything from the previous era seem staid and conventional. Method acting’s ostensive suitability to its cultural moment conferred a special legitimacy on its polemics against the “old-fashioned” actors of the 1930s and 1940s, and, as framed by Strasberg, distinctions between acting styles and acting approaches were black and white. According to Strasberg, acting styles were either authentically American or an artificial imitation of foreign elites; actors created “real” emotion using his Method or served up hackneyed portrayals bundled together out of mere externals. Strasberg’s approach had a well-publicized name, which made it seem more legitimate than the set of acting techniques circulated by Adler, the studio drama coaches, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the Pasadena Playhouse, and the Actors’ Lab in Hollywood. Strasberg’s work had an aura of scientific validity, for he had a method actors could learn. By comparison, acting in the 1930s and 1940s appeared to be the result of mere trial and error, reflecting the personalities of ham actors, and based on little more than a collection of ad hoc remedies and threadbare conventions. The scientific aura surrounding Strasberg made him an expert at a

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time when America valued experts; as Warren Susman notes, “consciousness of living in a new machine age, the Depression (and to a lesser extent World War II)” had created insecurities in American culture that led to an emerging reliance on experts.10 In this context, Strasberg was able to promote himself as a much-needed expert, who had developed a pop-psychology method for managing a mysterious aspect of social interaction— performance. In contrast to actors and actors turned teachers who were subsequently seen as passing along bits of folklore and hackneyed convention, Strasberg, who had enjoyed recognizable but limited success as a director, came to be seen as an expert on “the actor’s problem” through his affiliation with the Actors Studio in New York and most especially with Marilyn Monroe.11 By comparison, the acting teachers who circulated Modern acting principles in the 1930s and 1940s were dispersed across the country, from the Pasadena Playhouse in California to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New  York. Their work was not affiliated with a particular acting style, especially one valued for its association with sexy young white American rebels. Modern acting teachers, working in self-imposed obscurity at the studio drama schools or at the Actors’ Lab in Hollywood, did not use their association with film stars to promote themselves or their acting approach. Moreover, Modern acting teachers did not see themselves as the authors of a singularly “true” approach to acting, but instead as laboring to articulate the insights of fellow actors, as consolidating and refining a body of knowledge that had emerged as actors negotiated the complexities of modern drama and the aesthetic expectations of new stagecraft. Method acting’s meteoric rise in the 1950s depended on many factors, some of which we considered in Chap. 4. For instance, rather than being a dense body of knowledge under the purview of Modern acting professionals concerned with questions of craft, Method acting came to be seen as a style associated with actors known for working with Elia Kazan, who had critical and commercial success in both film and theatre in the 1940s and 1950s. The acting style also seemed well suited to the era’s male melodramas that reflected a popularized Freudian conception of character. Equally, it may be the case that the heightened emotionalism of the Method style worked during a time when Broadway and Hollywood had to address falling income and rising costs; comparatively inexpensive productions in the eras’ theatre, film, and television might have made (male) actors’ display of raw emotion an engaging spectacle.

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The Actors Studio in New  York, established in 1947 by Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford, and Bobby Lewis (who stayed less than a year), did not burden itself with the idealism of the Group Theatre; it was never designed to be a place “where playwrights, actors, directors, and designers [could] work together for a lifetime, each contributing to the growth of the others.”12 The economic challenges in the theatre business made that a prudent decision; in contrast to the peak years (1924–1930), when Broadway was able to sustain more than 200 productions a season, by the 1938–39 season there were fewer than a hundred shows opening on Broadway, and by the 1949–1950 season this had dropped to fewer than sixty.13 In another shrewd move, the Actors Studio dropped the Group Theatre’s left-leaning collaborative stance, and became instead a venue for symbiotic success, designed to produce actors responsive to direction and offering credentials for those trying to find work in theatre, film, and television.14 In the initial efforts of anticommunists, members of the House Committee on Un-American Activities had defunded the Federal Theatre in 1939 and made it difficult for people involved in 1930s left-leaning theatre groups to find work in film and television.15 In the 1940s, official and unofficial anticommunists had their most salient impact on theatre people, who found that working in Hollywood made them subject to special scrutiny—by HUAC, the California State Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities led by Jack Tenney, and the entertainment industry’s own anticommunists, who enforced the Motion Picture Association of America blacklist established in 1947.16 The success of anticommunists in the blacklist era led to films, plays, and television shows that explored psychological rather than social tensions, as producers made a “move from ideology to psychology demanded by the Cold War.”17 During the blacklist period, “personal, rather than public, dramas” became symptomatic of the performing arts’ “retreat from the political forum.”18 As individuals, many members of America’s acting community were forced to retreat from the social and economic pressure generated by the era’s anticommunists, who decided that “the movies, television and, to a lesser extent, the live theatre were to be purged of Reds and fellow travelers.”19 As many readers know, film and theatre scholarship continues to explore ways in which the “breach was filled by those who had either remained apolitical or who had cooperated with HUAC.”20 With the blacklist reducing the influence of some artists and creating opportunities for oth-

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ers, apolitical Lee Strasberg and friendly witness Elia Kazan would rise to prominence, riding the wave of Method acting’s association with authentic and even virile “American” identity. The ability and determination that Strasberg and Kazan demonstrated to mobilize contested cultural values legitimized both Strasberg’s Method and the Method style in Kazan’s film and theatre productions. The rhetoric that joined Method acting to “American” values neatly deflected potential objections by the anticommunists who maintained the entertainment industry blacklist, in effect from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. The ascendency of anticommunists in Hollywood not only shaped the contrasting fates of friendly and unfriendly witnesses, it has influenced accounts of American acting. The film and television blacklist meant that some careers and institutions flourished, while the significance of others would be diminished or overlooked. While there is no reason to question the recognition Kazan, for example, has received, his often-discussed decision to name names for HUAC made it possible for him to work and thus become a key figure in the history of American acting. By comparison, various other members of the Group Theatre have been written out of the narrative. Although one can only speculate, it seems possible that the history of American acting would be different if Actors’ Lab members Roman Bohnen, J. Edward Bromberg, Rose Hobart, and Will Lee had not been blacklisted due to “evidence” read into the record during the Tenney Committee hearing in 1948. One can also imagine that their working relationship with Sophie Rosenstein would have directed attention to the studio drama schools and even the studios’ affiliations with the Pasadena Playhouse and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.

DIFFERING LEGACIES The contributions of acting teachers working in studio-era Hollywood have been lost because accounts of American acting are created retrospectively and in light of various cultural values. In popular American culture, Method acting is valued as style, and it retains associations with authentic performance. Strasberg’s Method is the only acting approach most Americans know about; it is also the only acting style so deeply associated with freedom and masculine vitality that it remains something prized by many Americans.

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Endorsing the rhetoric of Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg in the 1950s, Method proponent Steve Vineberg suggests that the Method style resonates with the American public because it seems to capture “a natural dramatic expression of the way Americans understand and define themselves.”21 Yet individual Americans, living in disparate situations and having diverse social identities and cultural backgrounds, see and express themselves in various ways. Americans of different genders, ages, regions, eras, and economic status understand and perform themselves in contrasting fashions. And so, if one drills down to identify what Vineberg really means, it becomes apparent, I think, that the Method style embodies a specific kind of American identity—namely, the dangerous vitality and virility that is the province of unencumbered white men, as envisioned in the (ongoing) Cold War years. Echoing publicity surrounding the era’s pre-eminent Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock, Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift (both mistakenly labeled as Method actors) became icons of American liberty in the 1950s. The presumed “style” of Method acting seemed to reflect a robust form of masculine American individualism, and thus appeared to have parallels with the huge, chaotic, densely layered paintings produced during the cycle of Abstract Expressionism. Critics’ admiration for Pollock’s work often highlighted the paintings’ ability to suggest a “lonely jungle of immediate sensations, impulses and notions”; these terms could be applied to Method performances as well.22 More importantly, the Method style was held up as a model of American freedom and personal expression; male stars associated with Strasberg’s Method came to occupy the same domain as Pollock and the other “rebel” Abstract Expressionist painters who were promoted by the US State Department during the Cold War as “exemplars of American liberty.”23 The rhetoric supplied by US government officials and the burgeoning American advertising industry caused the perceived masculine virility of Method acting and Abstract Expressionist painting to be seen as hot commercial commodities and credentialed signs of American freedom. The language that bound Method style to “uniquely American” values of freedom, vitality, and personal expression created such a powerful admixture that the public image of white actors who portray angry young men continues to be absorbed into and mobilized by the rhetoric of the new American empire. It also seems to sustain the Method’s status as the country’s most celebrated acting style and most recognized

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acting approach, despite attacks from actors such as Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, who have been seen as its exemplars. The American public continues to equate Method acting with thoughtful, artistic, professional acting, despite contemporary actors’ recognition that serious acting “did not begin and end with Lee Strasberg [and] the Method.”24 Recall how Strasberg’s insistence that his actors tap into personal experiences to execute performances was challenged by Group Theatre members even in the mid-1930s, and that his approach did not have caché until the mid-1950s. Inside the acting profession, Strasberg’s Method has also been widely challenged since the 1960s, starting with the international youth movement and the burgeoning counterculture that returned actors’ attention to the embodied dimensions of performance.25 Pragmatic and ideological opposition to the Method continued in the 1970s and 1980s, as feminists rejected “the ‘matrix’ of Method practice” founded on male-centered norms in all aspects of performance: actor training, acting theory, scripts, casting, and direction.26 In subsequent decades, the “relationship between the teacher/director and the student/actor” in Method training has been seen as marred by “manipulation and control.”27 Critics of Method acting find that the contemporary British actor is “more flexible, has a broader range, is more imaginative, and even has more emotional intensity (once our fallback position) than his American counterpart.”28 Concerns about ethics and efficacy have led actor training programs at American universities to steer clear of exercises that Strasberg saw as central to the Method. From a twenty-first-century perspective, Modern acting and Method acting have quite different, but equally interesting, legacies. Turning first to Modern acting, contemporary evidence reveals that its techniques, vision of acting and the actor, and assumptions about the performer’s role and responsibilities, which once helped players negotiate the aesthetic and material challenges of the 1930s and 1940s, continue to facilitate actors’ work in the contemporary era, as they move from television to indie dramas to blockbuster spectacles; from disparate theatrical venues to various platforms for screen performance; and from naturalistic dramas, with characters shaped by social environments and personal histories, to postmodern performance pieces where performers “skip blithely from arch parody to pitch-perfect embodiment to fleeting moments of startling sincerity.”29 Turning to a rather different legacy, the popularization of Method acting has led to a veritable explosion in Americans’ mediatized performance of self, with YouTube serving as one of many delivery systems. Strasberg’s

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Method legitimized the view of acting as the display of personal emotion; this perspective would become increasingly important in the television age. Classic TV quiz shows created a precedent for reality television offerings that range from uplifting transformative-narrative interview programs to trash-TV shows with combative participants; all forms of reality television value people’s uninhibited authenticity or ability to perform a selected but heightened display of their emotions and personalities. Twenty-first-century iterations of Strasberg’s Method are not confined, of course, to the conception of performance integral to reality TV shows like Survivor (2000–present). For instance, an emphasis on the display of “real” emotion informs the acting approaches outlined in a number of contemporary acting manuals. Ivana Chubbuck, proprietor of the “The Chubbuck Technique,” outlines an approach that begins with understanding a character’s overall objective, his/her objective in a scene, and obstacles to those objectives—and then introduces the idea of substitutions. Similarly, in The Eight Characters of Comedy: A Guide to Sitcom Acting & Writing, Scott Sedita encourages aspiring sitcom actors to start with a basic acting class “to familiarize themselves with techniques like … personal substitution.”30 Yet, contemporary acting and directing manuals also circulate Modern acting strategies. Chubbuck urges actors to begin with script analysis, and she encourages them to explore “beats and actions” in the course of building characterizations.31 Echoing that point, Scott Sedita argues that while sitcom actors should know how to use personal substitutions, script analysis is the key to performance. He explains that actors must identify their characters’ “objective and goal in every scene,” and understand that for any characterization or performance, objective, obstacles, and intentions must be the focus of their work.32 Sedita emphasizes that finding what a character wants is the first and most important step in building a performance. As he explains: “Every character in every scene ‘wants’ something. They usually want it desperately and are determined, against all odds, to get it. How they go about getting it and the obstacles that get in their way are the basis for situation comedy.”33 Similarly, Robert Benedetti’s Action! Acting for Film and Television (2001) confirms the centrality of script analysis, proposing that understanding “the inner world beneath the surface of the script [is] the greatest creative and personal contribution you will make to your performance, and it will be the foundation of all the other work you do.”34 Echoing the format in Dillon’s Modern Acting guide, in his initial chapters Benedetti

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offers insights into the stage–screen transition. The second part of his book covers ways to approach performance, and here Benedetti references Stanislavsky and emphasizes that “everything the actor does as the character must be justified by growing directly out of the needs of the character.”35 Acting and directing teacher Judith Weston also points out that an “actor must play the situation (the predicament, the problem, the task)” rather than the emotion generated by personal substitutions that “can take the actor out of the moment to concentrate on his substitution rather than his scene partner.”36 Despite its invisibility in American popular culture, Modern acting’s strategies for building characterizations, combined with its vision of the actor as a unified whole, have given it a significant legacy in theatre, film, and television, as actors find themselves in an “exciting time” when they contribute to productions for global audiences, using digital technology to produce and deliver material.37 Modern acting techniques for creating characters different from oneself have become vital to CGI animators, who build characterizations through the visual depiction of intentionladen actions. Actors in performance-capture settings also follow Modern acting principles as they focus “on the interpersonal dynamics and lines of impelling actions and counteractions within each scene or scenario [to produce] emotionally expressive movements that [can] be successfully captured and digitized.”38 Modern acting and Strasberg’s Method represent two different visions of performance. With Method acting linked to the idea that performance means display of real emotion, it continues to have relevance in an American society that values personal expression. By comparison, Modern acting retains its importance because actors continue to negotiate new developments in staging and drama. Reflecting the challenges and values of the contemporary period, an introduction to the California Institute for the Arts actor training program states: the actor of the 21st century needs to be highly versatile, able to work in any number of forms, styles and settings. This actor must be technologically literate, have a strong command of body, voice and speech, and be equally adept in theater, film, television, and emerging media.39

While Method acting proponents might regard this position as a return to suspect British acting, Modern acting teachers of the 1930s and 1940s

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would likely see Cal Art’s statement as another iteration of the insight that acting depends on an indissoluble link between mind and body. All accounts of acting, including mine, are retrospective and teleological. I recognize that in mid-twentieth-century America, after the tremendous sense of change created by World War II and the new atomic age, perspectives central to the acting community of the 1930s and 1940s might seem old-fashioned. Yet, I would argue that a twenty-first-century perspective allows us to see that the individuals who articulated the principles of Modern acting in the 1930s and 1940s belong to a remarkable chapter in the history of American acting, and one that has had a lasting and productive impact on acting theory and practice. Evidence from the period (in the form of books, interviews, lectures, and more) should prompt us to give credit where it is due—namely, to the individuals who articulated the Modern acting strategies that contemporary actors use on a daily basis. In addition, the precedent set by teachers such as Sophie Rosenstein and Josephine Dillon, whose lifeworks are entitled Modern Acting: A Manual and Modern Acting: A Guide for Stage, Screen, and Radio, should give us the confidence to use the term Modern acting when discussing the creative labor that actors invest to: develop complex characterizations from research and script analysis; acquire the physical and vocal skill to embody characters different from themselves; and create engaging performances in a wide range of production settings. The Modern acting principles that first coalesced in the 1930s and 1940s do not suggest that acting is a problem needing a solution, but rather they provide strategies for exploring the labor-intensive aspects of building a characterization and then living the part in performance. The contributions of Modern acting teachers to American acting constitute an achievement that warrants recognition.

NOTES 1. In 1938, the US Department of Justice initiated an antitrust case against the five major studios (Paramount, RKO, MGM, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros.) and the three minor studios (Universal, Columbia, and United Artists). In 1948, after appeals and cross-appeals, the US Supreme Court issued a final decision, finding the studios guilty of restraint of trade. The decision called for the studios to sell some of the movie theatres they owned; this process moved slowly, with the studios reaching compliance by the late 1950s. Accounts of the Paramount Case can be found in histories

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2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

of American cinema; see Simon N.  Whitney, “Antitrust Policies and the Motion Picture Industry,” in The American Movie Industry, ed. Gorham Kindem (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), 162–204; Giuliana Muscio, Hollywood’s New Deal (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997); Drew Casper, Postwar Hollywood 1946–1962 (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007). Lab members found a way to use the name in publicity for their last production in 1950, even though declaring bankruptcy made presentation of a Lab production illegal. This parallels Group Theatre members’ decision to maintain the brand after becoming the New Group Inc. in 1937. David Cook, A History of Narrative Film, 4th ed. (New York: Norton, 1996), 513. Sharon Marie Carnicke, Stanislavsky in Focus: An Acting Master for the Twenty-First Century, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2009), 102. Most of Stanislavsky’s books appeared after he had been placed under house arrest in 1934. An abridged version of An Actor’s Work on Himself, Part I was published in English in 1936 as An Actor Prepares. A censored version of An Actor’s Work on Himself, Part II was published in the USA in 1949 as Building a Character. Stanislavsky’s drafts for another book were edited by Soviet censors and published in Russia as An Actor’s Work on the Role (1957) and in the USA as Creating a Role (1961). This book, together with lectures by Moscow Art Theatre members during their 1963 American tour, introduced the Method of Physical Actions, the Soviet version of Stanislavsky’s Active Analysis. In both iterations, actors use improvisation to explore characters’ physical and vocal expression. In the 1960s, various embodied approaches emerged to correct what actors of the time saw as shortcomings of the Method. In contrast to the 1930s, when Ronald Colman had to sue Sam Goldwyn to end the publicity that misrepresented his work as an actor, in the 1950s the studios no longer controlled promotional marketing. Strasberg could step into this void due to his association with Elia Kazan and the Actors Studio. See David Chesney, Interview with Cynthia Baron August 21, 2015. According to Warren’s son David Chesney, she worked with contract players David Janssen, Joi Lansing, and Olive Sturgess, and several actors for whom English was a second language. She attended Dana Hall School in Wellesley, MA, and taught at Wellesley College and Columbia University. Her acting career spanned theatre, film, and television. Actors in the Talent Development Program included: Julie Adams, Susan Cabot, Jeff Chandler, Mara Corday, Tony Curtis, Mamie Van Doren, Lance Fuller, Lisa Gaye, Brett Halsey, Ruth Hampton, Myrna Hansen, Rock Hudson, Kathleen Hughes, Gordon Hunt, Brad Jackson, Russell Johnson, Piper Laurie,

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8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

17.

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William Leslie, Richard Long, Audie Murphy, George Nadler, Lori Nelson, Hugh O’Brian, Gregg Palmer, Bart Roberts, Barbara Rush, and Sara Shane (“Inside U-I: A Scene the Movie Fans Didn’t See,” Universal-International, 1953 press release photo documentation, Photofest, Inc., New York). Philip Scheuer, “School for Future Stars Paying Off Handsomely,” Los Angeles Times, February 19, 1956, Box 749/24535, Talent School Files, Universal-International Collection, Cinema-Television Library, University of Southern California. Patrick McGilligan, Clint: The Life and Legend (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 79, 88. Lee Strasberg, A Dream of Passion: The Development of the Method, ed. Evangeline Morphos (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1987), 6. Warren Susman, Culture and Commitment (New York: Braziller, 1973), 9. Strasberg, Dream of Passion, 105. Jack Poggi, Theater in America: The Impact of Economic Forces, 1870–1967 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968), 284. Ibid., 47. Between 1947 and 1957, Broadway mounted a limited number of productions, ranging from the 1950–1951 season of eighty-one productions (the high) to the 1952–1953 season of fifty-four shows (the low) (Poggi, Theater in America, 47). Similarly, there were seventy-five theatres in operation from 1925 to 1929, but by the 1940–1941 season there were only thirty-two commercial theatrical venues in New York; in the 1950–51 season there were thirty-six (48). Some practitioners invested their creative energy in off-Broadway productions at the Circle in the Square, the Living Theatre, and the Phoenix Theatre (168–205). Others focused on nonprofit, community-based theatre (206–241). Cheryl Crawford got the Actors Studio listed as a resident theatre; in 1962, it received $250,000 from the Ford Foundation. Overall, there was little paid theatre work outside New York, and casting for Broadway shows favored established players (207, 168). Poggi, Theater in America, 159–161. The blacklist era (1947–1960) is discussed in many accounts of American cinema. See Robert Vaughn, Only Victims: A Study of Show Business Blacklisting (New York: Limelight, 1996); Victor S.  Navasky, Naming Names, 3rd ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2003); Cynthia Baron, “As Red as a Burlesque Queen’s Garters: Cold War Politics and the Actors’ Lab in Hollywood,” in Headline Hollywood: A Century of Film Scandal, eds. Adrienne L. McLean and David A. Cook (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001). Greg Rickman, “Review of Three Generations of Film Actors,” Film Quarterly (Fall 1992): 43. See Harold Clurman, The Fervent Years: The

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18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

Story of the Group Theatre and the Thirties (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975). In his 1945–1955 epilogue to The Fervent Years, Clurman reflects on the blacklist and the HUAC hearings. He observes that the “political constriction which began to make itself felt around 1947 and which mounted in frightening tempo to reach a sort of climax in 1953” led most theatre practitioners “to desire nothing more than to be inconspicuous citizens” (305–306). Laurence Senelick, “Introduction,” in Theatre Arts on Acting, ed. Laurence Senelick (New York: Routledge, 2008), xviii. Ibid. Ibid. See Bruce McConachie, “Method Acting and the Cold War,” Theatre Survey 41:1 (May 2000): 47–67; Bruce McConachie, American Theater in the Culture of the Cold War: Producing and Contesting Containment, 1947–1962 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2005). Steve Vineberg, Method Actors: Three Generations of an American Acting Tradition (New York: Schirmer, 1991), xii. Clement Greenberg, The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 2: Arrogant Purpose, 1945–1949, ed. John O’Brian (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 166. Peter Wollen, Raiding the Icebox: Reflections on Twentieth-Century Culture (New York: Verso, 2008), 101. Ian Watson, “Actor Training in the United States: Past, Present and Future (?),” in Performer Training: Developments across Cultures, ed. Ian Watson (Amsterdam: Harwood, 2001), 61. Jacques Lecoq, “Theatre of Gesture and Image,” in The Intercultural Performance Reader, ed. Patrice Pavis (New York: Routledge, 1996), 142. Rosemary Malague, An Actress Prepares: Women and “the Method” (New York: Routledge, 2012), 25. Ibid., 18. Richard Hornby, The End of Acting: A Radical View (New York: Applause, 1992), 9. Jacob Gallagher-Ross, “Image Eaters: Big Art Group Brings the Noise,” TDR: The Drama Review (Winter 2010): 54. Scott Sedita, The Eight Characters of Comedy: A Guide to Sitcom Acting and Writing, 2nd ed. (Los Angeles: Atides, 2014), 23. Ivana Chubbuck, The Power of the Actor: The Chubbuck Technique (New York: Gotham Books, 2004), v. Sedita, The Eight Characters of Comedy, 322. Ibid. Robert Benedetti, Action! Acting for Film and Television (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001), 77. Ibid., 71.

THE LEGACY OF MODERN ACTING

261

36. Judith Weston, Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for Film and Television (Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese, 1996), 155, 154. 37. Ed Hooks, Acting Strategies for the Cyber Age (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2001), 1. 38. Sharon Marie Carnicke, “Emotional Expressivity in Motion Picture Capture Technology,” in Acting and Performance in Moving Image Culture: Bodies, Screens, Renderings, eds. Jörg Sternagel, Deborah Levitt, and Dieter Mersch (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2012), 325. 39. “Acting Program,” School of Theatre, California Institute of the Arts, accessed January 23, 2016, https://theater.calarts.edu/programs/acting.

APPENDIX: GROUP THEATRE, ALFRED LUNT, AND KATHARINE CORNELL PRODUCTIONS

Group Theatre Productions Season/Play

Director

Designer

Playwright

Performances

1931–1932 The House of Connelly 1931– Night over Taos

Strasberg Strasberg Strasberg

Gorelik

Green Siftons Anderson

91 12 13

1932–1933 Success Story Big Night

Strasberg Crawford

Gorelik Gorelik

Lawson Powell

121 7

1933–1934 Men in White Gentlewoman

Strasberg Strasberg

Gorelik Gorelik

Kingsley Lawson

351 12

1934–1935 Gold Eagle Guy Awake and Sing! Waiting for Lefty and Till the Day I Die

Strasberg Clurman Odets/ Meisner

Oenslager Aronson

Levy Odets Odets

65 184 144

1935–1936 Weep for the Virgins

Crawford

Aronson

Child

9 (continued)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 C. Baron, Modern Acting, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-40655-2

263

264

APPENDIX: GROUP THEATRE, ALFRED LUNT, AND KATHARINE CORNELL ...

(continued) Paradise Lost Case of Clyde Griffiths

Clurman Strasberg

Aronson Barratt

Odets Piscator

73 19

1936–1937 Johnny Johnson

Strasberg

Oenslager

Green

68

1937–1938 Golden Boy Casey Jones

Clurman Kazan

Gorelik Gorelik

Odets Ardrey

250 25

1938–1939 Rocket to the Moon The Gentle People

Clurman Clurman

Gorelik Aronson

Odets Shaw

131 141

Lewis

Andrews

Saroyan

44

Kazan Clurman

Gorelik Gorlelik

Ardrey Odets

23 20

Clurman

Oenslager

Shaw

23

1939–1940 My Heart’s in the Highland Thunder Rock Night Music 1940–1941 Retreat to Pleasure

Productions Featuring Alfred Lunt 1931–1932 Elizabeth the Queen

264

1932–1933 Design for Living

135

1934–1935 Point Valaine

55

1935–1936 The Taming of the Shrew Idiot’s Delight

129 300

1937–1938 Amphitryon 38 The Seagull

153 41

1939–1940 There Shall Be No Night 1940–1941 There Shall Be No Night

115

66

APPENDIX: GROUP THEATRE, ALFRED LUNT, AND KATHARINE CORNELL ...

265

(continued) Productions Featuring Katharine Cornell 1932–1933 Lucrece Alien Corn

31 98

1933–1934 Jezebel

32

1934–1935 Romeo and Juliet The Barretts of Wimpole Street

Flowers of the Forest

77 24 (revival: 1931 production, 370 performances) 40

1935–1936 Romeo and Juliet Saint Joan

15 89

1936–1937 The Wingless Victory Candida

110 50

1938–1939 No Time for Comedy

185

1940–1941 The Doctor’s Dilemma

121

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Taxidou, Olga. The Mask: A Periodical Performance by Edward Gordon Craig. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998. Tenney, Jack B. Fourth Report of the Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities: 1948: Communist Front Organizations. Published by The Senate, March 25, 1948. Thomas, Dwight, and Mary Guion Griepenkerl. “The Actor’s Lab.” Theatre Arts (February 1947). Reprinted in Theatre Arts on Acting, edited by Laurence Senelick, 257–260. New York: Routledge, 2008. Tolson, Andrew, ed. Television Talk Shows: Discourse, Performance, Spectacle. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001. Tomlinson, Doug, ed. Actors on Acting for the Screen: Roles and Collaborations. New York: Garland Publishing, 1994. Trescony, Al. Interview August 20, 1986. Performing Arts Oral History Collection. Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. Tzioumakis, Yannis. American Independent Cinema: An Introduction. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006. Vaughn, Robert. Only Victims: A Study of Show Business Blacklisting. New York: Limelight, 1996. Vineberg, Steve. Method Actors: Three Generations of an American Acting Tradition. New York: Schirmer, 1991. Wainscott, Ronald H. The Emergence of the Modern American Theater, 1914–1929. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997. Walker, Julia A. “‘De New Dat’s Moiderin’ de Old’: Oedipal Struggle as Class Conflict in Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape.” In Art, Glitter, and Glitz: Mainstream Playwrights and Popular Theatre in 1920s America, edited by Arthur Gewirtz and James J. Kolb, 19–30. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004. Walkup, Fairfax Proudfit. Dressing the Part: A History of Costume for the Theatre. New York: F. S. Crofts, 1947. Watermeier, Daniel J. “Actors and Acting.” In The Cambridge History of American Theatre, Volume Two: 1870–1945, edited by Don B. Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby, 446–486. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Watson, Ian. “Actor Training in the United States: Past, Present and Future (?).” In Performer Training: Developments across Cultures, edited by Ian Watson, 61–82. Amsterdam: Harwood, 2001. Weston, Judith. Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for Film and Television. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese, 1996. White, R. Andrew. “Introduction: Stanislavsky: Past, Present, and Future.” In The Routledge Companion to Stanislavsky, edited by R.  Andrew White, 1–7. New York: Routledge, 2014. Whitney, Simon N. “Antitrust Policies and the Motion Picture Industry.” In The American Movie Industry, edited by Gorham Kindem, 161–204. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982.

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INDEX

A Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, xxi Across the Board on Tomorrow Morning, 80 Acting building characterizations, xiii–xv, xxi, xxiii–xxiv, 10, 22–4, 26, 31–4, 36, 41–2, 45–6, 49, 58, 63, 75, 77, 100–1, 104, 126, 144, 146, 162, 164, 171–4, 176, 178, 197, 199–224, 229–30, 234, 238, 246, 255–7 inspiration vs. technique, 19, 50, 73, 90 stage and screen, xxiv, 4–5, 7, 16–17, 104, 117–18, 165, 179, 219–42, 254–6 twenty-first century, xiii, xvi, xxi, 3–5, 170, 254–6 Acting experts, xxiii, 48, 53, 57, 171, 173, 181, 243, 250 gender disparities, 79, 181, 184 uncredited directors, 99, 173, 182 see also dialogue directors; drama coaches

Acting style, xiv, xx, xxv, 41, 61, 66, 70, 76, 81, 178, 199, 208–9, 249, 250, 252, 253 Action, xvii, 17, 22–5, 27, 28, 31–3, 52–5, 58, 74, 96–7, 101, 104–5, 114, 125, 144, 147–8, 162–3, 220, 255, 256 as seen by Actors’ Laboratory, 49–52, 197 as seen by studio drama coaches, xv, 42–3, 46, 175, 176, 178, 221, 229–30, 232–6, 241 Actor from a humanist vs. psychoanalytic perspective, xxi, 27, 31, 34, 53, 100, 197, 246, 256 guided by playwright’s vision, 22, 32, 55, 96, 97, 233 as mentor, 93, 172, 179–80 opposing views of actor training, 20, 24, 26, 29, 32–3, 41–2, 44, 55, 58, 184, 196–7, 213, 238, 246–7, 254, 256–7 as prism, 197, 213, 233 Actors’ agency, 17, 52, 54, 229

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 C. Baron, Modern Acting, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-40655-2

279

280

INDEX

Actors’ Equity Association, 87 Actors’ Laboratory in Hollywood, xviii, xxi, xxiii, xxiv, 41, 48, 53, 93, 105, 189–215, 219, 225, 233, 235–7, 243, 244, 246, 249, 250, 252 Cold War politics, 193, 201–9 Group Theatre members, xiv, 48, 120, 190 social-political orientation, 189–96 theatre productions, 64, 189, 192 war effort, 190, 191, 193, 202, 211 Actors’ Society of America, 87 Actors Studio in New York, xvi, xxii, 7–9, 33, 55, 70, 72–3, 76–80, 83, 191–2, 208–9, 244, 250, 251, 258, 259 Adams, Julie, 224, 258 Adams, Maude, 118 Adam’s Rib, 223, 239 Adler, Buddy, 166 Adler, Jacob, 9, 66 Adler, Luther, 9, 63, 64, 78, 120, 124, 126, 127, 129, 130, 158 Adler, Mortimer, 98 Adler, Sara, 9 Adler, Stella, ix, xvi, xxi, 9, 22, 26, 41, 52, 64, 64, 78, 119, 119, 129, 248, 249 affiliation with Stanislavsky, xvii, 48, 71, 125, 247 American Laboratory Theatre, xxi, 98, 124 confrontation with Lee Strasberg, xvi–xvii, 124–5, 247 Group Theatre, xxi, 122, 124, 126, 127 mentor of Marlon Brando, 6, 77–80 Modern acting teacher, xiv–xv, xxv, xxvii, 22–3, 53, 87, 168, 219, 237, 248

Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, The, 156 Adventures of Superman, The, 157 Affective memory, 27–8 Albert, Eddie, 103 Alberti, Madame Eva, xvii, xxvii, 146 Albertson, Lillian, x, xiv, xvii, xviii, xxiv, xxv, 8, 10, 12, 33, 171, 230–8, 231, 248 Alice in Wonderland, 92 Alison’s House, 92 Al Jackson Players, 114 All about Eve, 103, 166, 225 All My Sons, 71, 210 American Academy of Dramatic Arts, x, xiv, xviii, xxiii, xxv, 48, 80–1, 95, 113, 116, 123, 131, 137–53, 165, 168, 172, 192, 200, 219, 237, 243, 244, 249, 250, 252 actors associated with the Academy, 137–42, 150 actor training program, 142–50 American acting history, xi, xiv, xvi–xvii, xx, xxiv, 6–9, 15, 33, 71, 75, 76, 79, 81, 88, 113, 128, 148, 165, 168, 192, 199, 208, 244, 248, 252, 257 American Laboratory Theatre, xxi, xxii, 6, 19, 26–8, 48, 49, 87, 97–9, 101, 107, 122, 124, 125, 193, 199, 247 American Repertory Theatre, 93, 200 Anderson, James, 194 Anderson, Judith, 70 Anderson, Maxwell, 62 And Now Tomorrow, 179 Andrews, Dana, 80, 155, 157, 167 Angels with Dirty Faces, 113 Anna Christie, 112, 115 Anne of Green Gables, 167

INDEX

Anticommunists, xx, 72, 193, 202, 204, 244, 251, 252. See also blacklist Antoine, André, xxiv Antony and Cleopatra, 70, 155 Appia, Adolphe, 19, 21, 221 Applause, 117 Archer, William, 145 Arch Street Theatre, 88 Arliss, George, 36, 68 Aronson, Boris, xiv, 63, 263, 264 Arthur, Jean, x, 222–4 Arzner, Dorothy, 99 Asher, Jerry, 166, 166 Astaire, Fred, xxviii, 10 Astor, Mary, 116, 179 Astor Place Riot, 66, 71 Auerbach, George, 98 Auntie Mame, 141 Auteur, 222, 244 Avery, Elizabeth, 161 Awake and Sing!, ix, 9, 62–4, 64, 65, 73, 118, 126, 201, 263

B Bacall, Lauren, 81, 137, 141 Bad and the Beautiful, The, 7 Baggett, Lynne, 193 Baker, George Pierce, 98 Ball, Lucille, x, 177, 177 Bancroft, Anne, 137 Banjo Eyes, 176 Banker’s Daughter, The, 208, 210 Bankhead, Tallulah, 69, 75 Baright, Anna, 97 Bari, Lynn, 172 Barker, Margaret, 123–5 Barnes, Natalie, 211 Barr, Anthony, 210 Barretts of Wimpole Street, The, 70, 265

281

Barrymore, Ethel, 69, 88, 99, 118, 237 Barrymore, John, 88, 98, 99, 112, 179, 237 leading actor of his era, 6–7, 83, 99, 244 Barrymore, Lionel, 88, 99 Barrymore, Maurice, 66 Barton Fink, 7 Bataan, 156 Baxter, Anne, 103 Bear, The, 206 Beau Brummel, 179 Beau Geste, 12 Belasco Company, 173 Belasco, David, 222 Bel Geddes, Barbara, 76 Bel Geddes, Norman, xiv, 98, 172 Bellamy, Ralph, 114 Bell for Adano, A, 69, 202 Ben-Ami, Jacob, 65, 74, 101, 138 Benjamin, Walter, 220, 225 Berg, Gertrude, 145 Bergman, Ingrid, 237–8 Berkeley Square, 68 Berman, Pandro, 177 Bernhardt, Sarah, 118 Berry, John, 192 Best Years of Our Lives, The, 155, 176 Bewitched, 140 Bible, 91, 100 Bigger than Life, 158 Biggest Thief in Town, The, 208 Big Knife, The, 210 Big Lake, 98 Big Night, 121, 263 Bill of Divorcement, A, 98, 239 Blacklist, 35, 64, 191, 192, 199, 204, 205, 208, 211, 251, 252, 259, 260. See also anticommunists Blackmer, Sidney, 76 Blanke, Henry, 212

282

INDEX

Blankfort, Henry, 211 Blinn, Holbrook, ix, 89, 90, 237 Bliss Hayden School, 151 Blondell, Joan, 118 Blonde Venus, 67 Bloomgarden, Kermit, 127, 129, 130 Blue Dahlia, The, 179 Bob Cummings Show, The, 141 Bogart, Humphrey, 114, 115, 130 Bohnen, Roman (Bud), ix, x, xxii, 120, 128, 130, 195, 200, 201, 207, 211, 215, 252 Actors’ Laboratory, xxiv, 48, 190–2, 193, 200, 214 death, 64, 206–8 Group Theatre, 63, 121–2, 123, 125–7, 129, 130 response to The Fervent Years, 200–1 Tenney Committee, 204–6, 252 Boleslavsky, Richard, xiv, xvii, 57, 99, 107, 111, 146, 162, 199 American Laboratory Theatre, xxii, 26, 27, 97–9 Broadway productions, 98, 99 Hollywood productions, 6, 13, 18, 99, 116 Modern acting views, 19, 99–101 Moscow Art Theatre, 6, 97 vs. Lee Strasberg, 19, 99–101 Bonstelle, Jessie, 113, 114, 172 Boomerang, 76 Booth, Edwin, 36, 88 Boroff, George, 210 Boston College of Oratory, 96 Boucicault, Dion, 95, 146 Bowlby, Marguerite, 159 Boyer, Charles, 99 Bragin, J. George, 193 Brand, Neville, 194 Brando, Dorothy, 115

Brando, Marlon, xxii, 6, 70, 71, 74, 77–9, 81 as exemplar of Method acting style, 6, 76–7, 78, 253–4 opposition to Lee Strasberg, 78 training with Stella Adler, 6, 77–80 Brand, Phoebe, xxii, 50, 64, 120, 122, 130, 190 Actors’ Laboratory, 48, 49, 190, 192, 193, 210, 213 Group Theatre, 64, 118, 124, 127, 129 sense-memory workshop, 49, 51, 58 Brandt, Janet, 48 Brent, George, 116 Bridges, Lloyd, 191–3 Bringing up Baby, 222–3 British influence, xxii, 62, 65–9, 74, 116–17, 254, 256–7 Anglo-Saxon actors and traditions, 70, 73, 80 Astor Place Riot, 66, 71 disparaged by Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg, 71–3, 221 White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP), 69–72, 80 Broadway, xiii, xxvii, 62–3, 66, 69–71, 74–7, 80–1, 92–3, 98–9, 222, 237 and Actors’ Laboratory in Hollywood, 201, 205 and American Academy of Dramatic Art, 145, 148 as audition site and training ground, xxii–xxiii, 115, 116, 131, 138–42 Broadway–Hollywood connection, xxiii, xxv, 3–4, 6–7, 9, 10, 12, 102, 111–31 decline starting in 1920s, xx, 112, 120, 122, 131, 208, 244, 251, 259

INDEX

and Group Theatre, 118–31 and Pasadena Playhouse, 156, 167, 168 and studio drama coaches, 172, 176, 230, 231, 246 see also theatre Brody, Adrien, 56 Bromberg, J. Edward, x, xxi, 93, 209, 252 Actors’ Laboratory, 48–9, 190–2, 193 Group Theatre, 63–4, 118, 122, 124, 214 Hollywood Theatre Alliance, 211 Tenney Committee, 204–6, 208 Brook, Clive, 67, 117 Brook, Peter, 26 Brothers Karamazov, The, x, 139 Brown, Gilmor, x, xiv, xvii–xviii, 21, 80, 146, 158–62, 165, 219, 243–4 Gilmor’s boys, 157–8, 167 Modern acting views, xxiii, 21, 162–5 Brown, Phil, 48, 192, 193, 214 Brown, Vanessa, 132 Bulgakov, Leo, 122 Bulldog Drummond, 11, 12, 68 Burlesque, 117, 202 Burns (Sidney), Lillian, x, 173–5, 175, 176, 178, 181, 182, 187, 220, 221, 226, 232, 237 Burr, Raymond, 156, 157

C Cabot, Bruce, ix, 42, 43, 56 Cabot, Susan, 258 Cagney, James, 118, 194 Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, The, 157 Calhern, Louis, 70 California Institute for the Arts, 256

283

California State Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities. See Tenney Committee Calthrop, Gladys, 62 Calvert, Louis, 146, 162–4 Camille, 112 Candida, 70, 265 Cape Playhouse, 93, 114, 115 Capra, Frank, 13, 116, 130, 223 Carlson, Oliver, 203 Carnovsky, Morris, x, xxii, 64, 83, 120, 130, 139, 198, 234, 236 Actors’ Laboratory, 48, 49, 54, 57, 190, 192, 193, 197, 210, 213, 214 Group Theatre, 64, 122, 124, 126, 127, 129 Theatre Guild, 139, 190 Caro, Jacobina, 49, 190, 191, 206, 210, 211 Case of Clyde Griffiths, The, 121, 126, 127, 264 Cassavetes, John, 137 Casting casting directors, 7, 80, 88, 116, 117, 122, 129, 140, 155, 165, 173, 178, 181–3, 254, 259 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 76 Cavalcade, 68 Chaikin, Joseph, 249 Challee, William, 123 Chandler, Jeff, 258 Chanin, Gerry, 191, 192, 211 Chaplin, Charles, 12 Character vis-à-vis actor, xv–xvii, 5, 15–16, 27, 31–3, 36, 42–55, 58, 71, 75, 77, 95–7, 99, 101, 104–5, 246, 248, 256–7 as seen by Actors’ Laboratory, 196–7, 199, 201, 210, 213 as seen by American Academy of Dramatic Arts, 138–9, 143–9

284

INDEX

as seen by Pasadena Playhouse, 162–4, 168 as seen by stage and screen actors, 219–38 as seen by studio drama coaches, 171–6, 178–81, 184 Chastain, Jessica, 138 Chatterton, Ruth, 12 Chekhov, Anton, ix, xiv, 23, 62–3, 70, 80, 92, 206, 221 Chekhov, Michael, xiii, 56, 78, 201–2, 214, 249 Cheney, Sheldon, 162, 169 Cherry Orchard, The, 92 Child, Nellise, 118 Circle in the Square, 259 Citadel, The, 68 Citizen Kane, 141 Civic Repertory Theatre, 62, 91–3, 98, 126 Civic Theatre School, xxvi Cleveland Playhouse, 113, 156 Clift, Montgomery, xxii, 6, 69, 75–6, 81 as exemplar of Method acting, 74, 76, 79–80, 253–4 opposition to Strasberg’s Method, 74–5 training with Lunt and Fontanne, 75, 80, 94 Clive of India, 13, 99 Clurman, Harold, 6, 8, 63, 77, 78, 83, 119, 120, 122–9, 130, 160, 200–1, 260, 263, 264 Cobb, Lee J., 71, 80, 120, 127, 129, 130, 130 Coburn, Charles, 99 Cocoon, 141 Cohan, George M., 117 Colbert, Claudette, 116, 173 Cold War, xx, xxiv 64, 192, 202, 251

“American” identity and acting style, xxiv, 73, 249, 253 see also anticommunists; blacklist Colman, Ronald, ix, xxi, 11–15, 14, 67–9, 99, 111, 222, 258 Colton, Araby, 211 Columbia Pictures, 93, 185, 191, 257 Columbia University, xxvii, 258 Combs, Richard, 203 Come and Get It, 129 Comédie Française, 93 Communist front, 193, 203, 205, 206, 208, 211 Communist Party, 203–5 Concentration, xxi, 10–12, 17, 23, 30–3, 42, 45, 51, 54, 58, 71, 96–7, 99, 146, 148, 163, 180, 219, 232, 235–6 Conscious approach to acting, xxi, 41–3, 45, 49–52, 54, 55, 97, 163, 171, 195, 197, 198, 201, 213, 226, 227, 238, 247 Conservatoire method, 94, 212 Conte, Richard, 48 Contract players, x, 10, 42, 166, 171–4, 176–8, 180, 182, 187, 199, 228, 232, 245, 258 at the Actors’ Laboratory, 56, 131, 191, 193–4, 202 contract player system, 184, 243 Conway, Curt, 190 Cook, George Cram, 20, 34, 94 Cooper, Gary, 11, 62, 111, 223 Cooper, Maudie Prickett, 164 Copeau, Jacques, xxiv, 98 Coquelin, Constant, 145, 146 Corday, Mara, 258 Corey, Jeff, 49, 189–91, 195, 202, 210, 211, 213 Cormack, Bartlett, 138

INDEX

Cornell, Katharine, xxviii, 62, 69, 70, 94, 120, 121, 123, 142, 237, 265 Cornell University, 145 Costume designers, 7, 183 Count of Monte Cristo, The, 21 Cousins, Kay, 210 Coward, Noël, x, 62, 63, 67, 70, 73 Coy, Walter, 119, 120, 122 Craig, Edward Gordon, 21, 34, 146, 221–2 “Actor and the Übermarionette, The,” 20, 35 Lee Strasberg’s appreciation for, 20, 24, 25 women as impediment to art, 35, 93, 106 Craig, Louise, 211 Crawford, Cheryl, 8–9, 82, 93, 120, 122, 126, 127, 193, 200, 251, 259, 263 Crawford, Joan, 99, 118, 132 Creative labor, xx, xiii, 6–7, 32, 42, 47, 52, 179, 234, 249, 257 Crews, Laura Hope, 117 Cronyn, Hume, 48, 49, 117, 141, 150, 192, 193, 200, 219, 225, 232 Crosby, Bing, 173 Crossfire, 194 Crothers, Rachel, 87, 96 Cukor, George, ix, 14, 14, 67, 112, 114, 182 collaboration with Katharine Hepburn, x, 98, 117, 222, 223, 239 Cummings, Robert, 141 Curry College. See School of Expression Curry, Samuel Silas, 95, 97, 142 Curtis, Tony, 258 Cushman, Charlotte, 88 Cyrano de Bergerac, 246

285

D DaCosta, Morton, 141 Dancing Lady, 118 Dandridge, Dorothy, 205–6 Dane, Clemence, 98 D’Angelo, Aristide, 145–7, 148, 152 American Academy of Dramatic Arts, 144, 145, 147, 150 Jehlinger’s Method, 145, 147, 152 D’Angelo, Evelyn, 145 Dangerous, 118 Dark Angel, The, 12, 13 Dark at the Top of the Stairs, The, 76 Dassin, Jules, 35, 191, 192 Davenport, Mary, 121, 191 Davis, Bette, 15, 53–4, 67, 103, 114–6, 118, 132, 166, 179 script analysis, 232, 236 stage and screen acting, 219–20, 225 Davison, Sidney, 206, 211 Day at the Races, A, 10 Day of the Locust, The, 7 Dead End, 130 Dead Reckoning, x, 198, 219 Dean, James, 61, 74, 79 Death of a Salesman, 71, 80 Declaration, 204–5 Deep Are the Roots, 70 DeFore, Don, 156, 158 de Havilland, Olivia, 15, 173 DeMille, Cecil B., 66, 165 Design for Living, ix, 62–4, 65, 73, 264 Detroit Civic Theatre, 113, 172 Devil’s Garden, The, 230 Devil to Pay!, The, 13 Dewhurst, Colleen, 141 Dialect coaches, 171, 199 Dialogue, 23, 25, 46, 63, 77, 116, 179, 227, 229, 232 silent dialogue, 23, 33, 43–4, 227 see also mental pictures and conversations

286

INDEX

Dialogue directors, xxiii, 33, 171–3, 192, 230, 243. See also acting experts; drama coaches Diction, 45, 49, 100, 103, 105, 173, 174, 199, 227 Diction coaches, 171, 172, 199, 246 Diderot, Denis, 145, 241 Dieterle, William, 120, 212 Dietrich, Marlene, 67, 99 Dillon, Josephine, x, ix, xvi–xviii, 8, 12, 19, 33, 43, 177, 179, 228, 236, 241 Modern acting teacher, xiv, xxi, xxv, 10, 20–1, 23, 41–5, 53, 87, 237, 248, 257 Pasadena Playhouse, 158, 162, 168 stage and screen acting, xxiv, 225–31, 240, 255–6 Disraeli, 68 Distant Isle, 206 Dmytryk, Edward, 192, 194 D.O.A., 9 Dodsworth, ix, 102, 102 Doll’s House, A, 23, 89, 105 Dolman, John, 146 Donat, Robert, 68 Double Life, A, ix, 14, 69 Douglas, Kirk, ix, 137, 141, 142, 150 Douglas, Melvyn, 107, 118 Drama coaches, xiv, xvii, xxiii, 6, 8, 93, 103, 114, 140, 155, 156, 171–85, 221, 224, 225, 230, 232, 243, 249. See also acting experts; dialogue directors Dream of Passion, A (film), 35 Drew, Georgiana, 66 Drew, John, 118 Drew, Mrs. John, 88 Dr. H. R. Palmer’s Summer School of Music, xxvii

Driving Miss Daisy, 234–5 Dr. Kildare, 13 Dual focus, 163–4, 168, 236 Dunham, Katherine, 77 Dunne, Irene, 57, 107 Duse, Eleanor, 65

E Eagels, Jeanne, 67 Eames, Clare, 26, 138 East of Eden, 61, 74, 79 Edwards, James, 202 El Capitan College of Theatre, 151 Eldridge, Florence, 69 Eliscu, Edward, 208 Elizabeth the Queen, 62, 264 El Patio Theatre, 207 Emerson, Charles, 95, 96, 142 Emerson College of Oratory, 96, 97 Emotion, xvii, xxii, 8, 13, 17, 36, 63, 96, 117, 148, 160, 197, 212, 237, 247–50, 254–6 Modern acting view, xv–xvii, 31–2, 42, 44–50, 53–5, 78, 100–1, 104–5, 125, 143–4, 146–9, 163–4, 198, 213, 221, 226–9, 233–6 Strasberg’s view, xv–xvii, 24–6, 28–9, 32, 53–5, 59, 65, 71, 122, 238, 246, 249 Emotional labor, 183 Emotional memory, 20, 25, 27–8, 30–1, 38, 45–6, 54, 56–7, 58, 81, 124–5 Empire Theatre, 95–6 Empire Dramatic School, 95 Enfield, Cy, 211 Enright, Florence, 176, 185 20th Century Fox, 176, 224 Universal, 176, 244

INDEX

Ensemble performance, xviii, 20, 34, 72, 91, 94, 148, 163, 164, 201, 213, 221 Awake and Sing!, ix, 64, 65, 73 Design for Living, 62, 63, 65, 73 Minnie Maddern Fiske, 89, 90 Moscow Art Theatre, 61, 97, 107, 160, 177–8 Erickson, Leif, 76, 129, 130 Erie Playhouse, 113 Evelyn Prentice, 141 Evils of Tobacco, The, 206 Ewell, Tom, 114

F Fabray, Nanette, 70 Fairbanks, Douglas, 12 Fall Guy, The, 199 Falstaff, 99 Farmer, Frances, x, 80, 127, 128, 129, 130 Farmer, Mary Virginia, 123, 124, 190, 191, 210 Farmer Takes a Wife, The, 115 Father Knows Best, 155 Federal Theatre Project, 94, 145, 190, 202 Feminist scholarship, xvi, xxviii, 6, 7, 254 Feningston, Sylvia, 123, 124 Fields, Betty, 141 52nd Street, 120 Film, xiii–xxv, 3–12, 42, 67, 113, 115–6, 120, 138, 141, 148, 158–9, 165, 181, 219–43, 251, 256. See also Hollywood Fiske, Harrison Grey, 89 Fiske, Minnie Maddern, ix, xxii, 36, 66, 89, 90, 93–4, 100, 115, 160, 221, 237 Modern acting views, 89–91, 105

287

Fiske, Richard, 121, 191 Flag Is Born, A, 78 Flanagan, Hallie, 94 Fleming, Victor, 11, 115 Flesh and the Devil, 112 Flynn, Errol, 68, 166 Fonda, Henry, xxii, 115 Fontanne, Lynn, ix, xxviii, 62–3, 63, 69, 73, 75, 76, 80, 83, 94 Foolish Notion, 69 Ford, Friendly, 122 Ford, John, 68, 140, 173, 222 Ford Theatre Hour, 245 Forrest, Edwin, 36, 66 Four Feathers, The, 68 Fowler, Frank, 155 Foxhole in the Parlor, 75 Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, 102 French, Samuel, 121 Freund, Karl, 212 Fried, Walter, 129, 130 Frohman, Charles, xix, 88, 93, 95–6, 222 From Here to Eternity, 74, 76 Fuller, Frances, 147 Fuller, Lance, 258

G Gable, Clark, xiv, 68, 99, 116, 130 Garbo, Greta, 12, 112, 115 Garden of Allah, The, 99 Gardner, Ava, 173 Garfield, John (Jules), 64, 64, 103, 118, 120, 125, 127, 199–201 Garland, Judy, 173 Garrick Players, 102 Garson, Greer, 68–9, 221 Garwood, Alice, 146, 162 Gassner, John, 199 Gaye, Lisa, 258 Gaynor, Janet, 111

288

INDEX

Gazzara, Ben, 76 Gender, xxvi, 6, 35, 181–4, 253 Gentleman’s Agreement, 76 Gentle People, The, 9, 129, 130, 264 Gentlewoman, 121, 263 Gershwin, Ira, 211 Gest, Morris, 66 Ghosts, 23 Gibbs, Isabell, 211 Gilbert, Jody, 191, 192, 195, 211 Gilbert, John, 12 Gilder, Rosamond, xvii Gillette, William, 145 Gish, Lillian, 12 Given circumstances, 25, 58, 176 Modern acting view, 22, 31, 49, 50, 52, 53, 101, 175, 178–80, 197, 229, 232 Strasberg’s view, 25, 27 Glaspell, Susan, 20, 92, 94 Goddard, Paulette, 173 Gogol, Nikolai, 214 Goldbergs, The, 145 Gold Eagle Guy, 125, 127, 263 Golden Boy (film), 116, 158, 166 Golden Boy (play), x, 9, 116, 121, 127–8, 128, 129, 158, 199, 264 Goldwyn, Samuel, 12, 14, 15, 68, 155, 176, 222, 258 Goodbye, Mr. Chips, 68 Goodman, Edward, 144–5 Goodman Memorial Theatre, 113, 122–3, 151, 158 Gordin, Jacob, 66 Gordon, Michael, 129, 130, 192, 193, 213 Gordon, Robert H., 98 Gordon, Ruth, 69, 70, 138 Gorelik, Mordecai, xiv, 199, 263, 264 Goslar, Lotte, 49 Gough, Lloyd, 204, 207 Gould, Eleanor Cody, 143, 144, 147

Graham, Martha, 242 Granite, 98 Grant, Cary, x, 67–9, 118, 141, 222–3, 224 Granville-Baker, Harley, xxiv, 143 Grasso, Giovanni, 65 Great Lie, The, 116 Green Acres, 103 Green Grow the Lilacs, 98 Grimes, Luke, 138 Grotowski, Jerzy, xiii Group Theatre, x, ix, xvi–xvii, xxi–xxiii, 7–9, 33, 52, 62–4, 73, 76, 78–80, 93, 98, 99, 103, 111, 115–16, 118–31, 130, 145, 158, 177–8, 247, 251, 252, 254, 263–4 and Actors’ Laboratory in Hollywood, xiv, xxiv, 41, 48, 190–1, 192, 195, 199–202, 258 Guardsman, The, 62

H Hagan, James, 245 Hagen, Uta, 93 Hale, Barbara, 176–7 Halsey, Brett, 258 Hamlet, 69, 93, 237, 244 Hammerstein, Oscar, 98, 156 Hammett, Dashiell, 211 Hampton, Ruth, 258 Hansen, Myrna, 258 Hard Way, The, ix, 201 Harman, Estelle, 246 Hart, Moss, 178 Hathaway, Anne, 138 Hathaway, Joan, 192 Hawks, Howard, x, 11, 74, 75, 112, 114, 129, 141, 222–4, 224 Haydon, Larrae Albert, xxvi, 146

INDEX

Hayes, Helen, xxviii, 70, 94, 117, 237 Haysbert, Dennis, 138 Hazel, 156 Heckart, Eileen, 76 Hedda Gabler, 23, 92 Hedgerow Theatre, 113, 123 Heflin, Van, 173 Helburn, Theresa, 94 Hellman, Lillian, 211 Hello, Dolly!, 98 Henaghan, James, 202, 203, 205 Henry V, 69 Hepburn, Katharine, x, 98, 117–18, 222–3, 223, 239 Herne, James A., 36 Heron, Matilda, 36 High Noon, 11 Hingle, Pat, 76 His Girl Friday, 114, 141 Hitchcock, Alfred, 67, 141, 181, 222 Hobart, Rose, x, ix, 49, 92, 93, 193, 195, 196, 202, 204–6, 210, 252 Holden, William, x, 116, 158, 166, 173 Holiday, 239 Hollywood, xiii, xiv, xvii, xviii, xxii– xxiii, xxv, 5, 7–12, 15, 67–9, 80–1, 99, 102–3, 105, 190, 199–200, 204, 208, 243–4, 251–2 Broadway-Hollywood connection, 111–13, 115–18, 119–20, 123, 129–31, 138–42, 189, 196, 198, 201, 220–2, 225, 250 and Pasadena Playhouse, 155–8, 160, 165–8 and studio drama coaches, 171–84 Hollywood Theatre Alliance, 190, 191, 202, 208, 210, 211 Holm, Celeste, 76 Home of the Brave, 202

289

Hope, Bob, 173 Hopkins, Arthur, 138 Hopkins, Miriam, 62, 117 Hopper, Hedda, 105, 205–6 Hound of the Baskervilles, 67 House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), 191–3, 202–4, 208, 251, 252, 260 House of Connelly, The, 121, 263 Howard, Leslie, 67, 68 Hudson, Rock, 258 Hughes, Arthur, 144, 145 Hughes, Glenn, xxvi, 21 Hughes, Kathleen, 258 Hughes, Langston, 211 Hunt, Gordon, 258 Hunt, Marsha, 173 Huston, John, 116, 212 Hutchinson, Josephine, 93, 185

I Ibsen, Henrik, xiv, xv, xxv, 22–3, 55, 89, 91, 92, 221 Idiot’s Delight, 62, 121, 264 Il miracolo, 244 Imagination, 12, 21, 31–2, 42, 45–7, 49–50, 52, 53, 58, 90–1, 95, 96, 100–1, 103–5, 125, 145, 147, 148, 178, 184, 196, 232, 235 Imitation, 42, 99, 144, 249 Improvisation, xxii, 25, 43–5, 49, 50, 63, 75, 103, 144, 146, 180, 210, 223, 230, 233, 258 Informer, The, 68 Inheritors, 92 Inspector General, The, 201–2, 214 I Remember Mama, 77 Ironside, 156 Irving, Henry, 145, 146 It Happened One Night, 116 Ives, Burl, 76

290

INDEX

J Jackson, Brad, 258 Jacobowsky and the Colonel, 70 Jaffe, Sam, 130 Janney, Russell, 98 Janssen, David, 258 Jazz Singer, The, 112 J.B., 76 Jefferson, Joseph, 36, 146 Jehlinger, Charles, x, xiv, xviii, 80, 137, 142–50, 149, 152, 219, 243 Johnny Johnson, 119, 127, 264 Johnson, Russell, 210, 258 Johnson, Van, 173 Jones, Jennifer, 141, 200 Jones, Marjo, 187 Jones, Robert Edmond, xiv, 20, 98 Jonson, Ben, 201 Judas, 99 Julius Caesar, 78

K Kahn, Otto H., 66 Kanin, Garson, 69 Karnes, Robert, 210 Kates, Bernard, 148–9 Kaufman, George S., 178 Kaye, Danny, 189 Kazan, Elia, 6, 8, 61, 64–5, 69–79, 82, 119, 120, 124, 126, 127, 129–31, 191, 250–3, 258 Keene, Laura, 88 Keeper of the Flame, 239 Kellogg, John, 195 Kelly, Grace, 137, 141 Kelly, Jack, 245, 245 Kerr, Deborah, 76 Kerr, John, 76 Kid Galahad, 139 Kilgen, George, 211 Killian, Victor, 211

Kimmel, Jess, 246 King, Claude, 21–2 King, Henry, 12, 200 King Kong, 42, 56 Kingsley, Sidney, 115, 129, 263 Kirkland, Alexander, 99, 118 Kirkwood, Jim, 152 Kosslyn, Jack, 246 Kraber, Gerritt, 122 Kraft, H. S., 193 Kramer, Anne P., 166–7 Kramer, Stanley, 166 Kumin, Irving, 165

L Ladd, Alan, 179 Lake, The, 117 Lamour, Dorothy, 173 Land, Lucy, 211 Langer, Lawrence, 148 Lange, Sven, 138 Lansing, Joi, 258 Las Palmas Theatre, 201 Last Command, The, 116 Last Mile, The, 140 Last of Mrs. Cheyney, The, 99 Laughton, Charles, 67, 68, 99, 116–17, 130 Laura, 155 Laurents, Arthur, 202 Laurie, Piper, 258 Lawrence, Marc, 200 Lawson, John Howard, 8, 263 Lazarus Laughed, 159 League of Workers Theatres, 126 Lecoq, Jacques, 249 Lee, Will, 49, 54, 190, 191, 193, 195, 202, 204–6, 210, 211, 252 Le Gallienne, Eva, ix, xxii, 62, 89, 91–4, 123, 200, 221 Lehman, Lotte, xxviii

INDEX

Leigh, Janet, 173, 181, 232 Lenihan, Winifred, 200 LeRoy, Mervyn, 68, 69, 80, 102, 140 Leslie, Joan, 181 Leslie, William, 258–9 Letter, The, 67, 179 Levene, Sam, 140, 192, 193 Leverette, Lewis, 123 Levitt, Alfred Lewis, 211 Lewes, George Henry, 145 Lewis, Milton, 165 Lewisohn, Alice and Irene, 94 Lewis, Robert (Bobby), 8, 70, 75, 76, 82, 123, 124, 127–9, 130, 191, 251, 264 Leyda, Jay, 213 Life of Emile Zola, The, 120 Life study and observation, xvii, xxii, 52, 63, 228, 237 Liliom, 92 Little Caesar, 80, 138 Little Theatre movement, xiv, xxv, xxvii, 20, 34, 113, 162 Little Women, 117, 239 Littlewood, Joan, 249 Living Theatre, 259 Loeb, Philip, 144, 145 Lombard, Carol, 112 London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, 137 Long, Richard, 258–9 Lord, Pauline, 65 Loretta Young Show, The, 13 Lost Horizon, 13, 130 Lost Weekend, 69 Loughton (Seaton), Phyllis, x, 114, 140, 172–3, 174, 174, 181, 182, 184, 237 Louise, Anita, 103 Love Affair, 102–4 Love Life, 70, 82 Lovers and Friends, 70

291

Loy, Myrna, 116, 139 Lubitsch, Ernst, 62, 112, 222 Lunt, Alfred, ix, xxviii, 62–3, 63, 69, 72, 73, 94, 120–1, 139, 264 as leading actor of his era, 83 mentor of Montgomery Clift, 75, 76, 79–80 Lyceum Theatre and School, 95, 137 Lynn, Eleanor, 129, 130 Lytess, Natasha, 185, 212

M MacGowan, Kenneth, 20 MacKaye, Steele, 95, 105, 137 Mackay, F. F., 96 Macloon, Louis Owen, 230 MacMurray, Fred, 173 Macready, William Charles, 65–6 Madame Curie, 69, 221 Madison, Mae, 152 Madison Square Theatre School, 95 Male Animal, 156 Maltese Falcon, The, 116, 179 Malvaloca, 230 Mamoulian, Rouben, 116, 117 Mankiewicz, Joseph L., x, 49, 78, 103, 166 Mann, Anthony, 192 Mann, Daniel, 49, 190, 192, 193, 204, 210 Mansfield, Richard, 36 Mantzius, Karl, 93 March, Fredric, 62, 69, 99, 189 Marcus Welby, M.D., 155 Marion, Frances, 13 Marshall, Brenda, 166 Marshall, Herbert, 67, 117, 179 Marta Oatman School, 151 Martine, 98

292

INDEX

Martin, Mary, 70 Marx brothers, 10 Masquerader, The, 14 Massey, Raymond, 13, 76 Master Builder, The, 92 Matchmaker, The, 98 Maté, Rudolph, 9, 212 Matthew, Brander, 145 Mature, Victor, 157 Maverick, 245 Max, Ed, 211 Mayer, Louis B., 12, 182 Maynard, Gertrude, 122 Mayo, Virginia, 176 McClintic, Guthrie, 62, 70 McCrae, Joel, 130 McGregor, Marjorie, 211 McLaglen, Victor, 68 McLean, Margaret Prendergast, 49, 199 Meet the People, 190, 208, 210 Meiningen Players, xxiv Meisner, Sanford, 6, 64, 78, 122, 124–6, 127, 129, 130, 263 Men in White, 99, 115–16, 121, 123–4, 129, 199, 263 Mental pictures and conversations, 23, 33, 42, 43, 53, 58, 229, 234–6, 246 Mercury Players, 131 Mercury Stage, 246 Meredith, Burgess, xxviii Merry, Anne Brunton, 88 Method acting, xiii–xiv, xvi, xxiv, xxv, 64, 65, 78, 79, 81, 111, 122, 208–9, 238, 248, 249, 254, 256 as an acting style, xxii, 61, 65, 70–4, 76, 78, 80, 250–2, 253 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), 12, 112, 129, 155, 167, 173, 174, 178, 182, 194, 220, 232, 257 Middle of the Night, 138

Middleton, Ray, 70 Milland, Ray, 69, 173 Miller, Arthur, xv, 71 Minney, R. J., 13 Miracle on 34th Street, 140 Miracle, The, 98 Misérables, Les, 99 Modern acting, xiv–xvi, xxi, xxii, xxv–xxvi, 7, 13, 15, 19–25, 27, 33–5, 41–55, 58, 61, 74, 77, 80–1, 87, 91, 94–7, 105, 219, 221, 223, 229, 231–8, 243, 248–9, 254–5 and Actors’ Laboratory, 193, 196, 201 and American Academy of Dramatic Arts, 143–4, 150 and Boleslavsky, 99–101 and Group Theatre, 122, 125 modern acting principles, xvii–xx, xxiii–xviv, 3, 8, 10, 48, 50–1, 55, 65, 94, 143, 150, 158, 162, 164–5, 168, 171, 175, 182, 224, 228, 230, 232, 245–7, 250, 256, 257 and Ouspenskaya, 104–5 and Pasadena Playhouse, 158, 161, 162, 164–5, 167, 168 and Stanislavsky Modern acting, xiv, xxi, xxiv, 22, 33, 34, 53, 143, 221, 232, 234, 236, 246–8 and studio drama coaches, 173, 176, 178, 181, 183, 184 Modern actors, xiv–xv, 15, 21, 22, 41, 49, 50, 54, 55, 58, 91, 168, 230, 233 Modern characters, xviii, 10, 20–5, 92, 254 Modern drama, xiv–xv, xvii, xx–xxi, xxiv–xxv, 19–20, 22–4, 33, 41, 45, 48, 55, 65, 67, 89, 138, 146, 168, 221, 250 Modernist film and theatre, xiv

INDEX

Modern theatre, xxii, 22, 34, 41, 87, 90, 93, 94, 107, 159–61, 165, 180 Molly and Me, 145 Molnár, Ferenc, 92–3 Moloch, 230 Monogram Pictures, 245 Monroe, Marilyn, xxii, 15, 79, 114, 184, 185, 194, 206, 212, 250 Montana Masquers, xxvi Montgomery, Douglass, 167, 170 Montgomery, Robert, 99 Moorehead, Agnes, 140 Moran, Dolores, ix, 47, 193 Morgan, Frank, 138 Morning Glory, 117 Morris, Mary, 123 Mortimer, Lee, 205 Morton, Eustis, xviii, 146 Moscow Art Theatre, xvi, xxii, 6, 8, 48, 56, 61, 66, 73, 97, 99, 103, 107, 122, 129, 137, 142, 143, 160, 177–8, 244, 258 Moss, Carrie-Anne, 138 Motion-and performance-capture acting, xxi, xiv, 3, 256 Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, 176, 203 Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, 223 Mrs. Miniver, 69 Muhl, Ed, 165, 180 Mullen, Virginia, 211 Muni, Paul, 78, 118, 120, 167, 212 Murder Man, The, 115 Murphy, Audie, 194, 259 Murphy, Maurice, 211 Musgrove, Gertrude, 70 Music Box Theatre, 210 Music Man, The, 156 Mutiny on the Bounty, 68, 130 Myers, Henry, 208, 211 My Fair Lady, 68

293

N Nadler, George, 258–9 Naked City, 9 National Dramatic Conservatory, 96 Nazimova, Alla, xxviii Neely Dixon Dramatic School, 151 Neighborhood Playhouse, 48, 94, 129, 190 Nelson, Lori, 258–9 Nelson, Ruth, 98, 120, 122, 124, 125, 129, 130, 192 Nettleship, John T., 44 Newman, Paul, 76, 242 New School for Social Research, 52, 77, 129 New stagecraft, xiv–xv, xvii, xxiv, xx–xxi, 12–13, 19–23, 33–4, 41, 48, 55, 65, 89, 160, 164–5, 168, 222–4, 226, 250 Nicholson, Jack, 242 Night at the Opera, A, 10 Night in Casablanca, A, 10 Night over Taos, 121, 263 1931–, 121, 263 Ninotchka, 112 Nolan, Lloyd, 156 None but the Lonely Heart, 69 Norring, Ava, 245 No Time for Comedy, 121, 265 Nugent, Elliott, 156

O O’Brian, Hugh, 258–9 O’Brien, Pat, 113, 140 O’Casey, Sean, 206 Odets, Clifford, x, ix, 7, 8, 62–4, 69, 116, 118–19, 120, 122–9, 195, 201, 263–4 Of Human Bondage, 67 Of Mice and Men, x, 120, 207 Oklahoma!, 98

294

INDEX

Olivier, Laurence, 67–9 O Mistress Mine, 69 O’Neill, Eugene, xxv, 20, 23, 67, 115, 121, 159, 221 O’Neill, James, 21 One Sunday Afternoon, 245 One Sunday Night, 156 One Touch of Venus, 70 Only Angels Have Wings, x, 222, 224 Only Yesterday, 115 On the Waterfront, 78–80 Our Town, 98 Ouspenskaya, Maria, ix, xiv, xxii, 6, 26, 28, 97, 101–5, 102, 111, 199, 243

P Page, Geraldine, 76 Paid in Full, 230 Paige, Florence, 211 Palmer, Gregg, 258–9 Pantomime, xvii, xxii, 19, 27, 45, 63, 146, 194, 223, 230 Papp, Joseph, 190 Paradise Lost, 118, 126, 129, 195, 264 Paramount, 33, 112, 155, 156, 158, 165, 167, 171–3, 174, 176, 184, 194, 230, 257 Paramount Case, 257 Parker, Eleanor, 156, 158, 193 Parks, Larry, 192, 193, 200 Parsons, Louella, 105, 130 Pasadena Playhouse, x, xiv, xvii–xviii, xxv, xxiii, 21, 80, 105, 131, 146, 155–68, 172, 173, 178, 192, 193, 219, 236, 237, 243–4, 249, 250, 252 Pat and Mike, 239 Paths of Glory, 155 Patten, Dorothy, 123

Peck, Gregory, 114, 115 Penn, Leo, 199, 225 Penny Arcade, 118 Penny Serenade, 68 People’s Educational Center, 203 Performing arts industry, xiii, xv, xviii, xix–xxii, xxiv, xxx–xxxi, 3, 4, 7, 9, 33, 65–6, 71, 73, 77, 87, 105, 111, 118, 131, 168, 181, 189, 243, 251 Perry Mason, 156, 176 Personal experiences Modern acting view, xvii, xxii, 31, 33, 46–7, 50, 52, 58, 100–1, 124, 213, 233, 235, 237, 238, 248, 254 Strasberg’s view, xv–xvi, 26, 30, 34, 53, 54, 100, 238, 248 Personal inhibitions, 29, 91, 184 Personal substitutions, xvii, 50, 81, 145, 212, 221, 225, 234, 237, 238, 246, 255, 256 Peter Pan, 70, 92 Philadelphia Story, 239 Phipps, William, 194 Phoenix Theatre, 259 Pichel, Irving, 179, 192 Pidgeon, Walter, 69 Pillars of Society, 23 Pins and Needles, 98 Pirandello, Luigi, 146 Piscator, Erwin, 129, 264 Pittsburgh Playhouse, 113 Playboy of the Modern World, 170 Plummer, Christopher, 76 Pollock, Jackson, 253 Polonsky, Abraham, 193 Popular culture, xxii, xxiv, 61, 80, 248, 249, 256 Popular Front theatre companies, 190 Portrait of a Madonna, 202, 235 Pound on Demand, A, 206, 210

INDEX

Poverty Row studios, 173, 185, 199 Powell, William, 99, 116, 138–40, 141, 150 Powers, Carol and Leland, 96 Prague School, 5, 16 Preston, Robert, 80, 156, 157 Preval, Lucian, 211 Prickett, Charles, 243 Prickett (Blake), Oliver, 160 Prisoner of Zenda, The, 13 Private Life of Henry VIII, The, 67, 68 Private Lives, 70 Problem Modern acting view, xxi, 22, 31, 32, 41, 49–51, 53, 77, 101, 143, 147, 180, 181, 192, 197, 229, 235, 236, 256, 257 Strasberg’s view, xvi, 6, 24, 27–9, 30, 34, 35, 45, 54, 59, 71, 221, 250 Provincetown Players, xxvii, 20, 34, 94, 116, 123 Psycho, 181, 232 Purdom, Edmund, x, 175 Pygmalion, 68

Q Queen Kelly, 99 Quinn, Anthony, 193, 205, 210

R Racket, The, 138 Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO), x, 10, 33, 112, 131, 167, 171, 176, 177, 194, 230, 257 Raft, George, 130 Random Harvest, 68 Rankin, John, 204 Raphaelson, Samson, 212

295

Rasputin and the Empress, 99 Rathbone, Basil, 67, 99 Ratner, Herbert, 122, 124 Rebecca, 67, 68 Rebel without a Cause, 61 Redford, Robert, 137 Red River, 74–6 Reeves, George, 157 Reinhardt, Max, 19, 98, 151, 212, 222 Reis, Irving, 192 Relaxation, xvi–xvii, 17, 45, 51, 58, 144, 146, 180 Rendezvous, 141 Republic Pictures, 173, 194 Resident theatres, xxii–xxiii, 111, 113, 115, 158, 259 Reynolds, Debbie, 173 Rhapsody in Blue, 181 Rice, Elmer, 8, 23 Rice Summer Theatre, 156 Ride the High Country, 155 Rififi, 191 Riggs, Lynn, 98 Ritter, Thelma, 140 Road to Morocco, The, 173 Robards, Jr., Jason, 141 Roberts, Bart, 259 Robinson, Edward G., x, 80, 83, 137–9, 139, 140, 150, 199–200, 212 Robinson, Philip, 122 Rocket to the Moon, 129, 264 Rogers, Ginger, 10 Rogers, Lela E., x, 176–7, 177 Romance, 112, 115 Romeo and Juliet, 67, 265 Rosenstein, Sophie, ix, x, xiv–xv, xvi–xviii, xxi, xxvi, 8, 12, 21, 33, 47, 103, 129, 146, 156, 181–2, 184, 243 Actors’ Laboratory, 192, 193, 252

296

INDEX

Modern acting teacher, xxv, 10, 22–3, 41, 44–7, 53, 87, 219, 237, 247, 248, 257 Warner Bros. and Universal, 177–81, 194, 244–6 Rossellini, Roberto, 244 Rossen, Robert, 211 Rostova, Mira, 6, 75–6 Rowlands, Gena, 137–8, 242 Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, 137, 150 Rudd, Paul, 137–8 Rush, Barbara, 158, 258–9 Russell, Rosalind, 140, 141, 150, 237–8 Russett Mantle, 98

S Sage, Frances, 211 Saint, Eva Marie, 79 St. James Theatre and School, 95, 105 Saint Joan, 200, 265 Salt, Waldo, 191, 193 Salvation Nell, ix, 89–90, 90, 115, 237 Samson and Delilah, 74, 101, 138, 157 Sarah Lawrence College, 129 Sargent, Franklin Haven, 80, 95, 137 Saroyan, William, 80, 264 Savoy Theatre, 158–9 Sayonara, 78 Schenck, Joseph, 15 Schildkraut, Joseph, 92–3, 138 Schneider, Batami, 49 Schneider, Benno, 49 School of Dramatic Art, 103, 105 School of Elocution and Expression, 97 School of Expression, 97 School of the Spoken Word, 96 Schreiber, Elsa, 185

Scott, Lizabeth, 75, 184, 219 Scott, Randolph, 155, 158, 167 Screen Actors Guild, 21, 158 Screen tests, 43, 117, 120, 155, 172–3, 178, 182, 184, 187, 192 Script analysis, 31–2, 34, 52, 54–5, 63, 71, 75, 77, 93, 100–1, 104–5, 112, 255 Actors’ Laboratory, 51, 196–7, 210, 213 American Academy of Dramatic Arts, 138–9, 143–4, 146 Modern acting view of, xviii, xxii, 22–3, 53, 58, 223, 237, 257 Pasadena Playhouse, 162, 164 studio drama coaches, xvii, 42, 46, 173–4, 180–1, 221, 224, 226, 229–30, 234, 246 Seagull, The, 62–3, 92, 264 Sea Hawk, The, 166 Sea Hunt, 191 Search, The, 74–6 Seaton, George, 140 Seattle Repertory Playhouse, 113 Selznick, David O., 200, 202 Sennett, Mack, 112 Sense memory, xxii, 26–8, 30, 42–3, 45, 46, 49–51, 58, 63, 104, 194, 210, 223, 229–30, 237, 246 Sergeant York, 11 Sesame Street, 206 7th Heaven, 111 Seven Year Itch, The, 114, 132 Shadow of a Doubt, 114, 220 Shakespeare, William, 44, 65, 70, 72, 89, 91, 159, 178, 199 Shall We Dance, 10 Shane, Sara, 258–9 Shanewise, Lenore, 165, 236 Shaw, George Bernard, xv, 89, 146, 200 Shaw, Irwin, 129, 130, 206, 264 Shaw, Mary, 94

INDEX

Shdanoff, George, 48, 49, 56, 246 Shearer, Norma, 67 She Done Him Wrong, 67 Sheldon, Edward, ix, 89, 90, 115 Sherman, Vincent, ix, 47, 192, 201, 211 Sherwood, Robert E., 62, 94 Shirley, Anne, 167 Shubert Corporation, xix, 88 Shy and the Lonely, The, 206 Sidney, Sylvia, 9, 130 Sign of the Cross, The, 67 Silver Girl, The, x, 230, 231 Simon, S. Sylvan, 192 Sinatra, Frank, 75–6 Sinclair, Catherine, 88 Sinner’s Holiday, 118 Six-Fifty, The, 230 Skin of Our Teeth, The, 69, 70, 75, 78 Skouras, Spryos, 165–6 Slote (Levitt), Helen, 191, 192, 211 Smith, Art, 49, 57, 64, 122–3, 127, 129, 130, 190, 192, 193, 211 Smith College, 93, 94 Solid South, 114 Song of Bernadette, The, 200 Sorrell, Helena, 176 Sothern, Ann, 173 Sothern, E. H., 36 Soto-Michigan Jewish Center, 205, 206 Sound of Music, The, 56 Soviet censorship, 6, 244, 258 Sparrow, Wilbur, xxvi, 146 Stagers, The, 145 Stanhope (Wheatcroft), Adeline, 96 Stanhope-Wheatcroft School, 87, 96 Stanislavsky, Konstantin, xv–xviii, xxi, xxiv–xxv, 5–6, 25, 27, 31–4, 48, 58, 61, 71, 73, 78, 122, 124–5, 129, 142–3, 145–6, 160, 199, 244, 256, 258

297

and Modern acting, xiv, xxi, xxiv, 22, 33–4, 53, 143, 221, 232, 234, 236, 246–8 Stanwyck, Barbara, 116, 132, 166 Star Is Born, A, 8, 111–12 Stark, Juanita, 193 Stella Dallas, 167 Stephenson, James, 179 Sternberg, Josef von, 67, 116, 222 Stevenson, Janet, 204 Stevenson, Philip, 204 Stewart, James, 115, 223 Stock companies, xix, 12, 113–4, 115, 116, 131, 140, 141, 157, 168, 230 summer stock, xxii–xxiii, 111, 113–14, 115, 129 Stoddard, Eunice, 122 Storm, Gale, 245 Storm, Joan, 211 Stradner, Rose, 49 Strange Love of Martha Ivers, The, 141 Strasberg, Lee, xiii–xv, xxi–xxii, 7, 19–20, 23–36, 38, 41, 44–6, 51, 53–5, 61, 65, 99–101, 150, 184, 212, 237–8, 244, 246–50, 252–6, 258 attack on British/Anglo-American actors, 71–4, 80–1, 83, 221 critiqued by Brando and Clift, 74–8, 81 Group Theatre, xvi–xvii, 7, 64, 122–7, 200, 263–4 work with women, 6, 35, 57, 59, 79, 212 Strasberg (Miller), Paula, 79, 123 Straw Hat, The, 98 Street Angel, 111 Streetcar Named Desire, A, 71, 73, 76–7, 78, 234 Strindberg, August, xv

298

INDEX

Stuart, Gloria, 158, 192 Studio drama schools, xxiii, 10, 131, 160, 171–84, 243, 250, 252 Columbia, 93, 185 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), 173, 174, 178, 220 Paramount, 33, 171–3, 174, 176, 230 Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO), 33, 171–2, 176–7, 230 Republic Pictures, 173, 176 20th Century Fox, 172, 176, 194, 202, 224 Universal, 176, 180, 194, 202, 219, 244–6 Warner Bros, 177–9, 182, 192, 193, 219, 245 Sturgess, Olive, 258 Sullavan, Margaret, 115 Sullivan, Barry, 179 Sullivan, Elliott, 195 Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, 111 Sunset Boulevard, 3, 158 Suzuki, Tadashi, xiii Swanson, Gloria, 118 Swan, The, 93 Sweet Bird of Youth, 76 Sylvia Scarlet, 239

T Talent scouts, 118, 141, 155, 158, 165, 167, 171, 173, 182, 183 Talker, The, 230 Talking pictures, 112, 227 Talma, François Joseph, 145 Taming of the Shrew, The, 102, 164 Tamiroff, Akim, 200 Tandy, Jessica, 141, 202, 234–5 Tarcai, Mary, 48, 56–7, 190, 192–4, 210 Tea and Sympathy, 76

Tedrow, Irene, 192 Television, ix, xiii, xviii, xxi, 3–7, 89, 148, 159, 165, 180, 192, 199, 244, 250–2, 254–6 actors with television careers, 9, 12–13, 64, 113–15, 118, 132, 138, 140–1, 145, 148, 155–6, 158, 176, 199, 211, 245–6, 258 Tendresse, La, 12 Tenney Committee, 192, 193, 202–6, 208, 211, 214, 251, 252 Terry, Beatrice, ix, 92 Terry, Ellen, 35 Thacher (Kazan), Molly, 124, 191 20th Century Fox, 112, 165–6, 167, 172, 176, 194, 202, 212, 224, 257 20th Century Pictures, 15 Theatre, xiii–xv, xviii–xxv, 3–4, 6–7, 9, 19–20, 24, 65–7, 69, 73, 88–9, 112–13, 131, 148, 190, 243, 250–1, 256 artist of the theatre, 34, 99, 122, 123, 191 idealistic visions of theatre, 22, 93, 95, 189, 207 modern theatre, 22–3, 34, 41, 65, 90, 93–4, 105, 107, 159–61, 165, 180 theatre-in-the-round, xxvi, 21, 80, 159, 181 women’s contributions, xvii, 35, 88, 89, 93–4 see also Broadway Theatre Collective, 124 Theatre companies. See resident theatres; stock companies; touring companies Theatre Guild, xxvii, 62, 69, 72, 92, 94, 98, 113, 117, 121, 122, 138, 139, 144–5, 148, 176, 190, 192, 200

INDEX

299

Theatre of Action, 190 Theatre Union, 124 Theatrical Syndicate, xix, 66, 88, 89 Theodore Goes Wild, 107 There Shall Be No Night, 75, 94 They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, 156 Thin Man, The, 116, 139 Three Men on a Horse, 140 Three Musketeers, The, 98–9 Three Sisters, The, ix, 70, 92 Thurber, James, 156 Till the Day I Die, 118, 126, 263 Titanic, 158 Tone, Franchot, 103, 118, 121, 122, 130 Tonight or Never, 118 Top Hat, 10 Touring companies, xix, xxii, xxvii, 66, 88–9, 94, 107, 113, 115, 127, 131, 139–40, 155, 157, 168, 178, 230, 246 Tracy, Spencer, 81, 115, 137, 140, 150 Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A, 76, 131 Trescony, Al, 174 Trevor, Claire, 140 Truckline Café, 77–8 Trumbo, Dalton, 208 Trumpet Shall Sound, The, 98 Turner, Lana, 173 Tuttle, Frank, 192 Tuttle, Lurene, 170 Twelfth Night, 92 Twentieth Century, 112 Tyne, George, 193

University of California, Los Angeles, 246 University of Montana, Missoula, xxvi University of Oklahoma, xxvi University of Washington, xiv, xxvi, 21, 129, 151, 177 University of Wisconsin, 140 University Players, 114, 115 Up the River, 140

U Union Square School of Expression, 95 United Artists, 112, 257 United States Supreme Court, 244, 257 Universal, 56, 112, 158, 165, 176, 180, 194, 202, 219, 244–6, 257

W Wagner, Richard, xxiv Waiting for Lefty, 118, 125–6, 263 Waldman, Herman, 191, 211 Waldorf Statement, 192 Walker, Alixe, 123

V Vagabond King, The, 98 Vakhtangov, Yevgeny, 71 Van Doren, Mamie, 258 Vassar Experimental Theatre, 94 Vaudeville, 10, 112, 116, 139–40, 176 Vernon, John, 193 Veterans, 48, 56, 57, 193–5, 203–3, 205, 208 Virginian, The, 11 Viva Zapata!, 78 Vogues of 1938, 120 Voice and body work, xxii, 45, 90, 100, 103–5, 114, 116, 125, 161, 164, 172, 174, 177, 180–1, 232–3, 237–8, 246, 256 Actors’ Laboratory, 192, 196–7, 199, 213 American Academy of Dramatic Arts, 144–6, 148 Josephine Dillon, 222, 226–9 Volpone, 201

300

INDEX

Walkup, Fairfax Proudfit, 161 Wallis, Hal, 141 Walsh, M. Emmet, 137–8 Wanger, Walter, 120, 131 Warner Bros, 12, 15, 68, 112, 118, 120, 129, 141, 177–9, 182, 219, 245, 257 and Actors’ Laboratory, 192, 193, 202, 211 and Pasadena Playhouse, 155, 156, 165, 166 Warner, Doris, 129 Warren, Katharine, 246, 258 Washington Square Players, xxvii, 113, 144–5, 176 Waterloo Bridge, 102 Watts, Bill, 214 Wayne, John, 56 Webster, Margaret, 93, 200 Weep for the Virgins, 118, 121, 126, 129, 263 Weill, Kurt, 127 Wellesley College, 258 Welles, Orson, 118, 141, 199–200 Wellman, William, 111–12 West, Mae, 67 Wexley, John, 193 Whale, James, 158 Where Do We Go from Here?, 156 White Sister, The, 12–13 Wild Duck, The, 23 Wilde, Oscar, 23, 89 Wilder, Billy, 3–4, 69, 79, 114 Wilder, Thornton, 8, 69, 75, 98 Wild One, The, 78

Wilenchick, Clement, 122 Williams, Mervin, 193 Williams, Tennessee, 76, 202 Winfield, Marjorie, 210 Women’s pictures, 132 Women’s work, 182, 183 Wood, Mrs. John, 88 Woodward, Joanne, 242 Worker’s Laboratory Theatre, 124 World War II, xviii, xx, xxvi, 69, 191, 211, 249–50, 257 Wray, Anne MacLennan, 161–3 Wray, Fay, 42 Wright, Teresa, 76 Wuthering Heights, 67, 68 Wyler, William, 67, 69, 102, 130, 155, 176

Y Yale Drama School, 151 Years Ago, 69 Yiddish theatre, xxi, 9, 66, 138, 191 You and Me, 130 You Can’t Take it with You, 223 Young, Gig, 156, 157 Young, Loretta, 13 Young, Robert, 155, 157 Young, Roland, 117 You Touched Me!, 75

Z Zanuck, Darryl F., 15, 212 Zemach, Benjamin, 213