The method, p.52
The Method, page 52
175 “to the startled actors that he taught the Strasberg Method” Lewis, Slings and Arrows, 71.
175 He was their god no more Smith, Real Life Drama, loc 4149.
176 “all the methods and theories of acting technique” Quoted in ibid., loc 3437.
176 “if the actor has done his work well” Roberts, “Interview with Lee Strasberg,” JWRP JR-368, 19.
176 There are no surviving notes from Adler and Stanislavski’s meeting Adler’s missing notes are, for Stanislavski enthusiasts, something akin to a relic in an Indiana Jones film. In Stanislavsky in America, the late Mel Gordon indicates that he may have seen the notes from Adler’s time with Stanislavski, but no one else seems to have.
176 “What idiot thought that one up?” Quoted in Benedetti, Stanislavski: His Life and Art, 352.
176 the widely accepted story of the “system” Whyman, The Stanislavsky System of Acting, 239.
176 the Method of Physical Action Alongside his alterations to the “system,” Stanislavski described a twenty-five-step rehearsal technique in a letter to his son Igor in 1936. On day one, they read the script. Instead of table work, Stanislavski stood his actors up on the second day of rehearsal, roughing in the staging of the play’s physical actions. “When this is done exactly, correctly,” Stanislavski wrote, “so that it is true and it inspires our belief in what is happening onstage, then we can say that the line of the life of the human body has been created. This is no small thing, but [only] half of the role.” After this, the company improvised through the character’s actions, adding more and more layers and only picking up the script at the fourteenth stage of the process and refining from there.
177 “when playing a role, especially a tragic role” Quoted in Benedetti, Stanislavski: His Life and Art, 326.
177 the “system” became the basis for all acting instruction in Russia Benedetti, Stanislavski: His Life and Art, 355.
177 after his death, was called the Method of Physical Action Chambers, Analysis Through Action: From Stanislavsky to Contemporary Performance.
177 His renewed interest in the vocal and physical means Whyman, The Stanislavsky System of Acting, 31.
177 “on stage the performer lives by a feeling” Senelick, Stanislavsky—a Life in Letters, 545.
178 “We didn’t do any kind of emotional work with her” Clurman et al., “Looking Back,” 550.
CHAPTER 13: A NEW INNER MAN
179 She gave Bobby Lewis, Elia Kazan, and a few others Barton-Kraber, “Notes from Ellenville,” SAHC 22.6, 6.
179 “In a problem” Ibid.
179 “You must repeat the small physical problems” Ibid.
179 “all physical problems will be psychological” Ibid.
180 “through the circumstances under which you received it” Ibid., 8. In one of his lectures at the ALT, Boleslavsky also compares emotional memory to memorizing phone numbers.
180 Cheryl Crawford insisted it was haunted Crawford, One Naked Individual, 68.
180 “Boys, I think we’re working on a stiff” Quoted in Clurman, The Fervent Years, 142.
180 People kept getting sick Smith, Real Life Drama, loc 4210.
180 Strasberg seemed more interested in making large visual statements Ibid., loc 4411.
180 “What were you doing?” Lee asked her Quoted in Lewis, Slings and Arrows, 82–83.
181 “You’re behind time, Harold,” Odets responded Clurman et al., “Looking Back,” 496.
181 “belong to the largest possible group of humble, struggling men” Quoted in Brenman-Gibson, Clifford Odets, 302.
181 Joe Kelleher Ibid.
181 Odets sat down, inspired by a recent taxi driver strike Ibid., 283.
182 Three days later Kazan, A Life, loc 2530.
182 You’re so wrong I ain’t laughing Odets, Waiting for Lefty, 5.
182 so many people were living in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow Burns, New York: A Documentary Film, episode 6.
182 “We need the courage of the young” Quoted in Brenman-Gibson, Clifford Odets, 284–85.
183 Hello America! Hello Odets, Waiting for Lefty, 31.
183 “Harold,” Luther Adler said Quoted in Clurman, The Fervent Years, 142.
183 But Lefty was never performed in Boston Lewis, Slings and Arrows, 79–80.
183 One night, Odets told Clurman Clurman, The Fervent Years, 142.
184 “is closer to its ideal than it realizes” Atkinson, “Gold Eagle Guy,” New York Times, 33.
184 “We rehearsed Lefty without the supervision of an overlord” Kazan, A Life, 112.
184 “let ’em fall and break their necks” Quoted in Smith, Real Life Drama, loc 4435.
184 “If the Directors had come to you” Quoted in Clurman, The Fervent Years, 144.
184 “As long as we can find something to act” Quoted in Kazan, A Life, loc 2649.
184 Stella pressed Harold Ibid.
185 Harold feigned agreement Ibid.
185 “You don’t seem to understand, Clifford” Quoted in Clurman, The Fervent Years, 144.
185 Did Jake die for us to fight about nickels? Odets, Waiting for Lefty, 100–101.
185 “The actors’ faces were aglow” Clurman, The Fervent Years, 145.
185 At around the same time, Waiting for Lefty premiered Sources disagree on the exact chronology of the meeting to cancel the season, the reading of Awake and Sing!, and the premiere of Waiting for Lefty.
185 “Audience and actors had become one” Clurman, The Fervent Years, 148.
185 “Well, what’s the answer?” Odets, Waiting for Lefty, 31.
185 “the birth cry of the thirties” Clurman, The Fervent Years, 148.
186 “I was terrified the balcony was going to fall in” Clurman et al., “Looking Back,” 530.
186 “And the actors? We couldn’t sleep that night” Kazan, A Life, 115.
186 “One left the theatre Sunday evening” Quoted in Smith, Real Life Drama, loc 4546.
186 With a budget of $27 million Flanagan, Arena, 34.
186 Among those employed by the FTP Biographical history of the FTP, Syracuse.
187 Clifford let amateur companies have it for free Smith, Real Life Drama, loc 4551.
187 “more interesting than the Group’s formal Broadway productions” Quoted in ibid., loc 4556.
187 “tied up in bow-knots” Quoted in ibid.
187 Clurman asked Tone for the money Clurman, The Fervent Years, 146.
188 “the best first-week director of our time” Kazan, A Life, 121.
188 Clurman … cared more about the meaning of the text Smith, Real Life Drama, loc 4664.
188 “A play is not constructed on lines of dialogue” Clurman, Collected Works, 47.
188 “action isn’t enough” Roberts, “Interview with Harold Clurman,” JWRP JR-368.
188 “it was very easy for Harold Clurman to direct Awake and Sing” Clurman et al., “Looking Back,” 497.
188 “partner … in the struggle of production” Kazan, A Life, loc 2707.
189 Kazan stepped in to arrange the actors’ bodies Ibid., 122.
189 the way he’d confuse “congenital” with “congenial” Nott, He Ran All the Way, loc 1116.
189 he staged his own mock suicide Ibid., loc 585.
189 How about that Beethoven, Julie would say Ibid., loc 670.
189 “These plays were made for the Group Theatre” Clurman et al., “Looking Back,” 497.
189 “All of the characters … share a fundamental activity” Odets, Waiting for Lefty, 37.
190 “Fix it so life” Ibid., 97.
190 “duty to himself, to his colleagues, and to his audience” Quoted in Clurman, The Fervent Years 154–55.
CHAPTER 14: THE LIFE OF A PROSTITUTE IS PRETTY COMFORTABLE
192 “Dear Lee have already signed with pictures” Strasberg Papers, LS-29.
192 “an inferior imitation of Chekhov” Atkinson, “Paradise Lost,” New York Times, 1. Odets was, in fact, unfamiliar with Chekhov, which suggests that the acting techniques of the Moscow Art Theatre on some level have Chekhov embedded in their DNA.
192 “the most distressing experiences” Clurman, The Fervent Years, 188.
192 the Group reorganized its leadership structure Smith, Real Life Drama, loc 6238.
192 his relationship with Strasberg lay in tatters Clurman, The Fervent Years, 191.
192 In response, the Directors resigned Ibid., 196.
192 “the Group Theatre … has arrived at a new stage of its development” Clurman, Collected Works, 23.
192 In March, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg permanently resigned Smith, Real Life Drama, loc 6892.
193 When he sent it to Elizabeth Hapgood Benedetti, Stanislavski: His Life and Art, 366.
193 Clurman reviewed An Actor Prepares Clurman, Collected Works, 25–29.
193 In translating zadacha as “objective” instead of “task/problem” Whyman, The Stanislavsky System of Acting, 66–67. Jean Benedetti is particularly hard on Hapgood’s translation in his biography of Stanislavski, and he undertook his own, far more faithful and comprehensive translation, published in two volumes as An Actor’s Work and An Actor’s Work on a Role by Routledge. Benedetti is a good writer, and his attempt to remain faithful to Stanislavski’s original text is admirable, but the books remain bewildering despite his best efforts.
194 Harold Clurman quipped Roberts, “Interview with Harold Clurman,” JWRP JR-368, 28.
194 he did concede that An Actor Prepares was not particularly useful Clurman, Collected Works, 29.
194 he resorted to asking Stalin to appoint M. P. Arkadiev Benedetti, Stanislavski: His Life and Art, 362.
195 Vsevolod Meyerhold, whom he anointed as his successor Ibid., 371.
195 “There have been many misunderstandings between us” Benedetti, ed., The Moscow Art Theatre Letters, 358.
195 “A historian, some theatrical Nestor” Ibid.
195 “Who’s looking after Nemirovich?” Quoted in Benedetti, Stanislavski: His Life and Art, 374.
195 a third of America’s movie theaters closed Sklar, Movie-Made America, 162.
196 In 1933, Paramount and RKO went bankrupt Pond, “Before the Guild.”
196 the long-dormant Screen Writers Guild relaunched Sklar, Movie-Made America, 171.
196 That suit, United States v. Paramount Pictures Ibid., 170.
196 co-written by the publisher of a Hollywood trade paper and a Jesuit priest Ibid., 173.
196 “compensating moral value” Quoted in ibid., 174.
198 Warner Bros., the studio that produced The Jazz Singer Ibid., 152.
198 Audience behavior changed Ibid.
198 “The life of a prostitute is pretty comfortable” Quoted in Clurman, The Fervent Years, 201.
199 Clurman assisted producer Walter Wanger Ibid.
199 a crash course in directing for film Kazan, A Life, loc 3509.
199 Which was it going to be? Clurman, The Fervent Years, 206.
199 In August 1937, he returned to New York Ibid., 207.
199 both Odets and Clurman felt Brenman-Gibson, Clifford Odets, 476.
199 That Luther Adler was Stella’s brother “Interview with Julie Garfield,” The Breaking Point.
199 “to be a failure” Quoted in Nott, He Ran All the Way, loc 881.
200 it had its own ranch for filming westerns Basinger, The Star Machine, 13.
200 a probationary period that resulted in a six-month contract Ibid., 45.
200 If you hit it big, they’d offer you a seven-year contract Ibid., 130.
200 you’d be drilled in diction, comportment, riding Ibid., 59.
200 The studios also had acting schools and contracts Baron, Modern Acting, 178.
201 “Get rid of as many lines as you can” Quoted in Kazan, A Life, 184.
201 it had to figure out a type for each actor Basinger, The Star Machine, 73.
202 “The first time I was in a picture I was very frightened” Garfield, “Lecture on Film Acting,” 73.
202 in “the theatre you act and in the movies you react” Ibid., 74.
202 Garfield had studied with a teacher named Benno Schneider Nott, He Ran All the Way, 64.
203 In that little gap dwelled a link between audience and star Basinger, The Star Machine, 61.
203 one of the first of a new breed Nott, He Ran All the Way, 83.
CHAPTER 15: YOUR SECRET SELF
205 “Our means and our ends” Clurman, Collected Works, 29.
205 Too many of them had lost their faith Smith, Real Life Drama, loc 9269.
205 Meanwhile, the events of the last few years Ibid., loc 9170.
206 Tennessee Williams, who received much-needed encouragement Lahr, Tennessee Williams, 16.
206 the “boy genius of Broadway” Kazan, A Life, loc 5436.
206 taking over directorial duties shortly before Schickel, Elia Kazan, 105.
206 the alcoholism of the narrator’s father Kazan, A Life, loc 245.
207 he sidesteps the Strasberg/Adler dispute Ibid., loc 3176.
207 “power [of] the actual experience … thrilled you” Ibid., loc 145.
207 “The first thing you should do with an actor is” Quoted in Schickel, Elia Kazan, 169.
207 a talented actor whose career had been derailed Kazan, A Life, loc 5780.
207 Kazan was 4-F Ibid., 5168.
207 “Her outburst of pain” Ibid., loc 5780.
208 “something so real” Quoted in Ochoa, Stella! Mother of Modern Acting, loc 2995.
208 “What I remember best” Clurman, All People Are Famous, 120.
208 after a short stint directing screen tests Adams, Lee Strasberg: The Imperfect Genius of the Actors Studio, 191.
208 the home of Berthold and Salka Viertel Salka Viertel is a fascinating figure in her own right. Her life story and her salon for exiled European intellectuals are detailed in her wonderful memoir The Kindness of Strangers and Donna Rifkind’s The Sun and Her Stars. Clurman discusses his time with her in All People Are Famous (120–23), and Otto Friedrich’s City of Nets (99) has a particularly memorable description of Heinrich “brother of Thomas” Mann’s birthday party at her house.
208 Over at the Odets house Clurman, All People Are Famous, 123.
209 he even sent Tone a copy of An Actor Prepares Ibid., 122. Clurman claims that Crawford, whom he calls “an iron rod of ambition,” read it first, and heavily annotated its pages.
209 The list of plays the trio dreamed of producing “Suggested Acting Roles [1941],” SAHC 33.4.
209 after the ceremony, Stella jokingly asked the rabbi Ochoa, Stella! Mother of Modern Acting, loc 3159.
209 Acting was never Marlon Brando Jr.’s passion Mann, The Contender, 6.
209 dreamed instead of being a jazz drummer Ibid., 43–44.
209 “There is something in him that resents acting” Clurman, All People Are Famous, 260.
209 from digging ditches Bosworth, Marlon Brando, 19.
209 alcoholic, narcissistic mother Mann, The Contender, 70.
209 abusive, controlling father Ibid., 65.
210 parents eschewed bourgeois values Ibid., 56.
210 His dyslexia led to problems at school Ibid., 30.
210 Eventually he washed out of high school Bosworth, Marlon Brando, 15.
210 Duke directed Brando in A Message from Khufu Mann, The Contender, 81.
210 “I feel he must be in college” Quoted in ibid., 82.
210 Duke was known to take advantage of his students Ibid., 87.
210 Students went on strike Bosworth, Marlon Brando, 19.
210 Marlon Sr. agreed to pay for one year Mann, The Contender, 27.
211 the alienation effect Brecht, “The Street Scene,” 125. One way to think about “epic theater” and how it differs from the “system” is that whereas Stanislavski/Nemirovich and Strasberg/Clurman were concerned with the balance between form and content, Piscator and Brecht were concerned with function. Their work was explicitly anti-cathartic, anti-realistic, and anti-individual, portraying character as flowing from social conditions. Piscator’s Weimar productions were gigantic spectacles with titles like Rasputin, the Romanoffs, the War, and the People Who Rose Up Against Them. Two years later, Brecht threw down a challenge to the entire history of European theater when he asked, “Can we speak of money in the form of iambics? … Petroleum resists the five-act form; today’s catastrophes do not progress in a straight line but in cyclical crises.” (See Brecht on Theatre, 30.)
211 “There was no light fare or screwball comedy” Belafonte, My Song, 66.
211 “Perform what you learn!” Quoted in Mann, The Contender, 28.
211 Piscator’s power was waning at the school Ibid., 39.
211 “The actor is his own material” Dramatic Workshop 1941–42 course catalog, 12.
