Modern Acting

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 his-
torical 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 per-
formance 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 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-40655-2
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 pub-
lisher 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 xiii
Part I Making Modern Acting Visible 1
1 A Twenty-First-Century Perspective 3
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
vii
viii CONTENTS
Part II Acting and American Performing Arts 85
5 Developments in Modern Theatre and Modern Acting,

1875–1930 87
6 Shifting Fortunes in the Performing Arts Business 111
Part III The Creative Labor of Modern Acting 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 OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Cover Roman Bohnen in a camera test for The Hard Way

(Sherman 1943). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc.
Fig. 1.1 George Cukor and Ronald Colman on the set of A Double
Life (1947). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 14
Fig. 3.1 Josephine Dillon coaching actor Bruce Cabot in 1933.
Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 43
Fig. 3.2 Sophie Rosenstein coaching Dolores Moran for The Old
Acquaintance (Sherman 1943). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 47
Fig. 4.1 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
Fig. 4.2 Ensemble cast in the Group Theatre production of
Odets’Awake and Sing!(1935). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 64
Fig. 5.1 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
Fig. 5.2 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
Fig. 5.3 Maria Ouspenskaya in the Hollywood production of
Dodsworth (Wyler 1936). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 102
Fig. 6.1 Stella Adler in a Paramount publicity photo from 1937.
ix
x LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Fig. 6.2 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 128
Fig. 6.3 Publicity photo of the reconstituted Group Theatre in
late 1938 or early 1939. Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 130
Fig. 7.1 Edward G. Robinson in a Theatre Guild production of
The Brothers Karamazov (1927). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 139
Fig. 7.2 Kirk Douglas in a student production at the
American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1941.
Courtesy of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts 142
Fig. 7.3 Charles Jehlinger, American Academy of Dramatic
Arts. Courtesy of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts 149
Fig. 8.1 Gilmor Brown with students at the Pasadena Playhouse.
Courtesy of the Pasadena Playhouse State Theatre 161
Fig. 8.2 William Holden and Joseph Mankiewicz judging auditions
at the Pasadena Playhouse. Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 166
Fig. 9.1 Phyllis Loughton coaching a Paramount contract player in
1935. Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 174
Fig. 9.2 Lillian Burns coaching actor Edmund Purdom in 1955.
Fig. 9.3 Lela Rogers coaching Lucille Ball and other RKO contract
players c. 1937. Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 177
Fig. 10.1 Rose Hobart in a Universal publicity photo c. 1931.
Fig. 10.2 Morris Carnovsky in a publicity photo for Dead Reckoning
(Cromwell 1947). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 198
Fig. 10.3 Roman Bohnen in a publicity photo for Of Mice and Men
(Milestone 1939). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 207
Fig. 10.4 J. Edward Bromberg in a Hollywood publicity photo c.
1942. Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 209
Fig. 11.1 George Cukor and Katharine Hepburn on the set of
Adam’s Rib (1949). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 223
Fig. 11.2 Jean Arthur and Cary Grant on the set of Only Angels
Have Wings (Hawks 1939). Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 224
Fig. 11.3 Josephine Dillon in an audio session with contract players
c. 1937. Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 228
Fig. 11.4 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 231
Fig. 12.1 Universal contract players in a showcase scene directed by
Rosenstein in 1951. Courtesy of Photofest, Inc. 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 con-
tributions 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 twenty-
five years, and it depends on another group of people who labor in obscu-
rity, 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 grad-
uate 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
xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
the many teachers, colleagues, and collaborators who have served as guid-
ing 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 perform-

ing 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 expres-
sivity 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 conver-
sations 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 pro-
fessional 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 com-
parison, American audience members would probably have little familiar-
ity 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
xiv INTRODUCTION
in the 1930s and 1940s, for even general impressions about the Method
are a way to begin exploring the strategies that Strasberg’s initial con-
temporaries 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 consid-
ered 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 minimal-
ist 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 (associ-
ated 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 com-
prehensive volume co-authored by Sophie Rosenstein, a University of
Washington drama teacher who later became a drama coach in studio-
era 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
INTRODUCTION xv
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 act-
ing 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 chal-
lenges presented by modern playwrights’ interest in the nuances of every-
day 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 perfor-
mance. His Method leads actors to use substitutions (formulated by them-
selves 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
xvi INTRODUCTION
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 wait-
ing 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 memo-
rable form in 1934, when Adler presented fellow Group Theatre members
with ideas on acting to which she had been introduced during a concen-
trated 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 con-
frontation, 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 follow-
ing exchange. A player asks: “how can we make the part real to the audi-
ence [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 charac-
ter you are portraying.”18 Similarly, writing in 1936, Sophie Rosenstein
explains: “A question which is often brought up in the classroom in regard
INTRODUCTION xvii
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 experi-
ences 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 some-
thing real that will harrow their souls … In and out they go in an agoniz-
ing 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 substi-
tutions 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 for-
mal 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
xviii INTRODUCTION
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 publi-
cation of Stanislavsky’s Building a Character appeared in 1949 follow-
ing 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 transmis-
sion, 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 sup-
plied 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 per-
centage 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 mod-
ern, living characters, and “real” emotion essential to the film industry.
In sum, economic shifts in America’s performing arts business, changing
INTRODUCTION xix
industrial production conditions, and the era’s aesthetic priorities led to

the articulation and wide dissemination of Modern acting principles dur-
ing the studio era (the 1930s and 1940s).
Although one might view theatre “as an isolated institution,” by con-
sidering 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 organi-
zation 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 perform-
ing 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 transform-
ing America’s performing arts industry rested on “a gradual change in the
habits of theatregoers” nationwide; with “more opportunities for satis-
factory entertainment from movies at a lower price,” people went to the
xx INTRODUCTION
theatre less often, and once the “movies had taken over the job of provid-
ing 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 profes-
sion developed techniques well suited to modern drama, reflects my inter-
est 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 act-
ing 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 contribu-
tions 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 per-
forming 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.
INTRODUCTION xxi
Chapter 1, “A Twenty-First-Century Perspective,” outlines parallels

between actors’ careers in the 1930s and 1940s, and today’s multidimen-
sional performing arts industry, where actors find work in theatre, film,
and television, sometimes adding voice work and motion-capture act-
ing to their portfolios. Offering a glimpse of actors’ work in the 1930s,
it notes the contrast between the silent era, when directors talked per-
formers 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 develop-
ment 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 relation-
ship 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 produc-
tions 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 var-
ied acting problems of building characterizations and developing the requi-
site 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,
xxii INTRODUCTION
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 perfor-
mance. 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 start-
ing 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 articu-
lated in the 1930s and 1940s, by looking at the rise of actor training
in America in the late nineteenth century, and how increased mass pro-
duction in the performing arts industry led Hollywood to become the
home base for Modern acting teachers, from Moscow Art Theatre expa-
triate 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 ear-
lier 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 com-
panies 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
INTRODUCTION xxiii
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 Broadway-
Hollywood 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 artic-
ulation 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.
xxiv INTRODUCTION
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 dis-
cussed 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 lega-
cies 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 con-
tributed 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
INTRODUCTION xxv
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 dis-
cussing the Pasadena Playhouse, and gives substance to accounts of early
American actor training programs by analyzing acting principles circulat-
ing 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 profes-
sional 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 dove-
tail 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 perform-
ing 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
xxvi INTRODUCTION
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 orga-
nized 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 the-
atre-in-the-round venues, and student shows were part of Seattle social life
during Hughes’ tenure.
INTRODUCTION xxvii
5. The Little Theatre Movement emerged in the 1910s and gained momen-
tum 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.
xxviii INTRODUCTION
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.
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 indus-
trial 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 stream-
ing media; lavish Broadway productions and intimate theatre spaces; and
sound booths and motion-capture stages. For example, as behind-the-
scenes 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’ multi-
faceted 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 3

C. Baron, Modern Acting, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-40655-2_1
4 C. BARON
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 perform-
ing 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 con-
noisseurs, and James Gandolfini’s portrayal in The Sopranos (1999–2007)
made him part of American culture. Performers’ diverse careers and audi-
ences’ 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 direc-
tor David Cronenberg on dramas like A History of Violence (2005) and
Eastern Promises (2007). In an era of convergence and blurred boundar-
ies, 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 audi-
ences 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
A TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY PERSPECTIVE 5
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, installa-
tion art, and other unscripted performance art pieces challenged prevail-
ing 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 mak-
ing the politics of representation a component of all ongoing research;
for instance, today there are no barriers to exploring patterns that con-
nect 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 some-
times suggested simply by a costume or gesture.5
The insights made by the Prague School (1926–1948) into the distinc-
tions between character, actor, and performance detail have been ampli-
fied 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 con-
tribute 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 for-
mat 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 numer-
ous conflicting interpretations of his ideas.”10 Importantly, after the
Russian archives were opened in 1991, researchers not only discovered
6 C. BARON
the “extent of censorship that had been imposed upon Stanislavsky dur-
ing 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 com-
bined under the title An Actor’s Work (2008).
There are also new research areas to explore in the twenty-first cen-
tury, because decades of feminist critique (in theatre, film, and other disci-
plines) have clarified that cultural norms concerning gender and sexuality
are a factor in all aspects and forms of performance—in daily life, in ordi-
nary 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 shap-
ing 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 act-
ing, 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 teach-
ers. 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 act-
ing, 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 mem-
bers 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 natu-
ralized that the important figures in the first half of the twentieth century
seemed self-evident. However, the ongoing wave of interest in women’s
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 shed-
ding new light on the work of costume designers, casting directors, tele-
vision 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 swim-
ming 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 drunk-
enly bemoans his fate as an author of movie drivel. Capturing the cyni-
cism 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),
8 C. BARON
the lavish sets, sweeping musical score, and over-the-top costumes pres-
ent 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 waste-
land. The idea that Hollywood is inherently corrupt and corrupting has
influenced various research areas, including the history of American act-
ing. 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 artic-
ulate a body of techniques designed to help actors create “truthful” emo-
tional performances. That the American film industry could play a useful
role in the history of acting might sound preposterous at first blush, espe-
cially 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 play-
wright 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 commercial-
ism as an instance when “personal cunning and talent triumphed over
stupidity and decadence in Hollywood.”16 In the 1940s, Cheryl Crawford,
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 per-
forming 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 con-
tinued 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 produc-
tions 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 act-
ing, for she appeared in films from 1929 to 1996, in television programs
from 1952 to 1998, and in theatre productions from 1927 to 1973, includ-
ing 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 rea-
son studio-era Hollywood has been overlooked in accounts of American
acting. Another is that Hollywood publicity designed to support its star
10 C. BARON
system (that stars were playing themselves) sustained the idea that actors
who worked in the movies knew and cared little about acting, depend-
ing instead on personality and good looks. Moreover, like Broadway,
Hollywood did employ people for their physical beauty and athletic, come-
dic, and musical abilities, because it produced a range of entertainment,
including films that required skilled performers with substantial experi-
ence—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 commodi-
ties to entice audiences. Hollywood managed stars’ appearances on screen
and off to ensure that they embodied recognizable types and cultural ide-
als. However, after Hollywood made the transition to sound, studio exec-
utives 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 play-
ers 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 pub-
lished 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 out-
lined 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
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 transi-
tion 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 cin-
ema 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
12 C. BARON
(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 articu-
lated 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 twentieth-
century 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 transi-
tion 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 the-
atre’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
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 expres-
sion all the more natural and genuine.”26 Echoing that embrace of new
stagecraft values, screenwriter Frances Marion describes Colman’s perfor-
mance 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 “truth-
ful,” 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 convinc-
ingly 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
14 C. BARON
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 studio-
era 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 public-
ity by inventing and circulating the story that Colman played the addicted
cousin role “better after several drinks.”36 Furious at Goldwyn for fabricat-
ing 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 conver-
sation between takes
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 cover-
age 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 vol-
ume encapsulates contemporary research by featuring discussions of: per-
formance 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.
16 C. BARON
4. Work by Prague School members is useful for studies in this area, because
they identified (a) interactions between gesture-signs and gesture-expres-
sions 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 impression-
ists” (Acting in the Cinema [Berkeley: University of California Press,
1988], 4). For a survey of trends and positions in contemporary star stud-
ies, 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
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 profession-
als who direct below-the-line workers whose bodies or technical skills are
supervised by the thinking-people who “create” the product. Screen per-
formances are sometimes thought to be created by framing and editing
choices. Yet screen acting involves the embodied selection and combina-
tion of legible signs; the minute details of actors’ vocal and physical expres-
sion are an integral component of a production, on a par with lighting,
framing, editing, sound, and other non-performance elements. The open-
ended connotations encoded into screen performance details acquire
meaning and dramatic significance the same way they do in live perfor-
mances—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 produc-
tions require actors who use their training, experience, and independent
preparation to create telling vocal and physical expressions that are cali-
brated 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 com-
municate the actions and counteractions of that journey even when scenes
are shot out of sequence. Required to work without rehearsals, scene part-
ners, or attentive audiences, screen actors master relaxation and concentra-
tion; 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.
14. 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.
15. Ibid., 243, 242.
16. Ibid., 246.
17. Ibid., 243.
18. Ibid., 249.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the
Studio Era (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1988), 105.
22. Qtd. in Doug Tomlinson, ed., Actors on Acting for the Screen (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1994), 108.
23. Juliet Benita Colman, Ronald Colman: A Very Private Person (New York:
William Morrow, 1975), 84.
24. 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.
18 C. BARON
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 negoti-
ate “the task of acting” emerged from his interest in the “modern move-
ments” 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 devel-
opment of the modern American theatre” in the 1920s to “the Theatre

20 C. BARON
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 pro-
vided “the strongest intellectual stimulus” for his own work.5 Referring
to Craig as “the apocalyptic Englishman who was to revolutionize sce-
nic 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 characteriza-
tion, Strasberg offers his interpretation of Craig’s 1907 essay “The Actor
and the Übermarionette.” He proposes that Craig’s “greatly misunder-
stood” 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 direc-
tors’ 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 definite-
ness 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 cre-
ated by lighting design and multi-tiered sets—as creating new opportu-
nities for directors and performers. In the chapter of her acting manual
entitled “The History of Acting Is the History of Light,” Josephine Dillon
ACTING STRATEGIES, MODERN DRAMA, AND NEW STAGECRAFT 21
reflects on staging developments; she points out that with the introduc-
tion 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 influ-
enced the ideas of individuals who would become Modern acting teach-
ers. 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 stage-
craft 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 indi-
vidual 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-
22 C. BARON
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 con-
siderable 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 teach-
ers 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 play-
wright.”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 opi-
ate, 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
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 connec-
tions 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 experi-
ences might shape their actions and reactions in the present.
Modern acting teachers circulated strategies for negotiating contempo-
rary 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 turn-
ing points which show character or changes in character.”23 The sympa-
thetic 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’
24 C. BARON
“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, con-
ditioning, habits, and manners of behavior and expression.”28 As a conse-
quence, 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 link-
ing an actor’s work-on-the-self with work-on-the-role, and they have
devoted extensive attention to creating actual performances. By compari-
son, 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-
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; play-
able 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 rede-
fine “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 moti-
vating 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 emo-
tional 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
26 C. BARON
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 recre-
ate 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, tap-
ping into private, often traumatic, experiences was the only way to trigger
“real” emotion in performance.
Seeing actors and directors as having separate tasks and responsibili-
ties, 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
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 cou-
ple 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 char-
acter”; 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 pan-
tomime 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 inter-
actions 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 mem-
ory when he discusses the American Laboratory’s ways of defining affec-
tive 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 affec-
tive memory into sense memory, which is the memory of physical sensa-
tion, 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
28 C. BARON
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 unre-
lated to emotional memory; he notes that students were “introduced to
many individual exercises involving imaginary objects—drinking tea, eat-
ing a grapefruit, putting on and taking off shoes”; they had to “differentiate
between picking up pearls, nuts, potatoes, cantaloupes, and watermel-
ons.”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 sense-
memory 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 experi-
ence very deeply and intensely, but have been brought up in an environ-
ment 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
“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 inhibi-
tions, 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 addi-
tion 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 per-
form “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-
30 C. BARON
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 previ-
ous 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 emotional-
memory exercise. He explains that throughout his career as a Method act-
ing 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 expres-
sion,” 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 mem-
ory 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 subse-
quently recreate that emotion “at will.”90
While Strasberg would develop other exercises designed to coun-
ter 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 connect-
ing 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; discuss-
ing 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
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 stim-
ulate 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 abil-
ity 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 interpret-
ing a script, Stanislavsky made script analysis an essential part of actors’
work. Stanislavsky developed “a logical process of analysis for each seg-
ment 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 cre-
ative 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 abil-
ity to understand, visualize, and embody their characters’ given circum-
stances, problems, and actions.97
32 C. BARON
In opposition to Strasberg’s focus on exercises to break down inhibi-

tions, Stanislavsky emphasized the value of exploring myriad forms of char-
acterization. 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 posi-
tion that self-expression is the basis of acting, Stanislavsky maintained that
acting depends on a potentially enriching process of inquiry and discov-
ery. 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 exer-
cise, “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 com-
plex, evolving series of intention-laden actions; this preparation is the basis
for a portrayal distinguished by vivid expressivity, for those “scored” dra-
matic 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 activ-
ity 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 perfor-
mances, 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 “over-
come 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 divi-
sions 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 perform-
ers 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
experience of being aware of one’s feelings, especially in awkward con-

texts 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 con-
centration 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 predica-
ments … outside the actor’s personal experience.”102 This last point is sig-
nificant, 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 pos-
sibly can in studying the part, then play from memory – the synthetic memo-
ries 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 perspec-
tive 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 characteriza-
tions. Whereas Modern acting strategies lead performers to “think and
behave as their characters would logically do in the circumstances” of the
34 C. BARON
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 self-
expression 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 origi-
nal title, What Is Acting: From Stanislavsky to the Method, which suggests
the distance he travelled away from Stanislavsky.106 Strasberg’s observa-
tions 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 charac-
terizations and deliver performances that reflect their insights and abil-
ity to collaborate, Strasberg approached the challenges as a director, as a
“music” teacher seeking to develop performers able to function as über-
marionettes 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 direc-
tor.”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 collabo-
rators 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 contrib-
ute effectively to ensemble performances.
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).
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.
36 C. BARON
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 car-
ried 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 chap-
ter 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.
24. Ibid., 9.
25. Rosenstein, et al., Modern Acting: A Manual, 61.
26. Ibid., 62.
28. Ibid., 103.

29. Ibid., 160, 102, 159–160.
30. Ibid., 20.
31. Ibid., 138.
32. Ibid., 160.
33. Ibid., 95.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid., 75.
36. Ibid., 76.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid., 76–77.
39. Ibid., 77.
40. Ibid., 164.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., 78.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid., 60.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., 104.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid., 173.
50. Ibid., 114.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid., 173.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid., 174.
55. Ibid.
56. 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.
57. See Strasberg, Dream of Passion, 67.
58. Ibid., 68.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid., 63.
61. Ibid., 69.
62. Ibid., 69–70.
63. Ibid., 113.
64. Ibid., 71.
38 C. BARON
65. Ibid., 72.

66. Ibid.
67. Ibid., 138.
68. Ibid., 103.
69. Ibid., 139.
70. Ibid.
71. Ibid., 140.
72. Ibid., 102, 143.
73. Ibid., 132.
74. Ibid., 135.
75. Ibid., 134.
76. Ibid., 138.
77. Ibid., 141.
78. Ibid., 142.
79. Ibid., 143.
80. Ibid., 145.
81. Ibid.
82. Ibid., 146.
83. Ibid., 115–116.
84. Ibid., 116. Strasberg mentions that Method actors explore the emotional-
memory 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 teach-
er’s satisfaction.
85. Ibid., 149.
86. Ibid.
87. Ibid., 115, 149.
88. Ibid., 149.
89. Ibid., 115.
90. Ibid., 115, 149.
91. Ibid., 152, 148.
92. Ibid., 151.
93. Ibid.
94. Sharon Marie Carnicke, Stanislavsky in Focus: An Acting Master for the
Twenty-First Century, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2009), 203.
95. Ibid., 88.
96. Ibid., 133.
97. Ibid., 153, 152.
98. Ibid., 90.
99. Ibid., 91.
100. Ibid., 161, 160.
101. Ibid., 142.

102. Ibid., 166, 177.
1947), 63.
104. Carnicke, Stanislavsky in Focus, 204.
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 associ-
ated 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 prob-
lems 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 characteriza-
tion 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

42 C. BARON
lead to mechanical, imitative portrayals.2 In place of these, her book sug-

gests 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 coach-
ing 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 use-
ful 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
MODERN ACTING: A CONSCIOUS APPROACH 43
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 mate-
rial; 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
44 C. BARON
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 compli-
cated 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 explora-
tion 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 differ-
ences 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
“conventionalized and wooden patterns” when creating imagined charac-

ters if they use a Modern acting approach, which “stresses the importance
of working from within out, or from the inner feelings to the outer mani-
festation.”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 per-
formers’ 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 individual-
ity.”22 Rosenstein’s Modern Acting: A Manual includes brief chapters that
highlight the importance of body work that fosters flexibility, coordina-
tion, 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 multi-
ple 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 address-
ing “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 por-

trayed, 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 con-
ditioning 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
46 C. BARON
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 exer-
cise to train performers able to generate the emotion required by a direc-
tor. Rosenstein finds that use of even mundane sense memory (e.g., the
sound of a car starting) when studying a script leads to “more individu-
alization, plasticity, and naturalness” in performance, because it allows
actors to draw on all of their resources during the labor-intensive pro-
cess 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 “emo-
tion 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 vicari-
ous 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 per-
sonal 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 sus-
tain it [only] long enough to transpose it to the new situation. To do this
adequately, we must no longer think of the circumstances which accompa-
nied the real experience.”32 In contrast to Strasberg, Rosenstein finds that
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
48 C. BARON
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 per-
formance 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 prepara-
tion 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 direc-
tor 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 work-
ing sessions between 1945 and 1947. The first session included: Mary
Tarcai; actors Roman Bohnen, Janet Brandt, Phil Brown, J. Edward
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 work-
shops 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 mem-
bers, 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 hap-
pen”—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 understand-
ing.”42 To create portrayals “organically related to life,” modern actors
must locate the fictional “problems” that give them faith in the charac-
ter’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, sociologi-
cal, and psychological aspects of the characters; these given circumstances
color characters’ motivation and action. Thus, in building characteriza-
tions, modern actors must sensitize themselves to these factors in order
50 C. BARON
to “respond with truth” during performance as they recall the “intellec-

tual, mental analysis of the character” they have created during individ-
ual 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 dur-
ing 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 prin-
ciple, Brand states that during preparation and performance the actor
should say: “these are the given circumstances and these are the circum-
stances 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 charac-
ter 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 perfor-
mance, 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
Notes from the session on action highlight that the “set of circum-
stances” will provide “a springboard for the action” of any character.55
This view also informs Brand’s session on sense memory, for she empha-
sizes 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 analy-
sis provided the basis for “truthful” performances, and embodying a char-
acter’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 concen-
trate,” 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 charac-
terization 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 use-
less 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 prin-
ciples, sense-memory exercises aid actors’ efforts to create characters who
are unique and different from themselves; they can also foster the atten-
52 C. BARON
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 act-
ing.”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 cre-
ate 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 con-
nection with the script not only makes them the authors of their per-
formances, 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 lim-
its 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
“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 character-
ized 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 main-
taining a focus on the characters’ problems and actions scene by scene.68
Modern acting and the Method reflect differing philosophical per-
spectives. 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 necessar-
ily 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 coordina-
tion 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
54 C. BARON
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 them-
selves; as Lab member Will Lee explains, for actors “our inner life is insep-
arable 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 bod-
ies, their conscious and subconscious resources, mental and creative work,
inner lives and social environments. Modern acting emphasizes that learn-
ing 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 reac-
tions is what allows players to express the life breath of the characteriza-
tion, 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 emotional-
memory exercises). While Modern acting teachers would see “real” emo-
tion in performance as an uncomplicated by-product of preparation, it was
the elusive goal of Strasberg’s Method, which assumed actors are necessar-
ily cut off from their emotion.
Modern acting and the Method reflect contrasting views about act-
ing 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
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 perform-
ers 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 recog-
nized 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.
(New York: Prentice-Hall, 1940), v.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., 200.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 182.
56 C. BARON
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 ses-
sion 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.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., 43.
11. Ibid., 42.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., 122.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., 126.
17. Ibid., 129.
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
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 polish-
ing [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 anec-
dotes 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.
37. “Report – Mary Tarcai – October 1945,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated
Collection.
38. “Teacher’s Course: 1945,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection.
39. Ibid.
40. “Teacher’s Course: October 29, 1946,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated
Collection.
41. “Teacher’s Course: November 13, 1946,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated
Collection.
42. “Teacher’s Course: 1945,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection.
Collection.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid.
Collection.
52. Ibid. Art Smith differed from Lab colleagues, believing bit players “should
be able to use things from [their] own experience” to get into the “emo-
tional 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.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
58 C. BARON
55. Ibid.
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, remem-
ber 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).
Collection.
62. Ibid.
64. Ibid., 99.
65. Ibid., 75.
Twenty-First Century, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2009), 153.
68. Modern acting requires actors to ground performances in an understand-
ing 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 psy-
chology” (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).
70. Bette Davis, “On Acting in Films,” Theatre Arts 25 (September 1946):
639.
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 prob-
lems” 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 act-
ing 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 act-
ing 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 gar-
nered 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 charac-
terizations into a larger, coherent stage picture. As we will see, what con-
stitutes the specific “American” dimension of Method acting also differs

62 C. BARON
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 per-
formances 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 regu-
lation, 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 artis-
tic director of the Civic Repertory Theatre (1926–1933) led by British-
born 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 col-
laborative 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
MODERN ACTING: OBSCURED BY THE METHOD’S “AMERICAN” STYLE 63
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 exhaus-
tive 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 cou-
ple’s ability to create characterizations that reflected observable contem-
porary 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 exem-
plified 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
64 C. BARON
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 play-
ers 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 act-
ing 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
With Strasberg and Kazan as its leading proponents, Method act-

ing 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 under-
lying 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, giv-
ing 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 tal-
ent 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 underly-
ing 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 play-
ers.”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”
66 C. BARON
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 audi-
ences experienced theatre in separate venues. For example, the Bowery
and Broadway Theatres in New York were for the “unsophisticated” audi-
ences, 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 con-
stellation 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 equa-
tions 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 sup-
port 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 art-
ists 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
throughout the 1920s that were valued for their subtlety and psychologi-
cal 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 some-
thing 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 cuck-
olded 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
68 C. BARON
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, win-
ning 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 detec-
tive 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 boarding-
school teacher in the UK from World War I forward. This same year,
Laurence Olivier received a nomination for his role in Hollywood’s adap-
tation of the Emily Brontë novel Wuthering Heights. In 1941, Olivier was
nominated again, this time for his performance in Rebecca, as the mysteri-
ous 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
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 recog-
nized 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 “over-
whelmingly 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,
70 C. BARON
on Broadway from March to June 1945, and a revival of Noël Coward’s

Private Lives from October 1948 to May 1949. Katharine Cornell, work-
ing with her husband, director Guthrie McClintic, enjoyed commercial and
critical success as an actor and a producer in a series of Broadway offer-
ings. 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 com-
mercial 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 direct-
ing.21 However, beginning in 1945, Kazan would also start to depend
less on established actors and plays so strongly associated with the Anglo-
Saxon tradition. He directed Deep Are the Roots, a drama about racism
in the postwar American South, on Broadway from September 1945 to
November 1946. Kazan then directed All My Sons, Arthur Miller’s cri-
tique 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 obser-
vations about American acting in binary terms that contrasted authentic
“American” traditions with inauthentic British or Anglo-American con-
ventions. 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 com-
mercial 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 ostensi-
bly 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 provid-
ing 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 experi-
ences 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 his-
tory of acting so that Method acting becomes the authentic alternative
to the prominent Anglo-Saxon tradition in American performing arts.
72 C. BARON
Employing a strategy that the era’s anticommunists would use to dispar-

age opponents, Strasberg begins his remarks by referencing the opinion
of respected individuals. Intimating that the acclaim enjoyed by estab-
lished Anglo-Saxon actors was unwarranted, because critics knew noth-
ing 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 illuminat-
ing 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, ref-
erencing 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 out-
dated. 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, physi-
cally active and associated with spontaneity, intensity, and defiant emo-
tionality. Performances categorized under the rubric of Method acting
were seen as a “realistic” alternative to the “beautifully rhythmed declama-
tions 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
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 authen-
tic 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 chal-
lenge 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 asso-
ciation 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
74 C. BARON
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 train-
ing 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 reflect-
ing 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
to Strasberg’s approach. From his perspective, actors closely associated

with Strasberg “never created characters [and] instead merely played varia-
tions 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 some-
one 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 experi-
mental 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 produc-
tions 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, work-
ing 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-
76 C. BARON
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 act-
ing” 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 estab-
lished 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, par-
ticipating 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 British-
born 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
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 synony-
mous 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 high-
lighting 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
78 C. BARON
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 back-
stage note from this period, during rehearsals for Truckline Café, Clurman
found that Brando responded most effectively to a rehearsal exercise com-
parable 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 char-
acter 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 crum-
pling himself into a childlike posture, turning his feet inward and hunch-
ing 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 man-
ual, The Technique of Acting, he pointedly remarks that her approach to
acting does not lend itself “to vulgar exploitations, as some other well-
known 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 repre-
sent 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 nomi-
nation, 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).
The acclaim that both Kazan and Brando enjoyed caused the Actors
Studio to be identified as America’s premiere source of serious, profes-
sional 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 moviego-
ers 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 fea-
tured 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 train-
ing, and made Strasberg’s career a touchstone for significant developments
in American acting. Rosemary Malague has shown that Strasberg was cata-
pulted 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 seventy-
five 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 gener-
ations 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
80 C. BARON
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 memo-
rable 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, theatre-
in-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 act-
ing. 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 compari-
son, although actors such as Lee J. Cobb and Frances Farmer appeared in
Pasadena Playhouse productions, once the Actors Studio became associ-
ated with the real work of acting, the Playhouse seemed like a commer-
cial 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
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 “realis-
tic” 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 read-
ings 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 genera-
tion of actors dedicated to their art and, for the first time in acting his-
tory, equipped with a scientific approach. Yet there are reasons to question
these views. Despite the reality that breakthroughs make for good public-
ity 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
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.
82 C. BARON
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 unim-
pressed, 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.
24. Lee Strasberg, “Introduction,” in Acting: A Handbook of the Stanislavski
Method, ed. Toby Cole (New York: Bantam Books, 1955), 10.
25. Ibid.
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.
Tradition (New York: Schirmer, 1991), 113.
31. Qtd. in ibid., 113.
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.
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.
84 C. BARON
48. David Garfield, The Actors Studio: A Player’s Place (New York: Macmillan,
1984), 65.
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 var-
ied 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 eco-
nomic 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 act-
ing 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

88 C. BARON
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 engrav-
ing, and mass-marketed illustrated magazines [that] brought actors wide-
spread 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) com-
prised 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 “lady-
managers” in nineteenth-century theatre shows that the substantial duties
of the era’s theatre managers—“play selection, casting, directing, design-
ing, 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 dis-
banded as touring companies based in New York secured an increas-
ingly 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 pro-
ducers; division of labor increased as play producing became separate
from managing exhibition sites; there was a “standardization of prod-
uct” as each play was performed by one company or various duplicate
companies; and theatre syndicates (Frohman and Shubert) replaced local
producer-managers.5
DEVELOPMENTS IN MODERN THEATRE AND MODERN ACTING, 1875–1930 89
REPERTORY COMPANIES: SITES FOR EXPLORING MODERN

ACTING
The transition to a centralized system increased the “national” dimen-
sion of American theatre; in the early nineteenth century, there were
separate venues for Shakespeare and Bowery blood-and-thunder produc-
tions, whereas the new touring companies delivered the same “first-class”
product to a range of audiences, and established a model film and televi-
sion would follow.6 Yet the “standardization of product” prompted actor-
manager-directors like Minnie Maddern Fiske and Eva Le Gallienne to
establish repertory companies that operated outside the theatre syndi-
cate 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 “per-
sonality” 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 scrub-
woman 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
90 C. BARON
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 tech-
nique,” which allows skilled actors to create performances with “inde-
scribable 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 cre-
ate 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
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 char-
acters 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 main-
tain their focus on the character’s immediate experience.17 Having empha-
sized the need for actors to create performances based on their sensitive
appreciation of the character’s fictional environment and their own con-
tinually 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 opportu-
nity 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
92 C. BARON
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 pro-
duction 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 company-
founder Eva Le Gallienne (bottom right)
Schildkraut, led to critical acclaim for Le Gallienne. In 1923, she starred in

another Molnár play, The Swan, produced by Charles Frohman; the pro-
duction 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 per-
forming 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 for-
mer 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 per-
formers, 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 life-
long 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 con-
trol; 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 the-
atre was in many ways the accomplishment of women.”25 Summarizing Le
94 C. BARON
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 estab-
lished 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, psy-
chologically 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 twen-
tieth 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 tax-
onomy of facial and gestural expression associated with François Delsarte
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 charac-
ter.”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 pro-
ponent of formal actor training, believing that it would help to “con-
vert 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 vis-
ibility 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 will-
ing to subordinate himself to the character,” and actors should “approach a
character ‘from the inside, not the outside,’” yet also proposed that “train-
ing 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
96 C. BARON
Theatre run by producer Charles Frohman, known for taking young play-
ers 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 per-
formance,” 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 per-
forms 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 char-
acter 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
complete concentration, through love of the idea and a desire to communi-

cate 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 insti-
tution 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 move-
ment 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 under-
standing 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 rep-
ertory 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 act-
ing 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
98 C. BARON
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 suc-
cessful 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 produc-
tions 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
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 uncred-
ited 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 cre-
ated 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 writ-
ing 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 dis-
tinguished by the clear and continually reinforced set of ideas that antici-
pate 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 recog-
nized economic realities as yet another impediment to actors’ creativity; as
he put it, “the constant struggle for our existence that subordinates us to
100 C. BARON
those on whom depend our livelihood [absorbs] our whole mind in wor-
ries about our next meal.”48
Whereas Strasberg saw emotional expressivity as the singular distin-
guishing 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, dif-
ferent 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 some-
one 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 memo-
ries 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 per-
formances of private experiences and argued that they should substitute
personal experiences and circumstances for a character’s during perfor-
mance, Boleslavsky took the position of Modern acting teachers by argu-
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 per-
formance as a model for the heightened expressivity he sought to develop
in actors, Boleslavsky saw human life as the basis for acting. He told stu-
dents, “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 ask-
ing for “a glass of water to clean a strawberry stain on a white dress.”59
Throughout his lectures, Boleslavsky emphasized the Modern acting posi-
tion 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 charac-
ter’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 act-
ing 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-
102 C. BARON
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
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 dramat-
ics.”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 exer-
cises 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 sug-
gested 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
104 C. BARON
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 per-
former’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 char-
acter 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 per-
son’s “imagination and curiosity” and foster “flexibility of body, voice and
speech.”74 Actors must eliminate their own “every day behavior and pos-
ture, 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 discus-
sion 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
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 col-
umnist 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 lec-
tures 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 prac-
titioners 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.
106 C. BARON
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.
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.
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.
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 pro-
voke 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.
108 C. BARON
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.
78. Ibid., 204.

79. Ibid., 196.
80. Ibid., 193.
81. Ibid., 197.
82. Ibid., 199.
83. Ibid., 202.
84. 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

112 C. BARON
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 train-
ing 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 indepen-
dent 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 per-
forming 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 coun-
try had declined long before the crash. Between 1910 and 1925, the ven-
SHIFTING FORTUNES IN THE PERFORMING ARTS BUSINESS 113
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 produc-
tions, whereas in 1940 the number had dropped to around twenty.4
In this context, American theatre became a training ground and audi-
tion 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 con-
ditions 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 pro-
ductions 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 fre-
quently 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 oppor-
tunity to move from apprentice to secondary and even leading roles.
114 C. BARON
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 man-
ager, 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 produc-
tions 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
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 high-
profile 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 pro-
duction 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 execu-
tives would give leading roles to young theatre actors because they had
marketable value and could be trusted to deliver professional perfor-
mances. 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 suc-
cessful 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
116 C. BARON
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 success-
ful Broadway shows. Yet they discovered that these presold commodi-
ties 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 lead-
ing 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
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 invest-
ment 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 “ros-
ter 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, emo-
tions, 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 spe-
cific 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
118 C. BARON
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 lead-
ing 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 afflu-
ent 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
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)
120 C. BARON
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 con-
sensus 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 pos-
sible 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.)
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 sub-
sequent 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 ninety-
show 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 per-
formances, 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 com-
pany’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 prepon-
derance 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
122 C. BARON
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 viv-
idly 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 his-
tory, including confrontations that illustrate contrasting ideas about direc-
tors’ 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 empha-
sized 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 emo-
tion,’” 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 direc-
tors.”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 mem-
ber 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 fea-
tured player. Friendly Ford, Philip Robinson, and Art Smith came from
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 num-
ber 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 every-
thing 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 the-
atre, 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’ sugges-
tions and hire a business manager and an audience development expert.
These minor adjustments, however, did not address the actors’ con-
cerns about the direction and operation of the Group. During their hugely
successful 1933–1934 run of Men in White, the actors’ professional “dis-
appointment and ideological disaffection grew so intense … that plans for
124 C. BARON
‘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 profes-
sional company that attracted working-class audiences by charging low-
admission 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 acquir-
ing 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 meet-
ing on April 5, 1934, his “long oration” concluded with a thorough “cri-
tique 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 oft-
noted 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 pain-
ful 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 obses-
sion with emotional memory was undermining the confidence of the com-
pany 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
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 one-
self 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 occa-
sion, 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 declar-
ing, “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 pro-
cess they were relaxed and happy to be “working on their own without the
126 C. BARON
intimidating presence of Strasberg.”60 The show provided an opportunity

for the actors to exercise their creativity and ability to build characteriza-
tions; 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 osten-
sibly 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 per-
formances), the actors again found themselves with inadequate “opportu-
nities 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
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 improvi-
sational 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 con-
cerning 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 dur-
ing 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”
128 C. BARON
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
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 inter-
ested 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).
130 C. BARON
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 con-
sidered 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
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 the-
atres 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 perform-
ing arts venue.
NOTES
(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.
132 C. BARON
9. Ralph Bellamy, Interview May 18, 1977, Performing Arts Oral History
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
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 protago-
nists’ 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.
25. Smith, Real Life Drama, 297.
26. Ibid., 297–300.
27. Ibid., 305.

28. Ibid., 334.
29. Ibid., 333.
30. Ibid., 404–405.
31. Poggi, Theater in America, 84.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., 81; see 173.
35. 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.
37. Ibid., 41.
38. Ibid., 220.
39. Ibid.
40. See Smith, Real Life Drama, 30–31; see Chinoy, The Group Theatre,
24–28.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., 223.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., 228.
47. Ibid., 174.
48. Ibid., 227.
49. Ibid., 228.
50. Ibid., 102.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid., 103.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid., 107.
56. Bohnen, summer 1934 letter, Box 1, folder 11, Roman Bohnen Papers.
58. Ibid., 117.
59. Ibid., 118.
60. Ibid., 179.
61. Smith, Real Life Drama, 197, 198.
62. Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 84; see 232.
63. Ibid., 118.
64. Ibid., 182; see 167–183.
134 C. BARON
65. Ibid., 233.

66. Ibid., 114.
67. Ibid., 239.
68. Ibid., 240.
69. Bohnen, April 12, 1937 letter, Box 1, folder 14, Roman Bohnen Papers.
70. Golden Boy program, September 1938, Box 8, Roman Bohnen Papers.
71. Harold Clurman, The Fervent Years: The Story of the Group Theatre and the
Thirties (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 210.
73. Ibid., 227.
74. Smith, Real Life Drama, 234.
75. Ibid., 251.
76. Ibid., 310.
77. Ibid., 344.
78. Louella Parsons, 1939 column, Box 7, Roman Bohnen Papers.
79. Poggi, Theater in America, 84.
80. Ibid.
81. Sam Briskin, “Training Talent for the Movies,” Literary Digest (January 30,
1937): 23.
82. 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 elo-
cution 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 direc-
tor 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

138 C. BARON
(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 commend-
able 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 exclu-
sively 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 impossi-
ble to portray the reactions of a character you are creating in the movies or
THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF DRAMATIC ARTS 139
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 emo-
tional 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 box-
er’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),
140 C. BARON
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 commer-
cial 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 per-
formance 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 com-
edy 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 televi-
sion from 1949 to 1977.
The career path of Academy graduate Thelma Ritter was rather differ-
ent. After work in stock, radio, and on Broadway, she took time from act-
ing 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 exam-
ple, 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
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 sev-
eral films, including Rendezvous (Howard 1935), in which she had a
leading role opposite Powell. Russell eventually became known for co-
starring 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 senior-
citizen 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
142 C. BARON
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 simi-
lar 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.
In addition, as the Academy’s list of recommended reading (to be dis-

cussed 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 dur-
ing 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 portray-
ing? 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
144 C. BARON
Modern acting teachers. Noting that the “minute you go contrary to

the author’s instructions, you defeat yourself,” Jehlinger told his stu-
dents: “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 quali-
ties.”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 pro-
gram, 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 physi-
cal 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
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 perfor-
mance, 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 “act-
ing 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 act-
ing 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
146 C. BARON
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 per-
formances. 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 improvi-
sation 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 charac-
ters, 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
characterization depends on analysis of character relationships and a sensi-

tivity 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 char-
acter’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 perfor-
mance 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 feel-
ing in life and feeling in the theatre”: artistic feeling “springs from the imagi-
nation [while in general] life feeling springs from direct contact with life.”40
Marking the distinction, he observes that “the realization of character is a
148 C. BARON
flesh and blood embodiment of an imaginative being [and so] the accompa-
nying 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 televi-
sion 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 sim-
plify 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 char-
acter. 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
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
150 C. BARON
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 dif-
ferent 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 support-
ive 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.
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.
5. Qtd. in Doug Tomlinson, ed., Actors on Acting for the Screen (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1994), 471–472.
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.
152 C. BARON
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 pro-
vides 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.
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 mov-
ies.”1 Actors understood that affiliation with the Playhouse gave them valu-
able 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 com-
pany, 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.

156 C. BARON
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 appear-
ing in Playhouse productions; Young later married drama coach Sophie
Rosenstein in 1950. Eleanor Parker, who received three Oscar nomina-
tions 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 pro-
ductions 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-
THE PASADENA PLAYHOUSE 157
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 trav-
elling 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 com-
pany 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 bet-
ter graduates.”6
Supported by its patrons, the Playhouse took on the expense of devel-
oping 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.
158 C. BARON
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 develop-
ments 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 com-
pany. In 1917, Brown added local volunteers to the company, which was
now named the Community Players. This group staged a few one-acts
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 col-
lection of wealthy and interested patrons. Brown effectively promoted
the venture, and he created a rapport with the community by contribut-
ing 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 com-
munity 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 produc-
tion’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 col-
ony workshop, was formally established in 1928. In its first year, there
160 C. BARON
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” exem-
plified 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 emo-
tional 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 play-
ers 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 sup-
posed 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).
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
162 C. BARON
Modern Theatre Practice: A Handbook of Play Production (1938) by

Hubert C. Heffner, et al. To expand their knowledge of theatre his-
tory, they read The Theatre: Three Thousand Years of Drama, Acting, and
Stagecraft (1939) by Sheldon Cheney, who founded Theatre Arts maga-
zine 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 articula-
tion 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 analy-
sis 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 perfor-
mance 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
gesturing as the character. They note that during this phase of prepara-
tion, 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 encounter-
ing 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, ensem-
ble production, actors must always “listen to what is said, then take an
instant to grasp its meaning, then out of the thousand things [the charac-
ter] 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 per-
formers 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 clear-
headed allows actors to maintain concentration and hold on to the con-
ception 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 con-
trol” 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 emo-
tions while maintaining the distance required to express the character’s
164 C. BARON
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 adjust-
ments 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 per-
formance 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 char-
acter 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 inte-
gral 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 expres-
sions, 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 produc-
tion 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 study-
ing 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
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 act-
ing 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 pro-
duction.”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 train-
ing, he plucked them out and gave them parts in pictures.”36
Studio executives asked Playhouse directors for input on casting deci-
sions. 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 execu-
tives; 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 spon-
sor a Midsummer Festival at the Playhouse. 20th Century Fox president
166 C. BARON
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 pro-
fessionals 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
Teachers at the Playhouse directed students’ attention to the com-

plex 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 audi-
tion 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 pro-
ductions 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 con-
tract 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 show-
case 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 personal-
ity 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 develop-
ment; 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
168 C. BARON
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 old-
fashioned hams who did little more than memorize their lines, examin-
ing 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 profession-
alism 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.
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
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.
21. Brown and Garwood, General Principles of Play Direction, 105.
22. Ibid., 35–38.
26. Ibid., 123.
27. Ibid., 134.
170 C. BARON

29. Ibid., 199.
30. Ibid., 119.
31. Cooper, Interview with Bernard Galm, 33. Studying theatre history, stu-
dents learned that classic and romantic period plays generally involved full-
front or one-quarter positions; contemporary comedies or dramas would
require one-quarter or profile positions to maintain connection with audi-
ences and simulate behavior observed through an invisible fourth wall;
naturalistic plays would involve one-quarter, profile, three-quarter, and
full-back positions.
32. Pasadena Playhouse School of Theatre Bulletin, April 1947, Pasadena
Playhouse Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.
33. Cooper, Interview with Bernard Galm, 82.
34. 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.
35. Diane Alexander, Playhouse (Los Angeles: Dorleac-MacLeish, 1984), 59.
36. Ibid.
37. Shanewise, Interview with Bernard Galm, 131.
38. Gilmor Brown, Address Book, Pasadena Playhouse Collection, Huntington
39. Pasadena Playhouse 1957 brochure, Pasadena Playhouse Collection,
Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.
40. Pasadena Playhouse School of Theatre 1935 Catalog, Pasadena Playhouse
Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.
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.
43. Shoup, “The Pasadena Community Playhouse,” 294.
44. Article in Variety, Pasadena Playhouse Collection, Huntington Library,
San Marino, CA.
45. 20th Century Fox and RKO bios of Dana Andrews, Pasadena Playhouse
Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.
46. “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 develop-
ments, its training program is not limited to “preparing actors for reper-
tory 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 dia-

logue 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 circu-
lation 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 under-
stand 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 dia-
logue director in 1933; she would become the talent director at RKO in
1943, and subsequently publish her insights on Modern acting in Motion

172 C. BARON
Picture Acting, which will be discussed in Chap. 11. The studios’ interest
in acting specialists and organized training programs reflects their recog-
nition 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 devel-
oped 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 work-
ing 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 col-
laborated with them as they developed characterizations for specific films.
Loughton put on three stage productions a year for Paramount execu-
tives, 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
TRAINING IN MODERN ACTING ON THE STUDIO LOTS 173
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 pro-
duction, 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 power-
ful figure by combining the roles of talent scout and drama coach. Burns
explains that before she was hired by the studio, actors had received train-
ing 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 consider-
able 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 read-
ings twice a week. She would then arrange for screen tests for selected
actors. After they were signed to a contract, she would oversee their devel-
opment as actors and work with them on specific roles. To develop actors’
ability to use Modern acting techniques, she guided their exploration of
174 C. BARON
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 his-
tory 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
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 interac-
tions 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
176 C. BARON
In 1935, the same year Burns started at Republic, Universal hired

Florence Enright to be their drama coach. Enright had been a found-
ing 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 com-
edy 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 sug-
gestions 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-and-
dance 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, sculp-
ture, tennis, geography, history, and the Great Books.”16 Rogers became
a founding member of Hollywood’s self-appointed anticommunist orga-
nization, 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
for an eight-hour day. They attended formal classes and visited different
departments on the lot; Hale recalls that people in the ceramics, fash-
ion, and music departments became some of her best teachers. RKO con-
tract 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 stud-
ied 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.
178 C. BARON
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 audi-
tion, 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 assess-
ment 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. cast-
ing 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 vari-
ous 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 play-
ers 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 circum-
stances, 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 perfor-
mances 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
inner experience. She would run sound without picture to illustrate how
intonations and inflections conveyed the underlying meaning of a dia-
logue 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 particu-
lar. Rosenstein also arranged for the film’s cast members to discuss their
working methods with the students, sometimes accompanied by the pro-
jection 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 analyz-
ing completed performances reflects the era’s assumption that young per-
formers 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] any-
thing 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 dur-
ing 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 dur-
ing the film was crucial, because he showed her that before doing any
scene an actor must methodically review its given circumstances and the
180 C. BARON
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, impro-
visation, study of existing performances, and exercises to enhance relax-
ation, 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 aca-
demic 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 par-
ticipate in any or all aspects of the development program and that courses
should be offered year round. She understood that developments in mod-
ern 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 char-
acters. 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 act-
ing,” 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 stu-
dio’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 partici-
pation. Students did improvisations and performed scenes from selected
plays and films. Once a week, Rosenstein would screen a film for study
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 stu-
dios’ 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 teach-
ers of Modern acting, Rosenstein regarded actors’ understanding of their
characters as the real work of acting. She saw Modern acting as a labor-
intensive 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 charac-
ters’ 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 effec-
tively 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 busi-
ness; acting experts such as Phyllis Loughton, Lillian Burns, and Sophie
Rosenstein were hired to nurture young talent and facilitate the per-
formances 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 contribu-
tors 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
182 C. BARON
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 ambi-
tion 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 con-
notations 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-the-
scenes 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 pink-
collar 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 con-
temporary 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 advertis-
ing, 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 deci-
sions no longer reflected a studio’s slate of contract players, casting came
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, per-
forming emotionally as acting teachers, and participating in the decision-
making process through influence and solution delimitation, rather than
direct commands.35
Put another way, the work of both studio-era drama coaches and con-
temporary 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 strate-
gies 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 danc-
ing 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 non-
descript offices that served as rehearsal spaces in the 1930s and 1940s.
184 C. BARON
As token laborers in a male-dominated industry, and as women work-

ing 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 produc-
tion setting distinguished by massive sound stages filled with state-of-the-
art 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 sex-
specific” 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 profes-
sionals 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, imagina-
tion, 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
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 consider-
able time preparing her for an early screen test; Scott was eventually signed
by Paramount (Lizabeth Scott, Interview July 27, 1984, and May 30,
1985, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist

University, Dallas, TX).
4. Loughton, Interview July 22, 1979.
5. Ibid.
6. “Poverty Row” studios produced films “destined for the low part of dou-
ble 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 audi-
ences,” Poverty Row audiences included: “lower classes and ethnic immi-
grants . . . children and juveniles [and an] urban audience in the American
Southern states [interested in] singing cowboy westerns starring country
music stars” (75, 76).
7. Lillian Burns Sidney, Interview August 17, 1986, Performing Arts Oral
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Lillian Burns Sidney, Interview 1945, Gladys Hall Collection, Margaret
Herrick Library, Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, Beverly
Hills, CA.
11. Al Trescony, Interview August 20, 1986, Performing Arts Oral History
12. Ibid.
13. Burns Sidney, Interview 1945.
14. 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).
15. Kay Noske, “Lela Rogers: Mrs. Rogers’ Neighborhood,” Movie Star
Makeover, June 28, 2011, http://moviestarmakeover.blogspot.
com/2011/06/mrs-rogers-neighborhood.html.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
186 C. BARON
18. Barbara Hale, Interview July 19, 1984, Performing Arts Oral History
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
28. Janet Leigh, Interview July 25, 1984, Performing Arts Oral History
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 can-
nibals 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.
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, includ-
ing 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 perform-
ing 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 work-
shop 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 legend-
ary Schwab’s drugstore on Sunset Boulevard, and the alley between the
Lab and Schwab’s “became the favorite ‘hanging out’ place for members,

190 C. BARON
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 direc-
tor 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 activi-
ties.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 short-
lived 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 pro-
grams. It gained recognition (and notoriety) for its left-leaning musical
revue Meet the People, which played for a year in Los Angeles starting in
THE ACTORS’ LABORATORY IN HOLLYWOOD 191
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 fel-
low Columbia contract player Lloyd Bridges to the initial Lab meetings.
Bridges, father of actors Jeff and Beau Bridges and known for his lead-
ing 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 through-
out the 1940s. Jody Gilbert, known for her roles as a plus-size charac-
ter 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 success-
ful in 1947, when they partnered with Group director Cheryl Crawford
to establish the Actors Studio as an apolitical workshop to develop actors
192 C. BARON
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 profession-
als associated with the Lab made them subject to blacklisting, a devel-
opment 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 mem-
bers 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 act-
ing 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 direc-
tor), 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 pos-
sible 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
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 (actor-
director), 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
194 C. BARON
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 con-
tract 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, char-
acterized 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 test-
ing 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 veter-
ans. 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 vet-
erans 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
“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 color-
ful 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 contri-
butions to the war effort. Notes from this meeting show that members
were determined to make the Lab’s theatre work “as effective an instru-
ment … 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 direct-
ing the piece, Roman Bohnen’s aim was not to produce “the most finished
presentation,” but instead create an opportunity for the actors to appreci-
ate 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 per-
sonnel 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).
196 C. BARON
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 imagi-
nation, 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 pri-
orities of other Modern acting teachers. For Lab members, actor training
included voice and body work that made a performer more flexible, versa-
tile, disciplined, and thus able to embody a range of characters. Members
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 produc-
tion settings.
Lab members saw independent script analysis as the basis for all per-
formances. 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 per-
formance, for acting involves the use of one’s mind and body to incor-
porate an idea indicated by the author. In a performance, the character
in the script passes through the prism of the actor, and so becomes col-
ored 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 tech-
nical 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
198 C. BARON
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 spontane-
ously 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 spontane-
ously 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 connec-
tions between art and society, and to show ways that even contemporary
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 concep-
tion 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 pro-
ductions of Men in White (1934) and Golden Boy (1937).
Students at the Lab studied voice, diction, and dramatic interpreta-
tion 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 dia-
lect 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 black-
listed 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,
200 C. BARON
John Garfield, and Orson Welles exchanged ideas with students and fac-
ulty 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 some-
times 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 pro-
fessional 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 mem-
bers 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 explain-
ing 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 tal-
ents 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 produc-
tion 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 essen-
tially 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:
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 mov-
ies.”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
202 C. BARON
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 vulner-
able 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 anti-
communists 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 immedi-
ate 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 con-
cern,” because “the major studios [were] paying weekly fees to the Lab
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 anticommu-
nist 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 observ-
ers, 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 vet-
eran 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 commu-
nism 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 numer-
ous communist affiliations, Carlson tells readers that the “list of sponsors
and directors of the Actors Laboratory comprises a representative cross-
section 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
204 C. BARON
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 pat-
tern 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 con-
tributed 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 follow-
ing the October 1947 HUAC hearings. Valorizing the early Democratic-
Republican Party led by Thomas Jefferson, Declaration claimed the moral
high ground for twentieth-century individuals who challenged political

organizations that appealed to domestic security concerns as a way to dis-
credit 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 com-
munist 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 com-
munist front); and Bohnen had performed a monologue at the Soto-
Michigan 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 cita-
tions 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 inci-
dents to castigate. A passing moment in which African American actress
Dorothy Dandridge and light-skinned Hispanic actor Anthony Quinn
206 C. BARON
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 “evi-
dence” that the Lab was a front for communism: (a) the four people sub-
poenaed 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 sta-
tus.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 produc-
tion 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,
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
208 C. BARON
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 train-
ing 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 cre-
ated 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 specu-
late, 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
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.
210 C. BARON
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 orga-
nization 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 per-
formance 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 exer-
cises, 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).
Collection.
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 reorgani-
zation 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 hus-
band, 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
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
212 C. BARON
Drama School File, Warner Bros. Collection, University of Southern

California.
21. Hollywood Reporter and Los Angeles Times 1945 articles, Actors’ Laboratory
22. 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 intro-
duced 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, recom-
mending 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 emo-
tion through his own behavior—for example, by spitting at an actor. See
J. L. Styan, Max Reinhardt (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1982).
23. “Workshop Report: August 18, 1946,” Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated
Collection.
24. Ibid.
25. Qtd. in Joe Collura, “William Phipps: Staying the Course,” Classic Images
(October 2014): 74.
26. “Statement of Policy,” Box 3, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection.
28. “Constitution,” Box 3, Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection.
29. “Actors’ Laboratory Meeting: December 8, 1941,” Box 3, Actors’
30. Salvi, “The History of the Actors’ Laboratory,” 40.
31. Ibid.
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 act-
ing” (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 pro-
spectus; 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’
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 charac-
ter in the script when players expand their “souls” and develop the supple-
ness 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
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. “Suggestions for Fall Curricula: May 14, 1942,” Actors’ Laboratory
43. Leo Penn, “Stanislavski and a Ten Day Shooting,” Box 9, Actors’
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.
214 C. BARON
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 sat-
ire on nineteenth-century Russia. Roman Bohnen, Bill Watts, Phil Brown,
Morris Carnovsky, and J. Edward Bromberg helped facilitate communica-
tion due to Chekhov’s limited English. The production did not enjoy criti-
cal 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.
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 tran-
scripts also provide a more complete picture than offered by the summary
in the Tenney Committee’s 1948 report.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 indi-
cate 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

220 C. BARON
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 distinc-
tion, 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 train-
ing 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 perfor-
mances. She points out that the limited time for on-set rehearsal meant
more, not less, individual labor for actors. Burns notes that while journal-
ists 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
MODERN ACTING: STAGE AND SCREEN 221
In addition, (stage) actors working in studio-era Hollywood had to cre-

ate pitch-perfect performances in intense dramatic scenes, often without
interacting with fellow actors in advance or in the actual scene. To illus-
trate 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 explo-
ration 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 concentrat-
ing 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 perform-
ing,” for actors who used Modern acting strategies to build characteriza-
tions, producing emotion was not seen as a major obstacle to overcome.16
Like Stanislavsky, actors acquainted with Modern acting found that emo-
tions 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
222 C. BARON
Craig were recognized as major forces behind the new stagecraft move-
ment. 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 indepen-
dent producers (Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick), but it was primarily
a studio-producer system, with each season’s production schedule orga-
nized 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, inter-
views 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 behind-
the-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
Fig. 11.1 George Cukor and Katharine Hepburn engage each other in discus-
sion 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 improvi-
sations involving pantomimed sense-memory exercises had initially helped
actors deliver performances suited to theatre productions informed by
224 C. BARON
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
of their vocal expressions to suit specific frame selections. Rather than

describing, as theorist Walter Benjamin suggests, an inexplicable empti-
ness 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 inti-
mately visible by minute contractions of a muscle.”22 As Actors’ Lab mem-
ber 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 per-
sonal feelings being captured on film, but instead emerged from physi-
cal 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-
226 C. BARON
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 study-
ing 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, any-
thing 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 audi-
ences and lead them to feel like “they were thinking along with” the char-
acter.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 light-
ing 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,
necessarily (and sometimes inadvertently) convey the thoughts and emo-

tions 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 por-
trayed, 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 nec-
essary 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 dis-
torted 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 perfor-
mances 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
228 C. BARON
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 perfor-
mance, 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 inflec-
tions and qualities of voice suited to a characterization by relying on an
external approach to character. Instead, articulating a central Modern act-
ing 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,
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 vocabu-
lary, 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 defi-
nite.”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 prob-
able life of the character can the performer portray any section of that life
properly.”56 The mental pictures must capture the actor’s deep, sympa-
thetic understanding of the character’s mistakes, stupidities, and “love-
able 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 con-
veyed the subtext of a character’s interactions is quite telling, for it high-
lights 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 sup-
posed to know how to break down a script to identify a character’s given
circumstances, problems, and actions. In addition to “scoring” the inner
230 C. BARON
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 con-
vey 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 pre-
cept, Dillon explains that intensive script analysis is the key to understand-
ing 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 produc-
tion 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
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 interpre-
tation of the script and character; (b) an actor’s highly developed ability to
232 C. BARON
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 some-
where; 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 connec-
tion 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
details about characters’ stories involved a thoughtful process of entering

into their world.
Like other Modern acting teachers, Albertson recognizes that perfor-
mances 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 mem-
bers 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 perfor-
mances 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 perform-
ers (through voice, body, and improvisational sense-memory work). For
modern actors, this process has nothing to do with breaking down psy-
chological inhibitions or mining personal experience for emotional trig-
gers, 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 limita-
tions. It also allows performers to discover how they might give new life
to a character that has been portrayed many times or seems quite conven-
tional 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
234 C. BARON
character with a candid assessment of how they can best embody that char-
acter. 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 charac-
terizations, 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 char-
acter 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 per-
formance; it is the distillation of the role into a coherent entity that audi-
ences 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 analy-
sis 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
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 concen-
trating 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 maga-
zine 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 con-
centrating 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 com-
pleted.91 Discussing this process, Albertson points out that “as your pow-
ers 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
236 C. BARON
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 produc-
tion 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 feel-
ings. 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 perfor-
mances 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 mood-
patterns and voice-patterns embedded in mental pictures constructed dur-
ing individual preparation, are “much surer and far less wearing on the
nervous system.”100
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 cre-
ate 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 strate-
gies 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 iden-
tify 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 por-
trayed.”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 pro-
duction 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
238 C. BARON
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 char-
acter’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 (physi-
cal 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 gen-
eral 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.
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.
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 pro-
cess,” Hepburn explains: “I have the script on my mind for weeks, some-
times 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
21. Ibid.
22. “Acting for Motion Pictures,” Theatre Today c. 1947, Actors’ Laboratory
Incorporated Collection. Special Collections Department. University of
240 C. BARON
23. Leo Penn, “Stanislavski and a Ten Day Shooting,” Box 9, Actors’
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.
27. Ibid.
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
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.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid., 242.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid., 90.
60. 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).
1947), 103.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid., 22.
64. Ibid., 67.
65. Qtd. in McBride, Filmmakers on Filmmaking, 107.
67. Ibid.
68. Burns Sidney, Interview August 17, 1986.
69. Janet Leigh, Interview July 25, 1984, Performing Arts Oral History
70. Ibid.
71. Ibid.
73. Albertson, Motion Picture Acting, 65.
74. Ibid.
75. Course Outline for Veterans Administration, Box 5, Actors’ Laboratory
Incorporated Collection, Special Collections Department, University of
76. 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).
78. Course Outline for Veterans Administration, Box 5, Actors’ Laboratory
79. Ibid.
81. Ibid.
242 C. BARON
82. Morris Carnovsky, The Actor’s Eye (New York: Performing Arts Journal
Publications, 1984), 68.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid.
86. Jessica Tandy, Interview February 3, 1947, Box 9, Actors’ Laboratory
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.
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.
100. Ibid.
101. There might have also been actors who rejected the study and training
required by Modern acting.
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 gener-
ally 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 per-
forming 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 dia-
logue 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

244 C. BARON
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 tele-
vision. 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 produc-
ers. At the same time, the Supreme Court decision that allowed Roberto
Rossellini’s Il miracolo (1952) to be shown in New York moved concep-
tions of American cinema a step closer to auteur cinema, for its ruling deter-
mined 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 pub-
lic 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 opportu-
nity 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
THE LEGACY OF MODERN ACTING 245
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
246 C. BARON
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 replace-
ment. 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 visu-
alization exercises, where actors formed distinct mental pictures to build
characterizations, and on sense-memory exercises to increase their aware-
ness 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 devel-
opments were accompanied by an ostensive move from one set of acting
principles to another; whereas priorities in the 1930s and 1940s high-
lighted 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
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 ongo-
ing 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” emo-
tion 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 articu-
lated 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 them-
selves 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 inter-
pretation only after she could reference notes from her period of study
with Stanislavsky. That Adler needed to cite Stanislavsky directly is signifi-
cant, 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 self-
appointed 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-
248 C. BARON
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 high-
light and, at the same time, disown his affiliation with Stanislavsky, foster-
ing 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 experi-
ences 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 con-
tinues 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 fos-
ter research that could continue to disentangle them from Strasberg’s
Method. Recognizing distinctions between Modern and Method act-
ing 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-
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 uncompromis-
ing 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 promi-
nence 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 suit-
ability 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 portray-
als 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 conven-
tions. The scientific aura surrounding Strasberg made him an expert at a
250 C. BARON
time when America valued experts; as Warren Susman notes, “conscious-

ness 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-psy-
chology 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 conven-
tion, 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 prin-
ciples 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 act-
ing style, especially one valued for its association with sexy young white
American rebels. Modern acting teachers, working in self-imposed obscu-
rity 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 act-
ing approach. Moreover, Modern acting teachers did not see themselves as
the authors of a singularly “true” approach to acting, but instead as labor-
ing to articulate the insights of fellow actors, as consolidating and refining
a body of knowledge that had emerged as actors negotiated the complexi-
ties 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 profession-
als 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 melodra-
mas 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 fall-
ing 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.
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 design-
ers [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 the-
atre 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 scru-
tiny—by HUAC, the California State Senate Fact-Finding Committee on
Un-American Activities led by Jack Tenney, and the entertainment indus-
try’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 ten-
sions, 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-
252 C. BARON
ers, apolitical Lee Strasberg and friendly witness Elia Kazan would rise to
prominence, riding the wave of Method acting’s association with authen-
tic 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 anticom-
munists 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 ques-
tion 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 compari-
son, 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 mem-
bers 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 atten-
tion 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 retrospec-
tively and in light of various cultural values. In popular American culture,
Method acting is valued as style, and it retains associations with authen-
tic 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.
Endorsing the rhetoric of Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg in the 1950s,
Method proponent Steve Vineberg suggests that the Method style res-
onates with the American public because it seems to capture “a natu-
ral 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 contrast-
ing 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 com-
mercial commodities and credentialed signs of American freedom.
The language that bound Method style to “uniquely American” val-
ues of freedom, vitality, and personal expression created such a power-
ful admixture that the public image of white actors who portray angry
young men continues to be absorbed into and mobilized by the rheto-
ric 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
254 C. BARON
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 thought-
ful, artistic, professional acting, despite contemporary actors’ recogni-
tion 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 perfor-
mance.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 subse-
quent decades, the “relationship between the teacher/director and the
student/actor” in Method training has been seen as marred by “manipu-
lation 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 dra-
mas to blockbuster spectacles; from disparate theatrical venues to various
platforms for screen performance; and from naturalistic dramas, with char-
acters shaped by social environments and personal histories, to postmod-
ern 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 act-
ing has led to a veritable explosion in Americans’ mediatized performance
of self, with YouTube serving as one of many delivery systems. Strasberg’s
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 under-
standing a character’s overall objective, his/her objective in a scene, and
obstacles to those objectives—and then introduces the idea of substitu-
tions. 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 build-
ing characterizations.31 Echoing that point, Scott Sedita argues that while
sitcom actors should know how to use personal substitutions, script analy-
sis 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 perfor-
mance. 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 under-
standing “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
256 C. BARON
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 char-
acter must be justified by growing directly out of the needs of the charac-
ter.”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 creat-
ing characters different from oneself have become vital to CGI animators,
who build characterizations through the visual depiction of intention-
laden 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 perfor-
mance 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
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 teleologi-
cal. I recognize that in mid-twentieth-century America, after the tremen-
dous 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 prin-
ciples 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 last-
ing 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 charac-
terizations 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 act-
ing 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
258 C. BARON
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).
2. Lab members found a way to use the name in publicity for their last pro-
duction 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.
3. David Cook, A History of Narrative Film, 4th ed. (New York: Norton,
1996), 513.
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.
5. 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.
6. See David Chesney, Interview with Cynthia Baron August 21, 2015.
According to Warren’s son David Chesney, she worked with contract play-
ers 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,
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).
7. 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.
8. Patrick McGilligan, Clint: The Life and Legend (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2002), 79, 88.
9. Lee Strasberg, A Dream of Passion: The Development of the Method, ed.
Evangeline Morphos (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1987), 6.
10. Warren Susman, Culture and Commitment (New York: Braziller, 1973), 9.
13. Ibid., 47.
14. Between 1947 and 1957, Broadway mounted a limited number of produc-
tions, 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 oper-
ation 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 sea-
son 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 non-
profit, 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 out-
side New York, and casting for Broadway shows favored established players
(207, 168).
15. Poggi, Theater in America, 159–161.
16. 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).
17. Greg Rickman, “Review of Three Generations of Film Actors,” Film
Quarterly (Fall 1992): 43. See Harold Clurman, The Fervent Years: The
260 C. BARON
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).
18. Laurence Senelick, “Introduction,” in Theatre Arts on Acting, ed. Laurence
Senelick (New York: Routledge, 2008), xviii.
19. Ibid.
20. 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).
Tradition (New York: Schirmer, 1991), xii.
22. Clement Greenberg, The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 2: Arrogant
Purpose, 1945–1949, ed. John O’Brian (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1986), 166.
23. Peter Wollen, Raiding the Icebox: Reflections on Twentieth-Century Culture
(New York: Verso, 2008), 101.
24. 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.
25. Jacques Lecoq, “Theatre of Gesture and Image,” in The Intercultural
Performance Reader, ed. Patrice Pavis (New York: Routledge, 1996), 142.
27. Ibid., 18.
28. Richard Hornby, The End of Acting: A Radical View (New York: Applause,
1992), 9.
29. Jacob Gallagher-Ross, “Image Eaters: Big Art Group Brings the Noise,”
TDR: The Drama Review (Winter 2010): 54.
30. Scott Sedita, The Eight Characters of Comedy: A Guide to Sitcom Acting
and Writing, 2nd ed. (Los Angeles: Atides, 2014), 23.
31. Ivana Chubbuck, The Power of the Actor: The Chubbuck Technique (New
York: Gotham Books, 2004), v.
32. Sedita, The Eight Characters of Comedy, 322.
33. Ibid.
34. Robert Benedetti, Action! Acting for Film and Television (Boston: Allyn
and Bacon, 2001), 77.
35. Ibid., 71.
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 Strasberg Green 91
1931– Strasberg Gorelik Siftons 12
Night over Taos Strasberg Anderson 13
1932–1933
Success Story Strasberg Gorelik Lawson 121
Big Night Crawford Gorelik Powell 7
1933–1934
Men in White Strasberg Gorelik Kingsley 351
Gentlewoman Strasberg Gorelik Lawson 12
1934–1935
Gold Eagle Guy Strasberg Oenslager Levy 65
Awake and Sing! Clurman Aronson Odets 184
Waiting for Lefty and Odets/ Odets 144
Till the Day I Die Meisner
1935–1936
Weep for the Virgins Crawford Aronson Child 9
(continued)

C. Baron, Modern Acting, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-40655-2
264 APPENDIX: GROUP THEATRE, ALFRED LUNT, AND KATHARINE CORNELL ...
(continued)
Paradise Lost Clurman Aronson Odets 73

Case of Clyde Griffiths Strasberg Barratt Piscator 19
1936–1937
Johnny Johnson Strasberg Oenslager Green 68
1937–1938
Golden Boy Clurman Gorelik Odets 250
Casey Jones Kazan Gorelik Ardrey 25
1938–1939
Rocket to the Moon Clurman Gorelik Odets 131
The Gentle People Clurman Aronson Shaw 141
1939–1940
My Heart’s in the Lewis Andrews Saroyan 44
Highland
Thunder Rock Kazan Gorelik Ardrey 23
Night Music Clurman Gorlelik Odets 20
1940–1941
Retreat to Pleasure Clurman Oenslager Shaw 23
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 129
Idiot’s Delight 300
1937–1938
Amphitryon 38 153
The Seagull 41
1939–1940
There Shall Be No 115
Night
1940–1941
There Shall Be No Night 66
APPENDIX: GROUP THEATRE, ALFRED LUNT, AND KATHARINE CORNELL ... 265
(continued)
Productions Featuring Katharine Cornell
1932–1933
Lucrece 31
Alien Corn 98
1933–1934
Jezebel 32
1934–1935
Romeo and Juliet 77
The Barretts of Wimpole 24 (revival:
Street 1931
production,
370
performances)
Flowers of the Forest 40
1935–1936
Romeo and Juliet 15
Saint Joan 89
1936–1937
The Wingless Victory 110
Candida 50
1938–1939
No Time for Comedy 185
1940–1941
The Doctor’s Dilemma 121
BIBLIOGRAPHY
“Acting Program.” School of Theater, California Institute of the Arts. Accessed

January 23, 2016, https://theater.calarts.edu/programs/acting.
“Actors and Actresses Training to 1959.” Clipping File. Margaret Herrick Library.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, CA.
Actors’ Laboratory Incorporated Collection. Special Collections Department.
University of California, Los Angeles.
Adams, Julie. Interview July 19, 1984. Performing Arts Oral History Collection.
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX.
Adler, Stella. The Technique of Acting. New York: Bantam Books, 1988.
Aikman, Duncan. “Broadway Finds a Home in Hollywood.” New York Times,
September 9, 1929.
Albertson, Lillian. Motion Picture Acting. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1947.
Alexander, Diane. Playhouse. Los Angeles: Dorleac-MacLeish, 1984.
Allen, John. “Seventy-Five Years of the American Academy.” New York Herald
Tribune, December 6, 1959.
Anderson, Margaret. Thinking about Women. New York: Macmillan, 1985.
Astor, Mary. A Life on Film. New York: Delacorte, 1971.
Atkins, Thomas R. “Troubled Sexuality in the Popular Hollywood Feature.” In
Sexuality in the Movies, edited by Thomas R. Atkins, 109–131. New York: Da
Capo, 1975.
Badley, Linda, Claire Perkins, and Michele Schreiber, eds. Indie Reframed: Women
Filmmakers and Contemporary American Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2016.

268 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Banks, Miranda J. “Gender Below-the-Line: Defining Feminist Production

Studies.” In Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries, edited by
Vicki Mayer, Miranda J. Banks, and John Thornton Caldwell, 87–98. New York:
Routledge, 2009.
Bari, Lynn. Interview August 18, 1986. Performing Arts Oral History Collection.
“Barker on Stanislofsky (sic).” New York Times, March 21, 1915.
Baron, Cynthia. “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, edited by Adrienne L. McLean and David A. Cook, 143–162. New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001.
———. “The Modern Entertainment Marketplace, 2000 to the Present.” In
Acting, edited by Claudia Springer and Julie Levinson, 143–167. New
———. “Stanislavsky’s Terms for Script Analysis: Vocabulary for Analyzing
Performances.” Journal of Film and Video 65:4 (Winter 2013): 29–41.
———. “Suiting up for Postmodern Performance in The Killer.” In More than a
Method: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary Film Performance, edited by
Cynthia Baron, Diane Carson, and Frank P. Tomasulo, 297–329. Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 2004.
Baron, Cynthia, and Beckett Warren. “The Actors Studio in the Early Cold War.”
In American Film History: Selected Readings: Origins to 1960, edited by Cynthia
Lucia, Roy Grundmann, and Art Simon, 471–485. Malden, MA: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2016.
Baron, Cynthia, and Sharon Marie Carnicke. Reframing Screen Performance. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008.
Barrett, Edward L. The Tenney Committee: Legislative Investigation of Subversive
Activities in California. New York: Cornell University Press, 1951.
Behlmer, Rudy. Memo from Darryl F. Zanuck: The Golden Years of Twentieth
Century-Fox. New York: Grove Press, 1993.
Bellamy, Ralph. Interview May 18, 1977. Performing Arts Oral History Collection.
Benedetti, Jean. An Actor’s Work. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Benedetti, Robert. Action! Acting for Film and Television. Boston: Allyn and
Bacon, 2001.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In
Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, 217–251. New York: Harcourt,
Brace and World, 1968.
Bial, Henry. Acting Jewish: Negotiating Ethnicity on the American Stage and
Screen. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
Black, Gregory. Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 269
Blair, Rhonda. “Editor’s Introduction.” In Acting: The First Six Lessons: Documents
from the American Laboratory Theatre, edited by Rhonda Blair, ix–xxvi.
New York: Routledge, 2010.
Bohnen, Roman. Roman Bohnen Papers, 1918–1976. Billy Rose Theatre Division.
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, New York.
Boleslavsky, Richard. “Boleslavsky Lectures from the American Laboratory
Theatre.” In Acting: The First Six Lessons: Documents from the American
Laboratory Theatre, edited by Rhonda Blair, 121–179. New York: Routledge,
2010.
———. “The ‘Creative Theatre’ Lectures.” In Acting: The First Six Lessons:
Documents from the American Laboratory Theatre, edited by Rhonda Blair,
65–120. New York: Routledge, 2010.
———. “Fundamentals of Acting.” Theatre Arts (February 1927). Reprinted in
Theatre Arts on Acting, edited by Laurence Senelick, 236–242. New York:
Routledge, 2008.
Bosworth, Patricia. Montgomery Clift: A Biography. New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1978.
Brando, Marlon. “Foreword.” In The Technique of Acting, by Stella Adler, 1–2.
New York: Bantam Books, 1988.
———. Songs My Mother Taught Me. New York: Random House, 1994.
Bricker, Herschel Leonard, ed. Our Theatre Today: A Composite Handbook on the
Art, Craft, and Management of the Contemporary Theatre. New York: Samuel
French, 1936.
Briskin, Sam. “Training Talent for the Movies.” Literary Digest (January 30,
1937): 23.
Brown, Gilmor, and Alice Garwood. General Principles of Play Direction. Los
Angeles: Samuel French, 1936.
Burns Sidney, Lillian. Interview August 17, 1986. Performing Arts Oral History
Collection. Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX.
Burns Sidney, Lillian, and George Sidney. Interview 1945. Gladys Hall Collection.
Margaret Herrick Library. Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences,
Beverly Hills, CA.
Callahan, Vicki, ed. Reclaiming the Archive: Feminism and Film History. Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 2010.
Calvert, Louis. Problems of the Actor. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1938.
Carlson, Oliver. “The Communist Record in Hollywood.” American Mercury
(February 1948): 135–143.
Carnicke, Sharon Marie. “Emotional Expressivity in Motion Picture Capture
Technology.” In Acting and Performance in Moving Image Culture: Bodies,
Screens, Renderings, edited by Jörg Sternagel, Deborah Levitt, and Dieter
Mersch, 321–337. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2012.
270 BIBLIOGRAPHY
———. “Lee Strasberg’s Paradox of the Actor.” In Screen Acting, edited by Alan
Lovell and Peter Krämer, 75–87. New York: Routledge, 1999.
———. Stanislavsky in Focus: An Acting Master for the Twenty-First Century. 2nd
ed. New York: Routledge, 2009.
Carnovsky, Morris, with Peter Sanders. The Actor’s Eye. New York: Performing
Arts Journal Publications, 1984.
Casper, Drew. Postwar Hollywood 1946–1962. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing,
2007.
“Casting Audible Pictures.” New York Times, June 9, 1929.
Ceplair, Larry, and Steven Englund. The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the
Film Community, 1930–1960. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
Chapman, James, Mark Glancy, and Sue Harper. “Introduction.” In The New Film
History: Sources, Methods, Approaches, edited by James Chapman, Mark Glancy,
and Sue Harper, 1–10. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Cheney, Sheldon. The Theatre: Three Thousand Years of Drama, Acting, and
Stagecraft. New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1929.
Chesney, David. Interview with Cynthia Baron August 21, 2015.
Chinoy, Helen Krich. The Group Theatre: Passion, Politics, and Performance in the
Depression Era. Edited by Don B. Wilmeth and Milly S. Barranger. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
———. “Introduction: Art versus Business: The Role of Women in American
Theatre.” In Women in American Theatre, 2nd ed., edited by Helen Krich
Chinoy and Linda Walsh Jenkins, 1–9. New York: Theatre Communications
Group, 1987.
Chubbuck, Ivana. The Power of the Actor: The Chubbuck Technique. New York:
Gotham Books, 2004.
Cima, Gay Gibson. Performing Women: Female Characters, Male Playwrights, and
the Modern Stage. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993.
Clurman, Harold. The Fervent Years: The Story of the Group Theatre and the
Thirties. Rev. ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.
Cole, Toby. “Acknowledgments.” In Acting: A Handbook of the Stanislavski
Method. Rev. ed., edited by Toby Cole, 9. New York: Bantam Books, 1955.
Cole, Toby and Helen Krich Chinoy. “Minnie Maddern Fiske.” In Actors on
Acting, edited by Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy, 584. New York: Crown,
1970.
Collura, Joe. “William Phipps: Staying the Course.” Classic Images (October
2014): 74–81.
Colman, Juliet Benita. Ronald Colman: A Very Private Person. New York: William
Morrow, 1975.
Cook, David A. A History of Narrative Film. 4th ed. New York: Norton, 1996.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 271
Cooper, Maudie Prickett. Interview with Bernard Galm June 13, June 16, July 5,
and July 18, 1973. University of California, Los Angeles, Oral History
Collection. Transcripts 1982.
Cornea, Christine, ed. Genre and Performance: Film and Television. New York:
Manchester University Press, 2010.
Cronyn, Hume. “Notes on Film Acting.” Theatre Arts 35 (June 1949): 45–48.
———. A Terrible Liar: A Memoir. New York: William Morrow, 1991.
Cukor, George. Interview 1966. Ralph Freud Collection. University of California,
Los Angeles.
D’Angelo, Aristide. The Actor Creates. New York: Samuel French, 1941.
Davis, Bette. Interview July 28, 1966. Ralph Freud Collection. University of
———. “On Acting in Films.” Theatre Arts 25 (September 1946): 633–639.
Davis, Ronald L. The Glamour Factory: Inside Hollywood’s Big Studio System.
Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1993.
Dickens, Homer. “The American Academy of Dramatic Arts.” Films in Review
(December 1959): 597–598.
Dillon, Josephine. Modern Acting: A Guide for Stage, Screen and Radio. New York:
Prentice-Hall, 1940.
Douglas, Kirk. The Ragman’s Son: An Autobiography. New York: Pocket Books,
1988.
“Drama School File.” Warner Bros. Collection. Cinema-Television Library.
University of Southern California.
“Dramatic Art Class of 70 Is Graduated.” New York Times, March 15, 1938.
“Dramatic Arts School Graduates 44 Pupils.” New York Times, March 17, 1931.
Drummond, Alexander Magnus. A Manual of Play Production. New York:
New York State College of Agriculture, 1937
Eaton, Walter Prichard. “Acting and the New Stagecraft.” Theatre Arts (November
1916). Reprinted in Theatre Arts on Acting, edited by Laurence Senelick, 3–5.
———. “From Stage to Screen and Back.” New York Times, January 28, 1934.
“Eva Le Gallienne, Actress, Is Dead at 92.” New York Times, June 5, 1991.
Fiske, Minnie Maddern. “Excerpt from: Her Views on Actors, Acting, and the
Problems of Production; as Told to Alexander Woollcott.” In Actors on Acting,
edited by Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy, 584–587. New York, Crown
Publishers, 1970.
Funke, Lewis, and John E. Booth. Actors Talk about Acting. London: Thames and
Hudson, 1961.
Gallagher-Ross, Jacob. “Image Eaters: Big Art Group Brings the Noise.” TDR:
The Drama Review 54:4 (Winter 2010): 54–80.
Garfield, David. The Actors Studio: A Player’s Place. New York: Macmillan, 1984.
272 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gewirtz, Arthur, and James. J. Kolb, eds. Art, Glitter, and Glitz: Mainstream
Playwrights and Popular Theatre in 1920s America. Westport, CT: Praeger,
2004.
Giovacchini, Saverio. Hollywood Modernism: Film and Politics in the Age of the New
Deal. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001.
Gordon, Mel. Stanislavsky in America. New York: Routledge, 2009.
Gould, Eleanor Cody. “Jehlinger in Rehearsal: Notes Transcribed from Classes
1918–1952.” Copyright Eleanor Cody Gould 1958, copyright American
Academy of Dramatic Arts 1968. American Academy of Dramatic Arts Papers,
New York.
Graver, David. “The Actor’s Bodies.” Text and Performance Quarterly 17:3
(1997): 221–235.
Greenberg, Clement. The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 2: Arrogant
Purpose, 1945–1949, edited by John O’Brian. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1986.
Hale, Barbara. Interview July 19, 1984. Performing Arts Oral History Collection.
Hayes, Derek, and Chris Webster. Acting and Performance for Animation.
New York: Focal Press, 2013.
Heath, Stephen. Questions of Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1981.
Heffner, Hubert Crouse. Modern Theatre Practice: A Handbook of Play Production.
New York: F. S. Crofts, 1936.
Henderson, Archibald. The Changing Drama: Contributions and Tendencies.
Cincinnati: Stewart and Kidd, 1919.
Hill, Erin. “Recasting the Casting Director: Managed Change, Gendered Labor.”
In Making Media Work: Cultures of Management in the Entertainment
Industries, edited by Derek Johnson, Derek Kompare, and Avi Santo, 142–
164. New York: New York University Press, 2014.
Hinson, Hal. “Some Notes on Method Actors.” Sight and Sound (Summer 1984):
200–205.
Hirsh, Foster. A Method to Their Madness: The History of the Actors Studio.
New York: Da Capo, 2001.
Hobart, Rose. A Steady Digression to a Fixed Point. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow
Press, 1994.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human
Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.
Hodge, Alison, ed. Actor Training. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Hohman, Valleri J. Russian Culture and Theatrical Performance in America,
1891–1933. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Hooks, Ed. Acting for Animators. 3rd ed. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2011.
———. Acting Strategies for the Cyber Age. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2001.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 273
Hornby, Richard. The End of Acting: A Radical View. New York: Applause, 1992.
Hunt, Marsha. Interview August 12, 1983. Performing Arts Oral History
“Inside U-I: A Scene the Movie Fans Didn’t See.” Universal-International, 1953
press release photo documentation, Photofest Inc., New York.
Jameson, Storm. Modern Drama in Europe. London: W. Collins Sons & Co.,
1920.
Jones, Angie, and Jamie Oliff. Thinking Animation: Bridging the Gap between 2D
and CG. Boston: Thomson, 2007.
Kanfer, Stefan. A Journal of the Plague Years. New York: Antheneum, 1973.
Kates, Bernard. Letter to Frances Fuller, May 1, 1956. American Academy of
Dramatic Arts Papers, New York.
Kessler-Harris, Alice. Out to Work. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
King, Claude. “The Place of the Actor in ‘the New Movement.’” Theatre Arts
(November 1922). Reprinted in Theatre Arts on Acting, edited by Laurence
Senelick, 6–9. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Kirby, Michael. “On Acting and Not-Acting.” In Acting (Re)Considered: Theories
and Practices, 2nd ed., edited by Phillip B. Zarilli, 40–52. New York: Routledge,
2002.
Kirkwood, Jim. “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.
Krapp, George Philip. The Pronunciation of Standard English in America.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1919.
Kundert-Gibbs, John, and Kristin Kundert-Gibbs. Action! Acting Lessons for CG
Animators. Indianapolis: Wiley, 2009.
Langer, Lawrence. “Students at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts Are
Told: Mean More Than You Say.” Theatre Arts (July 1953): 28–29.
Lecoq, Jacques. “Theatre of Gesture and Image.” In The Intercultural Performance
Reader, edited by Patrice Pavis, 140–143. New York: Routledge, 1996.
Leigh, Janet. Interview July 25, 1984. Performing Arts Oral History Collection.
Leslie, Joan. Interview August 13, 1984. Performing Arts Oral History Collection.
Levine, Lawrene. Highbrow Lowbrow. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1988.
Lewis, Robert. Slings and Arrows: Theater in My Life. New York: Stein and Day,
1984.
Loughton Seaton, Phyllis. Interview July 22, 1979. Performing Arts Oral History
Malague, Rosemary. An Actress Prepares: Women and “the Method.” New York:
Routledge, 2012.
274 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mayo, Virginia. Interview November 30, 1973. Performing Arts Oral History
McBride, Joseph. Filmmakers on Filmmaking: The American Film Institute
Seminars on Motion Pictures and Television: Volume Two. Los Angeles: Tarcher
Press, 1983.
McClelland, Doug. Forties Film Talk. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1992.
McConachie, Bruce. American Theater in the Culture of the Cold War: Producing
and Contesting Containment, 1947–1962. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press,
2005.
———. “Method Acting and the Cold War.” Theatre Survey 41:1 (May 2000):
47–67.
McGilligan, Patrick. Clint: The Life and Legend. New York: St. Martin’s Press,
2002.
McGilligan, Patrick and Paul Buhle, eds. Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the
Hollywood Blacklist. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.
McTeague, James H. Before Stanislavsky: American Professional Acting Schools and
Acting Theory, 1875–1925. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1993.
Milkman, Ruth. Gender at Work. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987.
Mizruchi, Susan L. Brando’s Smile: His Life, Thought, and Work. New York: W. W.
Norton, 2014.
Mordden, Ethan. The American Theatre. New York: Oxford University Press,
1981.
Morley, Sheridan. Tales from the Hollywood Raj: The British, the Movies and
Tinseltown. New York: Viking Press, 1983.
Mukarovský, Jan. Structure, Sign, and Function: Selected Essays by Jan Mukarovský.
Translated and edited by John Burbank and Peter Steiner. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1978.
Murphy, Brenda. American Realism and American Drama, 1880–1940. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Muscio, Giuliana. Hollywood’s New Deal. Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1997.
Naremore, James. Acting in the Cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1988.
———. The Magic World of Orson Welles. Dallas: Southern Methodist University
Press, 1989.
Navasky, Victor S. Naming Names. 3rd ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 2003.
Noske, Kay. “Lela Rogers: Mrs. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” Movie Star Makeover,
June 28, 2011, http://moviestarmakeover.blogspot.com/2011/06/mrs-
rogers-neighborhood.html.
O’Brien, Pat. Interview February 2, 1975. Performing Arts Oral History
Oller, John. Jean Arthur: The Actress Nobody Knew. New York: Limelight, 1997.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 275
Ouspensakaya, Maria. Maria Ouspenskaya Collection. Special Collections

Department. University of California, Los Angeles.
———. “Notes on Acting with Maria Ouspensakaya.” In Acting: The First Six
Lessons: Documents from the American Laboratory Theatre, edited by Rhonda
Blair, 181–206. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Parish, James Robert, with Alvin H. Marill. The Cinema of Edward G. Robinson.
New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1972.
Pasadena Playhouse Collection. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.
Poggi, Jack. Theater in America: The Impact of Economic Forces, 1870–1967.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968.
Postlewait, Thomas. “The Idea of Hollywood in Recent Theatre Autobiographies.”
In The American Stage: Social and Economic Issues from the Colonial Period to
the Present, edited by Ron Engle and Tice L. Miller, 235–251. New York:
Powell, William. “Personal Quotes.” Internet Movie Database. Accessed January
24, 2016, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001635/bio.
Prickett, Oliver. 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.
Pullen, Kirsten. Like a Natural Woman: Spectacular Female Performance in
Classical Hollywood. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014.
Quinn, Michael L. The Semiotic Stage: Prague School Theater Theory. New York:
Peter Lang, 1995.
Raymond, Gerard. “125 Years and Counting: The American Academy of Dramatic
Arts Celebrates a Special Anniversary.” Backstage (November 26/December 2,
2009): 6–7.
Reinelt, Janelle G., and Joseph R. Roach, eds. Critical Theory and Performance.
Rev. ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007.
Rickman, Greg. “Review of Three Generations of Film Actors.” Film Quarterly
46:1 (Fall 1992): 43–44.
Rippy, Marguerite H. “Commodity, Tragedy, Desire: Female Sexuality and
Blackness in the Iconography of Dorothy Dandridge.” In Classic Hollywood,
Classic Whiteness, edited by Daniel Bernardi, 178–209. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 2001.
Roach, Joseph. The Player’s Passion. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1996.
Roberts, Vera Mowry. “‘Lady-Managers’ in Nineteenth-Century American
Theatre.” In The American Stage: Social and Economic Issues from the Colonial
Period to the Present, edited by Ron Engle and Tice L. Miller, 30–46. New York:
Roddick, Nick. A New Deal in Entertainment. London: British Film Institute,
1983.
276 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Rosenstein, Sophie, Larrae A. Haydon, and Wilbur Sparrow. Modern Acting: A
Manual. New York: Samuel French, 1936.
Salvi, Delia Nora. “The History of the Actors’ Laboratory, Inc., 1941–1950.”
PhD Dissertation. University of California, Los Angeles, 1969.
Schatz, Thomas. The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio
Era. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1988.
Schroeder, Patricia R. The Presence of the Past in Modern Drama. Teaneck, NJ:
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1989.
Scott, Lizabeth. Interviews July 27, 1984, and May 30, 1985. Performing Arts
Oral History Collection. Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX.
Sedita, Scott. The Eight Characters of Comedy: A Guide to Sitcom Acting and
Writing. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Atides, 2014.
Selden, Samuel. First Steps in Acting. New York: F. S. Crofts, 1947.
Senelick, Laurence. “Introduction.” In Theatre Arts on Acting, edited by Laurence
Senelick, xiv-xvii. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Shanewise, Lenore. Interview with Bernard Galm March 27, March 28, April 17,
and April 18, 1974. Oral History Collection. University of California, Los
Angeles. Transcripts 1980.
Sheehy, Helen. Eva Le Gallienne: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.
Shingler, Martin. Star Studies: A Critical Guide. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2012.
———. When Warners Brought Broadway to Hollywood. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2017.
Shoup, Gail. “The Pasadena Community Playhouse: Its Origins and its History
from 1917 to 1942.” PhD dissertation. University of California, Los Angeles,
1968.
Skinner, Otis. “Acting for the Sound Film.” New York Times, January 25, 1931.
Smith, Wendy. Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931–1940.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
Spector, Susan and Steven Urkowitz. “Uta Hagen and Eva Le Gallienne.” In
Women in American Theatre. 2nd ed., edited by Helen Krich Chinoy and and
Linda Walsh Jenkins, 119–123. New York: Theatre Communications Group,
1987.
Strasberg, Lee. A Dream of Passion: The Development of the Method, Edited by
Evangeline Morphos. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1987.
———. “Introduction.” In Acting: A Handbook of the Stanislavski Method. Rev.
ed., edited by Toby Cole, 10–17. New York: Bantam Books, 1955.
Styan, J. L. Max Reinhardt. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Susman, Warren. Culture and Commitment. New York: Braziller, 1973.
“Talent School Files.” Universal-International Collection. Cinema-Television
Library, University of Southern California.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 277
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.
Tzioumakis, Yannis. American Independent Cinema: An Introduction. New
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.
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.
278 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Wollen, Peter. Raiding the Icebox: Reflections on Twentieth-Century Culture.

New York: Verso, 2008.
Wray, Anne MacLennan. Interview with Cynthia Baron July 20 and July 27, 1995.
Zolotow, Maurice. “The Stars Rise Here.” Saturday Evening Post 229:46 (May
18, 1957): 44–45, 83–84, 86, 88.
INDEX
A Acting style, xiv, xx, xxv, 41, 61, 66,

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and 70, 76, 81, 178, 199, 208–9,
Sciences, xxi 249, 250, 252, 253
Across the Board on Tomorrow Action, xvii, 17, 22–5, 27, 28, 31–3,
Morning, 80 52–5, 58, 74, 96–7, 101, 104–5,
Acting 114, 125, 144, 147–8, 162–3,
building characterizations, xiii–xv, 220, 255, 256
xxi, xxiii–xxiv, 10, 22–4, 26, as seen by Actors’ Laboratory,
31–4, 36, 41–2, 45–6, 49, 58, 49–52, 197
63, 75, 77, 100–1, 104, 126, as seen by studio drama coaches, xv,
144, 146, 162, 164, 171–4, 42–3, 46, 175, 176, 178, 221,
176, 178, 197, 199–224, 229–30, 232–6, 241
229–30, 234, 238, 246, 255–7 Actor
inspiration vs. technique, 19, 50, 73, 90 from a humanist vs. psychoanalytic
stage and screen, xxiv, 4–5, 7, perspective, xxi, 27, 31, 34, 53,
16–17, 104, 117–18, 165, 179, 100, 197, 246, 256
219–42, 254–6 guided by playwright’s vision, 22,
twenty-first century, xiii, xvi, xxi, 32, 55, 96, 97, 233
3–5, 170, 254–6 as mentor, 93, 172, 179–80
Acting experts, xxiii, 48, 53, 57, 171, opposing views of actor training, 20,
173, 181, 243, 250 24, 26, 29, 32–3, 41–2, 44, 55,
gender disparities, 79, 181, 184 58, 184, 196–7, 213, 238,
uncredited directors, 99, 173, 182 246–7, 254, 256–7
see also dialogue directors; drama as prism, 197, 213, 233
coaches Actors’ agency, 17, 52, 54, 229

280 INDEX
Actors’ Equity Association, 87 Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,

Actors’ Laboratory in Hollywood, The, 156
xviii, xxi, xxiii, xxiv, 41, 48, 53, Adventures of Superman, The, 157
93, 105, 189–215, 219, 225, Affective memory, 27–8
233, 235–7, 243, 244, 246, 249, Albert, Eddie, 103
250, 252 Alberti, Madame Eva, xvii, xxvii, 146
Cold War politics, 193, 201–9 Albertson, Lillian, x, xiv, xvii, xviii,
Group Theatre members, xiv, 48, xxiv, xxv, 8, 10, 12, 33, 171,
120, 190 230–8, 231, 248
social-political orientation, 189–96 Alice in Wonderland, 92
theatre productions, 64, 189, 192 Alison’s House, 92
war effort, 190, 191, 193, 202, 211 Al Jackson Players, 114
Actors’ Society of America, 87 All about Eve, 103, 166, 225
Actors Studio in New York, xvi, xxii, All My Sons, 71, 210
7–9, 33, 55, 70, 72–3, 76–80, 83, American Academy of Dramatic
191–2, 208–9, 244, 250, 251, Arts, x, xiv, xviii, xxiii, xxv, 48,
258, 259 80–1, 95, 113, 116, 123, 131,
Adams, Julie, 224, 258 137–53, 165, 168, 172, 192,
Adams, Maude, 118 200, 219, 237, 243, 244, 249,
Adam’s Rib, 223, 239 250, 252
Adler, Buddy, 166 actors associated with the Academy,
Adler, Jacob, 9, 66 137–42, 150
Adler, Luther, 9, 63, 64, 78, 120, 124, actor training program, 142–50
126, 127, 129, 130, 158 American acting history, xi, xiv,
Adler, Mortimer, 98 xvi–xvii, xx, xxiv, 6–9, 15, 33, 71,
Adler, Sara, 9 75, 76, 79, 81, 88, 113, 128,
Adler, Stella, ix, xvi, xxi, 9, 22, 26, 41, 148, 165, 168, 192, 199, 208,
52, 64, 64, 78, 119, 119, 129, 244, 248, 252, 257
248, 249 American Laboratory Theatre, xxi,
affiliation with Stanislavsky, xvii, 48, xxii, 6, 19, 26–8, 48, 49, 87,
71, 125, 247 97–9, 101, 107, 122, 124, 125,
American Laboratory Theatre, xxi, 193, 199, 247
98, 124 American Repertory Theatre,
confrontation with Lee Strasberg, 93, 200
xvi–xvii, 124–5, 247 Anderson, James, 194
Group Theatre, xxi, 122, 124, Anderson, Judith, 70
126, 127 Anderson, Maxwell, 62
mentor of Marlon Brando, 6, And Now Tomorrow, 179
77–80 Andrews, Dana, 80, 155, 157, 167
Modern acting teacher, xiv–xv, xxv, Angels with Dirty Faces, 113
xxvii, 22–3, 53, 87, 168, 219, Anna Christie, 112, 115
237, 248 Anne of Green Gables, 167
INDEX 281
Anticommunists, xx, 72, 193, 202, Barrymore, Ethel, 69, 88, 99, 118,
204, 244, 251, 252. See also 237
blacklist Barrymore, John, 88, 98, 99, 112,
Antoine, André, xxiv 179, 237
Antony and Cleopatra, 70, 155 leading actor of his era, 6–7, 83, 99,
Appia, Adolphe, 19, 21, 221 244
Applause, 117 Barrymore, Lionel, 88, 99
Archer, William, 145 Barrymore, Maurice, 66
Arch Street Theatre, 88 Barton Fink, 7
Arliss, George, 36, 68 Bataan, 156
Aronson, Boris, xiv, 63, 263, 264 Baxter, Anne, 103
Arthur, Jean, x, 222–4 Bear, The, 206
Arzner, Dorothy, 99 Beau Brummel, 179
Asher, Jerry, 166, 166 Beau Geste, 12
Astaire, Fred, xxviii, 10 Belasco Company, 173
Astor, Mary, 116, 179 Belasco, David, 222
Astor Place Riot, 66, 71 Bel Geddes, Barbara, 76
Auerbach, George, 98 Bel Geddes, Norman, xiv, 98, 172
Auntie Mame, 141 Bellamy, Ralph, 114
Auteur, 222, 244 Bell for Adano, A, 69, 202
Avery, Elizabeth, 161 Ben-Ami, Jacob, 65, 74, 101, 138
Awake and Sing!, ix, 9, 62–4, 64, 65, Benjamin, Walter, 220, 225
73, 118, 126, 201, 263 Berg, Gertrude, 145
Bergman, Ingrid, 237–8
Berkeley Square, 68
B Berman, Pandro, 177
Bacall, Lauren, 81, 137, 141 Bernhardt, Sarah, 118
Bad and the Beautiful, The, 7 Berry, John, 192
Baggett, Lynne, 193 Best Years of Our Lives, The, 155, 176
Baker, George Pierce, 98 Bewitched, 140
Ball, Lucille, x, 177, 177 Bible, 91, 100
Bancroft, Anne, 137 Bigger than Life, 158
Banjo Eyes, 176 Biggest Thief in Town, The, 208
Banker’s Daughter, The, 208, 210 Big Knife, The, 210
Bankhead, Tallulah, 69, 75 Big Lake, 98
Baright, Anna, 97 Big Night, 121, 263
Bari, Lynn, 172 Bill of Divorcement, A, 98, 239
Barker, Margaret, 123–5 Blacklist, 35, 64, 191, 192, 199, 204,
Barnes, Natalie, 211 205, 208, 211, 251, 252, 259,
Barr, Anthony, 210 260. See also anticommunists
Barretts of Wimpole Street, The, 70, Blackmer, Sidney, 76
265 Blanke, Henry, 212
282 INDEX
Blankfort, Henry, 211 Brando, Marlon, xxii, 6, 70, 71, 74,

Blinn, Holbrook, ix, 89, 90, 237 77–9, 81
Bliss Hayden School, 151 as exemplar of Method acting style,
Blondell, Joan, 118 6, 76–7, 78, 253–4
Blonde Venus, 67 opposition to Lee Strasberg, 78
Bloomgarden, Kermit, 127, training with Stella Adler, 6, 77–80
129, 130 Brand, Phoebe, xxii, 50, 64, 120, 122,
Blue Dahlia, The, 179 130, 190
Bob Cummings Show, The, 141 Actors’ Laboratory, 48, 49, 190,
Bogart, Humphrey, 114, 115, 130 192, 193, 210, 213
Bohnen, Roman (Bud), ix, x, xxii, Group Theatre, 64, 118, 124, 127,
120, 128, 130, 195, 200, 201, 129
207, 211, 215, 252 sense-memory workshop, 49, 51, 58
Actors’ Laboratory, xxiv, 48, 190–2, Brandt, Janet, 48
193, 200, 214 Brent, George, 116
death, 64, 206–8 Bridges, Lloyd, 191–3
Group Theatre, 63, 121–2, 123, Bringing up Baby, 222–3
125–7, 129, 130 British influence, xxii, 62, 65–9, 74,
response to The Fervent Years, 116–17, 254, 256–7
200–1 Anglo-Saxon actors and traditions,
Tenney Committee, 204–6, 252 70, 73, 80
Boleslavsky, Richard, xiv, xvii, 57, 99, Astor Place Riot, 66, 71
107, 111, 146, 162, 199 disparaged by Elia Kazan and Lee
American Laboratory Theatre, xxii, Strasberg, 71–3, 221
26, 27, 97–9 White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
Broadway productions, 98, 99 (WASP), 69–72, 80
Hollywood productions, 6, 13, 18, Broadway, xiii, xxvii, 62–3, 66, 69–71,
99, 116 74–7, 80–1, 92–3, 98–9, 222,
Modern acting views, 19, 99–101 237
Moscow Art Theatre, 6, 97 and Actors’ Laboratory in
vs. Lee Strasberg, 19, 99–101 Hollywood, 201, 205
Bonstelle, Jessie, 113, 114, 172 and American Academy of Dramatic
Boomerang, 76 Art, 145, 148
Booth, Edwin, 36, 88 as audition site and training ground,
Boroff, George, 210 xxii–xxiii, 115, 116, 131,
Boston College of Oratory, 96 138–42
Boucicault, Dion, 95, 146 Broadway–Hollywood connection,
Bowlby, Marguerite, 159 xxiii, xxv, 3–4, 6–7, 9, 10, 12,
Boyer, Charles, 99 102, 111–31
Bragin, J. George, 193 decline starting in 1920s, xx, 112,
Brand, Neville, 194 120, 122, 131, 208, 244,
Brando, Dorothy, 115 251, 259
INDEX 283
and Group Theatre, 118–31 California State Senate Fact-Finding

and Pasadena Playhouse, 156, 167, Committee on Un-American
168 Activities. See Tenney Committee
and studio drama coaches, 172, Calthrop, Gladys, 62
176, 230, 231, 246 Calvert, Louis, 146, 162–4
see also theatre Camille, 112
Brody, Adrien, 56 Candida, 70, 265
Bromberg, J. Edward, x, xxi, 93, 209, Cape Playhouse, 93, 114, 115
252 Capra, Frank, 13, 116, 130, 223
Actors’ Laboratory, 48–9, 190–2, Carlson, Oliver, 203
193 Carnovsky, Morris, x, xxii, 64, 83,
Group Theatre, 63–4, 118, 122, 120, 130, 139, 198, 234, 236
124, 214 Actors’ Laboratory, 48, 49, 54, 57,
Hollywood Theatre Alliance, 211 190, 192, 193, 197, 210, 213,
Tenney Committee, 204–6, 208 214
Brook, Clive, 67, 117 Group Theatre, 64, 122, 124, 126,
Brook, Peter, 26 127, 129
Brothers Karamazov, The, x, 139 Theatre Guild, 139, 190
Brown, Gilmor, x, xiv, xvii–xviii, 21, Caro, Jacobina, 49, 190, 191, 206,
80, 146, 158–62, 165, 219, 210, 211
243–4 Case of Clyde Griffiths, The, 121, 126,
Gilmor’s boys, 157–8, 167 127, 264
Modern acting views, xxiii, 21, Cassavetes, John, 137
162–5 Casting
Brown, Phil, 48, 192, 193, 214 casting directors, 7, 80, 88, 116,
Brown, Vanessa, 132 117, 122, 129, 140, 155, 165,
Bulgakov, Leo, 122 173, 178, 181–3, 254, 259
Bulldog Drummond, 11, 12, 68 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 76
Burlesque, 117, 202 Cavalcade, 68
Burns (Sidney), Lillian, x, 173–5, 175, Chaikin, Joseph, 249
176, 178, 181, 182, 187, 220, Challee, William, 123
221, 226, 232, 237 Chandler, Jeff, 258
Burr, Raymond, 156, 157 Chanin, Gerry, 191, 192, 211
Chaplin, Charles, 12
Character vis-à-vis actor, xv–xvii, 5,
C 15–16, 27, 31–3, 36, 42–55, 58,
Cabot, Bruce, ix, 42, 43, 56 71, 75, 77, 95–7, 99, 101,
Cabot, Susan, 258 104–5, 246, 248, 256–7
Cagney, James, 118, 194 as seen by Actors’ Laboratory,
Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, The, 157 196–7, 199, 201, 210, 213
Calhern, Louis, 70 as seen by American Academy of
California Institute for the Arts, 256 Dramatic Arts, 138–9, 143–9
284 INDEX
as seen by Pasadena Playhouse, “American” identity and acting

162–4, 168 style, xxiv, 73, 249, 253
as seen by stage and screen actors, see also anticommunists; blacklist
219–38 Colman, Ronald, ix, xxi, 11–15, 14,
as seen by studio drama coaches, 67–9, 99, 111, 222, 258
171–6, 178–81, 184 Colton, Araby, 211
Chastain, Jessica, 138 Columbia Pictures, 93, 185,
Chatterton, Ruth, 12 191, 257
Chekhov, Anton, ix, xiv, 23, 62–3, 70, Columbia University, xxvii, 258
80, 92, 206, 221 Combs, Richard, 203
Chekhov, Michael, xiii, 56, 78, 201–2, Come and Get It, 129
214, 249 Comédie Française, 93
Cheney, Sheldon, 162, 169 Communist front, 193, 203, 205,
Cherry Orchard, The, 92 206, 208, 211
Child, Nellise, 118 Communist Party, 203–5
Circle in the Square, 259 Concentration, xxi, 10–12, 17, 23,
Citadel, The, 68 30–3, 42, 45, 51, 54, 58, 71,
Citizen Kane, 141 96–7, 99, 146, 148, 163, 180,
Civic Repertory Theatre, 62, 91–3, 219, 232, 235–6
98, 126 Conscious approach to acting,
Civic Theatre School, xxvi xxi, 41–3, 45, 49–52, 54,
Cleveland Playhouse, 113, 156 55, 97, 163, 171, 195, 197,
Clift, Montgomery, xxii, 6, 69, 198, 201, 213, 226, 227,
75–6, 81 238, 247
as exemplar of Method acting, 74, Conservatoire method, 94, 212
76, 79–80, 253–4 Conte, Richard, 48
opposition to Strasberg’s Method, Contract players, x, 10, 42, 166,
74–5 171–4, 176–8, 180, 182, 187,
training with Lunt and Fontanne, 199, 228, 232, 245, 258
75, 80, 94 at the Actors’ Laboratory, 56, 131,
Clive of India, 13, 99 191, 193–4, 202
Clurman, Harold, 6, 8, 63, 77, 78, 83, contract player system, 184, 243
119, 120, 122–9, 130, 160, Conway, Curt, 190
200–1, 260, 263, 264 Cook, George Cram, 20, 34, 94
Cobb, Lee J., 71, 80, 120, 127, 129, Cooper, Gary, 11, 62, 111, 223
130, 130 Cooper, Maudie Prickett, 164
Coburn, Charles, 99 Copeau, Jacques, xxiv, 98
Cocoon, 141 Coquelin, Constant, 145, 146
Cohan, George M., 117 Corday, Mara, 258
Colbert, Claudette, 116, 173 Corey, Jeff, 49, 189–91, 195, 202,
Cold War, xx, xxiv 64, 192, 202, 210, 211, 213
251 Cormack, Bartlett, 138
INDEX 285
Cornell, Katharine, xxviii, 62, 69, 70, D

94, 120, 121, 123, 142, 237, 265 DaCosta, Morton, 141
Cornell University, 145 Dancing Lady, 118
Costume designers, 7, 183 Dandridge, Dorothy, 205–6
Count of Monte Cristo, The, 21 Dane, Clemence, 98
Cousins, Kay, 210 D’Angelo, Aristide, 145–7, 148, 152
Coward, Noël, x, 62, 63, 67, 70, 73 American Academy of Dramatic
Coy, Walter, 119, 120, 122 Arts, 144, 145, 147, 150
Craig, Edward Gordon, 21, 34, 146, Jehlinger’s Method, 145, 147, 152
221–2 D’Angelo, Evelyn, 145
“Actor and the Übermarionette, Dangerous, 118
The,” 20, 35 Dark Angel, The, 12, 13
Lee Strasberg’s appreciation for, 20, Dark at the Top of the Stairs, The, 76
24, 25 Dassin, Jules, 35, 191, 192
women as impediment to art, 35, Davenport, Mary, 121, 191
93, 106 Davis, Bette, 15, 53–4, 67, 103,
Craig, Louise, 211 114–6, 118, 132, 166, 179
Crawford, Cheryl, 8–9, 82, 93, 120, script analysis, 232, 236
122, 126, 127, 193, 200, 251, stage and screen acting, 219–20, 225
259, 263 Davison, Sidney, 206, 211
Crawford, Joan, 99, 118, 132 Day at the Races, A, 10
Creative labor, xx, xiii, 6–7, 32, 42, Day of the Locust, The, 7
47, 52, 179, 234, 249, 257 Dead End, 130
Crews, Laura Hope, 117 Dead Reckoning, x, 198, 219
Cronyn, Hume, 48, 49, 117, 141, Dean, James, 61, 74, 79
150, 192, 193, 200, 219, 225, Death of a Salesman, 71, 80
232 Declaration, 204–5
Crosby, Bing, 173 Deep Are the Roots, 70
Crossfire, 194 DeFore, Don, 156, 158
Crothers, Rachel, 87, 96 de Havilland, Olivia, 15, 173
Cukor, George, ix, 14, 14, 67, 112, DeMille, Cecil B., 66, 165
114, 182 Design for Living, ix, 62–4, 65, 73, 264
collaboration with Katharine Detroit Civic Theatre, 113, 172
Hepburn, x, 98, 117, 222, Devil’s Garden, The, 230
223, 239 Devil to Pay!, The, 13
Cummings, Robert, 141 Dewhurst, Colleen, 141
Curry College. See School of Dialect coaches, 171, 199
Expression Dialogue, 23, 25, 46, 63, 77, 116,
Curry, Samuel Silas, 95, 97, 142 179, 227, 229, 232
Curtis, Tony, 258 silent dialogue, 23, 33, 43–4, 227
Cushman, Charlotte, 88 see also mental pictures and
Cyrano de Bergerac, 246 conversations
286 INDEX
Dialogue directors, xxiii, 33, 171–3, Driving Miss Daisy, 234–5

192, 230, 243. See also acting Dr. Kildare, 13
experts; drama coaches Dual focus, 163–4, 168, 236
Diction, 45, 49, 100, 103, 105, 173, Dunham, Katherine, 77
174, 199, 227 Dunne, Irene, 57, 107
Diction coaches, 171, 172, 199, 246 Duse, Eleanor, 65
Diderot, Denis, 145, 241
Dieterle, William, 120, 212
Dietrich, Marlene, 67, 99 E
Dillon, Josephine, x, ix, xvi–xviii, 8, Eagels, Jeanne, 67
12, 19, 33, 43, 177, 179, 228, Eames, Clare, 26, 138
236, 241 East of Eden, 61, 74, 79
Modern acting teacher, xiv, xxi, xxv, Edwards, James, 202
10, 20–1, 23, 41–5, 53, 87, El Capitan College of Theatre, 151
237, 248, 257 Eldridge, Florence, 69
Pasadena Playhouse, 158, Eliscu, Edward, 208
162, 168 Elizabeth the Queen, 62, 264
stage and screen acting, xxiv, El Patio Theatre, 207
225–31, 240, 255–6 Emerson, Charles, 95, 96, 142
Disraeli, 68 Emerson College of Oratory,
Distant Isle, 206 96, 97
Dmytryk, Edward, 192, 194 Emotion, xvii, xxii, 8, 13, 17, 36, 63,
D.O.A., 9 96, 117, 148, 160, 197, 212,
Dodsworth, ix, 102, 102 237, 247–50, 254–6
Doll’s House, A, 23, 89, 105 Modern acting view, xv–xvii, 31–2,
Dolman, John, 146 42, 44–50, 53–5, 78, 100–1,
Donat, Robert, 68 104–5, 125, 143–4, 146–9,
Double Life, A, ix, 14, 69 163–4, 198, 213, 221, 226–9,
Douglas, Kirk, ix, 137, 141, 233–6
142, 150 Strasberg’s view, xv–xvii, 24–6,
Douglas, Melvyn, 107, 118 28–9, 32, 53–5, 59, 65, 71,
Drama coaches, xiv, xvii, xxiii, 6, 8, 93, 122, 238, 246, 249
103, 114, 140, 155, 156, Emotional labor, 183
171–85, 221, 224, 225, 230, Emotional memory, 20, 25, 27–8,
232, 243, 249. See also acting 30–1, 38, 45–6, 54, 56–7, 58, 81,
experts; dialogue directors 124–5
Dream of Passion, A (film), 35 Empire Theatre, 95–6
Drew, Georgiana, 66 Empire Dramatic School, 95
Drew, John, 118 Enfield, Cy, 211
Drew, Mrs. John, 88 Enright, Florence, 176, 185
Dr. H. R. Palmer’s Summer School of 20th Century Fox, 176, 224
Music, xxvii Universal, 176, 244
INDEX 287
Ensemble performance, xviii, 20, 34, Fiske, Richard, 121, 191

72, 91, 94, 148, 163, 164, 201, Flag Is Born, A, 78
213, 221 Flanagan, Hallie, 94
Awake and Sing!, ix, 64, 65, 73 Fleming, Victor, 11, 115
Design for Living, 62, 63, 65, 73 Flesh and the Devil, 112
Minnie Maddern Fiske, 89, 90 Flynn, Errol, 68, 166
Moscow Art Theatre, 61, 97, 107, Fonda, Henry, xxii, 115
160, 177–8 Fontanne, Lynn, ix, xxviii, 62–3, 63,
Erickson, Leif, 76, 129, 130 69, 73, 75, 76, 80, 83, 94
Erie Playhouse, 113 Foolish Notion, 69
Evelyn Prentice, 141 Ford, Friendly, 122
Evils of Tobacco, The, 206 Ford, John, 68, 140, 173, 222
Ewell, Tom, 114 Ford Theatre Hour, 245
Forrest, Edwin, 36, 66
Four Feathers, The, 68
F Fowler, Frank, 155
Fabray, Nanette, 70 Foxhole in the Parlor, 75
Fairbanks, Douglas, 12 Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, 102
Fall Guy, The, 199 French, Samuel, 121
Falstaff, 99 Freund, Karl, 212
Farmer, Frances, x, 80, 127, 128, 129, Fried, Walter, 129, 130
130 Frohman, Charles, xix, 88, 93,
Farmer, Mary Virginia, 123, 124, 190, 95–6, 222
191, 210 From Here to Eternity, 74, 76
Farmer Takes a Wife, The, 115 Fuller, Frances, 147
Father Knows Best, 155 Fuller, Lance, 258
Federal Theatre Project, 94, 145, 190,
202
Feminist scholarship, xvi, xxviii, 6, 7, G
254 Gable, Clark, xiv, 68, 99, 116, 130
Feningston, Sylvia, 123, 124 Garbo, Greta, 12, 112, 115
Fields, Betty, 141 Garden of Allah, The, 99
52nd Street, 120 Gardner, Ava, 173
Film, xiii–xxv, 3–12, 42, 67, 113, Garfield, John (Jules), 64, 64, 103,
115–6, 120, 138, 141, 148, 118, 120, 125, 127, 199–201
158–9, 165, 181, 219–43, 251, Garland, Judy, 173
256. See also Hollywood Garrick Players, 102
Fiske, Harrison Grey, 89 Garson, Greer, 68–9, 221
Fiske, Minnie Maddern, ix, xxii, 36, Garwood, Alice, 146, 162
66, 89, 90, 93–4, 100, 115, 160, Gassner, John, 199
221, 237 Gaye, Lisa, 258
Modern acting views, 89–91, 105 Gaynor, Janet, 111
288 INDEX
Gazzara, Ben, 76 Graham, Martha, 242

Gender, xxvi, 6, 35, 181–4, 253 Granite, 98
Gentleman’s Agreement, 76 Grant, Cary, x, 67–9, 118, 141,
Gentle People, The, 9, 129, 130, 264 222–3, 224
Gentlewoman, 121, 263 Granville-Baker, Harley, xxiv, 143
Gershwin, Ira, 211 Grasso, Giovanni, 65
Gest, Morris, 66 Great Lie, The, 116
Ghosts, 23 Green Acres, 103
Gibbs, Isabell, 211 Green Grow the Lilacs, 98
Gilbert, Jody, 191, 192, 195, 211 Grimes, Luke, 138
Gilbert, John, 12 Grotowski, Jerzy, xiii
Gilder, Rosamond, xvii Group Theatre, x, ix, xvi–xvii,
Gillette, William, 145 xxi–xxiii, 7–9, 33, 52, 62–4, 73,
Gish, Lillian, 12 76, 78–80, 93, 98, 99, 103, 111,
Given circumstances, 25, 58, 176 115–16, 118–31, 130, 145, 158,
Modern acting view, 22, 31, 49, 50, 177–8, 247, 251, 252, 254,
52, 53, 101, 175, 178–80, 197, 263–4
229, 232 and Actors’ Laboratory in
Strasberg’s view, 25, 27 Hollywood, xiv, xxiv, 41, 48,
Glaspell, Susan, 20, 92, 94 190–1, 192, 195, 199–202,
Goddard, Paulette, 173 258
Gogol, Nikolai, 214 Guardsman, The, 62
Goldbergs, The, 145
Gold Eagle Guy, 125, 127, 263
Golden Boy (film), 116, 158, 166 H
Golden Boy (play), x, 9, 116, 121, Hagan, James, 245
127–8, 128, 129, 158, 199, 264 Hagen, Uta, 93
Goldwyn, Samuel, 12, 14, 15, 68, Hale, Barbara, 176–7
155, 176, 222, 258 Halsey, Brett, 258
Goodbye, Mr. Chips, 68 Hamlet, 69, 93, 237, 244
Goodman, Edward, 144–5 Hammerstein, Oscar, 98, 156
Goodman Memorial Theatre, 113, Hammett, Dashiell, 211
122–3, 151, 158 Hampton, Ruth, 258
Gordin, Jacob, 66 Hansen, Myrna, 258
Gordon, Michael, 129, 130, 192, 193, Hard Way, The, ix, 201
213 Harman, Estelle, 246
Gordon, Robert H., 98 Hart, Moss, 178
Gordon, Ruth, 69, 70, 138 Hathaway, Anne, 138
Gorelik, Mordecai, xiv, 199, 263, 264 Hathaway, Joan, 192
Goslar, Lotte, 49 Hawks, Howard, x, 11, 74, 75, 112,
Gough, Lloyd, 204, 207 114, 129, 141, 222–4, 224
Gould, Eleanor Cody, 143, 144, 147 Haydon, Larrae Albert, xxvi, 146
INDEX 289
Hayes, Helen, xxviii, 70, 94, Hope, Bob, 173

117, 237 Hopkins, Arthur, 138
Haysbert, Dennis, 138 Hopkins, Miriam, 62, 117
Hazel, 156 Hopper, Hedda, 105, 205–6
Heckart, Eileen, 76 Hound of the Baskervilles, 67
Hedda Gabler, 23, 92 House Committee on Un-American
Hedgerow Theatre, 113, 123 Activities (HUAC), 191–3,
Heflin, Van, 173 202–4, 208, 251, 252, 260
Helburn, Theresa, 94 House of Connelly, The, 121, 263
Hellman, Lillian, 211 Howard, Leslie, 67, 68
Hello, Dolly!, 98 Hudson, Rock, 258
Henaghan, James, 202, 203, 205 Hughes, Arthur, 144, 145
Henry V, 69 Hughes, Glenn, xxvi, 21
Hepburn, Katharine, x, 98, 117–18, Hughes, Kathleen, 258
222–3, 223, 239 Hughes, Langston, 211
Herne, James A., 36 Hunt, Gordon, 258
Heron, Matilda, 36 Hunt, Marsha, 173
High Noon, 11 Huston, John, 116, 212
Hingle, Pat, 76 Hutchinson, Josephine, 93, 185
His Girl Friday, 114, 141
Hitchcock, Alfred, 67, 141, 181, 222
Hobart, Rose, x, ix, 49, 92, 93, 193, I
195, 196, 202, 204–6, 210, 252 Ibsen, Henrik, xiv, xv, xxv, 22–3, 55,
Holden, William, x, 116, 158, 166, 89, 91, 92, 221
173 Idiot’s Delight, 62, 121, 264
Holiday, 239 Il miracolo, 244
Hollywood, xiii, xiv, xvii, xviii, xxii– Imagination, 12, 21, 31–2, 42, 45–7,
xxiii, xxv, 5, 7–12, 15, 67–9, 49–50, 52, 53, 58, 90–1, 95, 96,
80–1, 99, 102–3, 105, 190, 100–1, 103–5, 125, 145, 147,
199–200, 204, 208, 243–4, 148, 178, 184, 196, 232, 235
251–2 Imitation, 42, 99, 144, 249
Broadway-Hollywood connection, Improvisation, xxii, 25, 43–5, 49, 50,
111–13, 115–18, 119–20, 123, 63, 75, 103, 144, 146, 180, 210,
129–31, 138–42, 189, 196, 223, 230, 233, 258
198, 201, 220–2, 225, 250 Informer, The, 68
and Pasadena Playhouse, 155–8, Inheritors, 92
160, 165–8 Inspector General, The, 201–2, 214
and studio drama coaches, 171–84 I Remember Mama, 77
Hollywood Theatre Alliance, 190, Ironside, 156
191, 202, 208, 210, 211 Irving, Henry, 145, 146
Holm, Celeste, 76 It Happened One Night, 116
Home of the Brave, 202 Ives, Burl, 76
290 INDEX
J Kimmel, Jess, 246

Jackson, Brad, 258 King, Claude, 21–2
Jacobowsky and the Colonel, 70 King, Henry, 12, 200
Jaffe, Sam, 130 King Kong, 42, 56
Janney, Russell, 98 Kingsley, Sidney, 115, 129, 263
Janssen, David, 258 Kirkland, Alexander, 99, 118
Jazz Singer, The, 112 Kirkwood, Jim, 152
J.B., 76 Kosslyn, Jack, 246
Jefferson, Joseph, 36, 146 Kraber, Gerritt, 122
Jehlinger, Charles, x, xiv, xviii, 80, Kraft, H. S., 193
137, 142–50, 149, 152, 219, 243 Kramer, Anne P., 166–7
Johnny Johnson, 119, 127, 264 Kramer, Stanley, 166
Johnson, Russell, 210, 258 Kumin, Irving, 165
Johnson, Van, 173
Jones, Jennifer, 141, 200
Jones, Marjo, 187 L
Jones, Robert Edmond, xiv, 20, 98 Ladd, Alan, 179
Jonson, Ben, 201 Lake, The, 117
Judas, 99 Lamour, Dorothy, 173
Julius Caesar, 78 Land, Lucy, 211
Langer, Lawrence, 148
Lange, Sven, 138
K Lansing, Joi, 258
Kahn, Otto H., 66 Las Palmas Theatre, 201
Kanin, Garson, 69 Last Command, The, 116
Karnes, Robert, 210 Last Mile, The, 140
Kates, Bernard, 148–9 Last of Mrs. Cheyney, The, 99
Kaufman, George S., 178 Laughton, Charles, 67, 68, 99,
Kaye, Danny, 189 116–17, 130
Kazan, Elia, 6, 8, 61, 64–5, 69–79, Laura, 155
82, 119, 120, 124, 126, 127, Laurents, Arthur, 202
129–31, 191, 250–3, 258 Laurie, Piper, 258
Keene, Laura, 88 Lawrence, Marc, 200
Keeper of the Flame, 239 Lawson, John Howard, 8, 263
Kellogg, John, 195 Lazarus Laughed, 159
Kelly, Grace, 137, 141 League of Workers Theatres, 126
Kelly, Jack, 245, 245 Lecoq, Jacques, 249
Kerr, Deborah, 76 Lee, Will, 49, 54, 190, 191, 193, 195,
Kerr, John, 76 202, 204–6, 210, 211, 252
Kid Galahad, 139 Le Gallienne, Eva, ix, xxii, 62, 89,
Kilgen, George, 211 91–4, 123, 200, 221
Killian, Victor, 211 Lehman, Lotte, xxviii
INDEX 291
Leigh, Janet, 173, 181, 232 Loy, Myrna, 116, 139

Lenihan, Winifred, 200 Lubitsch, Ernst, 62, 112, 222
LeRoy, Mervyn, 68, 69, 80, 102, 140 Lunt, Alfred, ix, xxviii, 62–3, 63,
Leslie, Joan, 181 69, 72, 73, 94, 120–1, 139,
Leslie, William, 258–9 264
Letter, The, 67, 179 as leading actor of his era, 83
Levene, Sam, 140, 192, 193 mentor of Montgomery Clift, 75,
Leverette, Lewis, 123 76, 79–80
Levitt, Alfred Lewis, 211 Lyceum Theatre and School, 95,
Lewes, George Henry, 145 137
Lewis, Milton, 165 Lynn, Eleanor, 129, 130
Lewisohn, Alice and Irene, 94 Lytess, Natasha, 185, 212
Lewis, Robert (Bobby), 8, 70, 75, 76,
82, 123, 124, 127–9, 130, 191,
251, 264 M
Leyda, Jay, 213 MacGowan, Kenneth, 20
Life of Emile Zola, The, 120 MacKaye, Steele, 95, 105, 137
Life study and observation, xvii, xxii, Mackay, F. F., 96
52, 63, 228, 237 Macloon, Louis Owen, 230
Liliom, 92 MacMurray, Fred, 173
Little Caesar, 80, 138 Macready, William Charles, 65–6
Little Theatre movement, xiv, xxv, Madame Curie, 69, 221
xxvii, 20, 34, 113, 162 Madison, Mae, 152
Little Women, 117, 239 Madison Square Theatre School, 95
Littlewood, Joan, 249 Male Animal, 156
Living Theatre, 259 Maltese Falcon, The, 116, 179
Loeb, Philip, 144, 145 Malvaloca, 230
Lombard, Carol, 112 Mamoulian, Rouben, 116, 117
London Academy of Music and Mankiewicz, Joseph L., x, 49, 78, 103,
Dramatic Art, 137 166
Long, Richard, 258–9 Mann, Anthony, 192
Lord, Pauline, 65 Mann, Daniel, 49, 190, 192, 193,
Loretta Young Show, The, 13 204, 210
Lost Horizon, 13, 130 Mansfield, Richard, 36
Lost Weekend, 69 Mantzius, Karl, 93
Loughton (Seaton), Phyllis, x, 114, March, Fredric, 62, 69, 99, 189
140, 172–3, 174, 174, 181, 182, Marcus Welby, M.D., 155
184, 237 Marion, Frances, 13
Louise, Anita, 103 Marshall, Brenda, 166
Love Affair, 102–4 Marshall, Herbert, 67, 117, 179
Love Life, 70, 82 Marta Oatman School, 151
Lovers and Friends, 70 Martine, 98
292 INDEX
Martin, Mary, 70 Middleton, Ray, 70

Marx brothers, 10 Milland, Ray, 69, 173
Masquerader, The, 14 Miller, Arthur, xv, 71
Massey, Raymond, 13, 76 Minney, R. J., 13
Master Builder, The, 92 Miracle on 34th Street, 140
Matchmaker, The, 98 Miracle, The, 98
Maté, Rudolph, 9, 212 Misérables, Les, 99
Matthew, Brander, 145 Modern acting, xiv–xvi, xxi, xxii,
Mature, Victor, 157 xxv–xxvi, 7, 13, 15, 19–25, 27,
Maverick, 245 33–5, 41–55, 58, 61, 74, 77,
Max, Ed, 211 80–1, 87, 91, 94–7, 105, 219,
Mayer, Louis B., 12, 182 221, 223, 229, 231–8, 243,
Maynard, Gertrude, 122 248–9, 254–5
Mayo, Virginia, 176 and Actors’ Laboratory, 193, 196, 201
McClintic, Guthrie, 62, 70 and American Academy of Dramatic
McCrae, Joel, 130 Arts, 143–4, 150
McGregor, Marjorie, 211 and Boleslavsky, 99–101
McLaglen, Victor, 68 and Group Theatre, 122, 125
McLean, Margaret Prendergast, 49, modern acting principles, xvii–xx,
199 xxiii–xviv, 3, 8, 10, 48, 50–1,
Meet the People, 190, 208, 210 55, 65, 94, 143, 150, 158,
Meiningen Players, xxiv 162, 164–5, 168, 171, 175,
Meisner, Sanford, 6, 64, 78, 122, 182, 224, 228, 230, 232,
124–6, 127, 129, 130, 263 245–7, 250, 256, 257
Men in White, 99, 115–16, 121, and Ouspenskaya, 104–5
123–4, 129, 199, 263 and Pasadena Playhouse, 158, 161,
Mental pictures and conversations, 23, 162, 164–5, 167, 168
33, 42, 43, 53, 58, 229, 234–6, and Stanislavsky Modern acting, xiv,
246 xxi, xxiv, 22, 33, 34, 53, 143,
Mercury Players, 131 221, 232, 234, 236, 246–8
Mercury Stage, 246 and studio drama coaches, 173,
Meredith, Burgess, xxviii 176, 178, 181, 183, 184
Merry, Anne Brunton, 88 Modern actors, xiv–xv, 15, 21, 22, 41,
Method acting, xiii–xiv, xvi, xxiv, xxv, 49, 50, 54, 55, 58, 91, 168, 230,
64, 65, 78, 79, 81, 111, 122, 233
208–9, 238, 248, 249, 254, 256 Modern characters, xviii, 10, 20–5, 92,
as an acting style, xxii, 61, 65, 70–4, 254
76, 78, 80, 250–2, 253 Modern drama, xiv–xv, xvii, xx–xxi,
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), 12, xxiv–xxv, 19–20, 22–4, 33, 41,
112, 129, 155, 167, 173, 174, 45, 48, 55, 65, 67, 89, 138, 146,
178, 182, 194, 220, 232, 257 168, 221, 250
Middle of the Night, 138 Modernist film and theatre, xiv
INDEX 293
Modern theatre, xxii, 22, 34, 41, 87, N

90, 93, 94, 107, 159–61, 165, 180 Nadler, George, 258–9
Molly and Me, 145 Naked City, 9
Molnár, Ferenc, 92–3 National Dramatic Conservatory, 96
Moloch, 230 Nazimova, Alla, xxviii
Monogram Pictures, 245 Neely Dixon Dramatic School, 151
Monroe, Marilyn, xxii, 15, 79, 114, Neighborhood Playhouse, 48, 94,
184, 185, 194, 206, 212, 250 129, 190
Montana Masquers, xxvi Nelson, Lori, 258–9
Montgomery, Douglass, 167, 170 Nelson, Ruth, 98, 120, 122, 124, 125,
Montgomery, Robert, 99 129, 130, 192
Moorehead, Agnes, 140 Nettleship, John T., 44
Moran, Dolores, ix, 47, 193 Newman, Paul, 76, 242
Morgan, Frank, 138 New School for Social Research, 52,
Morning Glory, 117 77, 129
Morris, Mary, 123 New stagecraft, xiv–xv, xvii, xxiv,
Mortimer, Lee, 205 xx–xxi, 12–13, 19–23, 33–4, 41,
Morton, Eustis, xviii, 146 48, 55, 65, 89, 160, 164–5, 168,
Moscow Art Theatre, xvi, xxii, 6, 8, 222–4, 226, 250
48, 56, 61, 66, 73, 97, 99, 103, Nicholson, Jack, 242
107, 122, 129, 137, 142, 143, Night at the Opera, A, 10
160, 177–8, 244, 258 Night in Casablanca, A, 10
Moss, Carrie-Anne, 138 Night over Taos, 121, 263
Motion-and performance-capture 1931–, 121, 263
acting, xxi, xiv, 3, 256 Ninotchka, 112
Motion Picture Alliance for the Nolan, Lloyd, 156
Preservation of American Ideals, None but the Lonely Heart, 69
176, 203 Norring, Ava, 245
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, 223 No Time for Comedy, 121, 265
Mrs. Miniver, 69 Nugent, Elliott, 156
Muhl, Ed, 165, 180
Mullen, Virginia, 211
Muni, Paul, 78, 118, 120, 167, 212 O
Murder Man, The, 115 O’Brian, Hugh, 258–9
Murphy, Audie, 194, 259 O’Brien, Pat, 113, 140
Murphy, Maurice, 211 O’Casey, Sean, 206
Musgrove, Gertrude, 70 Odets, Clifford, x, ix, 7, 8, 62–4, 69,
Music Box Theatre, 210 116, 118–19, 120, 122–9, 195,
Music Man, The, 156 201, 263–4
Mutiny on the Bounty, 68, 130 Of Human Bondage, 67
Myers, Henry, 208, 211 Of Mice and Men, x, 120, 207
My Fair Lady, 68 Oklahoma!, 98
294 INDEX
Olivier, Laurence, 67–9 Peck, Gregory, 114, 115

O Mistress Mine, 69 Penn, Leo, 199, 225
O’Neill, Eugene, xxv, 20, 23, 67, 115, Penny Arcade, 118
121, 159, 221 Penny Serenade, 68
O’Neill, James, 21 People’s Educational Center, 203
One Sunday Afternoon, 245 Performing arts industry, xiii, xv, xviii,
One Sunday Night, 156 xix–xxii, xxiv, xxx–xxxi, 3, 4, 7, 9,
One Touch of Venus, 70 33, 65–6, 71, 73, 77, 87, 105,
Only Angels Have Wings, x, 222, 224 111, 118, 131, 168, 181, 189,
Only Yesterday, 115 243, 251
On the Waterfront, 78–80 Perry Mason, 156, 176
Our Town, 98 Personal experiences
Ouspenskaya, Maria, ix, xiv, xxii, 6, 26, Modern acting view, xvii, xxii, 31,
28, 97, 101–5, 102, 111, 199, 33, 46–7, 50, 52, 58, 100–1,
243 124, 213, 233, 235, 237, 238,
248, 254
Strasberg’s view, xv–xvi, 26, 30, 34,
P 53, 54, 100, 238, 248
Page, Geraldine, 76 Personal inhibitions, 29, 91, 184
Paid in Full, 230 Personal substitutions, xvii, 50, 81,
Paige, Florence, 211 145, 212, 221, 225, 234, 237,
Palmer, Gregg, 258–9 238, 246, 255, 256
Pantomime, xvii, xxii, 19, 27, 45, 63, Peter Pan, 70, 92
146, 194, 223, 230 Philadelphia Story, 239
Papp, Joseph, 190 Phipps, William, 194
Paradise Lost, 118, 126, 129, 195, Phoenix Theatre, 259
264 Pichel, Irving, 179, 192
Paramount, 33, 112, 155, 156, 158, Pidgeon, Walter, 69
165, 167, 171–3, 174, 176, 184, Pillars of Society, 23
194, 230, 257 Pins and Needles, 98
Paramount Case, 257 Pirandello, Luigi, 146
Parker, Eleanor, 156, 158, 193 Piscator, Erwin, 129, 264
Parks, Larry, 192, 193, 200 Pittsburgh Playhouse, 113
Parsons, Louella, 105, 130 Playboy of the Modern World, 170
Pasadena Playhouse, x, xiv, xvii–xviii, Plummer, Christopher, 76
xxv, xxiii, 21, 80, 105, 131, 146, Pollock, Jackson, 253
155–68, 172, 173, 178, 192, Polonsky, Abraham, 193
193, 219, 236, 237, 243–4, 249, Popular culture, xxii, xxiv, 61, 80, 248,
250, 252 249, 256
Pat and Mike, 239 Popular Front theatre companies, 190
Paths of Glory, 155 Portrait of a Madonna, 202, 235
Patten, Dorothy, 123 Pound on Demand, A, 206, 210
INDEX 295
Poverty Row studios, 173, 185, 199 Rasputin and the Empress, 99
Powell, William, 99, 116, 138–40, Rathbone, Basil, 67, 99
141, 150 Ratner, Herbert, 122, 124
Powers, Carol and Leland, 96 Rebecca, 67, 68
Prague School, 5, 16 Rebel without a Cause, 61
Preston, Robert, 80, 156, 157 Redford, Robert, 137
Preval, Lucian, 211 Red River, 74–6
Prickett, Charles, 243 Reeves, George, 157
Prickett (Blake), Oliver, 160 Reinhardt, Max, 19, 98, 151, 212,
Prisoner of Zenda, The, 13 222
Private Life of Henry VIII, The, Reis, Irving, 192
67, 68 Relaxation, xvi–xvii, 17, 45, 51, 58,
Private Lives, 70 144, 146, 180
Problem Rendezvous, 141
Modern acting view, xxi, 22, 31, 32, Republic Pictures, 173, 194
41, 49–51, 53, 77, 101, 143, Resident theatres, xxii–xxiii, 111, 113,
147, 180, 181, 192, 197, 229, 115, 158, 259
235, 236, 256, 257 Reynolds, Debbie, 173
Strasberg’s view, xvi, 6, 24, 27–9, Rhapsody in Blue, 181
30, 34, 35, 45, 54, 59, 71, Rice, Elmer, 8, 23
221, 250 Rice Summer Theatre, 156
Provincetown Players, xxvii, 20, 34, Ride the High Country, 155
94, 116, 123 Rififi, 191
Psycho, 181, 232 Riggs, Lynn, 98
Purdom, Edmund, x, 175 Ritter, Thelma, 140
Pygmalion, 68 Road to Morocco, The, 173
Robards, Jr., Jason, 141
Roberts, Bart, 259
Q Robinson, Edward G., x, 80, 83,
Queen Kelly, 99 137–9, 139, 140, 150, 199–200,
Quinn, Anthony, 193, 205, 210 212
Robinson, Philip, 122
Rocket to the Moon, 129, 264
R Rogers, Ginger, 10
Racket, The, 138 Rogers, Lela E., x, 176–7, 177
Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO), x, 10, Romance, 112, 115
33, 112, 131, 167, 171, 176, Romeo and Juliet, 67, 265
177, 194, 230, 257 Rosenstein, Sophie, ix, x, xiv–xv,
Raft, George, 130 xvi–xviii, xxi, xxvi, 8, 12, 21, 33,
Random Harvest, 68 47, 103, 129, 146, 156, 181–2,
Rankin, John, 204 184, 243
Raphaelson, Samson, 212 Actors’ Laboratory, 192, 193, 252
296 INDEX
Modern acting teacher, xxv, 10, Scott, Lizabeth, 75, 184, 219
22–3, 41, 44–7, 53, 87, 219, Scott, Randolph, 155, 158, 167
237, 247, 248, 257 Screen Actors Guild, 21, 158
Warner Bros. and Universal, Screen tests, 43, 117, 120, 155,
177–81, 194, 244–6 172–3, 178, 182, 184, 187, 192
Rossellini, Roberto, 244 Script analysis, 31–2, 34, 52, 54–5,
Rossen, Robert, 211 63, 71, 75, 77, 93, 100–1,
Rostova, Mira, 6, 75–6 104–5, 112, 255
Rowlands, Gena, 137–8, 242 Actors’ Laboratory, 51, 196–7, 210,
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 213
London, 137, 150 American Academy of Dramatic
Rudd, Paul, 137–8 Arts, 138–9, 143–4, 146
Rush, Barbara, 158, 258–9 Modern acting view of, xviii, xxii,
Russell, Rosalind, 140, 141, 150, 22–3, 53, 58, 223, 237, 257
237–8 Pasadena Playhouse, 162, 164
Russett Mantle, 98 studio drama coaches, xvii, 42, 46,
173–4, 180–1, 221, 224, 226,
229–30, 234, 246
S Seagull, The, 62–3, 92, 264
Sage, Frances, 211 Sea Hawk, The, 166
Saint, Eva Marie, 79 Sea Hunt, 191
St. James Theatre and School, 95, 105 Search, The, 74–6
Saint Joan, 200, 265 Seaton, George, 140
Salt, Waldo, 191, 193 Seattle Repertory Playhouse, 113
Salvation Nell, ix, 89–90, 90, 115, Selznick, David O., 200, 202
237 Sennett, Mack, 112
Samson and Delilah, 74, 101, 138, Sense memory, xxii, 26–8, 30, 42–3,
157 45, 46, 49–51, 58, 63, 104, 194,
Sarah Lawrence College, 129 210, 223, 229–30, 237, 246
Sargent, Franklin Haven, 80, 95, 137 Sergeant York, 11
Saroyan, William, 80, 264 Sesame Street, 206
Savoy Theatre, 158–9 7th Heaven, 111
Sayonara, 78 Seven Year Itch, The, 114, 132
Schenck, Joseph, 15 Shadow of a Doubt, 114, 220
Schildkraut, Joseph, 92–3, 138 Shakespeare, William, 44, 65, 70, 72,
Schneider, Batami, 49 89, 91, 159, 178, 199
Schneider, Benno, 49 Shall We Dance, 10
School of Dramatic Art, 103, 105 Shane, Sara, 258–9
School of Elocution and Expression, 97 Shanewise, Lenore, 165, 236
School of Expression, 97 Shaw, George Bernard, xv, 89, 146, 200
School of the Spoken Word, 96 Shaw, Irwin, 129, 130, 206, 264
Schreiber, Elsa, 185 Shaw, Mary, 94
INDEX 297
Shdanoff, George, 48, 49, 56, 246 and Modern acting, xiv, xxi, xxiv,
Shearer, Norma, 67 22, 33–4, 53, 143, 221, 232,
She Done Him Wrong, 67 234, 236, 246–8
Sheldon, Edward, ix, 89, 90, 115 Stanwyck, Barbara, 116, 132, 166
Sherman, Vincent, ix, 47, 192, 201, Star Is Born, A, 8, 111–12
211 Stark, Juanita, 193
Sherwood, Robert E., 62, 94 Stella Dallas, 167
Shirley, Anne, 167 Stephenson, James, 179
Shubert Corporation, xix, 88 Sternberg, Josef von, 67, 116, 222
Shy and the Lonely, The, 206 Stevenson, Janet, 204
Sidney, Sylvia, 9, 130 Stevenson, Philip, 204
Sign of the Cross, The, 67 Stewart, James, 115, 223
Silver Girl, The, x, 230, 231 Stock companies, xix, 12, 113–4, 115,
Simon, S. Sylvan, 192 116, 131, 140, 141, 157, 168,
Sinatra, Frank, 75–6 230
Sinclair, Catherine, 88 summer stock, xxii–xxiii, 111,
Sinner’s Holiday, 118 113–14, 115, 129
Six-Fifty, The, 230 Stoddard, Eunice, 122
Skin of Our Teeth, The, 69, 70, 75, 78 Storm, Gale, 245
Skouras, Spryos, 165–6 Storm, Joan, 211
Slote (Levitt), Helen, 191, 192, 211 Stradner, Rose, 49
Smith, Art, 49, 57, 64, 122–3, 127, Strange Love of Martha Ivers,
129, 130, 190, 192, 193, 211 The, 141
Smith College, 93, 94 Strasberg, Lee, xiii–xv, xxi–xxii, 7,
Solid South, 114 19–20, 23–36, 38, 41, 44–6, 51,
Song of Bernadette, The, 200 53–5, 61, 65, 99–101, 150, 184,
Sorrell, Helena, 176 212, 237–8, 244, 246–50, 252–6,
Sothern, Ann, 173 258
Sothern, E. H., 36 attack on British/Anglo-American
Soto-Michigan Jewish Center, 205, actors, 71–4, 80–1, 83, 221
206 critiqued by Brando and Clift, 74–8,
Sound of Music, The, 56 81
Soviet censorship, 6, 244, 258 Group Theatre, xvi–xvii, 7, 64,
Sparrow, Wilbur, xxvi, 146 122–7, 200, 263–4
Stagers, The, 145 work with women, 6, 35, 57, 59,
Stanhope (Wheatcroft), Adeline, 96 79, 212
Stanhope-Wheatcroft School, 87, 96 Strasberg (Miller), Paula, 79, 123
Stanislavsky, Konstantin, xv–xviii, xxi, Straw Hat, The, 98
xxiv–xxv, 5–6, 25, 27, 31–4, 48, Street Angel, 111
58, 61, 71, 73, 78, 122, 124–5, Streetcar Named Desire, A, 71, 73,
129, 142–3, 145–6, 160, 199, 76–7, 78, 234
244, 256, 258 Strindberg, August, xv
298 INDEX
Stuart, Gloria, 158, 192 Tedrow, Irene, 192

Studio drama schools, xxiii, 10, 131, Television, ix, xiii, xviii, xxi, 3–7, 89,
160, 171–84, 243, 250, 252 148, 159, 165, 180, 192, 199,
Columbia, 93, 185 244, 250–2, 254–6
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), actors with television careers, 9,
173, 174, 178, 220 12–13, 64, 113–15, 118, 132,
Paramount, 33, 171–3, 174, 176, 138, 140–1, 145, 148, 155–6,
230 158, 176, 199, 211, 245–6,
Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO), 33, 258
171–2, 176–7, 230 Tendresse, La, 12
Republic Pictures, 173, 176 Tenney Committee, 192, 193, 202–6,
20th Century Fox, 172, 176, 194, 208, 211, 214, 251, 252
202, 224 Terry, Beatrice, ix, 92
Universal, 176, 180, 194, 202, 219, Terry, Ellen, 35
244–6 Thacher (Kazan), Molly, 124, 191
Warner Bros, 177–9, 182, 192, 193, 20th Century Fox, 112, 165–6, 167,
219, 245 172, 176, 194, 202, 212, 224,
Sturgess, Olive, 258 257
Sullavan, Margaret, 115 20th Century Pictures, 15
Sullivan, Barry, 179 Theatre, xiii–xv, xviii–xxv, 3–4, 6–7, 9,
Sullivan, Elliott, 195 19–20, 24, 65–7, 69, 73, 88–9,
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, 111 112–13, 131, 148, 190, 243,
Sunset Boulevard, 3, 158 250–1, 256
Suzuki, Tadashi, xiii artist of the theatre, 34, 99, 122,
Swanson, Gloria, 118 123, 191
Swan, The, 93 idealistic visions of theatre, 22, 93,
Sweet Bird of Youth, 76 95, 189, 207
Sylvia Scarlet, 239 modern theatre, 22–3, 34, 41, 65,
90, 93–4, 105, 107, 159–61,
165, 180
T theatre-in-the-round, xxvi, 21, 80,
Talent scouts, 118, 141, 155, 158, 159, 181
165, 167, 171, 173, 182, 183 women’s contributions, xvii, 35, 88,
Talker, The, 230 89, 93–4
Talking pictures, 112, 227 see also Broadway
Talma, François Joseph, 145 Theatre Collective, 124
Taming of the Shrew, The, 102, 164 Theatre companies. See resident
Tamiroff, Akim, 200 theatres; stock companies; touring
Tandy, Jessica, 141, 202, 234–5 companies
Tarcai, Mary, 48, 56–7, 190, 192–4, Theatre Guild, xxvii, 62, 69, 72, 92, 94,
210 98, 113, 117, 121, 122, 138, 139,
Tea and Sympathy, 76 144–5, 148, 176, 190, 192, 200
INDEX 299
Theatre of Action, 190 University of California, Los Angeles,

Theatre Union, 124 246
Theatrical Syndicate, xix, 66, 88, 89 University of Montana, Missoula, xxvi
Theodore Goes Wild, 107 University of Oklahoma, xxvi
There Shall Be No Night, 75, 94 University of Washington, xiv, xxvi,
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, 156 21, 129, 151, 177
Thin Man, The, 116, 139 University of Wisconsin, 140
Three Men on a Horse, 140 University Players, 114, 115
Three Musketeers, The, 98–9 Up the River, 140
Three Sisters, The, ix, 70, 92
Thurber, James, 156
Till the Day I Die, 118, 126, 263 V
Titanic, 158 Vagabond King, The, 98
Tone, Franchot, 103, 118, 121, 122, Vakhtangov, Yevgeny, 71
130 Van Doren, Mamie, 258
Tonight or Never, 118 Vassar Experimental Theatre, 94
Top Hat, 10 Vaudeville, 10, 112, 116,
Touring companies, xix, xxii, xxvii, 66, 139–40, 176
88–9, 94, 107, 113, 115, 127, Vernon, John, 193
131, 139–40, 155, 157, 168, Veterans, 48, 56, 57, 193–5, 203–3,
178, 230, 246 205, 208
Tracy, Spencer, 81, 115, 137, 140, 150 Virginian, The, 11
Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A, 76, 131 Viva Zapata!, 78
Trescony, Al, 174 Vogues of 1938, 120
Trevor, Claire, 140 Voice and body work, xxii, 45, 90,
Truckline Café, 77–8 100, 103–5, 114, 116, 125, 161,
Trumbo, Dalton, 208 164, 172, 174, 177, 180–1,
Trumpet Shall Sound, The, 98 232–3, 237–8, 246, 256
Turner, Lana, 173 Actors’ Laboratory, 192, 196–7,
Tuttle, Frank, 192 199, 213
Tuttle, Lurene, 170 American Academy of Dramatic
Twelfth Night, 92 Arts, 144–6, 148
Twentieth Century, 112 Josephine Dillon, 222, 226–9
Tyne, George, 193 Volpone, 201
U W
Union Square School of Expression, 95 Wagner, Richard, xxiv
United Artists, 112, 257 Waiting for Lefty, 118, 125–6, 263
United States Supreme Court, 244, 257 Waldman, Herman, 191, 211
Universal, 56, 112, 158, 165, 176, Waldorf Statement, 192
180, 194, 202, 219, 244–6, 257 Walker, Alixe, 123
300 INDEX
Walkup, Fairfax Proudfit, 161 Wilenchick, Clement, 122

Wallis, Hal, 141 Williams, Mervin, 193
Walsh, M. Emmet, 137–8 Williams, Tennessee, 76, 202
Wanger, Walter, 120, 131 Winfield, Marjorie, 210
Warner Bros, 12, 15, 68, 112, 118, Women’s pictures, 132
120, 129, 141, 177–9, 182, 219, Women’s work, 182, 183
245, 257 Wood, Mrs. John, 88
and Actors’ Laboratory, 192, 193, Woodward, Joanne, 242
202, 211 Worker’s Laboratory Theatre, 124
and Pasadena Playhouse, 155, 156, World War II, xviii, xx, xxvi, 69, 191,
165, 166 211, 249–50, 257
Warner, Doris, 129 Wray, Anne MacLennan, 161–3
Warren, Katharine, 246, 258 Wray, Fay, 42
Washington Square Players, xxvii, 113, Wright, Teresa, 76
144–5, 176 Wuthering Heights, 67, 68
Waterloo Bridge, 102 Wyler, William, 67, 69, 102, 130, 155,
Watts, Bill, 214 176
Wayne, John, 56
Webster, Margaret, 93, 200
Weep for the Virgins, 118, 121, 126, Y
129, 263 Yale Drama School, 151
Weill, Kurt, 127 Years Ago, 69
Wellesley College, 258 Yiddish theatre, xxi, 9, 66, 138, 191
Welles, Orson, 118, 141, 199–200 You and Me, 130
Wellman, William, 111–12 You Can’t Take it with You, 223
West, Mae, 67 Young, Gig, 156, 157
Wexley, John, 193 Young, Loretta, 13
Whale, James, 158 Young, Robert, 155, 157
Where Do We Go from Here?, 156 Young, Roland, 117
White Sister, The, 12–13 You Touched Me!, 75
Wild Duck, The, 23
Wilde, Oscar, 23, 89
Wilder, Billy, 3–4, 69, 79, 114 Z
Wilder, Thornton, 8, 69, 75, 98 Zanuck, Darryl F., 15, 212
Wild One, The, 78 Zemach, Benjamin, 213

Modern Acting

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Modern Acting

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

MODERN

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN SCREEN INDUSTRIES AND PERFORMANCE

This series encompasses the spectrum of contemporary scholarship on

More information about this series at

Palgrave Studies in Screen Industries and Performance

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016942451

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Cover illustration: © Photofest, Inc.

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

Part I Making Modern Acting Visible 1

2 Acting Strategies, Modern Drama, and New Stagecraft 19

3 Modern Acting: A Conscious Approach 41

4 Modern Acting: Obscured by the Method’s

Part II Acting and American Performing Arts 85

5 Developments in Modern Theatre and Modern Acting,

6 Shifting Fortunes in the Performing Arts Business 111

Part III The Creative Labor of Modern Acting 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

Cover Roman Bohnen in a camera test for The Hard Way

In twenty-first-century America, the various components of the perform-

generally identified as formulating one version of Method acting, but

Method trains actors to relive personal experiences to make their “real

to relaxation is ‘If my character is tense and nervous, shouldn’t I be tense

Rosenstein’s acting manual and Pasadena Playhouse founder Gilmor

industrial production conditions, and the era’s aesthetic priorities led to

Chapter 1, “A Twenty-First-Century Perspective,” outlines parallels

Modern acting teachers discuss an array of concerns, including: voice and

Chapter 10, “The Actors’ Laboratory in Hollywood,” offers a history

begin to incorporate insights from the scholarship on retrospective action

consideration, and that drawing attention to them can illuminate aesthetic

Making Modern Acting Visible

Modern acting principles were actively explored and widely disseminated

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 3

HOLLYWOOD AND THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN ACTING

STUDIO PUBLICITY VERSUS THE NEW

conveyed the character’s changing thoughts and feelings as the narrative

Ronald Colman’s experience in his first sound film, Bulldog Drummond

and say, ‘I think this,’ but he would make suggestions—always sensible

jeopardize his career by informing the producer he would simply refuse

Acting Strategies, Modern Drama, and

Teachers as different as Josephine Dillon and Lee Strasberg have argued

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 19

sonality” or without reflecting on the character’s connection to social

“interpretation of a part, the idea of a character and the theme of the

THE UNIQUE FEATURES OF STRASBERG’S METHOD

himself.”46 Recognizing the parallels between psychoanalysis and his

STRASBERG’S IDEAS ON SENSE MEMORY AND EMOTIONAL

memory of thought and sensation.”63 In other words, sense memory is

“unconscious inhibitions or locked-up sensations.”69 In his view, when

tion and commitment,” Strasberg goes on to another in-class performance

STRASBERG’S DECISIVE BREAK WITH STANISLAVSKY

In opposition to Strasberg’s focus on exercises to break down inhibi-

experience of being aware of one’s feelings, especially in awkward con-

story, Strasberg encouraged actors to create “an inner life” unrelated to

28. Ibid., 103.

65. Ibid., 72.

101. Ibid., 142.