Abstract
Chapter 12 revisits one of the book’s central questions, how did Modern acting principles become invisible while Method acting became part of American popular culture? To answer this question, the chapter considers complications created by Strasberg’s self-proclaimed affiliation with Stanislavsky, and by changes in the performing arts business that affected Americans’ perceptions about actors and acting. It also explores the effects of the Cold War ideas that led Method acting to be associated with a certain (white, masculine, youthful) form of “American” vitality. To illuminate the overlooked legacy of the Modern acting strategies that coalesced in the 1930s and 1940s, the chapter identifies ways that contemporary actors use Modern acting techniques to create performances for a range of theatrical venues and a variety of screen formats.
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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 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 production in 1950, even though declaring bankruptcy made presentation of a Lab production illegal. This parallels Group Theatre members’ decision to maintain the brand after becoming the New Group Inc. in 1937.
- 3.
David Cook, A History of Narrative Film, 4th ed. (New York: Norton, 1996), 513.
- 4.
Sharon Marie Carnicke, Stanislavsky in Focus: An Acting Master for the Twenty-First Century, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2009), 102. Most of Stanislavsky’s books appeared after he had been placed under house arrest in 1934. An abridged version of An Actor’s Work on Himself, Part I was published in English in 1936 as An Actor Prepares. A censored version of An Actor’s Work on Himself, Part II was published in the USA in 1949 as Building a Character. Stanislavsky’s drafts for another book were edited by Soviet censors and published in Russia as An Actor’s Work on the Role (1957) and in the USA as Creating a Role (1961). This book, together with lectures by Moscow Art Theatre members during their 1963 American tour, introduced the Method of Physical Actions, the Soviet version of Stanislavsky’s Active Analysis. In both iterations, actors use improvisation to explore characters’ physical and vocal expression. In the 1960s, various embodied approaches emerged to correct what actors of the time saw as shortcomings of the Method.
- 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 players David Janssen, Joi Lansing, and Olive Sturgess, and several actors for whom English was a second language. She attended Dana Hall School in Wellesley, MA, and taught at Wellesley College and Columbia University. Her acting career spanned theatre, film, and television. Actors in the Talent Development Program included: Julie Adams, Susan Cabot, Jeff Chandler, Mara Corday, Tony Curtis, Mamie Van Doren, Lance Fuller, Lisa Gaye, Brett Halsey, Ruth Hampton, Myrna Hansen, Rock Hudson, Kathleen Hughes, Gordon Hunt, Brad Jackson, Russell Johnson, Piper Laurie, 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.
- 11.
Strasberg, Dream of Passion, 105.
- 12.
Jack Poggi, Theater in America: The Impact of Economic Forces, 1870–1967 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968), 284.
- 13.
Ibid., 47.
- 14.
Between 1947 and 1957, Broadway mounted a limited number of productions, ranging from the 1950–1951 season of eighty-one productions (the high) to the 1952–1953 season of fifty-four shows (the low) (Poggi, Theater in America, 47). Similarly, there were seventy-five theatres in operation from 1925 to 1929, but by the 1940–1941 season there were only thirty-two commercial theatrical venues in New York; in the 1950–51 season there were thirty-six (48). Some practitioners invested their creative energy in off-Broadway productions at the Circle in the Square, the Living Theatre, and the Phoenix Theatre (168–205). Others focused on 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 outside 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 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).
- 21.
Steve Vineberg, Method Actors: Three Generations of an American Acting 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.
- 26.
Rosemary Malague, An Actress Prepares: Women and “the Method” (New York: Routledge, 2012), 25.
- 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.
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Baron, C. (2016). The Legacy of Modern Acting. In: Modern Acting. Palgrave Studies in Screen Industries and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40655-2_12
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