Lee Strasberg: Artist of the Theater

Abstract

The real “success story” for Strasberg came a year after the tepid reception of Success Story. On September 26, 1933, Sidney Kingsley’s Men in White opened to rave reviews and excellent business at the box office. In the interim the Group had passed through what Clurman called the “Winter of our Discontent.” The years 1932–33 were the nadir of the Depression. Although the members had returned from Dover Furnace with uplifted spirits, many could only survive in New York by living together collectively in a run-down flat they had rented on 57th Street near the river. They thought of it as the Group poorhouse, although they dubbed it “Groupstroy” in the fashionable Russian manner, linking themselves ironically with the heroic labors on the great new Soviet dam, Dnieperstroy. The need to cling to one another and to their theatrical and political idealism was great as they suffered one blow after another. John Howard Lawson’s Success Story, for which they had such high hopes, had its disappointingly short run, and Dawn Powell’s The Big Night, directed by Crawford which followed, was the flop they had all anticipated. Production came to a standstill and members had to take jobs and handouts wherever they could find them. The Group seemed to be falling apart. To stem the tide of dispersion, they pleaded with Strasberg to teach some classes for them, but “Lee was wan and they were listless,” Clurman remembered. In his view the Group “did not need classes so much as relief.”