| Playhouse
West - A Short History
Intro - The
Beginning - Turning Point -
Enter Mr. Meisner
Reprinted From a 1995 Article by Robert Carnegie
A REVIEWER of Sidney Lumet’s new book, Making Movies,
made mention of the fact that Mr. Lumet had an excellent memory
when it came to those with whom he worked that did a good
job but conveniently forgot the names of those with whom he
had difficulties. This was gracious of Mr. Lumet and is the
example we would like to emulate in this short history of
our theater.
It struck us while watching a series on television entitled
“Inside the Actor’s Studio” how history
can become perverted for the advantage of those who are in
a position to benefit from the misconceptions. In an interview
with Alec Baldwin, which was a part of this series, the moderator,
James Lipton, said that “Alec Baldwin studied with Lee
Strasberg who founded The Actor’s Studio.” This
is a famous bit of rewritten history and has been intentionally
imbedded into the consciousness of almost the entire theatrical
world. The falsity of his statement can be easily discovered
by simply reading any theatrical history book like Kazan’s,
A Life, or A Method to Their Madness by Foster Hirsch. That
such a misleading statement, which is so easily disproved,
would be made on national television is testimony to how far
people in institutions will go to further their own agendas.
In point of fact, The Actor’s Studio was founded in
October of 1947 by Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford, and Robert
Lewis two months before A Streetcar Named Desire opened on
Broadway. It was Streetcar of course that made a star of Marion
Brando. In the book, Tennessee Williams & Elia Kazan:
a Collaboration in the Theatre by Brenda Murphy, the following
point is made about the casting of this play:
“It was Selznik (the producer) who suggested Kim Hunter
for Stella, but the rest of the cast, as was to become typical
for Kazan, came out of his newly established Actor’s
Studio, which he was to treat as a kind of permanent company,
drawing on it for both plays and films throughout the forties
and fifties.” (page 20).
Kazan was a member of The Group Theater. He learned there
that the best acting was created by an ensemble that worked
together and shared a common vision and technique. The Group
Theater was disbanded in 1940 but Kazan knew that if he was
to succeed as a director he needed to re-create in some measure
the approach of The Group. His effort to do so was The Actor’s
Studio and his reputation drew into it the finest actors of
that time. But over time, and as a result of a lot of effective
press agents, these early students of Kazan and other teachers,
such as Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner, have all been claimed
as Actor’s Studio actors, and by inference, protégé’s
of Lee Strasberg. Brando himself corrects this in his autobiography:
“After I had some success, Lee Strasberg tried to take
credit for teaching me how to act. He never taught me anything!
Sometimes I went to the Actor’s Studio on Saturday mornings
because Elia Kazan was teaching, and there were usually a
lot of good-looking girls. But Strasberg never taught me acting.
Stella did, and later Kazan.” (page 85).
We were surprised, at this late a date, that still the misinformation
about the Actor’s Studio and its founding is being promulgated
by Mr. Lipton and others. We have also heard of late a degree
of misinformation about us and our theater and we felt it
was time to set the record straight so that those who work
with us can know of a certainty from whence we come.
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