Adler Comments

Stella Adler (February 10, 1901 – December 21, 1992) was a prominent American actress through the 1920s and 30s and beyond. The daughter of Sara and Jacob Adler, Stella Adler was born into a Jewish-American acting dynasty. Adler was a founding member of the prominent Group Theater, as well as being married to legendary critic and director Harold Clurman for a time. She was the only American to be taught by the great acting instructor Konstantin Stanislavski. Her famous disagreement with Lee Strasberg over the appropriate teaching and interpretation of Stanislavski’s Method prompted a debate in American theatre that continues today. For years to follow, she was regarded as America’s foremost acting teacher. Her work, and view of The Method, is carried on today through the Stella Adler Studio of Acting.

Biography

*Adler was a member of the Jewish-American Adler acting dynasty, the youngest daughter of Jacob P. Adler and Sara Adler, the sister Luther and Jay Adler, and half-sister of Charles Adler. Her parents were the pre-eminent tragedians of the Yiddish stage in the United States.

*Stella was born in New York City, New York on February 10, 1901. She was the only American actor to be instructed in the art of acting by Konstantin Stanislavski. She was a prominent member of the Group Theatre, but differences of opinion with Lee Strasberg over the correct teaching of Stanislavki's System (later developed into Method acting) contributed to the ultimate break-up of the group.

*Adler was Marlon Brando's first influential acting teacher. Brando met her through his sister, Jocelyn, who was studying drama with Adler, and he decided to take drama as well. Brando had been considered unsuitable for the army and had been expelled from the military school that his father had sent him to. Adler believed when she met Brando that he would be the best American actor in theater before the end of the year.

*She was three times married, first to Horace Eliascheff, the father of her only child, Ellen, then to Harold Clurman, the famous director and critic, and one of the founders of the legendary Group Theater, and last to Mitchell A. Wilson, the

physicist and novelist who died in 1973.

*She died in Los Angeles, California, from heart failure at the age of 91 in 1992, and was interred in the Mount Carmel Cemetery, Glendale, New York. As said in her obituary, “with honey-blond hair and expressive grey-green eyes, Miss Adler was aristrocratic, physically and vocally, and her teaching was passionate, scholarly and volatile, delivered with evangelical showmanship, wicked wit and pungent phrases. She kept her students spellbound by raging, purring, cursing, cajoling and from time to time, complimenting.”

Actor

*She made her stage debut in 1906 in her father’s production of Broken Hearts at the Grand Street Theatre in New York, and appeared in nearly two hundred productions in the United States and abroad. In 1919, she made her first appearance in London as Naomi in Elisha Ben Avia at the Pavillion Theatre.

*Following a coast-to-coast tour on the Orpheum Vaudeville circuit, the young actress enrolled at the newly extablished American Laboratory Theatre School which was founded in 1925 by Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya, former members of the famed Mosvow Art Theatre, widely acknowledged to be the best repertory company in the world. There, Ms. Adler took part in countless scene workshops and played important parts in major American Laboratory Theatre Productions. It was there that she was introduced to Stanislavsky’s revolutionary acting technique. From 1926 until 1952 Adler appeared regularly on Broadway. She appeared in only three films, including Shadow of the Thin Man (1941).

*Stella Adler decided in the spring of 1931 to join The Group Theatre. It aimed to offer an alternative to the commercial stage by establishing an ensemble of players, directors, designers, and writers committed to the creation of a theatre where, plays could be seen as artistic wholes.

*Over the next few years, Stella Adler played leading roles in several Group Theatre Productions, including Myra Bonney in Dawn Powell’s Big Night; Gwen Ballentyne in John Howard Lawson’s Gentlewoman; and Adah Isaccs Menken in Melvin Levy’s Gold Eagle Guy. But the performance that impressed the critics was her portrayal of Bessie Berger in Awake and Sing, by Clifford Odets. Adler never accepted Lee Strasberg’s interpretation of “the method” and while on a European holiday was introduced to Stanislavsky and invited by him for the next several months to study daily, working on specific scenes and on various aspects of his technique.

*She returned to the Group Theatre in August of 1934, and made a formal report to the company on Stanislavsky’s technique complete with a chart illustrating the elements that go into the art of acting.

*From then on, the Group's directors placed less emphasis on resurrecting the actor's personal emotional experiences and concentrated instead on helping actors discover the emotional experiences of their characters. Ms. Adler shortly began to give acting classes herself.

*Stella Adler made her last stage appearance with the Group Theatre in December 1935 as Clara in Paradise Lost by Clifford Odets. In 1937, the actress made her motion picture debut in the light-hearted Paramount comedy, Love On Toast. Her subsequent screen credits include Shadow of the Thin Man, (MGM, 1941), and My Girl Tisa (United Artists, 1948). For a short period of time, she was associate producer at MGM to Arthur Freed and supervised such films as Madame Curie, DuBarry was a Lady, and Me and My Gal, as well as several other Judy Garland films.

*Stella Adler staged the critically acclaimed touring production of Odets' Golden Boy that stunned audiences in Los Angeles and in London during the winter of 1938 and 1939. She returned periodically to the Group Theatre until its dissolution in 1941, primarily to direct.

*Ms. Adler returned to the Broadway stage in May 1943 to portray Catherine Carnick, the promiscuous wife in Max Reinhardt's spectacular staging of Sons and Soldiers, by Irwin Shaw. In Claiborne Foster's Pretty Little Parlour, she pulled out all the stops to make the rapacious Clothilde Hilyard seem larger-than-life. Her portrayal of Zinaida, the volcanic lion tamer in the Theatre Guild's 1946 revival of Leonid Andreyev's mystical melodrama, He Who Gets Slapped, was equally flambouyant. Ms. Adler's final stage appearance was in London (1961) when she played Madame Rosepetal in Arthur Kopit's Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You In A Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad.

Director

*As a Broadway theatrical director, Stella Adler staged productions in New York City including Manhattan Nocturne by Roy Walling (1943), Sunday Breakfast by Emery Rub and Miriam Ball (1952), a revival of Paul Green's anti-war musical Johnny Johnson, and the musical Polonaise (1945), an historical extravaganza set to the music of Frederick Chopin, which enjoyed a respectable run.

*As more than one critic pointed out, Stella Adler's skill as a director was perhaps best measured by finely drawn characterizations she coaxed from her actors, most notably Manhattan Nocturne.

Teacher

*Concurrently, with her twin careers as an actress and director, Miss Adler began, in the early 1940's to teach. In 1949, she established the Stella Adler Theatre school as a place for serious young actors to work, study and perhaps the most important, perform. She formulated an ambitious curriculum specifically designed to provide each student with a practical acting technique that would, in her words, not only help him to extend his range, but also enable him to develop his craft and independence in the theatre. "The ultimate aim of the training is to create an actor who can be responsible for his artistic development and achievement."

*To that end, Miss Adler devised a comprehensive two-year program of classes in Acting, Speech and Voice, Shakespeare, Make-Up, and Movement among other things, as well as workshops in play analysis, characterization, scene preparation, and acting styles.

*Believing that a teacher's job is to agitate as well as to inspire, Stella Adler was a stern task mistress. She demanded from her students maximum, not minimum efforts and to get them she would encourage, wheedle, scold and occasionally explode. More often than not, she demonstrated the effect she wanted, moving with apparent effortlessness from Desdemona to Nina to Blanche DuBois, in a single scene-study class. As Foster Hirsch reported in “A Method to Their Madness", her classroom performances are surely among the most energetic in New York.

*The acting studio Adler founded still operates in New York City today. Her method, based on use of the actor's imagination, has been studied by many renowned actors, such as Robert De Niro, Martin Sheen, and Roy Scheider, in addition to Brando, who served as the studio's Honorary Chairman until his death. Adler's legacy continues with the work of the Stella Adler Studio of Acting.

Plays

Sunday Breakfast Original, Play

Staged by Stella Adler May 28, 1952 - Jun 8, 1952

He Who Gets Slapped Revival, Play, Tragedy

Performer: Stella Adler Zinida Mar 20, 1946 - Apr 27, 1946

Pretty Little Parlor Original, Play

Performer: Stella Adler Apr 17, 1944 - Apr 22, 1944

Manhattan Nocturne Original, Play

Directed by Stella Adler Oct 26, 1943 - Nov 13, 1943

Sons and Soldiers Original, Play

Performer: Stella Adler May 4, 1943 - May 22, 1943

Paradise Lost Original, Play, Drama

Performer: Stella Adler Clara Dec 9, 1935 - Feb 1936

Awake and Sing! Original, Play, Drama

Performer: Stella Adler Bessie Berger Sep 9, 1935 - Sep 1935

Awake and Sing! Original, Play, Drama

Performer: Stella Adler Bessie Berger Feb 19, 1935 - Jul 1935

Gold Eagle Guy Original, Play

Performer: Stella Adler Adah Menken Nov 28, 1934 - Jan 1935

Gentlewoman Original, Play, Comedy

Performer: Stella Adler Gwyn Ballantine Mar 22, 1934 - Apr 1934

Hilda Cassidy Original, Play

Performer: Stella Adler Hilda Cassidy May 4, 1933 - May 1933

Big Night Original, Play

Performer: Stella Adler Myra Bonney Jan 17, 1933 - Jan 1933

Success Story Original, Play

Performer: Stella Adler Sarah Glassman Sep 26, 1932 - Jan 1933

Night Over Taos Original, Play

Performer: Stella Adler Dona Josefa Mar 9, 1932 - Mar 1932

1931- [riginal, Play, Drama

Performer: Stella Adler Dec 10, 1931 - Dec 1931

The House of Connelly Original, Play, Drama

Performer: Stella Adler Geraldine Connelly Sep 28, 1931 - Dec 1931

Big Lake Original, Play, Drama

Performer: Stella Adler Elly Apr 11, 1927 - Apr 1927

The Straw Hat Original, Play, Comedy

Performer: Stella Adler Baroness Creme de la Creme

As director

Manhattan Nocturne (1943)

Sunday Breakfast (1952)

Quotes

*“With all the imperious flamboyance of an older theatrical tradition-European in its roots-she was somehow fragile, vulnerable, gay with mother wit and stage fragrance, eager to add knowledge to instinct, spiritually vibrant, as if forever awaiting the redemption of a faith as realistically substantial as it was emotionally exalting.” Harold Clurman on Stella Adler

*“The theatre-acting, creating, interpreting–means total involvement, the totality of heart, mind and spirit”- Adler

*“The total development of a human being into the most he can be and in as many directions as he can possibly take.” Adler from an interview in 1968

Stanislavsky taught her that “the source of acting is imagination and that the key to its problems is truth, truth in the circumstances of the play.”

*“My ability to bring out the student's talent is somewhere deep inside me, and I must do whatever I need to pull it out".-Adler

*"Don't critisize, Recognize"-Adler

*"Acting, creating, interpreting, means total involvement; the totality of heart, mind, and spirit. Acting is the total development of a human being into the most he or she can be and in as many directions as you can possibly take."-Adler

*"Do you know what you did, sweetheart? You interrupted the whole scene with your one throw away line. That's very American of you?"-Adler

*"There is a certain kind of excitement in the theatre – Nobody's completely sane!”

*"Take a chance children, you're not going to jail."-Adler

*"It's a drama. You're playing it like you're picking up a magazine in a beauty parlor."-Adler

*"You're acting the hell out of it. You're giving the performance of ten thousand actresses!"-Adler

*"I was at a rehearsal once and an actor yawned -- The rehearsal was dismissed."-Adler

*"Mitchell Wilson wrote in 'The New York Times' that ten years have been added to a man in the last decade, that men live longer -- but in America, it was added to the childhood, not to the maturity..."-Adler

*"Listen where the ideas come, darling. Listen quickly, grab the ideas... Like the C.I.A. does."-Adler

*"Darling, the theatre is not as small as you want to make it."-Adler

*"Do it, Don't talk about it."-Adler

*"When an actor meets another actor, he doesn't have to say, 'How do you do?,' he says, 'Oh, you're in the same trouble I'm in'."-Adler

*"Sweetheart, she's going to commit suicide in the next scene, and you want to powder your nose!"-Adler

*"If tears were talent, then my Aunt Sadie has more talent than anybody in the world."-Adler

*"You have to make magic out of lines."-Adler

*"Leave the audience alone. If you want them, they won't want you. If you ignore them, they'll like you."-Adler

*"You're playing an actress that's pretending to be pretending to be whatever you're pretending to be."-Adler

*"You could be good if you gave up acting."-Adler

*"Naturally he is destructive, because the nature of art is to destroy you -- look at me. If I were an artist, I would be at least ten times more destroyed. I'm just a teacher..."-Adler

*"The theatre doesn't permit all that inner psychological acting without an insane asylum being attached to it."-Adler

*"It's great! The arrogance of modern man, who says everything and knows nothing!"-Adler

*"Cut out nine-hundred and ninety-nine percent and we'll still have you acting to much."-Adler

*"Louder! for God's sake, before we all die!"-Adler

*"That's not acting! That's lunacy!"-Adler

References

www.ibdb.com Internet Broadway Database

http://0-proquest.umi.com.wncln.wncln.org/pqdweb?index Stella Adler Obituray

www.stellaadlet-la.com/AboutStella/StellaBio/StellaBio.html Stella Adler Website

www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/adler_s.html Pbs website

www.stellaadler.com

Clurman, Harold. The Fervent Years: The story of the group theatre and the thirties. New York: Hill and Wang,1945.