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Playhouse West

Playhouse West

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4250 Lankershim Blvd, North Hollywood, CA 91602
Playhouse West
Toluca Lake, The Valley
4250 Lankershim Blvd
Btwn Whipple St & Valley Spring Ln
North Hollywood, California 91602

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Description

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.Elia KazanThe 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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