Lee Strasberg

Lee Strasberg (born Israel Strassberg; Born in Budzanów, Austria-Hungary, he immigrated to the United States in 1909. He co-founded, with theatre directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931, which was hailed as "America's first true theatrical collective". In 1951, he became director of the nonprofit Actors Studio in New York City, considered "the nation's most prestigious acting school", Geraldine Page, Eli Wallach, and directors Andreas Voutsinas, Frank Perry, Elia Kazan, and Michael Cimino.

By 1970, Strasberg had become less involved with the Actors Studio and, with his third wife, Anna Strasberg, opened the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute with branches in New York City and in Hollywood, to continue teaching the Stanislavski's system, which he had interpreted and developed, for contemporary actors.

As an actor, Strasberg is best known for his portrayal of the primary antagonist, the gangster Hyman Roth, alongside his former student Al Pacino in The Godfather Part II (1974), a role he took at Pacino's suggestion after Kazan turned down the role, and which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He also appeared in Going in Style (1979) and ...And Justice for All (1979).

Early years Strasberg was born Israel Strassberg into a Jewish family in Budzanów, a village then in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now in Ukraine. He was the youngest of three sons born to Ida and Baruch Meyer Strassberg. Baruch immigrated to New York City while his family remained in Budzanów with an uncle, who worked as a rabbinical teacher. Baruch, who worked as a presser in the garment industry, sent first for his eldest son and his daughter. Finally, enough money was saved to bring over Ida and the couple's two remaining sons. In 1909, the family was reunited in Lower East Side, Manhattan, where they lived until the early 1920s. A young Strasberg took refuge in voracious reading and the companionship of his elder brother, Zalmon, whose death in the 1918 influenza pandemic was so traumatic for him that, despite being a straight-A student, he dropped out of high school.

A relative introduced Strasberg to the theatre by giving him a small part in a Yiddish-language production being performed by the Progressive Drama Club. He later joined the Chrystie Street Settlement House's drama club. Philip Loeb, casting director of the Theater Guild, sensed that Strasberg could act, although he was not yet thinking of a full-time acting career and was still working as a shipping clerk and bookkeeper for a wig company.

Strasberg eventually left the Clare Tree Major School to study with students of Stanislavski — Maria Ouspenskaya and Richard Boleslawski — at the American Laboratory Theatre. In 1925, Strasberg had his first professional appearance in Processional, a play produced by the Theater Guild.

According to Schickel: What Strasberg ... took away from the Actors Lab was a belief that just as an actor could be prepared physically for his work with dance, movement, and fencing classes, he could be mentally prepared by resort to analogous mental exercises. They worked on relaxation as well as concentration. They worked with nonexistent objects that helped prepare them for the exploration of equally ephemeral emotions. They learned to use "affective memory", as Strasberg called the most controversial aspect of his teaching—summoning emotions from their own lives to illuminate their stage roles. ... Strasberg believed he could codify this system, a necessary precursor to teaching it to anyone who wanted to learn it. ... e became a director more preoccupied with getting his actors to work in the "correct" way than he was in shaping the overall presentation. There, he created a technique that became known as "The Method" or "Method Acting". His teaching style owed much to the Russian practitioner, Konstantin Stanislavski, whose book, An Actor Prepares (published in English in 1936), dealt with the psychology of acting. He began by directing, but his time was gradually taken up by the training of actors. Called "America's first true theatrical collective", the Group Theater immediately offered a few tuition-free scholarships for its three-year program to "promising students."

Publishers Weekly wrote, "The Group Theatre ... with its self-defined mission to reconnect theater to the world of ideas and actions, staged plays that confronted social and moral issues ... with members Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, Stella, and Luther Adler, Clifford Odets, Elia Kazan, and an ill-assorted band of idealistic actors living hand to mouth are seen welded in a collective of creativity that was also a tangle of jealousies, love affairs, and explosive feuds." Playwright Arthur Miller said, "the Group Theatre was unique and probably will never be repeated. For a while it was literally the voice of Depression America." Co-founder Harold Clurman, in describing what Strasberg brought to the Group Theater, wrote:

Classroom settings Kazan described the classes taught by Strasberg:

In an 80th birthday interview, he said that he was looking forward to his next 20 years in the theater. According to friends, he was healthy until the day he died. "It was so unexpected", Al Pacino said. "What stood out was how youthful he was. He never seemed as old as his years. He was an inspiration." Actress Jane Fonda said after hearing of his death, "I'm not sure I even would have become an actress were it not for him. He will be missed, but he leaves behind a great legacy."

Legacy East 15th Street between Union Square East and Irving Place in Manhattan has been designated "Lee Strasberg Way"."Whether directly influenced by Strasberg or not", wrote acting author Pamela Wojcik, "the new male stars all to some degree or other adapted method techniques to support their identification as rebels.... He recreates romance as a drama of male neuroticism and also invests his characterization 'with an unprecedented aura of verisimilitude.'" Acting teacher and author Alison Hodge explains, "Seemingly spontaneous, intuitive, brooding, 'private,' lit with potent vibrations from an inner life of conflict and contradiction, their work exemplified the style of heightened naturalism which (whether Brando agrees or not) Lee Strasberg devoted his life to exploring and promoting." Pamela Wojcik adds: Because of their tendency to substitute their personal feelings for those of the characters they were playing, Actors Studio performers were well suited to become Hollywood stars. ... In short, Lee Strasberg transformed a socialistic, egalitarian theory of acting into a celebrity-making machine. ... It does not matter who 'invented' Marlon Brando or how regularly or faithfully he, Dean, or Clift attended the Studio or studied the method at the feet of Lee Strasberg. In their signature roles—the most influential performances in the history of American films—these three performers revealed new kinds of body language and new ways of delivering dialogue. In the pauses between words, in the language 'spoken' by their eyes and faces, they gave psychological realism an unprecedented charge. Verbally inarticulate, they were eloquent 'speakers' of emotion. Far less protective of their masculinity than earlier film actors, they enacted emotionally wounded and vulnerable outsiders struggling for self-understanding, and their work shimmered with a mercurial neuroticism ... he method-trained performers in films of the '50s added an enhanced verbal and gesture naturalism and a more vivid inner life.

Lee Strasberg, his wife Paula, his daughter Susan, and his son John, all appear as characters in Robert Brustein's 1998 play Nobody Dies on Friday, which one critic called a "scathing portrait of Strasberg", but one that "can by no means be dismissed as a simple act of character assassination." Brustein, a critic, director, and producer, had previously made public his dislike of the method as a philosophy of acting. The play was produced by Brustein's American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was later presented in Singapore.

Strasberg is a character in Names, Mark Kemble's play about former Group Theatre members' struggles during the blacklist era.

In 2020, Google Arts & Culture, together with Giovanni Morassutti, an Italian actor who has deepened the study of The Method and long-time collaborator of John Strasberg, have created an online exhibition named Strasberg Legacy tracing the history of the realistic school of acting.

Broadway credits Note: All works are plays and the original productions, unless otherwise noted. Four Walls (1927) – actor The Vegetable (1929) – director Red Rust (1929) – actor Green Grow the Lilacs (1931) – actor The House of Connelly (1931) – codirector 1931 (1931) – director Success Story (1932) – director Men in White (1933) – director Gentlewoman (1934) – director Gold Eagle Guy (1934) – director Paradise Lost (1935) – produced by Group Theatre Case of Clyde Griffiths (1936) – director, produced by Group Theatre Johnny Johnson (1936) – director, produced by Group Theatre Many Mansions (1937) – director Golden Boy (1937) – produced by Group Theatre Roosty (1938) – director Casey Jones (1938), produced by Group Theatre All the Living (1938) – director Dance Night (1938) – director Rocket to the Moon (1938) – produced by Group Theatre The Gentle People (1939) – produced by Group Theatre Awake and Sing! (1939), revival – produced by Group Theatre Summer Night (1939) – director Night Music (1940) – produced by Group Theatre The Fifth Column (1940) – director Clash by Night (1941) – director A Kiss for Cinderella (1942), revival – director R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) (1942), revival – director Apology (1943) – producer and director South Pacific (1943, apparently no relation to the Broadway musical South Pacific) – director Skipper Next to God (1948) – director The Big Knife (1949) – director The Closing Door (1949) – director The Country Girl (1950) – co-producer Peer Gynt (1951), revival – director Strange Interlude (1963), revival – produced by The Actors Studio – Tony Award co-nomination for Best Producer of a Play Marathon '33 (1963) – production supervisor Three Sisters (1964), revival – director, produced by the Actors Studio

Film credits Parnell (1937) as Pat (uncredited) Impact (1949) as taxi driver (uncredited) China Venture (1953) as Patterson The Godfather Part II (1974; nominated, Academy Award Best Actor in a Supporting Role) as Hyman Roth The Cassandra Crossing (1977) as Herman Kaplan ...And Justice for All (1979) as Sam Kirkland Boardwalk (1979) as David Rosen Going in Style (1979) as Willie Skokie (1981, TV movie) as Morton Weisman