LEE STRASBERG

'Lee Strasberg' (November 17, 1901 – February 17, 1982) was an Academy Award nominated Austro-Hungarian-American director, actor, producer, and acting teacher. He was born 'Israel Strassberg' in Budzanów, former Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Budaniv, Ukraine), to Ida and Baruch Meyer Strassberg.

Contents

Career

Personal life

Marilyn Monroe

Work on Broadway

See also

External links

References

Career

In 1931, Lee Strasberg became one of the co-founders of the Group Theatre, a company which included such legends as Elia Kazan, John Garfield, Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, Franchot Tone, and Robert Lewis. It is rarely mentioned that Strasberg left the Group Theatre in 1935 because of his controversial theories on acting, mostly challenged by Stella Adler, who later visited Russian Master Acting Trainer Konstantin Stanislavski who said he abandoned the thoughts that had influenced Strasberg. In 1936, Strasberg became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1949, he began a lengthy career at the Actors Studio in New York City. Within two years, he was artistic director and the now-renowned institution's reputation flourished. Actors under his tutelage there included Geraldine Page, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Kim Stanley, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Fonda, James Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Eli Wallach, Eva Marie Saint, Robert DeNiro, Jill Clayburgh, Ellen Burstyn, Gene Wilder, Steve McQueen and Dennis Hopper.
In 1966, he established the "Actors Studio West" in Los Angeles. In 1969, he began the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York and Los Angeles.^[1]
While rarely stepping in front of the camera himself (he appeared in just seven films), he received most attention for the role of Hyman Roth in ''. Roth is an elderly Jewish organized crime figure retired to Miami, having become the overlord of criminal enterprise in Cuba; in the course of the film he incurs the wrath of Michael Corleone, played by Strasberg's former student Al Pacino. Strasberg received an Academy Award nomination for this performance, losing to Robert DeNiro, another one of his former students.
Strasberg is considered by many to be the patriarch of American "method" acting. He provided inspiration for generations of actors during his lifetime and a lasting legacy for generations to come. Modern theater thought, however, seems to be more captivated with simpler, less self-indulgent acting methods like those of Sanford Meisner and David Mamet.

Personal life

He was married to his second wife, the actress and drama coach Paula Strasberg from 1934 until her death from cancer in 1966. They were the parents of actress Susan Strasberg and acting teacher John Strasberg. Lee Strasberg's third wife was the former Anna Mizrahi, a Sephardic Jew who was born in Venezuela and the mother of his two youngest children, David and Adam.
Lee Strasberg died of a heart attack in New York City at the age of 80; his eldest children and only grandchild were disinherited in the will. Strasberg is interred at Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, Westchester County, New York.

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was a student of Strasberg's, and he helped her throughout her life.
His daughter Susan wrote the best-selling book ''Marilyn and Me: sisters, rivals, friends'' (published after Lee's death, and probably in light of disinheriting his children), which recounted her relationship with her "surrogate sister". Monroe was 29 when she became Strasberg's favorite student. Over eight years the screen goddess was a sisterly friend and household rival of aspiring actress Susan Strasberg, just 17 when they met. Susan for a time shared her bedroom with the envied intruder, object of the paternal adulation of her father. In the book, Susan swings between admiration and disillusionment with Monroe (Susan describes Monroe as someone who sketched, wrote poetry and sympathized with underdogs when she wasn't floundering in depressed insomnia or drug-induced paranoia). A convert to Judaism after her marriage to Arthur Miller, she peppered her conversation with Yiddishisms.
In her final will, Monroe left Strasberg all of her personal effects and clothing, to be distributed to her friends, colleagues and those to whom she was devoted. This is something that he never followed through with as requested in Monroe's will. He was also given 75% of the residuary of the estate. For many years Lee Strasberg and later his wife Anna Strasberg have indicated that they were willed the Right of Publicity from Marilyn Monroe to her estate. Anna, who never met Monroe took over administration the estate after Lee Strasberg's death. The estate still earns millions of dollars in licensing fees whenever an advertiser or manufacturer uses Monroe's image. According to a recent online report in the Indianapolis Business Journal, Anna Strasberg had attempted to show that these rights were to be passed down to her husband. However recent rulings in New York and California courts in favor of photographers including The Shaw Family Archives in New York and Milton H. Greene Archives and Tom Kelley Studios have negated this falsehood of the Strasberg control of Marilyn Monroe's Right of Publicity. In these states there is no stronghold on Marilyn's image from Marilyn Monroe LLC (MMLLC) and the licensing agency CMG Worldwide. This was a right that did not exist at the time of Marilyn Monroe's death and The Right Of Publicity was also something that Marilyn Monroe did not specifically bequeath in her will.
Anna declared that she would never sell Monroe's personal items after successfully suing Odyssey Auctions in 1994 to prevent the sale of items that Strasberg withheld from Monroe's former business manager Inez Melson. However, in October 1999 Christie's auctioned the bulk of Monroe's personal effects - the auction netted $13.4 million. Julien's staged a second auction of Monroe's personal effects in 2005.

Work on Broadway

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) - Co-Director

★ ''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

★ ''The Three Sisters'' (1964), (revival) - Director, Produced by The Actors Studio

See also

★ Method acting

External links

★ Official website

★ The Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute

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★ John Strasberg Studios

★ Photo & Gravesite

References

1. A Timeline of Lee