Lee Strasberg

His father went to New York first and sent for the family in pieces, as the money came. Israel Strassberg arrived last, in 1909, and the Lower East Side closed over a boy who read constantly and worshipped his older brother Zalmon. The influenza of 1918 killed Zalmon, and Strasberg, a straight-A student, walked out of high school and never went back. He kept the books for a wig company and acted at a settlement house. Then in 1923 Stanislavski brought the Moscow Art Theatre to New York, and he watched an ensemble in which every actor carried a visible inner life. He was small and plain and never going to be a star. He decided to become the man who explained how they did it.

He learned it from Stanislavski's students, Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya, at the American Laboratory Theatre, and spent 50 years codifying it. Affective memory is the core. Before a scene the actor stops and rebuilds the sensory detail of a real moment from his own life until the feeling it carried comes back, then plays the scene inside that feeling. He co-founded the Group Theatre in 1931, took over the Actors Studio in 1951, and opened his own school in 1969. He acted on screen once to any effect, as Hyman Roth in The Godfather Part II.

He was frightening, and he meant to be. Elia Kazan, who admired him, wrote that the Group held together by the threat of Strasberg's anger and that he was afraid of the man himself. Strasberg put it plainly: at the Studio, he wrote, we do not sit around and feed each other's egos, and people are shocked how severe we are on each other. Actors came out of those sessions wrecked, and some never presented work again. Then there is Marilyn Monroe. She began studying with him in 1955, took private lessons at his home, grew close to him and to his wife Paula, and left him the bulk of her residuary estate. It passed on his death to Anna, the third wife he married after Monroe was gone, and the arrangement has drawn criticism ever since.

The argument outlived him and has not closed. Stella Adler spent five weeks with Stanislavski in Paris in 1934 and came back saying Strasberg had it wrong: Stanislavski had moved off emotional memory toward imagination and given circumstances. She broke with him and taught her own method. Sanford Meisner dropped affective memory altogether for the reality of doing. Critics have called it psychologically risky, and self-absorption in place of craft. On the day he died, Adler is said to have told her class it would take the theatre decades to recover from the damage he did to American actors. Against that stands the roster, and the fact that American screen acting after 1950 does not sound like what came before.

Lee Strasberg's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The Group Theatre other
  Co-founded with Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, and called America's first true theatrical collective 1931
• The Actors Studio other
  Founded in 1947 by Kazan, Cheryl Crawford and Robert Lewis — Strasberg was its artistic director from 1951 until he died 1951
• Strasberg at the Actors Studio book
  Tape-recorded sessions, edited by Robert H. Hethmon 1965
• Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute other
  His own school, on East 15th Street in New York, with a second campus in Los Angeles 1969
• The Godfather Part II film
  Hyman Roth — the part came at Al Pacino's suggestion after Elia Kazan turned it down, and brought an Academy Award nomination 1974
• A Dream of Passion book
  His own account of the Method, published five years after his death 1987

• 1909 aged ~8 The family is reunited on the Lower East Side His father had gone ahead to New York and worked as a presser in the garment trade, sending for the children as the fares were saved.
• 1918 aged ~17 His older brother Zalmon dies in the influenza pandemic Strasberg was a straight-A student. He dropped out of high school and did not go back.
• 1923 aged ~22 Stanislavski brings the Moscow Art Theatre to New York Kazan's biographer called it the life-shaping revelation. Strasberg went on to study under two of Stanislavski's students, Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya, at the American Laboratory Theatre.
• 1931 aged ~30 Co-founds the Group Theatre with Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford Arthur Miller said that for a while it was literally the voice of Depression America.
• 1934 aged ~33 Stella Adler comes back from five weeks with Stanislavski and says he has it wrong Stanislavski told her he had abandoned emotional memory in favour of imagination and the given circumstances of the text. Adler broke with Strasberg and taught her own method.
• March 1937 aged 35 Resigns as director of the Group Theatre It had run six years on internal feuds as much as on ideas.
• 1951 aged ~50 Takes over the Actors Studio as artistic director More than a thousand actors auditioned each year and five or six were admitted. Dustin Hoffman got in on his sixth try, Harvey Keitel on his 11th.
• 1955 aged ~54 Marilyn Monroe becomes his student She took private lessons at his home because she was too shy for the room, and replaced her old coach Natasha Lytess with his wife Paula.
• February 17, 1982 aged 80 Dies of a heart attack in New York City A day earlier he had been told of his election to the American Theater Hall of Fame. Three days earlier he had danced in a chorus line with the Rockettes at Radio City, beside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

• Marilyn Monroe 1926–1962
  Actress and cultural icon whose blend of vulnerability and glamour made her a symbol of Hollywood's golden age. taught
• Elia Kazan 1909–2003
  Directed A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman and On the Waterfront, and named names to HUAC. co-founded the Actors Studio with
• Marlon Brando 1924–2004
  Actor whose method acting revolutionized film performance and influenced generations of actors. denied by
• James Dean 1931–1955
  Actor whose brief career and rebellious image in Rebel Without a Cause made him a symbol of teenage disillusionment. taught
• Al Pacino b. 1940
  Legendary actor whose roles in The Godfather and Scarface made him an icon of American cinema. succeeded at the Actors Studio by
• Robert De Niro b. 1943
  Academy Award-winning actor whose method performances in Taxi Driver and Raging Bull defined a generation. taught