Sanford Meisner

The family went to the Catskills to improve Sanford Meisner's health. His younger brother Jacob drank unpasteurized milk there, contracted bovine tuberculosis and died. Their parents blamed Sanford. He was the oldest of four children born in Brooklyn to Hermann Meisner, a furrier, and Bertha Knoepfler, both Jewish immigrants from Hungary, and he grew up withdrawn, calling the death decades later the dominant emotional influence in his life, from which he had never escaped. What released him was the family piano. He trained as a concert pianist at the Damrosch Institute of Music, the school that became Juilliard, until the Depression pulled him out to haul fabric in the Garment District.

He was 19 when he took a job as an extra with the Theatre Guild and decided acting was the work. In 1931 Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford picked 28 actors to form the Group Theatre, and Meisner was one of them. He acted with the company for a decade and argued with it throughout, resisting Strasberg's reliance on affective memory. In 1935 he joined the faculty of the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. He ran its acting department until 1990 — 55 years — and spent them building something of his own.

The core exercise looks like nothing. Two actors sit facing each other, and one states a plain observation — you are wearing a red shirt — and the other repeats it back, and they keep going. What they are listening for is the small change in the other person: impatience, amusement, a flinch. When the words stop being something either of them thinks about, the behavior turns involuntary. Meisner's summary has become the standard one — living truthfully under imaginary circumstances. Strasberg pointed the actor inward, at his own remembered feeling. Adler pointed him at imagination and the given circumstances of the script. Meisner pointed him across the room, at the other person. He could be brutal — one published account has him pinching a student from behind to force a line out — and his students defend him anyway.

The students: Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Gregory Peck, Grace Kelly, Sydney Pollack, James Caan, Steve McQueen, Jeff Goldblum. Cancer took his larynx in 1970. He taught for another 26 years with a prosthetic voice, and did not stop. He kept running the Neighborhood Playhouse acting department until 1990 and stayed on as director emeritus. He also opened schools with his partner on the island of Bequia and in North Hollywood. He died in his sleep at home in Sherman Oaks on February 2, 1997, at 91. His exercises are now a standard part of American actor training, taught by people who never met him.

Sanford Meisner's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The Meisner technique other
  Developed and refined at the Neighborhood Playhouse over five decades 1935
• Neighborhood Playhouse acting department other
  Joined the faculty in 1935 and directed the department until 1990 1935
• Meisner/Carville School of Acting other
  Founded on the Caribbean island of Bequia, with a North Hollywood branch from 1985 1983
• Sanford Meisner on Acting book
  Written with Dennis Longwell — a year in his classroom, transcribed 1987
• The Sanford Meisner Center for the Arts other
  North Hollywood theater company and school, opened two years before his death 1995

• August 31, 1905 aged 0 Born in Brooklyn to Hungarian Jewish immigrants Hermann Meisner, a furrier, and Bertha Knoepfler. Sanford was the oldest of four.
• 1923 aged ~18 Leaves Erasmus Hall High School and goes after acting work He had already acted under Lee Strasberg at a Lower East Side settlement house.
• 1925 aged ~20 Appears in the Theatre Guild revue The Garrick Gaieties Strasberg was in the same company. The show produced the song Manhattan.
• 1931 aged ~26 Chosen as one of the 28 founding actors of the Group Theatre Selected by Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford.
• 1934 aged ~29 Stella Adler returns from Stanislavski and Meisner breaks with affective memory Adler reported that Stanislavski now treated personal memory as a last resort. Meisner abandoned it entirely.
• 1935 aged ~30 Joins the faculty of the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre He would run its acting department for 55 years.
• 1970 aged ~65 Diagnosed with throat cancer and loses his larynx He went on teaching for another 26 years with a prosthetic voice.
• 1987 aged ~82 Publishes Sanford Meisner on Acting with Dennis Longwell The book put the classroom itself on the page and carried the technique nationwide.
• February 2, 1997 aged 91 Dies in his sleep at home in Sherman Oaks at 91

• Lee Strasberg 1901–1982
  Taught the Method to two generations of American actors, and made affective memory the centre of it. rival
• Stella Adler 1901–1992
  Acting teacher who trained Marlon Brando and broke with Lee Strasberg influenced by
• Harold Clurman 1901–1980
  Co-founder of the Group Theatre and drama critic of The Nation founded the Group Theatre with
• Elia Kazan 1909–2003
  Directed A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman and On the Waterfront, and named names to HUAC. Group Theatre colleague
• Grace Kelly 1929–1982
  Film star turned Princess of Monaco taught