• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 441 0

Paul Muni or Paulette Goddard and change your name. They were Jews, but didn’t “look Jewish” and employed the camouflage of non-Jewish names. Hence Julius Garfinkle became John Garfield, Marion Levy became Paulette Goddard, Emmanuel Goldenberg became Edward G. Robinson and Muni Weisenfreund became Paul Muni. Later this changed when people like Barbra Streisand said, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to change my name. I’m a Jew and I’m proud of it.” Now Jews don’t have to get their noses operated on to get a job, but Stella was part of a different era. She went to Hollywood, made three movies and changed her last name to “Ardler,” hoping it would help, but she had a sharp, aquiline nose that gave her the “Jewish look.” She had it operated on and the result made her look more like a shiksa; but producers still said she looked too Jewish to offer her the kind of jobs her talent deserved and that would have made her a star.

But while Stella never fulfilled her dream, she left an astounding legacy. Virtually all acting in motion pictures today stems from her, and she had an extraordinary effect on the culture of her time. I don’t think audiences realize how much we are in debt to her, to other Jews and to the Russian theater for most performances we see now. The techniques she brought back to this country and taught others changed acting enormously. First she passed them on to the other members of the Group Theatre, and then to actors like me who became her students. We plied our trade according to the manner and style she taught us, and since American movies dominate the world market, Stella’s teachings have influenced actors throughout the world.

Stella always said no one could teach acting, but she could. She had a knack for teaching people about themselves, enabling them to use their emotions and bring out their hidden sensitivity. She also had a gift for communicating her knowledge; she could tell you not only when you were wrong, but why. Her instincts were unerring and extraordinary. If I hit a sour note in a scene, she knew it immediately and said, “No, wait, wait, wait … that’s wrong!” and then dug into her large reserve of intuitive intelligence to explain why my character would behave in a certain way based on the author’s vision.

“Method acting” was a term popularized, bastardized and misused by Lee Strasberg, a man for whom I had little respect, and therefore I hesitate to use it. What Stella taught her students was how to discover the nature of their own emotional mechanics and therefore those of others. She taught me to be real and not to try to act out an emotion I didn’t personally experience during a performance.

Because of Stella, acting changed completely during the fifties and sixties. Until the generation she inspired came along, most actors were what I have always thought of as “personality” actors, like Sarah Bernhardt, Katharine Cornell or Ruth Gordon. George Bernard Shaw once said, “A character actor is one who cannot act and therefore makes an elaborate study of disguise and stage tricks by which acting can be grotesquely simulated.” A lot of actors believed that by growing a beard, checking out a robe from the wardrobe department and carrying a staff they could become Moses, but they were seldom anything other than themselves playing the same role time after time. To indicate torment or confusion, they put their hands on their foreheads and sighed loudly. They acted externally rather than internally.

There were a few good natural actors from the past. I once saw a clip from a 1916 movie, Cenere, starring Eleonora Duse, a fine actress whose career was unfortunately overshadowed by her rival, the more flamboyant Bernhardt. Her acting was understated, simple, without theatrical artifice and enormously effective. Other natural actors whose instincts showed in their work were Paul Muni and Jimmy Cagney, but I believe they were exceptions. Until Stella came along, stage acting was mostly declaiming, superficial gestures, exaggerated expression, loud voices, theatrical elocution and unfelt emotion. Most