Stella Adler(1901-1992)
- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Stella Adler was born on February 10, 1901, in New York, the youngest
daughter of the Yiddish theater actors, Jacob P. Adler and Sarah Adler, who
founded an acting dynasty. In addition to her parents, Stella's family
included her siblings Charles Adler, Jay Adler, Julia and Luther Adler, all of whom
appeared on Broadway. Stella made her debut at the age of four in the
family-owned theater in the play "Broken Hearts". At the age of 18, she
made her London debut as "Naomi" in "Elisa Ben Avia", in which she
appeared for a year before returning to New York. Stella then spent the
next 10 years treading the boards in vaudeville and Yiddish language
theaters throughout North and South America and Europe. In all, she
appeared in 100 plays.
Adler was widely acclaimed in the Yiddish theater, but she wanted to
break out of that theatrical ghetto and play a wider variety of roles
on the legitimate stage and in Hollywood. What was constant in Adler's
83-year-long career was her intense dedication to broadening the level
of artistry in the theater.
She made her Broadway debut as a replacement in Carl Kapek's "The World
We Live In". (Her official debut as a member of the original company
was in "The Straw Hat" on Oct 14, 1926). After its run played out, she
joined the acting school run by Richard Boleslawski and Maria Ouspenskaya, the American
Laboratory. Both Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya were former members
of the famous Moscow Art Theatre.
While married to Horace Eleaschreff, Adler met Harold Clurman, who would
become her second husband and one of the co-founders of The Group
Theatre, in 1924 (They would marry 19 years later). In this period, she
met another future Group Theatre co-founder, Lee Strasberg, at the Actor's
Laboratory when she participated in classes there in 1928. Along with
Cheryl Crawford, Clurman and Strasberg founded the Group Theatre in 1931. It
became arguably the most influential theater group in 20th century
America, at least in terms of its influence on acting by introducing
the teaching of Konstantin Stanislavski's System to the American stage. Its aim was the
championing of realism and it is credited with bringing naturalism into
the American theater. Clurman and Strasberg invited Adler to become a
founding member of the Group Theatre. The Utopian political ideals that
were central to the idea of the Group Theatre did not appeal to Adler,
nor did the cooperative focus of the company, but she did join after
being promised leading roles and because she supported Clurman's vision
of the theater as an art form. It was with the Group Theatre that
Stella played some of her more acclaimed roles, including "Sarah
Glassman" in "Success Story", "Bessie Berger" in "Awake and Sing" and
"Clara" in "Paradise Lost".
In 1934, she took a leave of absence from the Group Theatre and
traveled to Russia to study for five weeks in Moscow Art Theatre, and
in private sessions with the great man himself, Konstantin Stanislavski, whose motto
was "Think of your own experiences and use them truthfully." Adler was
among few American actors, such as Michael Chekhov and Richard Boleslawski to study
privately with Stanislavsky. In August 1934, she returned from Russia,
and made a presentation of what she learned from Stanislavski, then she
began teaching acting classes to members of The Group Theatre troupe,
including the actors Elia Kazan, Sanford Meisner and Robert Lewis. Meisner and Lewis
would go on to be the most influential acting teachers in America after
Adler herself and Strasberg. Kazan, who would go on to become the
greatest theatrical director in 20th century American theater, also had
a huge impact on American acting by championing what became known in
the vernacular as "The Method", which was closely related to Adler's
teaching. Kazan's exposure to Konstantin Stanislavski's System via Adler was highly
influential in his work.
Stella Adler, being the most experienced of the Group Theatre actors,
had not accepted Lee Strasberg's idiosyncratic version of
Stanislavski's System, which Strasberg interpreted as "method" and
shifted its goals to memory exercises. "The (memory) emphasis was the
sick one" in Strasberg's "method", said Stella Adler, as it made acting
under Strasberg increasingly painful for her. Feeling uncomfortable
with the Group Theatre members, many of whom were also Communist Party
members, Adler left the company in 1937 to conquer Hollywood. According
to her later student and friend, Marlon Brando, she had a bad nose job to
camouflage her looks, so hell-bent was she on conquering the movies as
she had the stage. She was not to succeed.Adler spent six years as an
associate producer at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, at which she
acted in movies under the name "Stella Ardler."
She did not achieve the quality of roles or the acclaim that she had in
the theater, and she eventually returned to the stage in the early
1940s, acting and directing on Broadway and in London. Adler also began
to teach at German émigré Erwin Piscator's acting workshop at the New
School for Social Research, where she mentored the young Marlon Brando. She
married Clurman in 1943. At its core, the theatrical experience is
rooted in the willing suspension of disbelief, with an audience
willingly ignoring the fact that it is watching a synthetic
entertainment in a highly unrealistic venue. Such is the power of good
theater to draw the audience into the world created upon the stage that
this suspension of disbelief not only occurs, but that it, as an art
form, provides an immediacy that other more "realistic" forms such as
movies or television cannot provide. Adler believed that "the theater
exists 99% in the imagination" and it was this belief that was the
foundation of her philosophy and instruction.
Drawing on Stanislavski's System, Adler made it the bedrock of her
technique that an actor's primary concern was with the emotional
origins of the script. An actor (and acting student) must search
between the lines of the script for the playwright's important, but
unspoken, messages. To tap into this vein and bring forth the real
meaning in a character, an actor needed both imagination and the
ability to open oneself up emotionally. Essentially, Adler's method
emphasized that authenticity in acting is achieved by drawing on inner
reality to expose deep emotional experience. Konstantin Stanislavski taught her that
"the source of acting is imagination and the key to its problems is
truth, truth in the circumstances of the play."
It was a fortuitous occasion when Brando enrolled in Erwin Piscator's
Dramatic Workshop at New York's New School and came into Stella Adler's
orbit. The results of this meeting between an actor and the teacher
preparing him for a life in the theater would mark a watershed in
American acting and culture as it was through Brando that "The Method"
was introduced into the American theater and movies. It would dominate
American acting for more than half-a-century and is still the dominant
paradigm now, over sixty years since Adler tutored Brando.
"The Method" as taught by Adler and other Group Theater alumni was a
more naturalistic style of performing, as it engendered a close
identification of the actor with the character's emotions. The
extraordinarily sensitive and intelligent Brando was the ideal student
due to the prodigious talent he could yoke to the harness of technique
that was "The Method". Adler took pride of place among Brando's acting
teachers, and socially she helped turn him from a fairly ignorant
Midwestern farm boy into a knowledgeable and cosmopolitan artist who
one day would socialize with presidents.
Aside from acting, Adler directed two plays on Broadway, "Manhattan
Nocturne" during the 1943-44 season, and "Sunday Breakfast" in 1952.
Her last appearance as an actress on the Broadway stage was in the
revival of "He Who Gets Slapped" in 1946.
Stella Adler left the faculty of the New School in 1949 to establish
her own acting school, the Stella Adler Theatre Studio (which would be
renamed the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting before taking its final
name, the Stella Adler Studio of Acting). She developed a curriculum
from her wide knowledge and experience, combining her understanding of
Konstantin Stanislavski's System with the techniques and traditions of the Yiddish
theater, The Group Theatre, Broadway and Hollywood. In addition to
acting technique, the school offered workshops in play analysis,
character, and scene preparation; the students gleaned on-stage
experience by performing scenes and plays before invited audiences.
Among the alumni of her school were Marlon Brando (chairman of the board of
the school until his death), Warren Beatty (who has taken over the position),
Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel.
Adler taught script analysis at Yale for a year and half. Courses for
advanced students and professionals were added to the curriculum of her
own school, including rehearsal technique and script analysis. Due to
her reputation and connections, the school was able to attract
distinguished lecturers, including Sir John Gielgud and Arthur Laurents.
Stella Adler was a major inspiration to her students. Her mantra was,
"You act with your soul. That's why you all want to be actors - because
your souls are not used up by life". Adler is still, more than a decade
after her death, viewed as one of the foremost influences on
contemporary acting.
Adler divorced Clurman in 1960, after 17 years of marriage.
Subsequently, she married Mitchell Wilson, whom she remained married to until
his death in 1973. She did not remarry.
Stella Adler died on December 21, 1992 in Los Angeles, California. She
was 91 years old.
daughter of the Yiddish theater actors, Jacob P. Adler and Sarah Adler, who
founded an acting dynasty. In addition to her parents, Stella's family
included her siblings Charles Adler, Jay Adler, Julia and Luther Adler, all of whom
appeared on Broadway. Stella made her debut at the age of four in the
family-owned theater in the play "Broken Hearts". At the age of 18, she
made her London debut as "Naomi" in "Elisa Ben Avia", in which she
appeared for a year before returning to New York. Stella then spent the
next 10 years treading the boards in vaudeville and Yiddish language
theaters throughout North and South America and Europe. In all, she
appeared in 100 plays.
Adler was widely acclaimed in the Yiddish theater, but she wanted to
break out of that theatrical ghetto and play a wider variety of roles
on the legitimate stage and in Hollywood. What was constant in Adler's
83-year-long career was her intense dedication to broadening the level
of artistry in the theater.
She made her Broadway debut as a replacement in Carl Kapek's "The World
We Live In". (Her official debut as a member of the original company
was in "The Straw Hat" on Oct 14, 1926). After its run played out, she
joined the acting school run by Richard Boleslawski and Maria Ouspenskaya, the American
Laboratory. Both Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya were former members
of the famous Moscow Art Theatre.
While married to Horace Eleaschreff, Adler met Harold Clurman, who would
become her second husband and one of the co-founders of The Group
Theatre, in 1924 (They would marry 19 years later). In this period, she
met another future Group Theatre co-founder, Lee Strasberg, at the Actor's
Laboratory when she participated in classes there in 1928. Along with
Cheryl Crawford, Clurman and Strasberg founded the Group Theatre in 1931. It
became arguably the most influential theater group in 20th century
America, at least in terms of its influence on acting by introducing
the teaching of Konstantin Stanislavski's System to the American stage. Its aim was the
championing of realism and it is credited with bringing naturalism into
the American theater. Clurman and Strasberg invited Adler to become a
founding member of the Group Theatre. The Utopian political ideals that
were central to the idea of the Group Theatre did not appeal to Adler,
nor did the cooperative focus of the company, but she did join after
being promised leading roles and because she supported Clurman's vision
of the theater as an art form. It was with the Group Theatre that
Stella played some of her more acclaimed roles, including "Sarah
Glassman" in "Success Story", "Bessie Berger" in "Awake and Sing" and
"Clara" in "Paradise Lost".
In 1934, she took a leave of absence from the Group Theatre and
traveled to Russia to study for five weeks in Moscow Art Theatre, and
in private sessions with the great man himself, Konstantin Stanislavski, whose motto
was "Think of your own experiences and use them truthfully." Adler was
among few American actors, such as Michael Chekhov and Richard Boleslawski to study
privately with Stanislavsky. In August 1934, she returned from Russia,
and made a presentation of what she learned from Stanislavski, then she
began teaching acting classes to members of The Group Theatre troupe,
including the actors Elia Kazan, Sanford Meisner and Robert Lewis. Meisner and Lewis
would go on to be the most influential acting teachers in America after
Adler herself and Strasberg. Kazan, who would go on to become the
greatest theatrical director in 20th century American theater, also had
a huge impact on American acting by championing what became known in
the vernacular as "The Method", which was closely related to Adler's
teaching. Kazan's exposure to Konstantin Stanislavski's System via Adler was highly
influential in his work.
Stella Adler, being the most experienced of the Group Theatre actors,
had not accepted Lee Strasberg's idiosyncratic version of
Stanislavski's System, which Strasberg interpreted as "method" and
shifted its goals to memory exercises. "The (memory) emphasis was the
sick one" in Strasberg's "method", said Stella Adler, as it made acting
under Strasberg increasingly painful for her. Feeling uncomfortable
with the Group Theatre members, many of whom were also Communist Party
members, Adler left the company in 1937 to conquer Hollywood. According
to her later student and friend, Marlon Brando, she had a bad nose job to
camouflage her looks, so hell-bent was she on conquering the movies as
she had the stage. She was not to succeed.Adler spent six years as an
associate producer at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, at which she
acted in movies under the name "Stella Ardler."
She did not achieve the quality of roles or the acclaim that she had in
the theater, and she eventually returned to the stage in the early
1940s, acting and directing on Broadway and in London. Adler also began
to teach at German émigré Erwin Piscator's acting workshop at the New
School for Social Research, where she mentored the young Marlon Brando. She
married Clurman in 1943. At its core, the theatrical experience is
rooted in the willing suspension of disbelief, with an audience
willingly ignoring the fact that it is watching a synthetic
entertainment in a highly unrealistic venue. Such is the power of good
theater to draw the audience into the world created upon the stage that
this suspension of disbelief not only occurs, but that it, as an art
form, provides an immediacy that other more "realistic" forms such as
movies or television cannot provide. Adler believed that "the theater
exists 99% in the imagination" and it was this belief that was the
foundation of her philosophy and instruction.
Drawing on Stanislavski's System, Adler made it the bedrock of her
technique that an actor's primary concern was with the emotional
origins of the script. An actor (and acting student) must search
between the lines of the script for the playwright's important, but
unspoken, messages. To tap into this vein and bring forth the real
meaning in a character, an actor needed both imagination and the
ability to open oneself up emotionally. Essentially, Adler's method
emphasized that authenticity in acting is achieved by drawing on inner
reality to expose deep emotional experience. Konstantin Stanislavski taught her that
"the source of acting is imagination and the key to its problems is
truth, truth in the circumstances of the play."
It was a fortuitous occasion when Brando enrolled in Erwin Piscator's
Dramatic Workshop at New York's New School and came into Stella Adler's
orbit. The results of this meeting between an actor and the teacher
preparing him for a life in the theater would mark a watershed in
American acting and culture as it was through Brando that "The Method"
was introduced into the American theater and movies. It would dominate
American acting for more than half-a-century and is still the dominant
paradigm now, over sixty years since Adler tutored Brando.
"The Method" as taught by Adler and other Group Theater alumni was a
more naturalistic style of performing, as it engendered a close
identification of the actor with the character's emotions. The
extraordinarily sensitive and intelligent Brando was the ideal student
due to the prodigious talent he could yoke to the harness of technique
that was "The Method". Adler took pride of place among Brando's acting
teachers, and socially she helped turn him from a fairly ignorant
Midwestern farm boy into a knowledgeable and cosmopolitan artist who
one day would socialize with presidents.
Aside from acting, Adler directed two plays on Broadway, "Manhattan
Nocturne" during the 1943-44 season, and "Sunday Breakfast" in 1952.
Her last appearance as an actress on the Broadway stage was in the
revival of "He Who Gets Slapped" in 1946.
Stella Adler left the faculty of the New School in 1949 to establish
her own acting school, the Stella Adler Theatre Studio (which would be
renamed the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting before taking its final
name, the Stella Adler Studio of Acting). She developed a curriculum
from her wide knowledge and experience, combining her understanding of
Konstantin Stanislavski's System with the techniques and traditions of the Yiddish
theater, The Group Theatre, Broadway and Hollywood. In addition to
acting technique, the school offered workshops in play analysis,
character, and scene preparation; the students gleaned on-stage
experience by performing scenes and plays before invited audiences.
Among the alumni of her school were Marlon Brando (chairman of the board of
the school until his death), Warren Beatty (who has taken over the position),
Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel.
Adler taught script analysis at Yale for a year and half. Courses for
advanced students and professionals were added to the curriculum of her
own school, including rehearsal technique and script analysis. Due to
her reputation and connections, the school was able to attract
distinguished lecturers, including Sir John Gielgud and Arthur Laurents.
Stella Adler was a major inspiration to her students. Her mantra was,
"You act with your soul. That's why you all want to be actors - because
your souls are not used up by life". Adler is still, more than a decade
after her death, viewed as one of the foremost influences on
contemporary acting.
Adler divorced Clurman in 1960, after 17 years of marriage.
Subsequently, she married Mitchell Wilson, whom she remained married to until
his death in 1973. She did not remarry.
Stella Adler died on December 21, 1992 in Los Angeles, California. She
was 91 years old.