My journey ends here...
STRASBERG Lee
Born Israel Strassberg.
Date of birth
: November 17, 1901, Boudanov (Budzanov), now Ukraine.
Date of death : February 17, 1982, New York City (
,
,
).
Portrait
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;
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;
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Addresses
* The Belnord, 225 West 86th Street, near Broadway, New York City
,
,
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Telephone : TR 72 469 et TR 72 212
* 135 Central Park West (where also lived Marianne Kris), New York City
,,
,
,
* Summer house in Fire Island.
Occupation drama teacher.
Story
Native to a poor Jewish ghetto in Poland.
His parents emigrated in the USA on August 21, 1909; he grew up in the Jewish community of the Manhattan Lower East Side, a community culturally rich although underprivileged in the material level.
On October 29, 1926 he married Nora Cohen (April 1st, 1908, New York-November 26, 1929, New York)
(
).
He studied drama with the Russian actress Maria Ouspenskaïa and the director Richard Boleslavski, former colleague of Stanislavski at the famous Art Theater of Moscow.
He became actor during his adolescence, at the Chrystie Street Settlement House of Manhattan, where he was noticed by Philip Loeb, at that time, casting director for the Theater Guild.
Lee remained in the Guild until 1931.
In 1931 (taking the name of Strasberg) he founded the Group Theater with Cheryl Crawford and Harold Clurman
(
) 
.
Both actor, producer, director and in charge of the actors training, he perfected an acting approach which became the Method.
With the Group Theater, whose members were from the extreme left-wing, he staged "Men in White" in 1933,
which had a lot of success 
,
;
In 1937, after some disagreements on the Method principles, he left the Group Theater and went to work on his side.
On May 22, 1938, birth of his daughter Susan.
On May 20, 1941, birth of his son John.
In 1941, the Group Theater
was disbanded; 2 of its key-members, Luther and Stella Adler, remained in New
York City and Stella became Lee's opponent as drama teacher.
Lee felt a big resentment towards the movie studios, since 1945 when the direction of "Somewhere in the Night", of which he was co-author with Joseph L.Mankiewicz, was refused to him; he was convinced that the studios wanted consistently to fool the actors and the screenwriters.
He ran for 3 years the Fox tests.
Tenacious and disobedient, Lee had been dismissed on May 26, 1947 and had went back to the East of the USA.
He became self-employed, before becoming the art director at the Actors Studio in 1951, 4 years after its creation by Cheryl Crawford, Elia Kazan and Robert Lewis.
But the Actors
Studio was still for its main part, Kazan's estate. Because if the
Studio was famous outside the theater circle, it was thanks to Kazan's
plays and movies.
"A Streetcar Named Desire" of Kazan had started in Broadway 2 months after the Actors
Studio's foundation.
Not anyone could be member of the Studio, and you could attend only with an invitation and after having been auditionned by Strasberg.
He was a tyrannical mentor who appeared with distance and coldness towards the majority of his students and rivals. But nevertheless, the members of the Studio were convinced of the superiority of the teaching they received.
The Actors Studio was the place of an individual and group drama experimentation. Every actors were auditionned by Lee Strasberg himself, and some received additional instructions from Strasberg, at his home.
Marilyn was introduced to Paula Strasberg, Lee's wife, through Sidney Skolsky, in August 1954; Marilyn was apparently too shy to approach Lee directly.
Their professional association started in February 1955; she took private lessons at his home. She didn't attend the public sessions at the Actors Studio before being ready, in May 1955.
"East of Eden",
also of Kazan and another movie the public associated with the Studio,
made Strasberg's situation worse.
Pathetic, he tried to reap the benefit for Marlon Brando as long
as James Dean, while Brando had attended the lessons of his enemy
Stella Adler, and James Dean
had fled, terrified, after a brief stay at the Studio
(
), where
Strasberg had cruelly criticized his efforts in the working groups.
From Strasberg's point of view, Marilyn couldn't have come at a more appropriate moment. She gave him a weapon in his fight for his domination at the Studio.
Marilyn Monroe would be Strasberg's movie star like Marlon Brando and James Dean had been Kazan's one.
To Strasberg, when Marilyn would finally give a brilliant performance, it would be his triumph, not Marilyn's one. He wanted to be more than her teacher; when she would be ready, he wanted moreover to direct her.
November 10, 1955, they attended a representation of the play "A Hatful of Rain" in Broadway (
,
,
) 
,
,
,
-
On October 5, 1955, at the party following the premiere of "Diary of Anne Frank" with Susan Strasberg
.
On December 12, 1955, at the
premiere of "The Rose Tattoo" 
,
During the 7 years of her association with Strasberg, she never became a full-fledged member of the organization, but there are some proofs that she planned to become one of the 12 members of the 1962 class.
Strasberg's acting approach was closely related to psychotherapy. Like with her psychiatrists, Marilyn spent many time searching in her past, dramatizing some periods of her unhappy childhood to feed the usual morning-time conversation. Strasberg maintained that it was essential that she worked on this "sense memory" if she wanted to rouse her "real tragic power". Several Marilyn's biographers have noticed the danger of this intense focusing on Marilyn's childhood misfortunes.
She found Strasberg's approach exciting and very demanding; as she told to Norman Rosten :"Lee makes me think. He says that I have to start to face the problems I meet in my work and in my life; the question is to know how or why I can act".
Strasberg believed in her and soon became one of her most faithful partisans and it was particularly comforting for Marilyn. When Joshua Logan who thought to suggest "Bus Stop" to Marilyn, contacted Strasberg to know what he thought of her, this one answered that Marlon Brando and Marilyn were the biggest talents his school had known.
He was the only drama teacher to din to Marilyn his belief according to which she was quite promising as a theater actress, but in spite of the many years she studied the Method and Strasberg's numerous contacts in the theater world, Marilyn had never had a stage role for her.
She soon became a member of the family, sharing the Strasbergs meals and several times spending the night at their home, the nights she felt alone and couldn't sleep. She accompanied them in their second home in Fire Island.
The final expression of his father role towards Marilyn appeared on July 1, 1956 when he led her to the altar for
her religious wedding with Arthur Miller (
,
,
,
,
,
,
).
For the project of "The Prince and the Showgirl" (1957), Strasberg met Milton Greene himself to negotiate Paula's presence fees on the set, in London.
He asked 38 000$ for 10 weeks of work. It was much more than the Marilyn Monroe Productions could afford. Marilyn offered to give a part of her fee, and that's how Paula became the third best paid person on the movie, after Laurence Olivier and Marilyn.
In 1959 Strasberg was refused for the post of head of the new theater of the Lincoln Center. The Actors Studio was in negotiation with the Lincoln Square Project (that's how the Lincoln Center was called) since 1956.
With Elia Kazan and Cheryl Crawford, Lee Strasberg suggested that the theater would be inserted to a cultural center made up of the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philarmonic and the New York City Ballet. He was convinced that the Actors Studio would be the theatrical company in residence and estimated himself worthy to hold the position of a cultural leadership.
Instead of that, Robert Whitehead, recruited to set the theater up, asked Kazan to be his partner.Once again, the Strasbergs invited Marilyn at home, after the failure of her wedding with Arthur Miller. She spent Christmas 1960 with them.
On January 21, 1961, he was there when she came back from Mexico where the divorce with Arthur Miller had
been granted 
.
In February 1961, the Strasbergs were the first people contacted by Marilyn when she was hospitalized at the
On March 13, 1961, party for the benefit of the Actors Studio at the Roseland Dance City, New York
This same year, Lee and Marilyn worked on the
project of the TV version of "Rain" of Somerset Maugham, but when
NBC refused to entrust Strasberg with the direction, because had hadn't
yet prove himself, Marilyn withdrew from the project.
-
On February 6, 1962, they attended the representation of "Macbeth" at the Old Vic Theater in Broadway
-
Lee was invited at the White House twice in 1962, on May and October 
;
.
Marilyn was generous in many ways, notably by making the Actors Studio benefit of her prestige and offered 10 000$ to Lee so that he could go and study theater in Japan.
Some signs shows that, during her last year of life, Marilyn's faith in Strasberg began to wane. She had moved again in Los Angeles, and according to many witnesses, Dr Greenson, her psychotherapist on the West Coast, wanted her to start from the beginning and all over again.
After Marilyn's death, Lee was invited by Joe DiMaggio to read the eulogy at her funerals on August 8, 1962
,
,
,
-
,
,
,
,
Letter from Marilyn to Lee, undated 
-
In 1963, with Paula, Susan and
Richard Burton 
1963, "The Lady of the Camellias" at the Winter Garden Theatre 
In 1966 Paula died.
In January 1968 he married Anna
Mizrahi (Anna
Strasberg), an actress he met at the Actors' Studio.
,
,
,
;
;
They had 2 children Adam Lee (July 29, 1969) and David Lee Israel (January 30, 1971)
(
,
,
).
After Lee's death, she inherited all his properties, which included all Marilyn's possessions, donated to Lee Strasberg in her will, and also 75% of Marilyn's income, after the execution of some specific clauses.
She became Marilyn's only beneficiary, although she hadn't known her.
The Marilyn Monroe Theater (7932 or 7936 Santa Monica
Boulevard, West Hollywood)(
) is on
the West Coast, the annex of the Theater
Institute of Lee Strasberg (
).
In 1972, at the Actors Studio 
He was nominated to the Academy Awards for his first appearance in a movie, "The Godfather Part II" (1974)
(
,
).
.
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