Lee Strasberg was born 120 years ago today.
An actor, director and acting teacher, Strasberg co-founded, with directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931. It was hailed as "America's first true theatrical collective."
In 1951, he became director of the non-profit, Actors Studio in New York City, considered one of the nation's most prestigious acting schools.
In 1969, Strasberg founded the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York City and in Hollywood to teach the work he pioneered.
Strasberg is considered the father of method acting in America. From the 1920s until his death in 1982, he trained several generations of theatre and film's most illustrious talents, including Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Julie Harris, Paul Newman, Ellen Burstyn, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and the director, Elia Kazan.
Former student Elia Kazan directed James Dean in East of Eden (1955), for which Kazan and Dean were nominated for Academy Awards. As a student, Dean wrote that Actors Studio was "the greatest school of the theater [and] the best thing that can happen to an actor.”
Playwright Tennessee Williams, writer of A Streetcar Named Desire, said of Strasberg's actors: "They act from the inside out. They communicate emotions they really feel. They give you a sense of life."
Directors like Sidney Lumet, a former student, have intentionally used actors skilled in Strasberg's "Method."
Kazan, in his autobiography, wrote, "He carried with him the aura of a prophet, a magician, a witch doctor, a psychoanalyst and a feared father of a Jewish home.... [H]e was the force that held the thirty-odd members of the theatre together, and made them 'permanent.'"
Today, Ellen Burstyn, Al Pacino and Harvey Keitel lead this nonprofit studio dedicated to the development of actors, playwrights and directors.
As an actor, Strasberg is probably best known for his role as gangster Hyman Roth in The Godfather Part II (1974), which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His personal papers, including photos, are archived at the Library of Congress.
Strasberg died in 1982 at age 80.