Broadway Babylon (23 page)

“You hear them denigrated so often, but an acting school or class is better than nothing.
Much
! Acting requires other people.… Writing you can learn on your own, but not acting.… Acting is more than one person, and with conflict necessary.”—E
DWARD
J
AMES
O
LMOS

“[In the 1940s] for my audition at the American Academy of Dramatic Art in New York, I wrote my own material, not knowing that everyone normally did well-known scenes. Mine was a depressing sketch about a woman whose furniture was laughing at her. When they accepted me, I thought it was so marvelous—not realizing at the time that they would have accepted a tree if it had applied.”—C
OLLEEN
D
EWHURST

“The low down on acting is you’re a puppet … constantly waiting and wishing to get hired, which after you are, you’re used as a puppet to fulfill the writer’s and director’s visions. Actresses object to this much less than actors do.”—R
EID
S
HELTON
(
Annie’s
Daddy Warbucks)

“I enjoyed the theatre but I found, in my limited experience, that moviemaking was full of sharks. The ethical level is higher in politics.”—theater star H
ELEN
G
AHAGAN
, who made one film and later became a congress-woman

“Every actor has a natural animosity toward every other actor, present or absent, living or dead.”—former film star L
OUISE
B
ROOKS

“The theatre community is very supportive. I’ve always felt comfortable and accepted there.… There’s less jockeying for position and behind-the-scenes goings-on than in Los Angeles.”—C
AROL
B
URNETT

“After I left acting [after marrying Ted Turner], I felt relieved at not having to compete so relentlessly, and empowerment at not having to speak someone else’s lines.”—J
ANE
F
ONDA

“To become an actor, you have to be one.”—novelist H
AROLD
R
OBBINS

“If you’re friendly and not a big gossip, your fellow actors will like you. Unless you’re a success. That’s unforgivable.”—J
AMES
E
ARL
J
ONES

“A young actress working with Greta Garbo noticed that before each take, Garbo would get alone and do some sort of preparation. After a take, the young actress nervously approached the star … [and] asked … was it sense memory, inner monologue, affective memory? Garbo looked at her and said, ‘No, darling. I’m imagining my face sixty feet by forty feet.’ … It’s why many stage actors don’t work in films.”—J
EREMY
W
HELAN
, actor and author of
Instant Acting

“In the theatre, the actor of less than classical good looks is sheltered by the distance between audience and stage and the often unrealistic stage makeup. For older or physically flawed actors, theatre is more tolerant and nurturing
than working before a camera.”—actor-dancer B
ARTON
M
UMAW
(
My Fair Lady
)

“An actor can remember his briefest notice well into senescence and long after he has forgotten his phone number and where he lives.”—J
EAN
K
ERR
, playwright and critic’s wife

“If you think you’ll be boring onstage, you will be. Attitude counts … just allow the magic of the theatre, which has been weaving its spell since at least the ancient Greeks, to work for you. But if you do play a boring character,
you
must not be bored. It takes animation, it takes an active interior life while onstage, to play even a bore.”—R
ICHARD
K
ILEY
(
Man of La Mancha
)

“I have the greatest admiration for actors who sing on a stage where there is no mechanism to make them sound perfect. There can’t be anything more exposing than to perform in a stage musical. How do they do it?”—P
ETER
O’T
OOLE

“When you’ve done movie musicals, even the ones I did with Astaire and Rogers, Broadway tends to label you a lightweight. So you get lightweight roles. But this should help; people take Broadway musicals pretty seriously. If they’re hits.”—E
RIK
R
HODES
, a Broadway replacement in
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
who then toured with the hit show

“Theatre’s less money crazed than movies and less ratings dominated than TV. And there is much less of a caste system in theatre, where supporting actors are also vital and everybody has to be on their toes to give forth a good play.”—actor and acting coach J
EFF
C
OREY

“In theatre one can play with a role. One actually can have a good time while being professional … experiment while building and improving. I never have been comfortable in film. It’s dead serious, all business and pressure, with intermittent visits from horrible men in suits and sunglasses. It’s like working in a straitjacket.”—S
IR
J
OHN
G
IELGUD
, who won a supporting Oscar for
Arthur

“In my drawing room I can bring out the essence of an actor with a few strokes. Most actors do the same thing, using broad strokes to present essential character traits, then filling in when necessary. On the stage, they have more time to do this, though obviously the featured [supporting] players are given less time, and so those strokes have to be even broader, more caricaturish.”—master caricaturist A
L
H
IRSCHFELD
, after whom Broadway’s Martin Beck Theatre was renamed on the 100th anniversary of his birth in June 2003

“We were trained to project. We sang with those big voices, no microphones. There was an energy in hearing that. Now we are totally in the charge of that man who dials your voice up and down. Many singers don’t have the volume, and many dancers don’t have the extensive training. They’re more athletic and aerobic, but there’s a loss of artistry and discipline.”—L
EE
R
OY
R
EAMS
(
Applause, 42nd Street
)

“What we say [on stage], how we walk, how we sit—these are just the facts. But the soul of the character is when you sing and dance it. Suddenly, the dream of you is what you become—you-without-flaws emerges, the essence of the person.”—C
AROL
C
HANNING

“It’s much easier to make the transition from singer to actress than from dancer to actress because people think of dancers as being mute. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard people say, ‘Oh, she can’t open her mouth. She can’t talk.’ I must have been saying
something
up there on the stage for all those years.… I’m still waiting to be considered an actress.”—G
WEN
V
ERDON

“Getting ready for a musical is like preparing for an athletic event. You have to go into training. I think doing Shakespeare is simpler. [In musicals] you have to get your voice, your body, and the whole thing together. You can’t be a reprobate and do musicals.… You can’t stay up late or smoke or go out partying.”—C
HRIS
S
ARANDON
,
The Light in the Piazza

“Musicals are very tiring. The effect is cumulative.… The minute I stopped playing
Applause
—which ended in London and had taken five years of my life—my body fell apart. Because that daily discipline was over.”—L
AUREN
B
ACALL

“Trying out any show is always a nightmare. I had three understudies in
West Side Story
, and you were always under the gun of being replaced. You have to be running at 200% all the time.”—C
AROL
L
AWRENCE

“I have had the dubious yet fascinating experience of reading my own published obituary. Accidentally, ten years ago. I had very mixed emotions.… I will say that had I been a different sort of public figure, such as a politician, such an egregious error would not have occurred. They would have taken more care to check. But it can readily happen to an actor; we’re mere entertainers.”—actor-playwright E
MLYN
W
ILLIAMS

“Back in the 1970s I did a revival of
Charley’s Aunt
, and I learned something … about drag. Actors can surprise ourselves about how easy it is to get into something, or used to it. Actors discover aspects, new things, sometimes shocking, about themselves … not just drag.… Being an actor, you
get to explore the most exciting—and the most frightening—subject of all: yourself.”—R
AUL
J
ULIA

“When you eat food on the stage, it has to be soft. If it’s hard and you choke, you can’t say the playwright’s lines. When I was in
The Matchmaker
I had quite a bit of eating to do, and we used soft, ripe pears that could be sculpted to look like chicken and veg … [and] in
Ethan Frome
our meat stew and gravy was made out of bananas and prune juice. The glamour and good taste of acting are of course overrated.”—actress, playwright, and author R
UTH
G
ORDON

“It’s absolutely out of the question. I could
never
impersonate a woman who had such a peculiar notion of hospitality.”—D
AME
E
DITH
E
VANS
on why she would not play Lady Macbeth

“[The doctor] sprayed my throat with a solution laced with cocaine. It stimulated my larynx, relieved strain on my vocal chords, and reduced my chances of becoming mute during a performance. At [the pharmacy] where I presented the prescription, I was given a bottle of pale little lozenges, labeled ‘Cocaine and Menthol.’ ”—T
ALLULAH
B
ANKHEAD
on how she coped with laryngitis

“Applause is as the actor’s very breath, giving life to a performance.”—actress S
ARAH
S
IDDONS
in the late 1700s

“As for me, I find that I act best when my heart is warm and my head is cool.”—19th-century American actor J
OSEPH
J
EFFERSON
III, when asked whether he agreed with Constant Coquelin [the originator of Cyrano de Bergerac] that actors should feel nothing, or with Henry Irving that actors should seem to feel what they’re declaiming

“Saying ‘the Method’ is silly and limiting. It’s like saying ‘the American way.’ There’s more than just one.”—dancer-actor G
REGG
B
URGE
(
A Chorus Line
)

“I wish I knew what that means. Me, I just act.”—M
ONTGOMERY
C
LIFT
, asked about the Method in 1959

“Method acting’s an abomination. The chief lesson actors from these so-called modern schools learn is complete egotism. They are taught to relate everything to self.… Marlon Brando has been known to place rubber stoppers in his ears so he cannot hear the words spoken by other players!”—B
ORIS
K
ARLOFF
, stage and horror-film star

“The best method of acting is
often
. In acting too, practice makes perfect.”—R
ENEE
T
AYLOR
(
An Evening with Golda Meir
)

“Actors are like athletes. They must work or they atrophy pretty quickly.”—L
EN
C
ARIOU
(
Sweeney Todd
)

“Go for the performance that feels good, feels right. Compare this with the audience’s reaction and the opinions of your honest colleagues. Be aware of what you do and don’t do and how you vary. Be self-critical, but not self-destructive. Be aware of how good you sometimes are, and open to how much better you have yet to become.”—stage legend E
VA
L
E
G
ALLIENNE

“My pet peeve is the nervous or overeager audience member who laughs too loud and too often and irks the hell out of me.”—J
ASON
M
ILLER
, playwright and actor (
The Exorcist
)

“Some younger actors laugh, but I still do it. I put red dots in the corner of my eyes so when someone is looking at you from way up in the balcony it doesn’t look as if I have just one eye. That and false eyelashes are a big help to an actress.”—G
ERALDINE
P
AGE

“In movies it’s another story, but on the stage it is such an asset to have big eyes.… Actresses also have the advantage of being able to create a bigger mouth. But I mostly did that for compensation; I was very sensitive about my exophthalmic eyes, which no one poked fun at until I left the theatre for movies. Apart from body language, the eyes and mouth are almost entirely what you express emotion with.”—B
ETTE
D
AVIS

“I’ll admit, esthetically speaking, my nose isn’t a complete disaster. But dramatically, it lacks punch.”—O
RSON
W
ELLES
, who often used putty

“The camera can come in and pick up little things that happen on your face, and you’d never see it in the theatre. There’s a different physical reality on stage … [where] you are the transmitter … the mechanical means by which the message is sent out—rather than a camera picking it up. You use your whole physical self.”—M
ADELINE
K
AHN

“Lots of Hollywood actors don’t like to rehearse … think it’s just repeating or draining themselves. Wrong. It’s improving and fortifying. In pictures, they don’t always want it right, they want it by five o’clock.”—J
OHN
G
ARFIELD
, one of the first film stars to get it in his contract that he be allowed to return annually to Broadway

“So many kids now are scared off of theatre by the memorization. It’s so many more lines than TV, movies, or in commercials! But all the lines do fall into place; that’s what rehearsal does for you. So what I tell kids is to look at some of the intellectually challenged movie stars who’ve been on Broadway. Okay, Stallone hasn’t to my knowledge, or Schwarzenegger. But so many have, and if they can do it, so can you!”—stage and TV actress L
YNNE
T
HIGPEN