Exits and Entrances JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
Along with the reboot of my career in film in the 1960s, I had the good fortune to return to acting on the stage as well. My former student Gordon Davidson was the founding artistic director of the ...Mark Taper Forum in downtown Los Angeles. Gordon directed the American premiere ofIn the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer,Heinar Kipphardt’s dramatic account of the Atomic Energy Commission’s hearing in 1954 that branded Oppenheimer as a security risk. He cast me along with my friends bert freed and John Randolph. Johnny had also been blacklisted, and bert was a political progressive
Infernal Methodists JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
I wince when I am asked the tiresome question “Are you a Method teacher?” I think to myself, “Poor Stanislavsky. Peace unto his ashes!” To qualify as a teacher of the Stanislavsky system would ...require me to reincarnate as Stanislavsky himself.
During the 1950s the poor, victimized Stanislavsky Method was too frequently equated with mumbling, slurred speech, and inaudibility. It also manifested itself as a dreadful narcissism on stage. Brooks Atkinson of theNew York Times,the doyen of stage critics during Broadway’s golden age, bemoaned the fact that theaters were filled with “too many performers who seemed to be
When I teach, I make frequent references to mythology, not as some hightoned parlor game but as a practical device to help the actor’s search for a more impelling thematic core. For example, it might ...be useful for an actor who is playing Dr. Stockmann in Ibsen’sAn Enemy of the Peopleto equate the travail of Stockmann with the struggles of the Greek deity Prometheus. Prometheus brought fire as illumination to the people of the earth and was cruelly punished by his vengeful father, Zeus. regardless of Zeus’s wrath, prometheus would not yield.
The Promethean myth is reflected in
In terms of acting itself, what is required of a film actor is essentially no different from what is required of a stage actor. The accommodations are truly minimal, and I’ve always shied away from ...the idea of classes in film acting because it betrays ignorance. It just means you don’t understand acting. Obviously, there are practical adaptations that one must be aware of when working on a film set versus a theater stage, but those adaptations never pertain to the acting itself.
Acting requires deep reverence. I tell my students, “Wipe your feet before you enter a theater.” This
Cheremoya Mini-Theater JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
Hope and I were fortunate to have purchased our house in Hollywood at the T-shaped intersection of Cheremoya Avenue and Chula Vista Way in 1949. It was a quiet street lined with camphor and sycamore ...trees. The house was a generous home with a wide hallway, wainscoted dining room, kitchen, breakfast room, living room, library, and, at the end of a hallway, a music room. At the entrance, a broad stairway with a handsome mahogany railing led to a small landing, off which were four sunlit bedrooms.
In addition to Mae and Sol Babitz, we had a marvelous collection of
There is a story I tell whenever I start a new class. A station wagon stops in the midst of very heavy traffic at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. A solicitous policeman, observing that the driver ...and his family seem lost, approaches the car and asks, “Can I help you?” The harassed driver says, “Yes, please. How do I get to Pasadena?” The policeman waits a beat and then says, categorically, “Well, you can’t get there from here.”
People in all walks of life often believe there is a better hypothetical launching place than where they are at any
When I taught at the Stage Society, actors auditioning for their classes were asked to prepare one or two pieces. At the end of the audition, the actor would be told, “Thank you, we’ll let you know.” ...This brutal phrase has become uncomfortably familiar in Hollywood. Even then, it was my feeling that we owed auditioning actors considerably more attention and respect than a cursory “Thank you” and dismissal.
I made the suggestion that if my colleagues and I could spend a bit more time with the auditioning process, we could rework an actor’s audition material, which would allow us
Manila JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
In the early spring of 1968, I flew to Manila to work on a film calledImpasse,starring burt reynolds and Anne Francis. It was not a great script, but the part included a trip to the Orient, so I ...agreed to do it. I had been in the philippines once before, in 1945, when the USSYorktowndropped anchor off Tacloban. It was at the height of the war in the pacific, and two U.S. Navy Seabees were assigned to guard me as I photographed Osmeña Park, the navy’s wartime recreation center, and then the island of Leyte, where
True Grit JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
Hiring me in the role of Tom Chaney inTrue Gritwas a classic case of creative casting. The first time we met for a read-through of the script, the director, Henry Hathaway, told me, “Before Maggie ...Roberts wrote the script, I read the novel and on page one I read that Tom Chaney, the villain, was ‘a short man with cruel features . . . about twenty-five years of age,’ and just like that, I got a flash of you in my head. I called Hal wallis and said, ‘I want Jeff Corey for the part of Tom Chaney.’”
The Stage Society JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
Early in the summer of 1951, J. Arthur Kennedy, who had acted with me in the Federal Theatre’s production ofLife and Death of an American,called and asked if I would like to play the role of Captain ...Keeney in Eugene O’neill’s one-act playIle.It was to be the first production of the newly formed stage society in Hollywood. In spite of my heavy schedule at UCLA and part-time construction work, I felt the need to act again. My colleagues were glad to see me, and people individually and in groups were most solicitous in regard to my
