Dreams of Acting JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
As a teenager, I saw the filmThe Private Life of Henry VIIIstarring the great Charles Laughton. The movie had a huge influence on me. As I exited the theater and walked through the streets, I tried ...to incorporate the stride, demeanor, and posture of the porcine sixteenth-century monarch I had just seen on the screen. I attempted not only to capture the outward mold of his character but also to absorb the moods, feelings, and attitudes of his personality. This was probably my first conscious brush with acting, and the energy and excitement of it stayed with me.
The War Ends JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
At war’s end, theYorktowndropped anchor in Tokyo Harbor next to the USSMissouri, where the Japanese formally accepted surrender terms. We were the first American liberty party to land on Japanese ...soil. It was an amazing experience to walk through Japanese neighborhoods that only a few days before had been part of enemy territory. I took my camera with me and shot photos of the newly surrendered Japan. A local man stopped me and indicated he had been a war photographer—for the other side. He invited me to his home to show me some of his photographs.
Something I call hooks are all around us and we use them every day, whether we are aware of them or not. Hooks in our private lives can be ideas that drive our actions or obsessive thoughts that ...infiltrate the things we do. Hooks are not necessarily negative, although they can be. They can point us to success, streamline our actions, and help define how we feel about any given event in our lives.
For the actor, it is eminently helpful to find a central hook that prevails over every twist and turn, contradiction, affirmation, and all other aspects of
Galileo JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
Everyone, regardless of his or her profession, has a list of “things that might have transpired but didn’t.” At the top of my list is an opportunity in late 1945. I had recently received my honorable ...discharge from the U.S. Navy and was eager to resume my acting career. The director Joseph Losey was preparing a stage production of Bertolt Brecht’sGalileoat the newly built Coronet Theatre in Beverly Hills. The great Charles Laughton was to play Galileo, and Brecht, who was living in exile in Los Angeles, would be directly involved in the production. I had a remarkable
Good acting often comes from an actor’s struggle to come up with a single compelling context for his role. It rarely comes in an instant. It comes with exploration and from the effort to search for ...thematic unity. We are the totality of our experiences and observations, large and small. For each of us there are literally thousands of occurrences, seen for no more than a flash, which seem to be inconsequential at the moment yet live in our minds and are part of the joy and sorrow of our lives. It is imperative for an actor to incorporate this
The Doors Open JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
During the blacklist years, Hope and I did not have passports. In the midst of McCarthyism, the government had required applicants to sign an affidavit regarding past or present membership in the ...Communist Party, which we, of course, would not do. A psychoanalyst named Dr. Walter Briehl, who was a pioneer in group therapy, along with the artist Rockwell Kent, took the government to court, and in 1958 the Supreme Court overturned that regulation. In 1959 Hope and I applied for and received our passports. In 1960 we signed up for a Los Angeles County Museum of Art tour of
Treading Water JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
By 1955 the success of my acting classes was bruited about. High-powered entrepreneurs came to me with a proposal calculated to bring in a quarter of a million dollars a year. Their extravagant plan ...was for me to write a correspondence course wherein I would describe acting exercises that people could do by themselves or in groups. A new lesson would be forthcoming every week. The enthusiastic promoters of this plan proposed to advertise in movie magazines and weekly tabloids and include the list of all the successful actors, screenwriters, and directors who had studied with me. I simply could
Words, Words, Words JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
For an actor, the text of a play is both enemy and friend. What the words say holds richness and meaning. On the other hand, the words open the trapdoor to the dullest, most one-dimensional ...performances imaginable. An actor must quickly learn to distinguish between the manifest content of speech—the words themselves—and the latent content of speech—what is actually meant by the words that are spoken. Actors often fall prey to the illusion that words are the support and ballast of a performance. They are often disarmed when I tell them it is safe to assume sthe
Assumptions JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
In the brilliant children’s bookWinnie-the-Pooh,written by A. A. milne, pooh asks, “Hallo, Rabbit, is that you?” After a moment’s pause, Rabbit replies, “Let’s pretend it isn’t and see what happens.” ...Assumptions change everything, and the color of the lens we view the world through completely alters our perceptions of reality. What happens if it’s not Rabbit who has entered the room? How does the scenario change between the two characters? Assumptions in a play or film have enormous power, and it is precisely when characters behave according to the prompting of their assumptions rather than objective circumstances that
Innocents Abroad JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
Nine years before the fall of the Berlin wall, the screen Actors Guild arranged for a delegation of its members to visit actors in East Germany. I was invited to be part of the group. Our contingent ...included four SAG executive board members, Joseph Ruskin, Daryl Anderson, my ex-student G. D. spradlin, and me. Additional delegates were the actors Bert Freed and susan Hunt and the costume designer Marianna Elliott.
We arrived in East Berlin in may 1981 and settled into our compact but very comfortable hotel rooms. Early the next morning, G. D. joined me on a long walk
