Stella Adler
from the trailer for Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)
Born	(1901-02-10)February 10, 1901 New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	December 21, 1992(1992-12-21) (aged 91) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1919–1952

Stella Adler (February 10, 1901^[1] – December 21, 1992) was an American actress and an acclaimed acting teacher,^[2] who founded the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York City (1949) and the The Stella Adler Academy of Acting in Los Angeles (1985) with long-time protege Joanne Linville, who continues to teach and furthers Adler's legacy.^[3][4] Her grandson Tom Oppenheim now runs the school in New York,^[2] which produced alumni including Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, and Jenny Lumet^[5], daughter of Sidney Lumet.^[6] Irene Gilbert, long-time protege and close personal friend, founded the Stella Adler Academy of Acting and Theatre in Los Angeles, and was instrumental in bringing Stella Adler to the West Coast to teach on a permanent basis.^[7] The LA school continues to flourish as an acting studio and houses several theaters, alumni of the Stella Adler-Los Angeles school include Mark Ruffalo, Benicio Del Toro, Brion James, Salma Hayek, Clifton Collins Jr. & Sean Astin.

Early life[link]

Born in New York City's Lower East Side,^[8] Adler was a member of the Jewish-American Adler acting dynasty, the youngest daughter of Sara and Jacob P. Adler,^[2] the sister of Luther and Jay Adler, and half-sister of Charles Adler; in fact all her five siblings were actors. They were a significant part of a vital ethnic theatrical scene that thrived in New York from the late 19th century well into the 1950s. Stella Adler would become the most famous and influential member of her family. She began acting at the age of four as a part of the "Independent Yiddish Art Company" of her parents, and concluded it 55 years later, in 1961. During that time, and for years after, Stella Adler taught acting as well.^[9]

Career[link]

She began her acting career at the age of four in the play Broken Hearts at the Grand Street Theatre on the Lower East Side, as a part of her parents' Independent Yiddish Art Company.^[3][9] She grew up acting alongside her parents, often playing roles of boys and girls. Her work schedule allowed little time for schooling, but when possible, she studied at public schools and New York University. She made her London debut, at the age of 18, as Naomi in the play Elisa Ben Avia with her father's company, in which she appeared for a year before returning to New York. In London she met her first husband, Englishman Horace Eliashcheff; their brief marriage however ended in a divorce.

She made her English-language debut on Broadway in 1922, as the Butterfly in the play The World We Live In, and also spent a season in the vaudeville circuit. In 1922-1923, the renowned Russian actor-director Constantin Stanislavski made his only US tour with his Moscow Art Theatre. Adler and many others saw these performances; this had a powerful and lasting impact on her career, as well as the 20th century American theatre.^[8] She joined the American Laboratory Theatre in 1925; there she was introduced to Stanislavski's theories, from founders and Russian actor-teachers and former members of the Moscow Art Theater - Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya. In 1931 she joined the Group Theatre, New York, founded by Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford, through theater director and critic, Clurman, whom she later married in 1943. With Group theatre she worked in plays like Success Story by John Howard Lawson, two Clifford Odets plays, Awake and Sing! and Paradise Lost, and directed the touring company of Odets's Golden Boy and More to Give to People. Members of Group Theatre were leading interpreters of the Method acting technique based on the work and writings of Stanislavski.

In 1934, Adler went to Paris with Harold Clurman and studied intensively with Stanislavski for five weeks. During this period, she learned that Stanislavski had revised his theories, emphasizing that the actor should create by imagination rather than memory. Upon her return, she broke away from Strasberg on the fundamental aspects of Method acting.^[10]

In January 1937, Adler moved to Hollywood. There she acted in films for six years under the name Stella Ardler, occasionally returning to the Group Theater until it dissolved in 1941. Eventually she returned to New York to act, direct and teach, the latter first at Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop at the New School for Social Research, New York City,^[11] before founding Stella Adler Studio of Acting in 1949. In the coming years, she taught Marlon Brando, Judy Garland, Dolores del Río, Robert De Niro, Elaine Stritch, Martin Sheen, Manu Tupou, Harvey Keitel, Melanie Griffith, Peter Bogdanovich and Warren Beatty, among others, the principles of characterization and script analysis. She also taught at the New School,^[12] and the Yale School of Drama. For many years, Adler led the undergraduate drama department at New York University,^[3][13] and became one of America's leading acting teachers.^[10]

"Stella Adler was much more than a teacher of acting. Through her work she imparts the most valuable kind of information - how to discover the nature of our own emotional mechanics and therefore those of others. She never lent herself to vulgar exploitations, as some other well-known so-called "methods" of acting have done. As a result, her contributions to the theatrical culture have remained largely unknown, unrecognized, and unappreciated."^[14]

-Marlon Brando

Adler was Marlon Brando's first professional acting teacher. In 1988, she published 'The Technique of Acting' (Bantam Books), with a foreword by Brando.^[12] From 1926 until 1952, Adler appeared regularly on Broadway. Her later stage roles include the 1946 revival of 'He Who Gets Slapped' and an eccentric mother in the 1961 black comedy, 'Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad.' Among the plays she directed was a 1956 revival of the Paul Green-Kurt Weill antiwar musical 'Johnny Johnson'.^[15] Acting Now: Conversations on Craft and Career, by Edward Vilga.^[16] She appeared in only three films, Love on Toast (1937), Shadow of the Thin Man (1941), and My Girl Tisa (1948).

Stanislavski and The Method[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Adler was the only American actor to study with Constantin Stanislavski. She was a prominent member of the Group Theatre, but differences with Lee Strasberg over the Stanislavski System (later developed by Strasberg into Method acting) made her leave the Group.

Adler once said: 'Drawing on the emotions I experienced, for example, when my mother died to create a role, is sick and schizophrenic. If that is acting, I don't want to do it.'

Adler met with Stanislavsky again later in his career and questioned him on Strasberg's interpretation. He told her that he had abandoned emotional memory (which had been Strasberg's dominant paradigm) but they both believed that the actor did not have what is required to play a variety roles already instilled inside them, extensive research was needed to understand the experiences of characters who have different values originating from different cultures. For instance if a character talks about horse riding you need to know something about horse riding as an actor, other wise you will be faking. More importantly one must study the values of different people to understand what situations would have meant to people, that in the actor's own culture might mean nothing. Without this work she said an actor walks onto the stage "naked." This approach is what one of her students, Robert de Niro, became famous for. She also trained actors sensory imagination to help make the characters' experiences more vivid (a commonality between her and Strasberg). Mastery of the physical and vocal aspects of acting, she believed, was necessary for the actor to command the stage: all body language should be carefully crafted and voices need to be clear and expressive. She often referred to this as an actor's "size" or "worthiness of the stage." Her biggest mantra was perhaps, 'in your choices lies your talent,' she would encourage actors to find the most grand character interpretation possible in a scene, another favourite phrase of hers regarding this was 'don't be boring.'

Personal life[link]

Adler married three times, first to Horace Eliascheff, the father of her only child Ellen, then from 1943 to 1960 to Harold Clurman, the famous director and critic and one of the founders of the Group Theatre, and finally to Mitchell A. Wilson, the physicist and novelist who died in 1973.

From 1938 to 1946 she was a sister-in-law to actress Sylvia Sidney. Sidney was married to her brother Luther at the time and provided Stella with a niece and nephew. Even after Sidney and Luther divorced, she and Sylvia remained close friends.

She died on December 21, 1992, from heart failure at the age of 91, in Los Angeles, California. Adler was survived by her daughter Ellen, her sister Julia, and two grandchildren, including Tom Oppenheim,current president and artistic director of Stella Adler Studio of Acting, New York City.^[2] She was interred in the Mount Carmel Cemetery, Glendale, New York.

Legacy[link]

Stella Adler's technique, based on a balanced and pragmatic combination of imagination as well as memory, is hugely credited with introducing the subtle and insightful details and a deep physical embodiment of a character.^[17] Elaine Stritch once said: "What an extraordinary combination was Stella Adler - a goddess of full of magic and mystery, a child full of innocence and vulnerability."^[17] In the book Acting: Onstage and Off, Robert Barton wrote: "[Adler] established the value of the actor putting himself in the place of the character rather than vice versa ... More than anyone else, Stella Adler brought into public awareness all the close careful attention to text and analysis Stanislavski endorsed."^[17]

In 2004, The University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center acquired Adler's complete archive. It includes correspondence, manuscripts, typescripts, video and audiotapes, photographs and other materials. The archive traces her career from her start in the New York Yiddish Theater to her encounters with Stanislavski and the Group Theatre to her lectures at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting.^[18]

In 2006, she was honored with a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of the 'Stella Adler Theatre' at 6773 Hollywood Boulevard.^[19]

Stella Adler Schools[link]

The Acting schools Adler founded still operate today in New York City and Los Angeles. Her method, based on use of the actor's imagination, has been studied by many renowned actors, such as Robert De Niro, Elaine Stritch, Martin Sheen, Dolores del Rio, Roy Scheider, Vincent D'Onofrio, Mark Ruffalo, Warren Beatty, Michael Imperioli, Salma Hayek, Sean Astin, Barbara Stuart, Joyce Meadows, Stephen Bauer and Benicio del Toro, in addition to Marlon Brando, who served as the New York studio's Honorary Chairman until his death, and was replaced by another pupil, Warren Beatty.

Career on Broadway[link]

All works are the original Broadway productions unless otherwise noted.

• The Straw Hat (1926)
• Big Lake (1927)
• The House of Connelly (1931)
• 1931 (1931)
• Night Over Taos (1932)
• Success Story (1932)
• Big Night (1933)
• Hilda Cassidy (1933)
• Gentlewoman (1934)
• Gold Eagle Guy (1934)
• Awake and Sing! (1935)
• Paradise Lost (1935)
• Sons and Soldiers (1943)
• Pretty Little Parlor (1944)
• He Who Gets Slapped — revival (1946)
• Manhattan Nocturne (1943)
• Sunday Breakfast (1952)

Works[link]

• The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre and the Thirties, By Harold Clurman, Stella Adler. Da Capo Press, 1983. ISBN 0-306-80186-8.
• The Technique of Acting, by Stella Adler. Bantam Books, 1988. ISBN 0-553-05299-3.
• Creating a Character: A Physical Approach to Acting, by Moni Yakim, Muriel Broadman, Stella Adler. Applause Books, 1993. ISBN 155783161.
• Stella Adler: The Art of Acting, by Stella Adler, Howard Kissel, Applause Books, 2000. ISBN 1-55783-373-7.
• Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov, by Stella Adler, Barry Paris. Random House Inc, 2001. ISBN 0-679-74698-6.

Quotes[link]

• "In your choices lies your talent."
• "Don't use your conscious past. Use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your character. I don't want you to be stuck with your own life. It's too little."^[3]
• "You can't be boring. Life is boring. The weather is boring. Actors must not be boring."^[3]
• "Growth as an actor and as a human being are synonymous."^[20]
• "A junkie is someone who uses their body to tell society that something is wrong."^[20]
• "The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation. The theatre is a spiritual and social X-ray of its time. The theatre was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation."^[3]
• "Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one."
• "The play is not in the words, it's in you!"^[21]

Further reading[link]

• Acting with Adler, by Joanna Rotté. Limelight Editions, 2000. ISBN 0-87910-298-5.

See also[link]

• Mikhail Chekhov
• Uta Hagen
• Estelle Harman
• Robert Lewis

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Stella Adler

• Judith Laikin Elkin, Stella Adler, Jewish Women Encyclopedia
• Stella Adler at the Internet Broadway Database
• Stella Adler at the Internet Movie Database
• Stella Adler Los Angeles
• Stella Adler Studio of Acting

• Stella Adler News at The New York Times

Mark Ruffalo
Ruffalo at the 2007 Toronto Film Festival
Born	Mark Alan Ruffalo (1967-11-22) November 22, 1967 (age 44) Kenosha, Wisconsin, U.S.
Occupation	Actor, director, producer, screenwriter
Years active	1987–present
Spouse	Sunrise Coigney (2000–present)

Mark Alan Ruffalo (born November 22, 1967) is an American actor, director, producer and screenwriter. He starred in films such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Zodiac, Shutter Island, Just Like Heaven, Collateral, You Can Count on Me, The Avengers, and The Kids Are All Right, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.^[1]

Early life[link]

Ruffalo was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin. His mother, Marie Rose (née Hebert), is a hairdresser and stylist, and his father, Frank Lawrence Ruffalo, Jr., worked as a construction painter.^[1][2][3] His father and maternal grandmother were of Italian descent, and his maternal grandfather was of French Canadian ancestry.^[4][5] He has two sisters, Tania and Nicole, and a brother, Scott,^[1] who died in December 2008. Ruffalo has described himself as having been a "happy kid"^[6] and his upbringing as taking place in a "very big" family with "lots of love".^[7] Of his father, Ruffalo has said, "He was an amazing, charismatic guy who was city high school wrestling champion three times. He was away a lot when I was growing up. I was very lonely for him.”^[8] Ruffalo was raised Roman Catholic; he attended both a Catholic and a progressive school. Ruffalo spent his teen years in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where his father worked. He graduated from First Colonial High School,^[1] and then moved with his family to San Diego, and later to Los Angeles, California. There, he took classes at the Stella Adler Conservatory and co-founded the Orpheus Theatre Company.^[1] With the OTC, he wrote, directed, and starred in a number of plays, and spent the next nine years earning his money as a bartender.

Career[link]

Acting[link]

Ruffalo had minor roles in films like The Dentist (1996), the low-key crime comedy Safe Men (1998) and Ang Lee's Civil War Western Ride with the Devil (1999). Through a chance meeting with writer Kenneth Lonergan, Ruffalo began collaborating with Lonergan and appeared in several of his plays, including the original cast of This is Our Youth (1998), which led to Ruffalo's role as Laura Linney's troubled, aimless drifter brother Terry in Lonergan's acclaimed, Academy Award-nominated 2000 film You Can Count on Me.^[1] He received favorable reviews for his performance in this film, often earning comparisons to the young Marlon Brando, and won awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and Montreal World Film Festival.^[1]

This led to other significant roles, including the films XX/XY (2002), Isabel Coixet's My Life Without Me with Sarah Polley (2003), Jane Campion's In the Cut with Meg Ryan (2003), Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), and We Don't Live Here Anymore (2004), which is based upon two short stories written by Andre Dubus.^[1] He appeared opposite Tom Cruise as a narcotics detective in Michael Mann's acclaimed crime-thriller Collateral (2004).^[1] More recently, Ruffalo has appeared as a romantic lead in "chick flicks" such as View From the Top (2002), 13 Going on 30 (2004), Just Like Heaven (2005) and Rumor Has It (2005).^[1] In 2006, Ruffalo starred in Clifford Odets's Awake and Sing! at the Belasco Theatre in New York, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.^[1] In March 2007, he appeared in Zodiac as SFPD homicide inspector Dave Toschi, who ran the investigation to find and apprehend the Zodiac killer from 1969 through most of the 1970s.^[1] In 2007, Ruffalo played divorced lawyer Dwight Arno, who accidentally kills a child and speeds away, in Terry George's film Reservation Road, based on the novel by John Burnham Schwartz.

In 2008, Ruffalo starred as a con man in The Brothers Bloom with Adrien Brody and Rachel Weisz. Also in 2008, he starred along with Julianne Moore in Blindness. 2008 also saw Ruffalo in Brian Goodman's What Doesn't Kill You with Ethan Hawke and Amanda Peet, which was shown at the Toronto Film Festival. In 2009, he played a brief role in the film Where The Wild Things Are as Max's mother's boyfriend. In 2010, he costarred in the Martin Scorsese thriller Shutter Island as U.S. Marshal Chuck Aule, the partner of Leonardo DiCaprio's character Teddy Daniels.^[9]

In 2010, he starred in Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right, with Annette Bening and Julianne Moore. Ruffalo stated in an interview that he approached Cholodenko after watching High Art and said he would love to work with her. Years later, she called Ruffalo and said she wrote a script, and had him in mind for the part. The performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor.^[10]

He is set to star in Second Coming, a low-budget indie film. According to Production Weekly, it is being produced by Richard N. Gladstein, Laura Bickford, and Ludovic Dardenay. The movie will also star Marion Cotillard, Ethan Hawke, Anjelica Huston, and Thandie Newton, and it will be the directorial debut of Nenad Cicin-Sain.^[11]

On July 23, 2010, it was announced that Ruffalo would star in the 2012 superhero film The Avengers. He received critical acclaim for his performance as Dr. Bruce Banner in the film.^[12]

Directing[link]

He made his directorial debut with Sympathy for Delicious, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Special Jury Prize. On releasing the film, Ruffalo said, "I'm still looking for distribution. I have a couple offers on the table, but I'm holding out for something a little bigger. I've been screening it for a lot of groups, and people are really responding to it. I think they're scared of that movie."^[13] Of directing, he says, "I liken it to an actor gets to eat one slice, and a director gets to eat the whole pie. [laughs] You get to collaborate with gifted people who are good at their craft, so you're orchestrating all these different mediums. You're helping people through the script to realize their own talents. I find that really satisfying, and I felt like being in front of the camera is so intense and self-involved and personal, and directing isn't like that for me. It's a much more communal experience. Last year at this time, I was like, 'I'm not going back to acting, man. No way, it's done.' I haven't worked in a year. It's really taken me that long to get back to my love for what I do for acting. I would like to do 50-50, if I could. Really, I'd just be directing right now, but I can't support my family doing that at this moment, and I love acting. It's not a bad position to be in."^[13]

Personal life[link]

Family[link]

Since June 2000, Mark has been married to French-American actress Sunrise Coigney (born Christina Sunrise Coigney on September 17, 1972 in San Francisco), and they have three children: a son Keen, born in 2001, and daughters Bella Noche, born in 2005, and Odette, born in 2007, in Los Angeles.^[14]

On December 1, 2008, Ruffalo's brother, Scott, was shot at his Beverly Hills condominium,^[15] with one report describing the shooting as "execution-style" in the back of the head.^[16] Scott died on December 8, 2008. Police took two people into custody: a woman who is considered a suspect and a man considered a "person of interest".^[17] One of the suspects reportedly told police that Scott Ruffalo shot himself while playing Russian roulette;^[18] the witnesses were later released as the police investigation continued.^[19]

In 2002, Ruffalo was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma, a type of brain tumor, and had surgery; the tumor was benign, but resulted in a period of partial facial paralysis.^[2] He fully recovered from the paralysis and returned to good health as well as an active life and movie career.

Ruffalo is a vegetarian.^[20]

Political views[link]

On October 4, 2006, he appeared on Democracy Now!, a daily news program. He spoke against the War in Iraq, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, torture, and the Bush Administration. He also announced he would speak at The World Can't Wait Protest in New York City on October 5, 2006. Ruffalo contributed to the campaign of former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel for the 2008 Democratic Party nomination for President.^[21]

In October 2007, Ruffalo criticized the 9/11 Commission Report as "completely illegitimate" and called for re-opening the investigation. He said: "I saw the way they all came down and I am baffled. My first reaction is that buildings don't fall down like that." He also criticized the 9/11 truth movement, saying "There's so much information that's been put out there by truth for 9/11 and ... so much of it has been stretched that a lot of people are grabbing hold of the more sensational parts of what doesn't jibe..."^[22]

[edit] Opposition to fracking

On October 4, 2010, Ruffalo, who makes his home with his family in Callicoon, New York, appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show to discuss hydraulic fracturing and the The FRAC Act of 2009.^[23] Ruffalo stated in the December 2010 issue of GQ magazine that after he organized screenings in Pennsylvania of a documentary about natural-gas-drilling called Gasland, he was placed on a terror advisory list.^[24] The Department of Homeland Security denied that they had him on a list.^[25]

On July 13, 2011, Ruffalo appeared on Countdown With Keith Olbermann to discuss fracking, most particularly in New York. "This is an industry that is the dirtiest, slimiest, most arrogant, and negligent that you can imagine," Ruffalo says. Ruffalo taped an "online segment extra" for Countdown, during which time Keith Olbermann offered him the opportunity to become an official Countdown Contributor. Ruffalo gratefully accepted.^[26]

On March 28, 2012, Ruffalo appeared on The Colbert Report to discuss his continued opposition to fracking and promote waterdefense.org.^[27]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Mark Ruffalo at the Internet Movie Database
• Mark Ruffalo at the Internet Broadway Database
• Mark Ruffalo at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• People in Film: Mark Ruffalo at Focus Features
• Clips from Ruffalo interview on Inside the Actors Studio
• Mark Ruffalo Producer Profile for The 1 Second Film

James Lipton
James Lipton, April 2007
Born	(1926-09-19) September 19, 1926 (age 85) Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Occupation	Poet, talk show host, writer, teacher, actor, producer
Years active	1951–present
Spouse	Nina Foch (1954–1959) Kedakai Turner (1970–present)
Parents	Lawrence Lipton Betty Weinberg

James Lipton (born September 19, 1926) is an American writer, poet, composer, actor and dean emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University in New York City. He is the executive producer, writer and host of the Bravo cable television series Inside the Actors Studio, which debuted in 1994. He is also a pilot and member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

Early life[link]

James R. Lipton was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Betty (née Weinberg), a teacher, and Polish-born journalist Lawrence Lipton. Noted as the author of the popular Beat Generation chronicle, The Holy Barbarians, Lawrence Lipton was a graphic designer, a columnist for the Jewish Daily Forward and a publicity director for a movie theater.^[1][2][3]

Career[link]

A 1944 graduate of Central High School, Lipton portrayed Dan Reid on WXYZ-Radio's The Lone Ranger. Moving to New York, he initially studied to be a lawyer, and turned to acting only to finance his education.^[4] He wrote for several soap operas, Another World, The Edge of Night, Guiding Light, Return to Peyton Place and Capitol, as well as acting for over ten years on Guiding Light.^[4] In 1951, he appeared in the Broadway play The Autumn Garden by Lillian Hellman. He portrayed a shipping clerk turned gang member in Joseph Strick's 1953 film, The Big Break, a crime drama.

Lipton was the book writer and lyricist for the short-lived 1967 Broadway musical Sherry!, based on the Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman play The Man Who Came to Dinner, with music by his childhood friend Laurence Rosenthal. The score and orchestrations were lost for over 30 years, and the original cast was never recorded. In 2003, a studio cast recording (with Nathan Lane, Bernadette Peters, Carol Burnett, Tommy Tune, Michael Myers and others) renewed interest in the show.

In 1968, his book, An Exaltation of Larks, was first published, and has been in print and revised several times since then, including a 1993 Penguin books edition.^[5] The book is a collection of "terms of venery", both real and created by Lipton himself. The dust jacket biography for the first edition of Exaltation claimed his activities included fencing, swimming, and equestrian pursuits and that he had written two Broadway productions. He speaks French fluently.

In 1983, Lipton published his novel, Mirrors, about dancers' lives. He later wrote and produced it as a TV movie.^[4] In television, Lipton has produced some two dozen specials including: twelve Bob Hope Birthday Specials; The Road to China, an NBC entertainment special produced in China; and the first televised presidential inaugural gala (for Jimmy Carter).^[4]

In 2008 Lipton provided the voice for the Director in the Disney animation film Bolt.

[edit] Inside the Actors Studio

In the early 1990s, Lipton was inspired by Bernard Pivot,^[6] and sought to create a three year educational program for actors that would be a distillation of what he had learned in the twelve years of his own intensive studies.^[4] In 1994, he arranged for the Actors Studio - the home base of "method acting" in the USA for over sixty years - to join with New York City's New School University and form the Actors Studio Drama School, a formal degree-granting program at the graduate level.^[4] After ending its contact with the New School, the Actor's Studio established The Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University^[7] in 2006.

Lipton created a project within the Actors Studio drama school: a non-credit class called Inside the Actors Studio (1994), where successful and accomplished actors, directors and writers would be interviewed and would answer questions from acting students.^[4] These sessions are also taped and broadcast on television for the general public to see. The episodes are viewed in 89 million homes throughout 125 countries. Lipton himself hosts the show and conducts the main interview.^[4]

During an interview with writer Daniel Simone, when asked if he had anticipated the sudden success, Lipton responded, "Not in my wildest imagination. It was a joint arduous effort involving many people. At a point and time, I had three lives. I was the dean of the Actors Studio, the writer of the series, its host and executive producer. I maintained a preposterous 16-hour schedule."^[8]

Personal life[link]

Between 1954 and 1959, Lipton was married to actress Nina Foch. He has been married to Kedakai Turner, a model and real estate broker, since 1970.^[1]

See also[link]

Poetry portal

• Bernard Pivot

References[link]

External links[link]

• Bravo biography
• James Lipton at the Internet Movie Database

Holland Taylor
Taylor circa 1994
Born	Holland Virginia Taylor (1943-01-14) January 14, 1943 (age 69)[1] Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States[1]
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1969–present

Holland Virginia Taylor (born January 14, 1943^[1]) is an American actress of film, stage and television. Her notable television roles include Ruth Dunbar in Bosom Buddies, senator's wife Margaret Powers on Norman Lear's The Powers That Be, Judge Roberta Kittleson in The Practice and Evelyn Harper in Two and a Half Men.

Early life[link]

Taylor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1943, the daughter of Virginia, a painter, and C. Tracy Taylor, an attorney.^[2] She is the youngest of three girls in the family; her sisters are Patricia and Pamela. Taylor attended high school at Westtown School, a Quaker boarding school in West Chester, Pennsylvania. She then majored in drama at Bennington College^[3] graduating in 1964, before moving to New York City to become an actress.^[4]

Career[link]

Taylor's long career began in the theater. Throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s she appeared in numerous Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, including starring roles in Simon Gray's Butley and A. R. Gurney's The Cocktail Hour; for the latter she was nominated for a Drama Desk award. Taylor also has the dubious distinction of having starred in Broadway's most infamous flop, Moose Murders, where she filled in, with less than a week's rehearsal, for veteran character actress Eve Arden who had jumped from the sinking ship.^[5]

In 1983 Taylor had one of her greatest theatrical moments in Breakfast with Les and Bess, which prompted the New York magazine theater critic John Simon to sing, "...Miss Taylor is one of the few utterly graceful, attractive, elegant and technically accomplished actresses in our theater...seeing her may turn you, like me, into a Taylor freak..."^[6]

Concentrating on theater, television took a backseat but she did take on the role of Denise Cavanaugh on the long running soap opera, The Edge of Night, who was so evil, she killed herself just to frame her husband. Then encouraged by her acting coach, the legendary Stella Adler, Taylor took a role that would make her well known: Tom Hanks' sexy, demanding boss in the 1980s sitcom Bosom Buddies.^[7]

The actress' rising fame, built slowly over many years, led her to roles that made her a well known name in the industry. She proved herself to be equally adept both at comedy and at drama.^[4] From 1992 to 1993 she starred in Norman Lear's The Powers That Be with John Forsythe and David Hyde Pierce; and from 1995 to 1998 on The Naked Truth.

She played the part of rapacious Judge Roberta Kittleson on The Practice. Originally intended to be a one-time appearance,^[8] the role lasted from 1998 to 2003. She won the Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in 1999; in her acceptance speech, she brought the house down when she lifted the Emmy over her head and said, "Overnight!" Taylor thanked David E. Kelley, The Practice's producer/writer and creator, for "giving me a chariot to ride up here on: A woman who puts a flag on the moon for women over 40—who can think, who can work, who are successes, who can cook, and who can COOK!".

Taylor was also nominated for an Emmy for her recurring role on AMC's The Lot, and has been nominated four times since 2003, for best supporting actress for her role on the TV series Two and a Half Men, playing Evelyn Harper, the snobbish, overbearing mother of Charlie Sheen's and Jon Cryer's characters. Taylor's television movie and series guest roles have been extensive and include appearances on ER, Veronica's Closet, and recurring roles on Ally McBeal; Monk and as billionaire Peggy Peabody on The L Word.

Taylor's movie roles have included Reese Witherspoon's tough Harvard law professor in the 2001 comedy Legally Blonde; Tina Fey's mother in Baby Mama; The Truman Show; Happy Accidents; Next Stop Wonderland; George of the Jungle; The Wedding Date; How to Make an American Quilt; Romancing the Stone; and D.E.B.S..

Taylor's animated roles include that of Prudence, the castle's majordomo and love interest of the Grand Duke, in Disney's Cinderella II and Cinderella III: A Twist in Time. She also played a role in the animated show American Dad! as Francine's biological mother.

Holland Taylor in 2008.

Taylor's first love remains the theater and she began researching, writing and producing a one-woman play about the late Texas Governor Ann Richards in 2009.^[4] The two-act play, originally titled Money, Marbles, and Chalk, starring Taylor as Richards, was first workshopped in May 2010 at The Grand 1894 Opera House in Galveston, Texas.^[9] It was later retitled Ann: An Affectionate Portrait of Ann Richards^[10] and opened in Chicago November 16, 2011 and was billed as a "pre-Broadway" engagement. It is scheduled to play at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. December 17, 2011 through January 15, 2012.^[11]

Charitable work[link]

Taylor has been a long-time, major supporter of Aid For AIDS in Los Angeles, serving on their Honorary Board and as an ongoing participant in their largest annual fundraiser, Best In Drag Show, among other fundraising efforts.^[12]

Emmy Award nominations[link]

Filmography[link]

Film[link]

Television[link]

Theater[link]

Broadway

• Breakfast with Les and Bess
• Moose Murders
• Murder Among Friends
• Butley (Alan Bates)
• Something Old, Something New
• We Interrupt this Message
• The Devils (Anne Bancroft)

Off-Broadway

• Vagina Monologues
• The Cocktail Hour
• Drinks Before Dinner
• Children
• Fashion
• Colette (Zoe Caldwell)
• Love Letters
• Ann: An Affectionate Portrait of Ann Richards

Regional

• Kindertransport
• A Delicate Balance
• Passion Play (Galati)
• The Philanthropist
• Black Comedy

Los Angeles

• The Unexpected Man, The Geffen Playhouse
• Kinder Transport, The Tiffany Theatre
• Narrator – LA Philharmonic "Persephone, Stravinsky, Essa-Pekka Salonen, Conductor"
• Narrator – LA Philharmonic "Ahknaten, Philip Glass, John Adams, Conductor"

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Holland Taylor

• Holland Taylor at the Internet Movie Database
• Holland Taylor at the Internet Broadway Database
• Holland Taylor at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Holland Taylor Bio at CBS - Two and a Half Men

Pope Joan publicly giving birth during a street-procession. Note the jester behind the column mocking the event. Woodcut engraving by Giovanni Boccaccio. Now in British Museum. circa 1353.

Pope Joan was a legendary female Pope who allegedly reigned for a few years some time during the Middle Ages. The story first appeared in 13th-century chronicles, and subsequently spread and embellished throughout Europe. It was widely believed for centuries, though modern religious scholars consider it fictitious, perhaps deriving from historicized folklore regarding Roman monuments or from anti-papal satire.

The first mention of the female pope appears in the chronicle of Jean Pierier de Mailly, but the most popular and influential version was that interpolated into Martin of Troppau's Chronicon Pontificum et Imperatorum, later in the 13th century. Most versions of her story describe her as a talented and learned woman who disguises herself as a man, often at the behest of a lover. In the most common accounts, due to her abilities, she rises through the church hierarchy, eventually being elected pope. However, while riding on horseback she gives birth, thus exposing her gender. In most versions, she dies shortly after, either being killed by an angry mob or from natural causes. Her memory is then shunned by her successors.

Legend[link]

A medieval artistic rendition of Pope Joan with a papal tiara. Illustrated Manuscript. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, circa 1560's.

The earliest mention of the female pope appears in the Dominican Jean de Mailly's chronicle of Metz, Chronica Universalis Mettensis, written in the early 13th century. In his telling, the female pope is not named, and the events are set in 1099. According to Jean:

Query: Concerning a certain Pope or rather female Pope, who is not set down in the list of Popes or Bishops of Rome, because she was a woman who disguised herself as a man and became, by her character and talents, a curial secretary, then a Cardinal and finally Pope. One day, while mounting a horse, she gave birth to a child. Immediately, by Roman justice, she was bound by the feet to a horse's tail and dragged and stoned by the people for half a league, and, where she died, there she was buried, and at the place is written: 'Petre, Pater Patrum, Papisse Prodito Partum' [Oh Peter, Father of Fathers, Betray the childbearing of the woman Pope]. At the same time, the four-day fast called the "fast of the female Pope" was first established"

—Jean de Mailly, Chronica Universalis Mettensis

Jean de Mailly's story was picked up by his fellow Dominican Etienne de Bourbon, who adapted it for his work on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost. However, the legend gained its greatest prominence when it appeared in the third recension (edited revision) of Martin of Opava's Chronicon Pontificum et Imperatorum later in the 13th century. This version, which may have been by Martin himself, is the first to attach a name to the figure, indicating that she was known as "John Anglicus" or "John of Mainz." It also changes the date from the 11th to the 9th century, indicating that Joan reigned between Leo IV and Benedict III in the 850s. According to the Chronicon:

John Anglicus, born at Mainz, was Pope for two years, seven months and four days, and died in Rome, after which there was a vacancy in the Papacy of one month. It is claimed that this John was a woman, who as a girl had been led to Athens dressed in the clothes of a man by a certain lover of hers. There she became proficient in a diversity of branches of knowledge, until she had no equal, and, afterward in Rome, she taught the liberal arts and had great masters among her students and audience. A high opinion of her life and learning arose in the city; and she was chosen for Pope. While Pope, however, she became pregnant by her companion. Through ignorance of the exact time when the birth was expected, she was delivered of a child while in procession from St Peter's to the Lateran, in a lane once named Via Sacra (the sacred way) but now known as the "shunned street" between the Colisseum and St Clement's church. After her death, it is said she was buried in that same place. The Lord Pope always turns aside from the street, and it is believed by many that this is done because of abhorrence of the event. Nor is she placed on the list of the Holy Pontiffs, both because of her female sex and on account of the foulness of the matter.

—Martin of Opava, Chronicon Pontificum et Imperatorum

One version of the Chronicon gives an alternate fate for the female pope. According to this, she did not die immediately after her exposure, but was confined and deposed, after which she did many years of penance. Her son from the affair eventually became Bishop of Ostia, and ordered her entombement in his cathedral when she died.

Other references to the female pope are attributed to earlier writers, though none appears in manuscripts that predate the Chronicon. The one most commonly cited is Anastasius Bibliothecarius (d. 886), a compiler of Liber Pontificalis, who was a contemporary of the female Pope by the Chronicon's dating. However, the story is found in only one unreliable manuscript of Anastasius. This manuscript, in the Vatican Library, bears the relevant passage inserted as a footnote at the bottom of a page. It is out of sequence, and in a different hand, one that dates from after the time of Martin of Opava. This "witness" to the female Pope is likely to be based upon Martin's account, and not a possible source for it. The same is true of Marianus Scotus's Chronicle of the Popes, a text written in the 11th century. Some manuscripts of it contain a brief mention of a female Pope named Joanna (the earliest source to attach to her the female form of the name), but all these manuscripts are later than Martin's work. Earlier manuscripts do not contain the legend.

Some versions of the legend suggest that subsequent popes were subjected to an examination whereby, having sat on a dung chair containing a hole called sedia stercoraria, a cardinal had to reach up and establish that the new pope had testicles, before announcing "Duos habet et bene pendentes" ("He has two, and they dangle nicely"),^[1] or "habet" ("he has 'em") for short.^[2]

Later development[link]

An untitled Popess on the Rosenwald Sheet of uncut Tarot woodcuts. Early 16th-century. Now in National Gallery in Washington D.C.

From the mid-13th century onward, the legend was widely disseminated and believed. Joan was used as an exemplum in Dominican preaching. Bartolomeo Platina, the scholar who was prefect of the Vatican Library, wrote his Vitæ Pontificum Platinæ historici liber de vita Christi ac omnium pontificum qui hactenus ducenti fuere et XX in 1479 at the behest of his patron, Pope Sixtus IV. The book contains the following account of the female Pope:

Pope John VIII: John, of English extraction, was born at Mentz (Mainz) and is said to have arrived at Popedom by evil art; for disguising herself like a man, whereas she was a woman, she went when young with her paramour, a learned man, to Athens, and made such progress in learning under the professors there that, coming to Rome, she met with few that could equal, much less go beyond her, even in the knowledge of the scriptures; and by her learned and ingenious readings and disputations, she acquired so great respect and authority that upon the death of Pope Leo IV (as Martin says) by common consent she was chosen Pope in his room. As she was going to the Lateran Church between the Colossean Theatre (so called from Nero's Colossus) and St. Clement's her travail came upon her, and she died upon the place, having sat two years, one month, and four days, and was buried there without any pomp. This story is vulgarly told, but by very uncertain and obscure authors, and therefore I have related it barely and in short, lest I should seem obstinate and pertinacious if I had admitted what is so generally talked. I had better mistake with the rest of the world, though it be certain, that what I have related may be thought not altogether incredible.

References to the female Pope abound in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance. Giovanni Boccaccio wrote about her in De Mulieribus Claris (1353).^[3] The Chronicon of Adam of Usk (1404) gives her a name, Agnes, and furthermore mentions a statue in Rome that is said to be of her. This statue had never been mentioned by any earlier writer anywhere; presumably it was an actual statue that came to be taken to be of the female Pope. A late-14th-century edition of the Mirabilia Urbis Romae, a guidebook for pilgrims to Rome, tells readers that the female Pope's remains are buried at St. Peter's. It was around this time when a long series of busts of past Popes was made for the Duomo of Siena, which included one of the female Pope, named as "Johannes VIII, Foemina de Anglia" and included between Leo IV and Benedict III.

At his trial in 1415, Jan Hus argued that the Church does not necessarily need a Pope, because, during the Pontificate of "Pope Agnes" (as he also called her), it got on quite well. Hus's opponents at this trial insisted that his argument proved no such thing about the independence of the Church, but they did not dispute that there had been a female Pope at all.

There were associated legends as well. In the 1290s, the Dominican Robert of Uzès recounted a vision in which he saw the seat "where, it is said, the Pope is proved to be a man." Pope Joan has been associated with marvelous happenings. Giacomo Penzio (fl. 1495-1527), in a work falsely attributed to Petrarch (1304–74), wrote in his Chronica de le Vite de Pontefici et Imperadori Romani that after Pope Joan had been revealed as a woman:

...in Brescia it rained blood for three days and nights. In France there appeared marvelous locusts, which had six wings and very powerful teeth. They flew miraculously through the air, and all drowned in the British Sea. The golden bodies were rejected by the waves of the sea and corrupted the air, so that a great many people died (Francesco Petrarch Chronica de le Vite de Pontefici et Imperadori Romani).

After the Dark Age and Medieval chroniclers, various Protestant writers took up the Pope Joan legend in their anti-Catholic writings. In 1675, a book appeared in English entitled A Present for a Papist: Or the Life and Death of Pope Joan, Plainly Proving Out of the Printed Copies, and Manscriptes of Popish Writers and Others, That a Woman called JOAN, Was Really POPE of ROME, and Was There Deliver'd of a Bastard Son in the Open Street as She Went in Solemn Procession. The book describes, among other stories, an account of the purported Pope Joan giving birth to a son in plain view of all those around, accompanied by a detailed engraving showing a rather surprised looking baby peeking out from under the Pope's robes. The book was penned "By a LOVER of TRUTH, Denying Human Infallibility." According to the preface the author had been "many years since deceased" and was "highly preferred in the Church of Rome." Furthermore, the preface indicates that the book was first printed in 1602. Even in the 19th century, authors such as Ewaldus Kist and Karl Hase discussed the story as a real occurrence. However, other Protestant writers, such as David Blondel and Gottfried Leibniz, rejected the story.

Analysis and critique[link]

Most modern scholars dismiss Pope Joan as a Medieval legend.^[4] The Oxford Dictionary of Popes ^[5] acknowledges that this legend was widely believed for centuries, even among Catholic circles, but declares that there is "no contemporary evidence for a female Pope at any of the dates suggested for her reign," and goes on to say that "the known facts of the respective periods make it impossible to fit [a female Pope] in".

In 1587, Florimond de Raemond, a magistrate in the parlement de Bordeaux and an antiquary, published his first attempt to deconstruct the legend, Erreur Populaire de la Papesse Jeanne (also subsequently published under the title L'Anti-Papesse). The tract applied humanist techniques of textual criticism to the Pope Joan legend, with the broader intent of supplying sound historical principles to ecclesiastical history, and the legend began to come apart, detail by detail. Raemond's Erreur Populaire went through fifteen editions, as late as 1691.^[6]

In 1601, Pope Clement VIII declared the legend of the female Pope to be untrue. The famous bust of her, inscribed Johannes VIII, Femina ex Anglia, which had been carved for the series of Papal figures in the Duomo di Siena about 1400 and was noted by travelers, was either destroyed or recarved and relabeled, replaced by a male figure, of Pope Zachary.^[7]

The legend of Pope Joan was "effectively demolished" by David Blondel, a mid-17th century Protestant historian, who suggested that Pope Joan's tale may have originated in a satire against Pope John XI, who died in his early 20s.^[5] Blondel, through detailed analysis of the claims and suggested timings, argued that no such events could have happened.^[5]

The 16th-century Italian historian Onofrio Panvinio, commenting on one of Bartolomeo Platina's works that refer to Pope Joan, theorized that the story of Pope Joan may have originated from tales of Pope John XII; John reportedly had many mistresses, including one called Joan, who was very influential in Rome during his pontificate.^[8][9]

The Catholic Encyclopedia elaborates on the historical timeline problem:

Between Leo IV and Benedict III, where Martinus Polonus places her, she cannot be inserted, because Leo IV died 17 July 855, and immediately after his death Benedict III was elected by the clergy and people of Rome; but, owing to the setting up of an Antipope, in the person of the deposed Cardinal Anastasius, he was not consecrated until 29 September. Coins exist which bear both the image of Benedict III and of Emperor Lothair, who died 28 September, 855; therefore Benedict must have been recognized as pope before the last-mentioned date. On 7 October 855, Benedict III issued a charter for the Abbey of Corvey. Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims, informed Nicholas I that a messenger whom he had sent to Leo IV learned on his way of the death of this Pope, and therefore handed his petition to Benedict III, who decided it (Hincmar, ep. xl in P.L., CXXXVI, 85). All these witnesses prove the correctness of the dates given in the lives of Leo IV and Benedict III, and there was no interregnum between these two Popes, so that at this place there is no room for the alleged Popess.^[10]

It is also notable that enemies of the Papacy in the 9th century make no mention of a female Pope. For example, Photius I of Constantinople, who became Patriarch in 858 and was deposed by Pope Nicholas I in 863, was an enemy of the Pope. He vehemently asserted his own authority as Patriarch over that of the Pope in Rome, and would have made the most of any scandal of that time regarding the Papacy; but he never mentions the story once in any of his voluminous writings. Indeed, at one point he mentions "Leo and Benedict, successively great priests of the Roman Church".^[11]

Rosemary and Darroll Pardoe, authors of The Female Pope: The Mystery of Pope Joan, theorize that if a female pope did exist, a more plausible time frame is 1086 and 1108, when there were several Antipopes; during this time the reign of the legitimate Popes Victor III, Urban II, and Paschal II was not always established in Rome, since the city was occupied by Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor, and later sacked by the Normans.^[11] This also agrees with the earliest known version of the legend, by Jean de Mailly, as he places the story in the year 1099. De Mailly's 'account' was acknowledged by his companion Stephen of Bourbon.

Against the weight of historical evidence to the contrary, the question remains as to why the Pope Joan story has been popular and widely believed. Philip Jenkins in The New Anti-Catholicism suggests that the periodic revival of what he calls this "anti-papal legend" has more to do with feminist and anti-Catholic wishful thinking than historical accuracy.^[12]

The sede stercoraria, the throne with a hole in the seat, now at St. John Lateran (the formal residence of the popes and center of Catholicism), is to be considered. This and other toilet-like chairs were used in the consecration of Pope Pascal II in 1099 (Boureau 1988). In fact, one is still in the Vatican Museums, another at the Musée du Louvre. The reason for the configuration of the chair is disputed. It has been speculated that they originally were Roman bidets or imperial birthing stools, which because of their age and imperial links were used in ceremonies by Popes intent on highlighting their own imperial claims (as they did also with their Latin title, Pontifex Maximus).[2]

Alain Boureau (Boureau 1988:23) quotes the humanist Jacopo d'Angelo de Scarparia, who visited Rome in 1406 for the enthronement of Gregory XII. The pope sat briefly on two "pierced chairs" at the Lateran: "...the vulgar tell the insane fable that he is touched to verify that he is indeed a man" a sign that this corollary of the Pope Joan legend was still current in the Roman street.

Medieval Popes, from the 13th century onward, did indeed avoid the direct route between the Lateran and St Peter's, as Martin of Opava claimed. However, there is no evidence that this practice dated back any earlier. The origin of the practice is uncertain, but it is quite likely that it was maintained because of widespread belief in the Joan legend, and it was thought genuinely to date back to that period.

Although some Medieval writers referred to the female Pope as "John VIII," a genuine Pope John VIII reigned between 872 and 882. Due to the Dark Ages lack of records, confusion often reigns in the evaluation of events.

A problem sometimes connected to the Pope Joan legend is the fact that there is no Pope John XX in any list. It is said this reflects a renumbering of the Popes to exclude Joan from history. Historians have known since Louis Duchesne's critical edition of the Liber Pontificalis that the 'renumbering' was actually due to a misunderstanding in the textual transmission of the official Papal lists. In the course of the 11th century, in the time after John XIX, the entry for John XIV had been misread as referring to two different popes of this name. These two popes then came to be distinguished as Iohannes XIV and Iohannes XIV bis ("John XIV the second").

The existence of a second Pope John XIV was widely accepted in the 13th century, hence the numbering of Popes John XV through XIX was regarded as being erroneous. When Petrus Hispanus was elected pope in 1276 and chose the papal name John, he decided to correct this error by skipping the number XX. He numbered himself John XXI, thus acknowledging the presumed existence of John XIV "bis" in the 10th century.

Cultural references[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

The Pope Joan story has been reworked in a number of modern works. The story is retold in the Greek author Emmanuel Rhoides' 1866 novel The Papess Joanne. Pope Joan is a character in the opening scene of Caryl Churchill's feminist play Top Girls (1982). The story is reworked in American writer Donna Woolfolk Cross's 1996 novel. Pope Joan. There have been two film versions, a 1972 film directed by Michael Anderson and a 2009 film adapted from Cross' novel.

See also[link]

• Legends surrounding the Papacy
• Theodora (senatrix)
• Saeculum obscurum
• Marozia
• List of Popes

References[link]

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company.