TV Reviews : An Inside Look at the Method of Acting

If there’s an American acting style, certainly it’s the naturalism associated with “the Method,” a much-misunderstood acting process that is explored by disciples and by example in “Miracle on 44th Street: A Portrait of the Actors Studio” tonight on “American Masters” (KCET Channel 28 at 10; KPBS Channel 15 at 9).

Host Paul Newman, president of the Actors Studio, credits the influential acting laboratory with “shaping the artistic conscience of a nation.” The fascinating archival photos and observations from illustrious members demonstrate why Newman’s assessment is not mere hyperbole.

Little in the photographic history of American acting is more legendary than the shots of then-unknown young actors gathered in the late 1940s in the stuffy rehearsal room of what was a converted church on 44th Street. Begun under Constantin Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre, “the Method” dug at characters’ psychological realities by utilizing sense memory, transformation and improvisation. A demanding Lee Strasberg developed the process in acting workshops that drew the cream of American talent.

Among the actors who studied there were Marlon Brando, James Dean, Julie Harris, Robert De Niro, Joanne Woodward, Marilyn Monroe, Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman (who, we hear, was turned down 14 times before being accepted).

We hear members Lee Grant, Ellen Burstyn and Anne Jackson peel away the mystification of “the Method.” Harvey Keitel admits it took him seven years before he passed the preliminary auditions. Woodward says she was so nervous she broke down and cried during her five-minute final audition (which the judges mistook for real acting and passed her).

In a classic demonstration of “the Method,” Eli Wallach performs Chekhov’s short play, “Swan Song.” And Norman Mailer, in the show’s only critical view of taskmaster Strasberg, recounts that Strasberg “made you suffer for your education. He was chilling and reptilian.”