Word: duse
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...week Susskind rushed in and out of rehearsals, spending almost as much time on the phone as he did watching the actors, yet seeing enough to scribble endless notes of advice; e.g., "Keep Myrna alive." He supervised the cutting of Jeanne Crain's lines ("She's no Duse"), and hesitated not a moment to order the taping of an entire scene from The Browning Version when one actor showed a tendency to blow his lines. (This last maneuver, by a man who has always championed live TV and frowned on tape and other mechanical aids, was as revealing...
What are the chief requisites for a great actor or actress? "Most people will list a great voice and a good-looking body," he said. "But the greater performers have lacked one or both of these--David Garrick, Edmund Kean, Eleanora Duse, Pauline Lord and Helen Hayes, for example." In the movies, even such "good but not great actors" as Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and John Garfield were not able to get anything but villain roles for a long, long time...
...matter what the style is," Strasberg said, "the same capacity of imagination is demanded--even in the most formal theatre, like the Noh drama of Japan. The result must be convincing and believable in any kind of theatre. The two greatest feminine performances I ever saw were given by Duse and Mei Lan-Fang; and the latter was the more notable achievement, for it had to overcome the greater handicaps." (Mei Lan-Fang was the foremost Chinese actor, and head of the Ching-Chung Monastery, who specialized in female impersonations). "In all kinds of theatre, the basic emotions are always...
...melodious but somewhat fruity "voice of gold." Rumor had it that she slumbered in a coffin lined with silk. The majestic Modjeska once held a U.S. audience "clutched in [her] spell" with a heartbreaking recital of what she later admitted was the Polish alphabet, and the mighty Duse would petulantly play her big scenes hidden from the audience...
...find it. If Julie dares to find it, there can be little doubt that the theater will be the richer for her experience, and she herself may one day be able to cry with Eleonora Duse: "There are a thousand women within me, and each one makes me suffer in turn . . . How I have loved life...