Stella Adler (1905-1992), the daughter of actors Sarah and Jacob Adler, spent
her whole life immersed in the theater. She began her career in the
Yiddish
theater. She spent her twenties traveling throughout the
United States,
Europe,
and
South America, performing in
vaudeville and Yiddish theater.
Her second husband Harold Clurman was one of the co-founders of the Group
Theater, a cooperative ensemble dedicated to reinvigorating the theater with plays
about important contemporary topics. She left the Group briefly to study with
Constantin Stanislavsky, who taught a precursor to "method acting" returning with
various new ideas about American theater. She never felt completely comfortable
with the Group and in 1937 she left for Hollywood. She stayed there for six years
and had roles in various movies, including "Love on Toast" (1937) and "The
Shadow of the Thin Man" (1941), then returned to Broadway to act and direct.
In 1949 she opened the Stella Adler Theater Studio (later renamed the Stella
Adler Conservatory of Acting). Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Warren
Beatty, and Candice Bergen have all studied at her conservatory. Her emphasis
was on the emotional origins of the script. She stressed imagination and the
connection between acting and the soul. She told her students, "You act with your
soul. That's why you all want to be actors, because your souls are not used up by
life." Adler is still viewed as one of the key influences on contemporary acting.