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Inventing a stage name "Boleslawski" (later spelled also "Boleslavsky"), the young Pole Boleslaw Ryszard Srzednicki left his second home (Odessa, Russian Empire) to study theatre and train as an actor at the world-famous Moscow Art Theatre, before and during WW1. He also acted in a few early Russian films. In the chaotic wake of the Russian Revolution, Civil War, and then Soviet Russia's war with Poland (1918-21), Boleslawski left Russia forever, migrated through Poland and Germany, and wound up in the USA. In the 1920s he became, along with Maria Ouspenskaya , one of the first teachers in the US of the serious, emotionally grounded, ensemble style of the Moscow Art Theatre (later known as the "Method"). To put his the spic theories into action, Boleslawski created the "American Laboratory [Stage] Theatre" in New York in 1923. (Forerunner of the "Group Theatre" of the 1930s and "Actor's Studio" after WW2.) Boleslawski also wrote serious theoretical articles about acting for "Theatre Arts Magazine," and later collected them in a 1933 book, "Acting - the First Six Lessons." The coming of sound to motion pictures, and the financial collapse of the American Laboratory Theatre, led Boleslawski to abandon the New York stage and to accept an offer to direct films in Hollywood, beginning in 1929. He made several important films at major studios like MGM and Fox before his premature death in January, 1937. Among his most important film-directing assignments were Rasputin and the Empress (1932) (with the 3 Barrymores), Men in White (1934) ( Clark Gable & Myrna Loy ), The Painted Veil (1934) ( Greta Garbo ), Les Misérables (1935) ( Fredric March & Charles Laughton ), and Theodora Goes Wild (1936) ( Irene Dunne ) - a wide range of genres. He even directed a musical, Metropolitan (1935) ( Lawrence Tibbett ) and a cowboy film, Three Godfathers (1936) ( Chester Morris ). Boleslawski was married at least 3 times. From his last marriage, to pianist-actress 'Norma (Drury) Boleslavsky', he had one child, a son named Jan (1935-1962), who tragically was to lose his father before he was two years old, and then to lose his own life at the tender age of 27. Richard Boleslawski's death of cardiac arrest, at the age of 47, before he had completed his final film ( The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937) with Joan Crawford ) was shockingly sudden, and from unclear causes. One explanation, probably incorrect, traces his fatal illness to his penultimate film, The Garden of Allah (1936) (with Marlene Dietrich ), the exteriors of which he shot in the burning heat of the Southwest desert. At some point, it is claimed, Boleslawski unwisely "drank the (unboiled) water", rather than soft drinks and bottled water (as the company had been advised to do). From which he allegedly fell ill, and eventually expired at 47.
The 1926 stage production, "The Straw Hat", which he directed, was the original Broadway production of the famous French comedy, "The Italian Straw Hat".Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 37-41. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.In the Russo-Polish War of 1920, Boleslawski fought as a soldier in the Polish Army and took part in the Polish invasion of the Ukraine, shortly before the war ended.Boleslawski's wife, Norma, provided the piano playing for Ingrid Bergman in the film Intermezzo: A Love Story (1939).In the 1920s, Boleslavski's students at the American Laboratory Theatre school in New York included Lee Strasberg , Stella Adler and Harold Clurman , all of whom were to become active members of The Group Theater (1931-1939), the first ensemble company in America to apply the Stanislavski System to American acting.
Richard Boleslawski
Date of Birth:
4 February 1889
Date of Death:
17 January 1937
Biography:
Inventing a stage name "Boleslawski" (later spelled also "Boleslavsky"), the young Pole Bo...more
Trivia:
The 1926 stage production, "The Straw Hat", which he directed, was the original Broadway p...more
Starmeter:
Awards:
2 wins & 1 nomination.
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