Uta Hagen
Uta Hagen | |
---|---|
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art | |
Occupation(s) | Actress, Author |
Years active | 1937–2001 |
Spouses | |
Children | 1 |
Uta Thyra Hagen (12 June 1919 – 14 January 2004) was a German-American actress and theatre practitioner. She originated the role of Martha in the 1962 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee, who called her "a profoundly truthful actress." Because Hagen was on the Hollywood blacklist, in part because of her association with Paul Robeson, her film opportunities dwindled and she focused her career on New York theatre.
She later became a highly influential acting teacher at New York's Herbert Berghof Studio and authored best-selling acting texts, Respect for Acting, with Haskel Frankel,[1] and A Challenge for the Actor. Her most substantial contributions to theatre pedagogy were a series of "object exercises" that built on the work of Konstantin Stanislavski and Yevgeny Vakhtangov.
She was elected to the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1981.[2] She twice won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play and received a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1999.
Life and career
Early life
Born in
Career
Hagen was cast, early on, as Ophelia by the actress-manager Eva Le Gallienne. Hagen went on to play (at age 18) the leading ingénue role of Nina in a Broadway production of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.[3] "The Lunts," she later stated, "were an enormous influence on my life." She admired "their passion for the theatre, and their discipline."[8] The New York Times' critic Brooks Atkinson hailed her Nina as "grace and aspiration incarnate."[9]
She played
Primarily noted for stage roles, Hagen won her first
Although she appeared in some movies after 1972, the Hollywood blacklist limited her output in film and television. She would later comment about being blacklisted, "that fact kept me pure."[3]
She was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award as "Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series" for her performance on the television soap opera One Life to Live.
She taught at
Later in life, Hagen returned to the stage, earning accolades for leading roles in Mrs. Warren's Profession (1985), Collected Stories, and Mrs. Klein. After Berghof's death in 1990, she became the school's chairperson.[11]
She also wrote Respect for Acting (1973) and A Challenge for the Actor (1991), which advocate realistic (as opposed to "formalistic") acting. In her mode of realism, the actor puts his own psyche to use in finding identification with the role," trusting that a form will result.[12] In Respect for Acting, Hagen credited director Harold Clurman with a turn-around in her perspective on acting:
In 1947, I worked in a play under the direction of Harold Clurman. He opened a new world in the professional theatre for me. He took away my 'tricks'. He imposed no line readings, no gestures, no positions on the actors. At first I floundered badly because for many years I had become accustomed to using specific outer directions as the material from which to construct the mask for my character, the mask behind which I would hide throughout the performance. Mr Clurman refused to accept a mask. He demanded ME in the role. My love of acting was slowly reawakened as I began to deal with a strange new technique of evolving in the character. I was not allowed to begin with, or concern myself at any time with, a preconceived form. I was assured that a form would result from the work we were doing.
Hagen later "disassociated" herself from Respect for Acting.[8] In Challenge for the Actor, she redefined a term which she had initially called "substitution," an esoteric technique for mixing elements of an actor's life with his/her character work, calling it "transference" instead. Respect for Acting was used as a textbook for many college acting classes. She also wrote a 1976 cookbook, Love for Cooking. In 2002, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President George W. Bush at a ceremony held at the White House.
Students of Uta Hagen
- Gene Wilder
- Robert DeNiro
- Steve McQueen
- Tony Goldwyn
- Orson Bean
- Faye Dunaway
- Gene Hackman
- Laura Esterman
- Hal Holbrook
- Sandy Dennis
- Griffin Dunne
- Sally Kirkland[16]
- Robert LuPone
- Barbara Feldon
- Tovah Feldshuh
- Michael Paré[17]
- Katie Finneran
- Constance Ford
- Victor Garber
- Jerry Stiller
- Anne Meara
- Rita Gardner
- Charles Nelson Reilly
- Lee Grant
- Charles Grodin
- Eileen Heckart
- William Hickey
- Gerald Hiken
- Anne Jackson
- Harvey Korman[13]
- Geraldine Page
- Jason Robards, Jr.
- Matthew Broderick
- Corey Parker[18]
- Whoopi Goldberg
- Amanda Peet
- Jack Lemmon
- Lindsay Crouse
- Fritz Weaver
- Prunella Scales
- Kevin Sussman
- Rochelle Oliver
- Peter Boyle
Personal life
Uta Hagen was married to José Ferrer from 1938 until 1948.[3] They had one child together, their daughter Leticia (born 15 October 1940). They divorced partly because of Hagen's long-concealed affair with Paul Robeson, her co-star in Othello. Hagen married Herbert Berghof on 25 January 1957, a union that lasted for 33 years until his death in 1990. Hagen died in Greenwich Village in 2004 after suffering a stroke in 2001.[3]
In popular culture
In 2009, Weird Al Yankovic’s “Skipper Dan” referenced Uta Hagen in the opening verse:
I starred in every high school play
Blew every drama teacher away
I graduated first in my class at Juilliard
Took every acting workshop I could
And I dreamed of Hollywood
While I read my Uta Hagen
and studied the Bard[19]
Theatre
- Her name was in the song Buddha, Pablo Neruda too."[20]
Work
Stage
|
Film
Television
|
Awards and nominations
- 1951 Tony Award, Actress—Play, The Country Girl[21]
- 1963 Tony Award, Actress—Play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
- Special 1999 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement[22]
- 1999 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences[23]
- 2002 National Medal of Arts
Quotes
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (April 2024) |
- "Once in a while, there's stuff that makes me say, 'That's what theatre's about'. It has to be a human event on the stage, and that doesn't happen very often."[24]
- "Awards don't really mean much."[25]
References
- ISBN 978-0-02547-390-4.
- ^ "Elected to the Theater Hall of Fame". The New York Times. 3 March 1981. Retrieved 14 November 2013.
- ^
- ^ Current Biography Yearbook. H. W. Wilson Company. 1964. Retrieved 14 November 2013 – via Google Books.
- ^ "Dr. Oskar Hagen to talk on art". Cornell Daily Sun. 21 March 1930. Retrieved 4 April 2019.
- ^ Port of New York, passenger list of the S.S. Westernland, 24 December 1936, sheet 165.
- ^ Miles, S. A. (Fall 2000). "Lady Invincible". Wisconsin Academy Review. 46 (4): 19–23. Retrieved 28 February 2019.
- ^ a b Buckley, Michael (18 January 2004). "Stage To Screens: A Chat with Theresa Rebeck; Remembering Uta Hagen". Playbill. Archived from the original on 20 October 2012. Retrieved 30 March 2011.
- ^ Gussow, Mel (15 January 2004). "Uta Hagen, Tony-Winning Broadway Star and Teacher of Actors, Dies at 84". The New York Times.
- OCLC 751694891.
- OCLC 1361694692.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ISBN 0-684-19040-0
- ^ a b "Harvey Korman". Archive of American Television. 20 April 2004. Retrieved 18 June 2012.
- ^ Oxman, Steven (10 June 2001). "Review: 'Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks'". Variety. Retrieved 29 September 2016.
- ^ "Uta Hagen Memorial". The New York Times. 20 March 2004. Retrieved 18 June 2012.
- ^ "The Sally Kirkland vu from the land of the silver screen". August 2000.
- ISBN 978-0-7864-2483-2.
- ^ Migdal, Sylvan (27 January 2004). "Uta Hagen, legendary actor and teacher, dies at 84". *The Villager. Retrieved 28 February 2019.
- ^ "Lyrics". Musixmatch.
- ^ "To Uta". genius.com.
- ^ "1951 Tony Awards". Infoplease.com. Retrieved 14 November 2013.
- ^ "Meet Uta Hagen". HB Studio. Archived from the original on 11 July 2010. Retrieved 28 February 2019.
- ^ Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter H (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 25 July 2014.
- ^ "Uta Hagen Quotes". BrainyQuote. Retrieved 14 November 2013.
- ^ "Uta Hagen Quotes". BrainyQuote. Retrieved 14 November 2013.
External links
- Media related to Uta Hagen at Wikimedia Commons
- Uta Hagen at the Internet Broadway Database
- Uta Hagen at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
- Uta Hagen at IMDb
- Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof papers, 1889–2004 at Billy Rose Theatre Division at the New York Public Library, Library for the Performing Arts