Richard Boleslawski

Biography

Inventing a stage name "Boleslawski" (later spelled also "Boleslavsky"), 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 WW I. 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)--in which Boleslawski fought as a Polish soldier--he left Russia forever, traveling through Poland and Germany, and wound up in the US. 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 thespian theories into action, Boleslawski created the American Laboratory [Stage] Theatre in New York in 1923 (the forerunner of the Group Theatre of the 1930s and the Actors Studio" after WW II). Boleslawski also wrote serious theoretical articles about acting for "Theatre Arts Magazine", and in 1933 collected them in a book, "Acting--The First Six Lessons". The coming of sound to motion pictures, and the financial collapse of the American Laboratory Theatre, forced Boleslawski to abandon the New York stage and 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 directing assignments were Rasputin and the Empress (1932) (the only film in which John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore appeared together), Men in White (1934) (Clark Gable and Myrna Loy), The Painted Veil (1934) (Greta Garbo), Les Misérables (1935) (Fredric March and 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 western, Three Godfathers (1936) (Chester Morris). Boleslawski was married at least three times. From his last marriage--to pianist-actress Norma Drury--he had one child, a son named Jan (1935-1962) who tragically was to lose his father before he was two years old, and later to lose his own life at the tender age of 27. Boleslawski's death of cardiac arrest, at age 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 illness to his penultimate film, The Garden of Allah (1936) (with Marlene Dietrich), the exteriors of which were shot in the burning heat of the southwestern American desert. At some point, it is claimed, he unwisely "drank [unboiled] water" rather than soft drinks and bottled water (as the company had been advised to do).