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The Old-Time Radio Digest!
Volume 2002 : Issue 352
A Part of the [removed]!
ISSN: 1533-9289
Today's Topics:
Fred Foy [ "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@hotm ]
Who said it? [ zbob@[removed] ]
racial prejudice [ Michael Berger <intercom1@attglobal ]
Re: Sambo's restaurants [ Brent Pellegrini <brentp@[removed] ]
The Automat [ ABCDiehl@[removed] ]
Singer Carol Richards [ Larry Jordan <midtod@[removed]; ]
Struts and Frets; On Radio Acting [ Charlie Summers <charlie@[removed] ]
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Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2002 11:13:42 -0400
From: Charlie Summers <charlie@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Struts and Frets; On Radio Acting
STRUTS AND FRETS
by Harry Bartell
++++
On Radio Acting
By the time I was twelve I knew I wanted to be an actor. That is the
equivalent of eagerly looking forward to poverty. Almost every art form
presents economic problems for those who become enmeshed but I think acting
may be the toughest of all. Poets and other writers can always write;
painters can paint and singers can sing but actors can't just act by
themselves. I guess it may be argued that mimes can always work a good street
corner and for that matter an actor can play Hamlet under the nearest tree.
Somehow it's not quite the same without an audience. The first Greek dramas
used a single actor which made getting cast in a play even tougher. There
have been times though when I've doubted that.
Actors are essentially interpreters, not creators. Their finished product
starts with someone else's words. I am now deliberately not considering
one-person performers like the famous Ruth Draper who created her own
characters and switched from one to the other with great ease and speed,
seemingly filling the stage with a lot of people all at once. Starting out,
actors almost universally overlook a fact of life: there are many, many more
actors than there are parts. It comes with the territory. For a while I
thought it was purely an American phenomenon but one day my wife and I were
shopping in Harrod's, the famous London department store, and the young clerk
hastened to let us know that he was not a permanent member of the staff; he
was really an actor temporarily between engagements. So why does anyone in
his right mind decide to be an actor?
I think that he is essentially unhappy. He is dissatisfied with who and what
he is and wants to be somebody else. Many great actors turn out to be quiet,
even dull people off-stage. This is not the same as the kid who says, "I'm
going to be a movie star and have a Rolls-Royce and get married twelve
times." I'm talking about the boy or girl who is willing to study and work
and fail and start over again. The odds of success haven't changed a great
deal but there is one big difference today. There are lots of universities
offering training grounds. Schools like UCLA and Yale have fabulous
facilities and professional instructors. Given talent and determination and
the attainment of some success, I think that the actor who achieves emotional
maturity and more stability also loses the pressing need to perform. But at
the same time he may very well be a better, freer actor.
But let's talk about the actor in radio. The man who is supposed to have had
the greatest influence on acting in the 20th century was a Russian named
Constantin Stanislavsky. He was a great director and teacher, the inspiration
for the Group Theater and The Method. And he wouldn't have lasted fifteen
minutes in radio. His idea was to rehearse for six months until the actor had
thoroughly blended the character he was playing with his own personality and
emotions until performance was a simple, pure display. Of course, I'm
oversimplifying but for now that will do.
When a freelance radio actor not playing a recurring role arrived at the
studio he was given 25 to 50 mimeographed pages of script. Four or five hours
later he was expected to give a finished performance of a role timed to the
second and coordinated with music and sound effects. The only information
that he had about his role-or roles because he frequently had two-was the
name of the character on the front page. There was usually time to mark the
script before it was read at the table and it was then that he started to
pick up the first hints of what the character was about. Most of the time
that was enough to provide a basic start. On rare occasions on Dragnet the
show was recorded absolutely cold. No rehearsal at all. If he was doubling he
also had to figure out how to differentiate between [removed] A good
radio actor was always reading one or two lines ahead of where he was
speaking so he picked up bits and pieces before he actually said them.
The next stage was a microphone reading that incorporated sound effects, cues
and mike perspectives. In some cases there were separate mikes used for
filter effects such as a voice on a telephone or in a room that echoes. Or if
there were several people working at one microphone there was the physical
problem of getting into position holding a script, turning pages, backing out
to let another actor in, and doing all of this silently. By this time the
actor had a good idea of what the character looked like, how it was dressed,
what the location looked like, how the character should sound and how to
produce that sound. That might include the tempo of his speech and a check to
see that another actor's speech wasn't the same. For the most part, the radio
director did very little directing of the actor. He or she was mostly
concerned with putting all the elements of the show together, especially
filling the time slot exactly. There was a dress rehearsal with all the
elements in place, cuts or changes were made before the broadcast. If a show
ran long, a cut might make a huge difference to the actor. If he had based
his idea of the character on a given speech and it was cut, he had to ask for
at least partial restitution or change his whole performance. The script was
timed by an assistant director with a mark every fifteen seconds during the
mike reading. If any cuts or additions were made then or after the dress
rehearsal it was back-timed or changed to reflect the additions or cuts. That
way the director always knew within a few seconds how the performance was
timing out on the air. If it was running short or long the actor had to
change his character on the air to accommodate.
Like I said, Stanislavsky would have bombed.
Even with all the above demands actors developed individual styles and those
changed over the course of years if the actor felt a certain type of delivery
meant more work. Some actors became so mannered that everything they did
began to sound alike. This was more obvious in television when physical
appearance placed additional restrictions. I've often wondered whether
casting actors was placed in the same category as buying a necktie. You
either liked it or you didn't. Why did actor X work constantly for one
director and never for another? If he was working at all he must have some
talent or skill. Or why was he in demand at one advertising agency and never
hired at another? I worked with Fred McKaye as an actor and I worked with him
when he became a director but never when he was a director at J. Walter
Thompson. 'Tis a puzzlement!
This may be pure speculation but I think networks had personalities. For
reasons I cannot understand, I worked more at CBS than any other place. I
know I liked CBS better than NBC, and Mutual more than ABC. The whole
atmosphere when you walked into the building was different. The CBS layout
was more open, the foyer which served as an informal hangout was easily
available just to the left of the front entrance. At NBC everyone was
funneled through a narrow gateway with a posted guard. It felt as though you
had to carry a passport to get to the studios. The old Mutual studios on
Melrose Avenue where we did Sherlock Holmes had one strategic advantage. It
was only steps away from the Melrose Grotto which became Nickodell, the class
B Brown Derby. Prior to Mutual the buildings had housed NBC but they built an
entirely new building at Sunset and Vine about a block or so away from CBS.
If an actor had a conflict, going back and forth between the two networks
became a great deal simpler.
There was another intangible I should mention. There seemed to be differences
in approach and attitude among the actors from New York, Los Angeles and
Chicago probably reflecting the personalities of those cities. I admit to
hating New York from my first visit in 1925 to the present but I don't think
that colors my assessment of an acting style. Actors there seemed to adopt a
presentation that was keyed into the genre of legitimate theater.
Generalizing is dangerous yet it seems to me that radio actors there took a
more "dramatic" attack with more projection and a quick tempo. Actors in Los
Angeles tended to play more in the style of motion picture performance which
took advantage of the microphone and the technique of the close-up. In my
opinion that yielded a more realistic performance. Actors coming to the West
Coast from Chicago frequently brought with them a tendency to play everything
in the manner of a soap opera where a single word went a long way.
If my theory is correct, it makes sense that a director coming to Los Angeles
from New York would be inclined to cast actors whom he knew and had worked
with before. When that happened it partially explained some of the reasons
why actor A worked for B and never for C. Otherwise, I suppose he was just
the wrong colored necktie.
- ------------------
Harry Bartell maintains that his major accomplishment as a professional actor
for forty years was to survive with his mind, morale and marriage intact.
Born in 1913 in New Orleans, he grew up in Houston and graduated Phi Beta
Kappa from Rice University in 1933. After a stint at Harvard Business School
and a couple of years forced labor in a department store he moved to
Hollywood and stayed there for the next fifty-one years. Three seasons at the
Pasadena Playhouse led to work in 185 radio series and 77 TV series plus a
dozen or so properly forgettable motion pictures.
This article will be archived by the end of the week at:
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End of [removed] Digest V2002 Issue #352
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