Cheryl Crawford
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Cheryl Crawford (24 September 1902 - 7 October 1986) American actress, theatrical director and producer. She was also one of the founders of the Group Theatre. Among the many well-known productions she produced were Brigadoon, Porgy and Bess, One Touch of Venus, and Paint Your Wagon.
She was born in Akron, Ohio and began directing in her family's living room there. She majored in drama at Smith College where she was briefly expelled for smoking.
Moved to New York City, enrolled at the Theatre Guild. Worked as assistant to a director for the Theatre Guild’s stock company in upper New York. Also played poker and bottled bathtub gin to supplement her income.
By 1931, Crawford creating her own company with Lee Strasberg, The Group Theatre. In 1933, the Group had its first commercial success, “Men in White,” which won the Pulitzer Prize.
In 1935, Crawford, along with peers Harold Clurman and Lee Strasberg traveled to the Soviet Union to study the Russian Theatre. It was there that she met Stanislavksy and Meyerhold was able to discuss their methods with them first-hand. She applied what she had learned to her productions. She had had several failures in producing straight plays and found herself drawn to musical theatre after her two great successes with "Porgy and Bess" and "One Touch of Venus", which won several of the First Annual Donaldson Awards.
In 1936 Crawford resigned from the company. As she recalled in her autobiography, One Naked Individual: My Fifty Years in the Theatre (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1977), “I felt exhilarated, even cocky, to be on my own. I was going to do great things, bring to audiences distinguished plays, quality entertainment” (p. 103).
Crawford was influential in the careers of such actors as Helen Hayes, Bojangles Robinson, Mary Martin, Ethel Barrymore, Ingrid Bergman, Tallulah Bankhead and Paul Robeson among many others.
In 1946, she set the American Repertory that included Eli Wallach, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and William Windom.
In 1947 she, Elia Kazan and Robert Lewis created The Actor's Studio, where many famous actors trained at, including Marlon Brando, James Dean, Jerome Robbins, Shelley Winters, Jane Fonda, Bea Arthur, and many more. Lee Strasberg joined in 1951 as the artistic director.[link]
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