Richard Boleslawski

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
(Redirected from Richard Boleslavsky)
Jump to: navigation, search
Richard Boleslawski
File:Ryszard Boleslawski.jpg
Born Bolesław Ryszard Srzednicki
(1889-02-04)February 4, 1889
Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Russian Empire
Died Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist.
Hollywood, California, US
Nationality Polish
Other names Bolesław Ryszard Srzednicki
Occupation Acting teacher • Actor • Theater and Film director
Spouse(s) Maria Efremova (div.), Natalia Platonova (div. 1929), Norma Drury (m. 1929, until his death)

Richard Boleslawski (born Bolesław Ryszard Srzednicki; February 4, 1889 – January 17, 1937) was a Polish theatre and film director, actor and teacher of acting.

Biography

Richard Boleslawski was born Bolesław Ryszard Srzednicki on February 4, 1889, in Mohyliv-Podilskyi,[1] in the Russian Empire to an ethnic Polish family of Catholic faith. He graduated from the Tver Cavalry Officers School. He trained as an actor at the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre under Konstantin Stanislavski and his assistant Leopold Sulerzhitsky, where he was introduced to the 'system'.[2]

During World War I, Boleslawski fought as a cavalry lieutenant on the tsarist Russian side until the fall of the Russian Empire. He left Russia after the October Revolution of 1917 for his native Poland, where he directed his first movies. As his birth name was difficult to pronounce, he took the name Ryszard Bolesławski. His Miracle at the Vistula (Cud nad Wisłą) was a semi-documentary about the miraculous victory of the Poles at the Vistula River over the superior Soviet Russian forces during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1921.

Boleslawski was married at least three times and had a son with his last wife, Norma.

Boleslawski acted in Love One Another (Die Gezeichneten, 1922),[3] a German silent film directed by Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer. In September 1922, he made his way to New York City, where, now known as "Richard Boleslawski" (the English spelling of his name), he began to teach Stanislavski's 'system' (which, in the US, developed into Method acting) with fellow émigré Maria Ouspenskaya. In 1923, he founded the American Laboratory Theatre in New York. Among his students were Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler and Harold Clurman, who were all founding members of the Group Theatre (1931–1940), the first American acting ensemble to utilize Stanislavski's techniques.

Offered a contract to direct Hollywood films, Boleslawski made several significant films with some of the major stars of the day, until his sudden death from cardiac arrest a few weeks short of his 48th birthday, on January 17, 1937. He is interred in the Calvary Cemetery, East Los Angeles.

Hugh Walpole, who worked with Boleslawski on the script for Les Misérables (1935), dedicated his 1937 novel John Cornelius to him with an In Memoriam poem.[4]

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Boleslawski has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Blvd.

Filmography

Films directed by Richard Boleslavsky (also credited as Ryszard Bolesławski and Richard Boleslawski):

in Russia

in Poland

in the United States

<templatestyles src="Div col/styles.css"/>

Books

  • The Way of the Lancer (1932; about the battles of Polish Uhlans in Russia)
  • Lances Down (1932)
  • Boleslavsky, Richard. 1933 Acting: the First Six Lessons. New York: Theatre Arts, 1987. ISBN 0-87830-000-7. (1933)
  • New Features In Acting (1935)

References

  1. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. Benedetti (1999, 209-211).
  3. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

Sources

  • Benedetti, Jean. 1999. Stanislavski: His Life and Art. Revised edition. Original edition published in 1988. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-52520-1.

External links