Harold Clurman: A Life of Theatre. - video recording reviews

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Jan, 1994 by Robert S. Rothenberg

Home Vision / 56 minutes $39.95

It is an axiom of the theater that the people on stage often are not half as fascinating as those who put them there. Harold Clurman--director, producer, author, and critic--unquestionably was one of those to whom this most emphatically applies.

Clurman was one of the driving forces--along with Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford--behind the Group Theatre, which stunned audiences from the Depression to World War II with realistic, socially relevant dramas that never had been seen on the American stage. The roster of those who made up this company is a roll call of the great actors (Stella and Luther Adler, John Garfield, Lee J. Cobb, Morris Carnovsky), playwrights (Clifford Odets, Sidney Kingsley), and directors (Elia Kazan, Bobby Lewis) of the era. The plays that emerged from this talent--"Awake and Sing," "Waiting for Lefty," "Golden Boy," "Men in White"--still are regarded as classics.

After the demise of the Group Theatre in 1941, Clurman remained a force on and off Broadway, directing wherever there was a stage and a play to mount on it. He insisted--usually at the top of his lungs, arms flailing, and bursting with energy--that what the theater needed was more bad plays, since they were the manure that made good plays grow. Kazan, playwright Arthur Miller, and actors Roy Schieder and Karl Malden are among those who testify to Clurman's genius in interviews interspersed through this video. However, Clurman dominates this documentary in footage showing him directing, teaching, lecturing, and being honored by his peers. As this video's title indicates, his truly was a life of theater.