University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/34659 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. PUBLIC BODIES, PRIVATE MOMENTS: METHOD ACTING AND AMERICAN CINEMA IN THE 1950s Paul McDonald Phd in Film Studies University of Warwick Department of Film and Television Studies Submitted 3rd January 1997 Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Declaration Summary Introduction 1 Conceptual ising film acting 12 12 The voice and body in film acting 20 Acting and emotion 28 Modernity and the drama of the self 40 Talent and symbolic power 2. Managing the unmanaged heart 55 Stanislavski, the System and America 57 63 Professionalization and personality 79 Staging the self 87 A clean place 3" Tongue-tied emotionalism 93 The Method style 95 Method moments 105 4. Feeling for father 120 Conformity and the management of male feelings 121 Rebellion and male melodrama 126 5. Negotiating Brando 152 Against civilisation 155 Against Hollywood 158 Brando in business 163 Method manners and stardom 172 National culture and the limits of the Method 179 Conclusion 189 Bibliography 193 Filmography 216 List of Illustrations Figure 1. The distribution of capital in the field of cultural production 45 Figure 2. Sectors of film production 48 Acknowledgements I have several people to acknowledge for helping me see this work to completion. My thanks for the love, support and tolerance shown by Bridget and Jessica throughout these endeavours. The supervision of Professor Richard Dyer always transformed my work and his own writing continually provided a source of inspiration to me. I am grateful to Adrienne Olszewska of the library at the University of Salford for her willingness to assist in the considerable task of obtaining numerous documents for me. Finally, I thank my friend and former colleague Roland Metcalf for always having the ability to clarify ideas in our discussions about the difficulties of talking about acting. Declaration In chapter 1, parts of the section `The voice and the body in film acting' have reworked passagesfrom the entry on film acting which I have contributed to John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (eds.) The Oxford Guide to Film Studies Vol. 1, Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming. Summary The thesis deals with two central issues: a) the construction of a framework for the study of film acting which places performance in a cultural context b) the cultural significance of Method acting during the 1950s with specific reference to American cinema of the period The first chapter considers the ways in which the voice and body in film acting are made meaningful in the context of beliefs about acting and personal identity. The chapter also proposes ways for situating the practical activity of film acting in a context of cultural production. The remaining chapters study the cultural significance of Method acting through separate analyses of the Method technique, style, representation of gender, and image of star performance. Readings of the Method technique and style are placed in the context of a `culture of personality', in which the significance of the Method was produced in the ways that acting signified beliefs about personal identity. The discussion of the Method style is then developed in the analysis of the ways in which the style was used in film melodramas to represent the gendered anxieties of the rebel hero. Finally, Marlon Brando's image and performances are studied for how the actor personified the meaning of the Method. Together, technique, style, gender representation, and stardom, are studied as various aspects of what is called the Method discourse. r. Introduction 1 Introduction During the scene from On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan 1954, US) where Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint have escaped from the church and are walking in the park, Brando's left hand performs a number of actions. He pushes away a tramp who bothers them and uses his hand to point a threatening finger when the tramp accuses Brando's character, Terry Malloy, of `still being a bum'. He tucks the hand back in his trouser pocket and continues walking. Saint, playing the part of Edie Doyle, takes a pair of gloves from her does the drops to the They coat pocket, and as she so, one of =loves ground. stop walking and Brando/Terry stoops to pick up the glove with his left hand. He looks at the glove, passesit to his right hand, and continues talking as he picks flecks of lint from the fabric of the glove. Most of the time, Brando/Terry is concentrating on speaking to Saint/Edie and only occasionally does he look down to see what his hands are doing. The handling of the glove is entirely incidental to the dialogue. When Brando/Terry sits on a child's swing, his left hand continues to clean the glove. After a while, without looking, he slides the glove onto his left hand. The glove is tight and he has to use his right hand to make it fit. The conversation turns to Edie's college studies, an unknown field to Terry. When he asks Saint/Edie `what do y' do up there', Brando/Terry's hands go outwards, a gesture which could show both openness and emptiness. As the conversation continues, Brando/Terry takes a pack of chewing gum from a jacket pocket with his right hand. Saint/Edie and Brando/Terry start to walk again. He transfers the chewing gum to his left hand and takes out a stick with his right hand. The pack is placed in a trouser pocket. Brando/Terry wipes the stick with his left hand. They stop walking. Brando/erry strips the paper from the stick of gum with his left hand and places the gum in his mouth with his right. The left hand drops the chewing gum paper and SaintlEdie pulls her glove from Brando/Terry's hand. This hand is then returned to the trouser pocket for the rest of the scene. The series of movements which Brando's hand performs Introduction 2 in this scene are the kinds of activities which actors refer to as `business', the minute actions of using and manipulating objects in acting. Talking about the scene, the director Elia Kazan offered this interpretation of the significance of the business with the glove: [the] in [the] use of objects scene ... was partly accidental and partly the talent of the actor who was in it... [he] is walking [her] home, rather against her will; and she on the one hand is attracted to him, and on the other hand wishes that he'd leave her alone because there's a social stigma attached to him, so she'd rather lose him, and at the same time she's attracted to him and would rather keep him. And he, too, is attracted to her, but he's also shy, and tense about connecting with her because he was responsible for the death of her brother. But mainly Brando wants to keep her, despite her desire to get rid of him. As they were walking along, she accidentally dropped her glove; and Brando picked the glove up; and by holding it, she couldn't get away - the glove was his way of holding her. Furthermore, whereas he couldn't, because of this tension about her brother being killed, demonstrate any sexual or loving feeling towards her, he could towards the And he his hand inside the the both his glove. put glove ... so that glove was way of holding on to her against her will, and at the same time he was able to express, through the glove, something he couldn't express to her directly. So the object, in that sense, did it all. (quoted in Ciment 1974,45-46) Kazan's interpretation of the scene constructs an entire subtext. Brando's handling of the glove is read as revealing the ethical, psychological and sexual tensions of the situation. Terry was involved with the murder of Edie's brother. His sense of moral responsibility conflicts with his desire for Edie. If he wants to form a relationship with her, Terry obviously cannot tell Edie what he has done. Kazan's reading of the business with the glove seems entirely plausible in these circumstances: the handing of the glove fills in the subtextual truth which the words of the dialogue do not articulate. Although the hand says so much, many questions still remain: if Kazan's detailed reading of the actor's gestures seems plausible, what are the reasons for why the handling of the glove should be read as Introduction 3 so meaningful? The narrative circumstances have set up the underlying tensions between Terry and Edie but why, of many possibilities, should it be that the glove more than anything else appears so resonant with subtextual meanings? Can the handling of the glove not be simply read as the handling of a glove? What makes the manipulation of the glove into something more? While acting remains a continual component of narrative cinema, film acting has seen relatively little attention in the debates of film studies.Some of the initial work in this area has provided valuable insights which are in need of development (see for example Dyer 1979 and 1982, King 1985, Naremore 1988 and Pearson 1992).