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Jack Garfein | |
|---|---|
.png) Garfein in 1957 | |
| Born | Jakob Garfein July 2, 1930 |
| Died | December 30, 2019 (aged 89) United States |
| Occupation(s) | Director, teacher, writer, producer |
| Spouses | Carroll Baker (m. 1955–69) Anna Loretta (m. 2003–07) Natalia Repolovsky (m. 2019) |
| Children | 4, including Blanche Baker and Herschel Garfein |
Jakob Garfein[1] (July 2, 1930 – December 30, 2019) was an American film and theatre director, acting teacher, and a key figure of the Actors Studio.
Growing up in Bardejov, Czechoslovakia during the rise of Nazism,[2] Garfein was deported to Auschwitz at the age of 13 and survived 11 concentration camps. In 1946, as an orphaned teen, he was among an early group of Holocaust[3] survivors to arrive in the U.S, and he obtained his American citizenship in 1952.
After studying at the Dramatic Workshop[4] in New York, Garfein became the first theater director to be awarded membership in the Actors Studio. He put on its first-ever play to move to Broadway, End as a Man (1953), and expanded the influence of Method Acting to Hollywood with the founding of Actors Studio West, alongside Paul Newman, in 1966. He was a teacher to actors Sissy Spacek, Ron Perlman, Irène Jacob, James Thierrée, Laetitia Casta, and Samuel Le Bihan. He directed Uta Hagen, Herbert Berghof, Shelley Winters, Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, Ralph Meeker, Mark Richman, Mildred Dunnock, and Elaine Stritch, and discovered Steve McQueen, Bruce Dern, George Peppard, Ben Gazzara, Pat Hingle, Albert Salmi, and Paul Richards. He also gave James Dean his first acting role in End as a Man (1953).
Working in Hollywood, Garfein collaborated with directors Elia Kazan and George Stevens[5] on the sets of Baby Doll (1956) and Giant (1956). Shortly after, he authored two both politically and artistically challenging films that did not spare Hollywood's conservatism and led to censorship. In The Strange One (1957), he tackled the question of racism in America. As a Jew who survived the Holocaust, he was shocked by segregation upon his arrival in the United States, and he fought for the right for African-American actors to be featured in the film. The Strange One was censored by the Motion Picture Production Code for general "homosexual overtones" and "excessive brutality and suggestive sequences [that] tend to arouse disrespect for lawful authority."
- ^ Genzlinger, Neil (January 7, 2020). "Jack Garfein, a Holocaust survivor who became a noted director, producer and acting teacher, working with some of the greatest actors and playwrights of his era, died on Dec. 30 at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 89". The New York Times.
- ^ "Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germany's Nazi Party, was one of the most powerful and notorious dictators of the 20th century. Hitler capitalized on economic woes, popular discontent and political infighting to take absolute power in Germany beginning in 1933". June 29, 2023.[failed verification]
- ^ "The Holocaust was a period in history at the time of World War Two (1939-1945), when millions of Jews were murdered because of who they were. The killings were organised by Germany's Nazi party, led by Adolf Hitler". BBC Newsround. January 24, 2012.[failed verification]
- ^ "In January 1940, Erwin Piscator, a German theater director, launched the Dramatic Workshop at the New School for Social Research. In its first semester the program had approximately 20 students for acting and 25 for directing".
- ^ "George Stevens, a filmmaker known as a meticulous craftsman with a brilliant eye for composition and a sensitive touch with actors, is one of the great American filmmakers, ranking with John Ford, William Wyler and Howard Hawks as a creator of classic Hollywood cinema, bringing to the screen mytho-poetic worlds that were also mass entertainment". IMDb.