Cheryl Crawford

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Cheryl Crawford

(born Sept. 24, 1902, Akron, Ohio, U.S. — died Oct. 7, 1986, New York, N.Y.) U.S. actress and theatre producer. She acted with the Theatre Guild from 1923 and became its casting manager (1928 – 30). She helped found the Group Theatre in 1931. A cofounder of the Actors Studio in 1947, she went on to serve as its executive producer. Her notable Broadway productions included Brigadoon (1947) and Tennessee Williams's The Rose Tattoo (1951) and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959).

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American Theater Guide: Cheryl Crawford

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Crawford, Cheryl (1902–86), producer. Born in Akron, Ohio, she started her theatrical career by staging plays while a student at Smith College. She later worked for the Theatre Guild before helping to found the Group Theatre in 1931 where she directed The House of Connelly (1931) and several other plays. Crawford's first successful independent production after leaving the Group Theatre was a 1942 revival of Porgy and Bess. Among her later productions were One Touch of Venus (1943), The Tempest (1944), Brigadoon (1947), The Rose Tattoo (1951), Paint Your Wagon (1951), Oh, Men! Oh, Women! (1953), and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959). While working as an independent producer she was also a founder of the short‐lived American Repertory Theatre, a founder of the Actors Studio, and Joint‐General Director of the ANTA play series. Autobiography: One Naked Individual, 1977.

Works: Works by Cheryl Crawford

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1947

The Actors Studio. A workshop for professional actors is founded by Cheryl Crawford (1902-1986), Elia Kazan (1909-2003), and Robert Lewis (b. 1909). In 1948 Lee Strasberg (1901-1982) joined the group and popularized the "method" school of acting, which encourages actors to tap into their feelings in performance. Both the Actors Studio and the acting style it encouraged would become major forces in contemporary American theater.

Wikipedia: Cheryl Crawford

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Cheryl Crawford (September 24, 1902 - October 7, 1986) was an American theatre producer and director.

Born in Akron, Ohio, Crawford majored in drama at Smith College. Following graduation, she moved to New York City and enrolled at the Theatre Guild. After performing in two productions, Juarez and Maximilian (1926) and The Brothers Karamazov (1927), she abandoned her acting career.

In 1931, Crawford created The Group Theatre with Harold Clurman and Lee Strasberg and began to direct. Her third effort, Men in White (1933), was the group's first commercial success and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. After directing two more productions, she decided to commit herself to producing and resigned from the company. As she recalled in her autobiography, "I felt exhilarated, even cocky, to be on my own. I was going to do great things, bring to audiences distinguished plays, quality entertainment." Her first major success was Golden Boy in 1937.

Crawford was influential in the early 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 and Eva Le Gallienne founded the American Repertory Theatre. In 1947, together with Elia Kazan and Robert Lewis, she created The Actor's Studio, which trained Marlon Brando, James Dean, Jerome Robbins, Shelley Winters, Jane Fonda, Bea Arthur, and many more. Former partner Strasberg joined them as artistic director in 1951.

Notable productions

Awake and Sing! (1939)
Porgy and Bess (1942)
One Touch of Venus (1943)
Brigadoon (1947)
The Rose Tattoo (1951)
Paint Your Wagon (1951)
Sweet Bird of Youth (1959)
Jennie (1963)
Celebration (1969)
Yentl (1975)

References

One Naked Individual: My Fifty Years in the Theatre by Cheryl Crawford, published by The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1977

External links

Cheryl Crawford at the Internet Broadway Database

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	Group Theatre (organization, United States – in theater)
	The Actors Studio (organization, United States – in theater)
	Oh, Men! Oh, Women! (American Theater)

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		Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		American Theater Guide. The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. Copyright © 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Works. The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more
		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Cheryl Crawford". Read more