Hagen, Uta (1919–2004), actress and teacher. Born in Germany but educated in America, she studied at England's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts before making her Broadway debut as Nina in The Seagull (1938). After winning praise for her Desdemona opposite Paul Robeson's Othello in 1943, her career faltered for several seasons until she replaced Jessica Tandy as Blanche Du Bois in A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948, then played the loyal wife Georgie in The Country Girl (1950) and Shaw's Saint Joan (1951). Hagen's performance as Joan, which displayed the high intelligence she brought to all her work, was admired for its common sense, down‐to‐earth qualities. In 1962 she created the role of Martha, the unhappily married woman, in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In the 1980s she starred in several Shavian revivals Off Broadway, then gave two outstanding performances in the 1990s: the psychologist Mrs. Klein (1995) and the author Ruth in Collected Stories (1998). Hagen taught acting for many years at the Manhattan school started by her husband, Herbert Berghof, and wrote some notable books on acting technique.
Uta Hagen
| American Theater Guide: Uta Hagen |
| 5min Related Video: Uta Hagen |
| Biography: Uta Thyra Hagen |
From "The Sea Gull", her 1938 Broadway debut, to the 1995 off-Broadway hit "Mrs. Klein", Uta Hagen (born 1919) keeps bringing down the house. Many critics consider her the first lady of theater.
Uta Hagen was born to Oskar Frank Leonard and Thyra A. (Leisner) Hagen in Gottingen, Germany, on June 12, 1919. Her brother, Holger Hagen, later became an actor in Germany. Hagen's father taught art history at the local university and also directed the Gottingen Handel festivals after World War I.
In 1924, as a Carl Schurz Foundation Professor, Hagen's father traveled to Wisconsin in the United States. He founded the art history department at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Offered the position as head of the department, he accepted and moved his family to the United States.
For many years during her childhood, Hagen had accompanied her parents to the theater both in the United States and abroad since the family made numerous trips back to Germany. It appeared that acting was already in her blood. In 1936, she graduated from the University of Wisconsin High School and entered the university itself, but she left after just one term. A semester of study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London convinced Hagen that acting was the right career choice and caused her to leave the University of Wisconsin for the uncertainties of the theater.
In 1937 she was on stage as Ophelia in a production in Dennis, Massachusetts. The title role of Hamlet was played by Eva Le Gallienne, one of Broadway's leading actresses. Le Gallienne, born in London in 1899, had founded the famed Civic Repertory Theatre in New York in 1926, becoming director and producer as well. With Le Gallienne's nurturing, Hagen skipped the usual route of small parts and made her stage debut on March 28, 1928. She was 19 when she made her debut as Nina in The Sea Gull at the Shubert Theatre.
In 1938, Hagen met the actor who would become her husband. They became acquainted in a rather unusual way. During a summer stock production of The Latitude of Love, in Ridgefield, Connecticut, Hagen was required to knock the leading man unconscious every night. However, José Ferrer survived, and they married on December 8, 1938. During their ten years of marriage, Hagen and Ferrer performed in many productions together, as well as separately. They became one of the very few teams of co-starring spouses to achieve stardom together. They had one daughter, Leticia.
Hagen kept busy over the next few years. She returned to Broadway in 1939, playing Edith in The Happiest Days and then appearing in Key Largo, the powerful Maxwell Anderson drama at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. Audiences applauded her Desdemona in Othello in 1942. The cast featured Paul Robeson in the title role and Ferrer as Iago. Later that year, she and Ferrer played in Vickie, a comedy at the Plymouth Theatre. Perhaps the key performance of Hagen's career occurred in 1943, again as Desdemona in the Theatre Guild's production of Othello, and once again with Robeson and Ferrer. The show ran for 295 performances.
After World War II and fears of the Soviet Union and communism were running high. Because Hagen and Ferrer were so closely associated with Robeson, an African-American actor well-known for his leftist views, they were eventually called to Washington, D.C., to be questioned about their own beliefs. Ferrer denied any connection to leftist views, and Hagen was never asked to give her views at all. Despite that, Hagen ended up being blacklisted from television and Hollywood movie roles.
In 1947, Hagen co-founded an acting school with actor/director Herbert Berghof and began teaching acting classes. Early in 1948, Hagen starred with Ferrer again in a production of Angel Street, and that June, they divorced. She married Berghof in 1951.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Hagen truly came into her own as one of Broadway's most respected and admired stars. She replaced Jessica Tandy on Broadway as Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire. She received enthusiastic reviews from critics. She next portrayed Georgie, the dowdy wife in the Clifford Odets' play, The Country Girl. Hagen won her first Antoinette Perry Award (Tony Award) for best dramatic actress for this role.
Hagen kept busy in summer stock in 1954, touring in The Lady's Not for Burning and The Deep Blue Sea. After her appearance in Island of Goats at the Fulton Theatre in 1955, Hagen left Broadway for a period of seven years. She had decided to wait for the perfect part.
Hagen returned to Broadway on October 13, 1962. Playing the ruthless Martha, a college professor's wife, in Edward Albee's searing drama, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Hagen earned her second Tony Award as well as the critics award for best dramatic actress of the year. Her co-star, Arthur Hill, portraying the husband who cannot live up to his wife's expectations, also won a Tony Award and the critics award. The play, as well as the film (with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in the lead roles) was a bit of a shock to audiences in the 1960s, not only for the way it laid open the ugly realities of a failed marriage, but also for its liberal use of obscenities.
Hagen has written two books, Respect for Acting in 1973 and A Challenge for the Actor in 1991. According to her biography on the Women's International Center website, the books "grew out of decades of collaboration and exploration of the actor's craft." She also continued to teach at the Herbert Bergof Studio, although her husband, the school's namesake, died in 1990. According to Marjorie Rosen of People, her students, who have included Academy Award winners Whoopi Goldberg, Jack Lemmon, and Geraldine Page, as well as Golden Globe winner Christine Lahti, "regard Hagen as the quintessential drama teacher." Lemmon commented that "Hagen taught him the 'truth about character behavior."' Hagen responded to Rosen, "I try to teach actors to bring a human being onstage, not an actor."
From the 1960s through the early 1990s, Hagen made television and film appearances, most notably The Boys from Brazil in 1978, an episode of The Twilight Zone television show in 1985, and Reversal of Fortune in 1990. She was also inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981. In 1995 at the age of 76, Hagen again received critical acclaim for her portrayal of psychoanalyst Melanie Klein in the off-Broadway production Mrs. Klein. Lloyd Rose of the Washington Post commented, "A legend is playing a legend when Uta Hagen appears in the title role of 'Mrs. Klein."'
Further Reading
Hagen, Uta, A Challenge for the Actor, Scribner, 1991.
Hagen, Uta, Respect for Acting, revised edition, Macmillan General, 1979.
Back Stage West, July 10, 1997.
People, February 5, 1996.
Time, November 20, 1995.
Washington Post, September 20, 1996.
"Uta Hagen, " Internet Movie Databank,http://us.imdb.com (May 18, 1998).
"WIC Biography -Uta Hagen, " Women's International Center,http://www.wic.org/bio/hagen.htm (May 18, 1998).
| Quotes By: Uta Hagen |
Quotes:
"More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic."
"Talent is an amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting -- intensely); a vivid imagination as well as a grip on reality; the desire to communicate one's own experience and sensations, to make one's self heard and seen."
| Actor: Uta Hagen |
- Born: Jun 12, 1919 in Gottingen, Germany
- Died: Jan 14, 2004 in Manhattan, New York, New York
- Occupation: Actor
- Active: '70s-'90s
- Major Genres: Thriller, History
- Career Highlights: Reversal of Fortune, The Boys From Brazil, The Other
- First Major Screen Credit: The Other (1972)
Biography
German character lead Uta Hagen first appeared onscreen in 1972. She is a Broadway star and noted drama coach. ~ All Movie Guide| Filmography: Uta Hagen |
| Wikipedia: Uta Hagen |
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This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (September 2009) (Find sources: Uta Hagen – news, books, scholar) |
| Uta Hagen | |
|---|---|
 Hagen with Paul Robeson in the 1943–1945 Theatre Guild production of Othello |
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| Born | 12 June 1919 Göttingen, Germany |
| Died | 14 January 2004 (aged 84) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Spouse(s) | Herbert Berghof (1957–1990) José Ferrer (1938–1948) |
Uta Thyra Hagen (12 June 1919 – 14 January 2004) was a three-time Tony Award winning German-born American actress. She originated the role of Martha in the 1963 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee (who called her "a profoundly truthful actress"). Hagen was on the Hollywood blacklist, in part because of her association with Paul Robeson, and this curtailed film opportunities, focusing her perforce on New York theatre. She later became a highly influential acting teacher at New York's Herbert Berghof Studio and authored the best-selling acting text Respect for Acting. She was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981.
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Life and career
Early life
Born in Göttingen, Germany, Hagen and her family emigrated to the United States in 1924, when her father received a position at Cornell University.[1] She was raised in Madison, Wisconsin. She appeared in productions of the University of Wisconsin High School and in summer stock productions of the Wisconsin Players. She studied acting briefly at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1936.[2] After spending one semester at the University of Wisconsin, where her father was the head of the department of art history, she left for New York City in 1937.[3] Her first professional role was as Ophelia opposite Eva Le Gallienne in the title role of Hamlet in Dennis, Massachusetts, in 1937.
Career
Hagen was cast, early on, as Ophelia by the actress-manager Eva LeGallienne. From there, Hagen went on to play the leading ingenue role of Nina in a Broadway production of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull which featured Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. It was 1938; Hagen was just 18. The New York Times' critic Brooks Atkinson hailed her Nina as "grace and aspiration incarnate." She would go on to play George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan (1951) on Broadway, and Desdemona in a production which toured and played Broadway, featuring Paul Robeson as Shakespeare's Othello and her then-husband Jose Ferrer as Iago. She took over the role of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire for the national tour, which was directed not by Elia Kazan who had directed the Broadway production but by Harold Clurman. Hagen had had a revelatory experience when she first worked with Clurman in 1947, and, in Respect for Acting, she credits her discoveries with Clurman as the springboard for what she would later explore with her husband Herbert Berghof: "how to find a true technique of acting, how to make a character flow through me." She played Blanche (on the road and on Broadway) opposite at least four different Stanley Kowalskis, including Anthony Quinn and Marlon Brando. Through interviews with her and contemporary criticism, the report is that Hagen's Blanche refocused the audience's sympathies with Blanche rather than with Stanley (where the Brando/Kazan production had leaned). Primarily noted for stage roles, Hagen won her first Tony Award in 1951 for her performance as the self-sacrificing wife Georgie in Clifford Odets' The Country Girl. She won again in 1963 for originating the role of the "I-wear-the-pants-in-this-family-because-somebody's-got-to" Martha in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. (An original cast recording was made of this show.) In 1981 she was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame and in 1999 received a "Special Lifetime Achievement Tony Award."
Although she appeared in some movies, because of the Hollywood blacklist she had more limited output in film and on television, not making her cinematic debut until 1972. She would later comment about being blacklisted, "that fact kept me pure." Although Hagen played characters with German accents in both of her best-known Hollywood films, The Boys from Brazil, in which her scene is with Laurence Olivier, and The Other, she had simply assumed the accent for those roles (Miss Hagen was raised in Wisconsin). She was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award as "Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series" for her performance on the television soap opera One Life to Live.
She taught at HB Studio, a well-known New York City acting school on a cobblestone, tree-shaded street in the West Village. She began there in 1947, and married its co-founder, Herbert Berghof, on January 25, 1957. Later in her life, Hagen undertook a return to the stage, earning accolades for leading roles in Mrs. Warren's Profession (1985), Collected Stories, and Mrs. Klein. After Berghof's death in 1990 she became the school's chairperson.
Hagen was an influential acting teacher who taught, among others, Matthew Broderick, Christine Lahti, Jason Robards, Sigourney Weaver, Liza Minnelli, Whoopi Goldberg, Jack Lemmon, Charles Nelson Reilly, Manu Tupou, Debbie Allen and Al Pacino. She was a voice coach to Judy Garland, teaching a German accent, for the picture Judgment at Nuremberg. Garland's performance earned her an Academy Award nomination. While being profiled in Premiere magazine, actress Amanda Peet said of her mentor Hagen that she was a woman whose class you didn't want to miss.
She also wrote Respect for Acting (1973) and A Challenge for the Actor (1991), which advocates realistic acting (as opposed to pre-determined "formalistic" acting). In her mode of realism, the actor puts his own psyche to use in finding identification with the role," trusting that a form will result.[4] In Respect for Acting, Miss Hagen credits director Harold Clurman with a turn-around in her perspective on acting: "In 1947, I worked in a play under the direction of Harold Clurman. He opened a new world in the professional theatre for me. He took away my 'tricks.' He imposed no line readings, no gestures, no positions on the actors. At first I floundered badly because for many years I had become accustomed to using specific outer directions as the material from which to construct the mask for my character, the mask behind which I would hide throughout the performance. Mr Clurman refused to accept a mask. He demanded ME in the role. My love of acting was slowly reawakened as I began to deal with a strange new technique of evolving in the character. I was not allowed to begin with, or concern myself at any time with, a preconceived form. I was assured that a form would result from the work we were doing."
Hagen later stated that she "disassociated" herself from her first book, Respect for Acting.[5][not specific enough to verify] In "Challenge for the Actor" she redefined a term which she had initially called "substitution", an esoteric technique for alchemizing elements of an actor's life with his/her character work, calling it "transference" instead. Though Hagen wrote that the actor should identify the character they play with feelings and circumstances from their (the actor's) own life, she also makes clear that "Thoughts and feelings are suspended in a vacuum unless they instigate and feed the selected actions, and it is the characters' actions which reveal the character in the play." Respect for Acting is used as a textbook for many college acting classes.
As well, she published a 1976 cookbook entitled Love for Cooking.
Her legacy is also preserved in a professionally produced dvd of her teaching an acting class, which preserves her candor, her theatrical anecdotes and her ruthless dedication to authenticity.
In 2002, she was awarded the National Medal of the Arts by President George W. Bush at a ceremony held at the White House.
Personal life
She married José Ferrer in 1938, with whom she had a daughter, Leticia (Lettie) Ferrer, an actor in New York City. They divorced in 1948 partially because of her affair with her Othello co-star Paul Robeson, an affair which was long concealed. She was married to the actor and teacher and director Herbert Berghof from 1957 until his death in 1990: "You know, we were partners in our work, in everything," she said. "We did everything together. Very few people understand what that kind of a loss is like."
Work
Stage
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Film
Television
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See also
References
- ^ Port of New York, passenger list of the S.S. Luetzow, September 4, 1924, sheet 41.
- ^ Port of New York, passenger list of the S.S. Westernland, December 24, 1936, sheet 165.
- ^ "Lady Invincible", Wisconsin Academy Review, vol. 46, issue 4, Fall 2000.
- ^ Hagen, Uta 1991. A Challenge for the Actor. New York: Scribner's. ISBN 0684190400
- ^ Interview in playbill.com[not specific enough to verify]
External links
- Uta Hagen at the Internet Broadway Database
- Uta Hagen at the Internet off-Broadway Database
- Uta Hagen at the Internet Movie Database
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