Jack Garfein

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Jack Garfein (born July 2, 1930 in Mukachevo , Carpathian Ukraine , Czechoslovakia , today Transcarpathian Oblast , Ukraine ; † December 30, 2019 ) was a theater and film director and acting teacher.

Life

Garfein was one of the few young people who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp . After the Second World War he came to the USA via Sweden . His uncle lived in New York City but either couldn't or wouldn't take him in. But he paid a foster family for this. Garfein took acting classes at the New York Dramatic Workshop and became a member of the Actors Studio in New York City. He worked in one of his first studio productions with James Dean as an actor.

Garfein's film debut as director of the 1956 film Die Die like a man takes place in a military academy in the southern states, which is characterized by a sadistic climate. The film disturbed audiences and critics with its open ending. Black actors played in a central scene. The studio had declined the collaboration of blacks because it feared for the commercial success of the film - especially the possibility of commercial exploitation of the film in the southern states. However, Garfein could not be persuaded to give in. Die Like A Man has been discredited by a member of the US Congress as an "un-American film". Garfein filmed Wild Buds in 1960 with Carroll Baker as a rape victim, who is being held captive by a man who saved her from suicide (jumping off the bridge).

Garfein was married to fellow actress Carroll Baker from 1955 to 1969 . They had a daughter, actress Blanche Baker , and son Herschel Garfein. After separating from Baker, he initially struggled to find his way in life.

Garfein co-directed the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York with Lee Strasberg , founded Actor's Studio West in Los Angeles in 1966 and directed off-Broadway. He was a friend of Henry Miller , who named him one of his eight best friends in his little book, My Bicycle and Other Friends.

Garfein was one of the most experienced method acting teachers . He taught at his acting school Le Studio Jack Garfein in Paris and gave workshops in Vienna , London , Budapest , Berlin and Los Angeles .

literature

  • Jack Garfein: Life and Acting: Techniques for the Actor . Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois 2010.
  • Kay Less : Between the stage and the barracks. Lexicon of persecuted theater, film and music artists from 1933 to 1945 . With a foreword by Paul Spiegel . Metropol, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-938690-10-9 , p. 127.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jack Garfein, Acclaimed Director and Producer, Dies at 89. In: Playbill . Accessed December 31, 2019 .
  2. ↑ filmreference.com: Jack Garfein Biography, accessed November 3, 2008
  3. ^ H. Miller: My Bicycle and Other Friends. Reminder sheets, ISBN 3-499-13297-4
personal data
SURNAME Garfein, Jack
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film and theater director, actor, and acting teacher
DATE OF BIRTH 2nd July 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Mukachevo
DATE OF DEATH December 30, 2019