The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre and the 30's

by Harold Clurman, Stella Adler (Foreword)

The Group Theatre was perhaps the most significant experiment in the history of American theater. Producing plays that reflected topical issues of the decade and giving a creative chance to actors, directors, and playwrights who were either fed up with or shut out of commercial theater, the "Group" remains a permanent influence on American drama despite its brief ten-year life.




It was here that method acting, native realism, and political language had their tryouts in front of audiences who anticipated--indeed demanded--a departure from the Broadway "show-biz" tradition. In this now classic account, Harold Clurman, founder of the Group Theatre and a dynamic force as producer-director-critic for fifty years, here re-creates history he helped make with Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan, Irwin Shaw, Clifford Odets, Cheryl Crawford, Morris Carnovsky, and William Saroyan.





Stella Adler contributed a new introduction to this edition which remembers Clurman, the thirties, and the heady atmosphere of a tumultuous decade.

Genres: Theatre, History, Nonfiction, Memoir, Drama, Film, Politics

329 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Harold Edgar Clurman was an American theatre director and drama critic, "one of the most influential in the United States". He was most notable as one of the three founders of New York City's Group Theatre.

Reviews

[Gabriel Congdon · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Eyes rise on GABE pacing his living room. He peers at his laptop mumbling about the state of Goodreads. ENTER BUHMANN, Gabe’s roommate.)

Gabe: I’m going to review the shit out of the Group Theater. It’s perfect Gabe material.

Buhmann: It’s about time. Are you going to talk about painters?

Gabe: I do like bringing up painters don’t I. It’s a way of getting a return on all that fine art knowledge that so far hasn’t done much to edify my character.

Buhmann: Is it true that in order to join the group theater you have to forfeit your name?

Gabe: You betcha. The actors also, during a rehearsal process, could only say words that were also in their lines. Any words not used in the play, couldn’t be said.

Buhmann: Classic Gabe making stuff up.

Gabe: Well I like a good fictionalization as much as the next lonely heart. Ok, let’s get at it.

(GABE sits down and to type out his soon to be world famous Fervent Years reviews)

Fuck yeah!

What a read. It was delightful and so many levels. First of all, all you theater geeks will freak. Let me just drop a few names for ya: Lee Strasberg, Sandy Misner, Stella Adler, Ella Kazan, Clifford Odets. And you run into that cast pretty quick it’s not much.

One of the most infesting aspects is the way which Clurman performs and only-kind-of-subtle scarf dance around the portents of radicalism.

Clurman: Yes, you see, we pay all our actors the same rate even if they perform a smaller part, and we don’t feature any one actor, and we list everyone’s name alphabetically, but communism? NO, no, of course not. I really don’t know anything about such things, I’ve heard of this Marks fellow. One of the actors read a manifesto by the man, but, I’m more of an aesthete.

Yes one has only to imagine some of how these scenes played out.

At its core, it’s a good nightmare book into the high-risk, high-reward profession of starting a theater company. Clurman, at the beginning, wanted the American theater to have its moment of aesthetics. When Chekov’s The Seagull was first performed under the direction of Stanislavski it’s said that at the bow the audience was silent before a thunderous applause. Clurman & Co. wanted to import Stanislavski technique into American soil. Did they have success?

You’ll have to read the book!

I’m kidding. They don’t. The goddamn theater is not a profitable enterprise and America has never really cared about the arts. I’m sure you, reader, could look through the walls of your own local theater and see that it too is crumbling.

(Scene II. A day later. Same setting)

Buhmann: How was the review received?

Gabe: It was a huge success. In fact, I’ve received many awards and honors for the review and the book publisher said that with this renewed interest in The Fervent Years they want to take it on the road and they want me to be the showrunner. And I told them yes!, damn it! From here on out, I’m running The Fervent Years by god, and I’ll be the one to dictate the terms by which the Fervent Years will be made possible.

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Man o man. This one took me awhile. I did find it inspiring and uplifting at times and hopelessly dry at others. It's, quite literally, a play by play of The Group Theatre from beginning to end. It's interesting that the struggles Clurman was facing are the same ones we face today - the commercialism, a small and narrow audience pool, the lack of good theater - people willing to actually change something and take society into account when choosing and developing work. He fights over and over to save his theater and hold his group together and in the end, kinda gives up.

He includes a quote from D.H. Lawrence: "The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood rather than the mind...changes the blood first. The mind follows later, in the wake..."

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harold Clurman's memoir of the Group Theatre is enlightening and inspiring. It's also a bit dry. As far as showing me what a little fervency and passion can accomplish Clurman gets a gold star. However, their endless self-criticism and refusal to accept any script/production/praise as good seem to me to be a large part of their inability to continue. I believe I understand why the Group Theatre is a fundamentally huge building block of modern American theatre, but I think that we can learn as much from their failures as we can from their successes. If nothing else, we can take from "The Fervent Years" the notion that wishing we could have done things differently is worthless; instead we should learn from the past and apply those lessons to the present.

[Beth Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Fervent Years is a classic that should be familiar to all students of theatre; I was fortunate to encounter it way back in the '60s, when I was in high school. It remains one of the most pleasurable and inspiring reads of any mid-20th century memoir as well as being an essential account of one of American theatre's most fecund periods. The perspective is that of only one member of the Group Theatre, albeit a seminal one, but the writing is masterful and the insight unparalleled. I'm delighted to be forced to rely on it for my research and thus find myself reading some passages repeatedly, sometimes just to savor the writing, not to mention Clurman's wisdom.

[Kari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harold is a talker. I understand why the Group members got frustrated with him.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Fervent Years deals with the creation of The Group Theatre, one of the founding performing companies in American Theatre.This book, written in 1944, describes the building blocks, the rise and the fall, and eventual demise of this organization of actors, directors, playwrights, producers and others responsible for a major infusion of talent and ideas in this theatrical endeavor. The author, Harold Clurman, along with Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford formed the company in the late 1920's, with productions running from 1931 to 1941. Along the way, some of the early greats of the performance scene are talked about: Stella Adler, Clifford Odets, Elia Kazan, Constantine Stanislavsky, Luther Adler, Franchot Tone, John Garfield, Morris Carnovsky, Bobby Lewis and Sandy Meisner.
This was not an easy read for me.It's told as a memoir, with very little dialogue, and a great deal of discussion on the state of the theatre during that period. The actors involved were barely making a living, struggling for survival, while management turned down opportunities to present works that might have turned a profit and enabled better times for the company. I had difficulty condoning actions which were taken, or often, not taken.
For someone in the performance fields, actors particularly, I would say this is an important read. Otherwise, it could be tough going.

[basker ville · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Fervent Years,” is a very grim look at Harold Clurman’s attempts at catapulting Group Theater to the most criticaly acclaimed institution. He wanted create a place for artists to be be able put up thought-provoking plays regardless of its profitability. It is interesting to see the ease of having to been able to travel to the Soviet Union, Paris and London, by Harold, a semi-impoverished director. Reading this book, I could feel communist ideology permeating throughout 1930s. I can see why actors and writers of the thirties wanted the creation of the Group Theater, a community based beast. I can only imagine the monopolistic ways of 30s Broadway producers, and how hard it must be to put up a successful play without the blessing of these filthy rich backers.
Harold Clurman, on the definition of theater “…It is an art of direct communication grounded on shared social and moral values.”
Clurman concluded that, “But it is indisputable that true theatres simply cannot exist as profitable commercial ventures.” In his ominous 1970s epilogue, Clurman Clurman argued between commercial theatre and strictly theater for the people. He mentioned that the number of plays produced significantly decreased as the years pass by. He blamed it on the ever growing ticket pricing, and the souless musical endeavors.

[Krister Ekeroth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stumbled on this one at an antiquarian's years and years ago and picked it up. Had I not read among others Mel Gordon's book on the Stanislavski technique and had hung around the Cinemateque watching Kazan's and Brando's collaboration, I might as well had put it back in the shelves. Now I didn't.
This is the story of how modern acting came to be. If you are looking at this you most assuredly know Stanislavski and the crazy, transcending work at the MAT ( Moscow Art Theatre). The people working in the Group Theatre took these precious learnings to their hearts, diverted, struggled against each other in factions with the result being nothing was ever the same again in films and theatre. You might belong to one of those factions or believe in some of the sectarianism that still is out there. Reading this might bring you the full circle back to the beginning of creativity which I guess was the original intention at the MAT.

[fivestarbookreview]

The Fervent Years, Harold Clurman's memoir of how the Group Theatre came together, achieved success, and then disbanded, is a fascinating theatrical artifact. Clurman, along with luminaries Lee Strasberg, Cheryl Crawford, and Stella Adler, formed the Group Theatre to explore a new method of acting and to produce modern American plays that supported that method. What's remarkable about this book is how Clurman manages to simultaneously sideline his primary collaborators while divesting himself of responsibility for the Group's downfalls. He recounts personal slights against him while maligning his acting company, fails to describe the plays he picks as good even as he insists on producing them, and relates the disbanding of the Group as inevitable when he clearly could have fought for it to continue to exist. Though the Group Theatre undoubtedly changed the course of American theatre, I'd prefer an account by Cheryl Crawford to Clurman's any day.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

What theater geek couldn't love Clurman's stories of Stella Adler's tantrums, Lee Strasburg's obsession with real emotion, or Clifford Odets' rise and fall? Even better is his account of the Group Theater's struggels as a mission driven producing organization. Non-profit American theater owes its heart to The Group and it was really fun to see how it all began. That said, Clurman does go off on some fairly legnthy theoretical diatribes. But then again, that's what visionaries are supposed to have stored in their guts, and I'll no doubt be borrowing from that language sometime soon.

[Malcolm Frawley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an in-depth study, written by one of its founders, of The Group Theatre, a collective of playwrights, actors & directors active throughout the 1930s, largely on Broadway stages. It will clearly have a niche readership but, as a performing arts practitioner, I was fascinated by the philosophy behind, & struggles of, this extraordinary company. Except for Clurman become somewhat sanctimonious during the final few chapters I was enthralled by this slice of history. We will certainly never see a Group theatre again. Sadly.

[Jay Sosnicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

... Fantastic book about the evolution, triumph and dissolution of The Group Theater by its architect, the late Harold Clurman. His prose is a bit thick at times, but his razor-sharp observations about the Group's work, his colleagues, and his own mistakes is raw and right on. The Group was a fairly short-lived experiment, but it was also the Big Bang of 20th Century theater, and its effects are still being felt.

[Zanna Frith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a must read for anyone in the theatre. It made me question what my purpose was in pursuing a career as an actress and what I am contributing to the world and the art by going after my dream. I wish I was as clear about my passion as Harold Clurman.

[Castille · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like most of the other reviews I've seen, I really enjoyed parts of the book and found a large percentage of it extremely dry. Most of it concerns the budgetary concerns, inability to raise funding, and the poverty in which the members of The Group lived.

[Patrick Polsin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting look not only at American theatre history but the whole of a creative enterprise.
We can see how common acting theories took root in AMERICA and changed the art form.

Recommend for anyone interested in theatre, art, or history.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit repetitive, but an interesting look at how American theater changed into what it is today.

[Lydia]

This book is incredible. It's a great historical account of the Group Theatre, and I found Clurman's "fervency," as it were, invading my brain and fueling my desire to keep reading like a maniac.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must read for young theatre artists starting out and wanting to do something different and brave.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

a little self-congratulatory, a little long-winded but digestible. it's a comfort to know that theater is just as impossible now as it was in the 30s.

[Sydney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important for every actor to read and learn the history. It can get long at times, but has some segments I couldn't put it down!

[Pat Gorman · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone that loves theater history, this is a must read. I absolutely loved it. I would not hesitate to read it again down the line. I recommend it highly.

[Hannah F · Rating 3 out of 5]

FINALLY DONE

[Daphne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Suchhh a slog but ultimately worth it. Wonderful epilogue, lots of great stuff in here.