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The daughter of famed acting teacher Lee Strasberg and former actress Paula Miller Strasberg, Susan Strasberg (1938-1999) began acting herself when she was in her teens, beginning on stage and TV. She made her film debut in Joshua Logan's 1955 production of "Picnic" as the tomboyish sister of Kim Novak. That same year she became a Broadway sensation in "The Diary Of Anne Frank" for which she was nominated for a Tony award. Otto Frank, Anne's father, later gave Susan a photo of Anne that she kept for the rest of her life. While it seemed as though she had everything, that was not the case ("I always thought Susan would have a perfect life," a friend of Susan's said to Kim Novak, who replied, "I always knew it wouldn't be perfect for her. During "Picnic" she couldn't even enjoy a sunset."). Susan revealed in her 1980 autobiography, BitterSweet, that from an early age she felt somewhat stifled by her parents who could be alternately domineering and distant. She wanted to match their expectations and she wanted their love and approval - something she felt that she seldom got. While performing "Time Remembered" on stage, Susan had a passionate love affair with her married costar, Richard Burton (which her mother encouraged) until she realized that Richard had no intention of making a real commitment. When Marilyn Monroe became part of the family Susan had a sibling-like relationship with America's most celebrated sex goddess - love, admiration and envy was shared between them. Susan and her parents retained contact with Marilyn until her death in 1962, which shocked and saddened the family. Susan later recounted, "An iron butterfly, some called her. Butterflies are very beautiful, give great pleasure, and have very short lifespans." In 1960, Susan starred in the war drama "Kapo" which earned her rave reviews, and the next year played a nurse in Hemingway's "Adventures Of A Young Man", opposite Richard Beymer. There on location in Rome, both she and Beymer noticed a beautiful young extra and both encouraged her to pursue acting as a career. Susan, for her part, suggested that the girl - Sharon Tate - take classes at the Actor's Studio with her father. In the mid-60s, Susan met actor Christopher Jones, and they married in 1965. Their relationship was a volatile one in which substance abuse and domestic violence were commonly introduced. The union produced a daughter, Jennifer, in 1968. But the marriage had deteriorated further, and was not helped by the death of Paula from cancer that year. In a cruel twist of fate, a month after their mother's death, Susan's brother John went through a window while high on LSD and had to have blood transfusions in a life and death struggle that he ultimately won. In an effort to give her child a better life, Susan filed for divorce, but Jennifer's health crisis (she had been born with four holes in her heart), put mother and child in a constant battle of surgeries to save the little girl's life. During the sixties, Susan found her once promising career confined the youth-oriented and foreign films, although she gave her all to her roles and came off well even if the films didn't. Susan continued to work alternately on stage, screen and television. From the eighties into the 90s, she appeared in several television movies, and was always game in appearing in documentaries about Marilyn Monroe (Susan wrote a memoir about her years with Marilyn) and "The Method". She was also able to re-establish her relationship with Lee before his passing in 1982. Sadly, Susan lost her battle with breast cancer in 1999. She was just 60 years old. At the end of BitterSweet, Susan recalled how she met up with Richard Burton outside the hospital where Jennifer was having her last surgery. The meeting was awkward (Burton didn't recognize her at first), but as they departed Susan made a realization of how she had survived, and how things had changed. "I thought of the twenty-four years I had been acting, of Europe, and of Christopher. I realized how many of my friends and colleagues had succumbed to the pressures of a public existence - too many. I felt blessed. Time catches up with us all. For years mutual friends had brought me messages: "Richard said to give love to his little girl." As I opened the door, I hesitated, but did not look back . . . . . All these years he had sent love to his little girl, but he had not recognized the woman."
I used the theme from Susan's debut film, "Picnic" as the music and the clips are from that film and also "Stage Struck" (1958).
Enjoy!
5 сен 2024
