Charles Grodin, who died this week, at age 86, was a wonderfully talented actor.
The following is an enjoyable and illuminating excerpt from his 1989 memoir, It Would Be So Nice If You Weren't Here: My Journey Through Show Business (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.). The excerpt concerns the legendary acting teacher Uta Hagen; Mr. Grodin studied with Ms. Hagen for three years, in the 1950s.
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Even thirty years later, I vividly remember the most important acting lesson I learned from Uta. It wasn't part of her regular teaching precepts ("Ask yourself, 'Who am I as a character? What do I want in the scene?' "). I don't even remember it coming up or ever being mentioned in the couple of dozen or so books on acting I've read, but it was invaluable and Uta gave it to me. I had played Holden Caulfield in a scene from J.D. Salinger's novel Catcher in the Rye. It was a scene between the teacher and Holden where they're discussing a terrible essay Holden had written. After the scene was over, Uta said to me there was one "pure acting moment in that scene. Do you know what it was?" Well...I was excited by the compliment. I still hadn't heard many in my young career. But I had no idea what Uta was talking about. "Was it the moment where I slowly turned and...?"
"No," Uta interrupted.
"Was it when I lifted my head suddenly and...?"
"No," Uta interrupted again.
I was quickly out of guesses. Evidently, a "pure acting moment" had gone right by and I'd never spotted it. Neither had the class, whom Uta had invited to join in the quiz....
When no one could spot my seemingly invisible "pure acting moment," Uta told me it was when I went to hand my essay back to the teacher, a fine actor named Scott Edmonds. I thought Scott was going to take it, but for a moment he didn't reach out to accept it. Then he did. There was a moment when I wasn't sure what was going to happen next. That was the pure acting moment: the moment of not knowing what the next moment was (just as we don't in life). I couldn't immediately repeat it, but when Uta identified it, I understood, and in the future strove to get myself again into a state of not anticipating what was next, of not knowing. Easier said than done, but it was invaluable to have been identified and experienced that once. Thirty years later, it's still about as valuable a lesson as I ever learned about acting, and that alone was worth the three years with Uta.
