I had my issues with him [Lee Strasberg], but I’ve read some things that just aren’t true, and I have to tell the truth about the man. He was a great teacher. If I have been good, I have to credit him with that. I was a bag of marbles, clattering and loose, and Lee put some order in me. He educated me. He trained me. I was also trained by Sanford Meisner, and I adore him, but Lee could speak to me in a way that was so direct. He woke me up.
There was a book that claimed Lee was cruel to actors. I never saw that, not until London, which was a catastrophe. [Baxley is referring to the production of The Three Sisters that was transferred to London.] He was tough on actors, which I guess some might consider cruelty, but the most frightening thing Lee gave me was freedom.
I was often very bad in The Three Sisters. Sometimes I was good, but I was often very bad. I just couldn’t maintain a focus on my character. I was shrill. Gerry [Geraldine Page] told me I was too often shrill. She told me that when I pushed her: Gerry would never just say that to an actress. I needed her help.
I came off stage one night aware that I had been very, very bad. If you do an ‘as if’ exercise, and you imagine that actors are connected by invisible threads, well, every thread had fallen to the floor of that stage, and I was tripping over them. I had no connection.
The next day I went to see Lee, and I told him how bad I had been. I wanted him to help me. I think I wanted him to yell at me. I may have wanted him to fire me. I don’t know. But Lee just looked at me and told me that I knew how to fix what was wrong. Then he said, Let’s work on it. I wanted—I really wanted—for him to criticize me, to show me how much he knew, but he just led me into a session where he worked with me on my concentration.
He was a great teacher. He pissed me off, and I lost contact with him, but there’s a lot of crap being written and said about him. We’ve got to keep the history clear.