NOVEMBER1, 1952
Esquire
Written by JOHN VAN DRUTEN
Photography by PAUL RADKAI
When as young an actress makes as swift a success as Julie Harris has achieved, there are a number of questions that everyone wants answered. What sort of a person is she? What made you think of her for this part? What is it like to work with her?
I had heard Julie Harris’ name several times before I saw her in Member of the Wedding. She had been in flops, but she had always had good notices. I had no idea of her qualities—I didn’t even know what she looked like. Member of the Wedding was a play that had a tremendous appeal for me, and I saw it three times. The performances seemed superb to me. Ethel Waters was restrained, tender and magnificent. Julie was very good indeed, and I knew that her role of Frankie was long and incredibly difficult. I had no idea what the future held for her, except that the part of this raucous and frightened child might well scare future directors away from her.
Then I wrote I am a Camera. Since it was not an original play, but an adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s novel about pre-Hitler Berlin, I knew the characters even before I started. But I never thought about the casting of Sally. When I was asked whom I wanted, I knew I had problems. Age and nationality—and of course skill—seemed to me the main ones. Julie stood out among American actresses, if she could play the part.
That summer I and Walter Starcke, one of the two producers, went to Europe on business. We reached Paris on the same day that Julie and her husband arrived there from Italy. We went to see them in a hotel on the left bank, and they met us at the elevator. Julie was a slight, blonde girl who was a lot prettier than her Frankie had let me suspect. She seemed to have a faint and retiring personality. We sat in the lounge and had soft drinks, and I told her about the play. I noticed her voice, which had an odd, self-checked quality, and a stronger American accent than I had remembered (perhaps that was only because we were in Europe). I told her she would have to read the part to me. I had written it with a strongly English quality, and I wanted to hear how the lines sounded in her voice. I knew that my request troubled her, though her answer was, “Of course.” I asked if she would like to read to me in Paris. She said no, she was having throat trouble, and she would prefer to wait and read in New York. She promised to make no engagement in the meantime. I went on to Berlin to look at the play’s background. I was a little depressed. I had a hunch that Julie would not play the part. I knew that she did not want to read.
The reading was in my apartment in New York. It was astonishing. Before my eyes Julie changed from a timid girl into the shameless Sally Bowles. I sat and stared at her—she was standing quite still, and I had no idea how or from where she was evoking all those images. After about five minutes I forgot to listen to her. When it was over we talked about the play and the qualities I wanted from it. Julie finally plucked up courage to ask: “What about me?” I had forgotten that there had been any question. I answered, “But of course the part is yours.”
After she had left I told the producers that I did not think I had ever sat in a room with so extraordinary an actress.
I still think that. I had to remember the remark and the certainty of my impression several times when I heard rumors that I had ruined my play with my casting. Julie, I heard, was a fine actress, but she was neither pretty nor sexy, and those were the two essential qualities. I went on sticking to the idea that acting and being came first. I know that they do.
Julie built the part slowly. She had speech tricks that had to be corrected. I have seldom known anyone so eager to meet another person’s ideas. She was afraid of the first scene, where Sally deliberately parades all her outrageousness. She said she could play it if she were wearing pink tights. I used that phrase as a constant reminder to her, and I sent her a pair of them as an opening night present. She defied the kind of direction I was used to giving older actresses. She never permitted me to give her a reading or an inflection—she said the result would be that she would merely imitate me. I had to find synonyms, other lines and situations to describe what I wanted. She is not a technical actress. There was a scene (subsequently cut) where she had to dress during a speech. I wanted certain laughs timed to fit the fastening of buttons. I tried to add some waste lines to give her more time. She begged me not to. She is not the sort of actress who can put on gloves with the words timed to each finger. She has to become the character, not act it. I gave in to her. You cannot force an actress to use a foreign method.
She never stopped working. No amount of rehearsal was too much for her. (Every great actress I have ever known has had the same willingness to work.) She seemed to have no existence outside her part. I still do not know what Julie is really like except that she is honest and resolute and desperately truthful, and that she will respect anyone who knows what he wants and who works honestly to achieve it. I am very fond of her. I know that so long as what she is after is within her range, she will end by getting it. Comedy is her hardest work. She has great admirations (oddly, for movie stars as well as actors—she spent last summer among the movie stars, making Member of the Wedding, her first film for Columbia Pictures), great loyalties and amazing intensity, as well as a kind of luminous innocence.
These are the qualities I would always remember in casting her. I would like to see her play Saint Joan, Hedvig in The Wild Duck, Irina in The Three Sisters, Nina in The Seagull, Barrie’s Mary Rose—all parts in which a transparency of mind is essential. She has a terrific power. I have entered the Empire Theatre, and before I have reached the back of the orchestra I have heard her voice, full-charged with intensity, pulling me to my place. She is as truthful in her work as she is in life. She is never afraid of being unpleasant in a part—never afraid of anything, except of not being honest and sincere. What more can one want from an actress?
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