Bittersweet by Susan Strasberg

 

Susan Strasberg May 22 1938 – January 21 1999

Ms. Strasberg begins this memoir with the admission that her newborn daughter entered this world with holes in her heart, traceable to recreational drugs use by her then husband Christopher Jones and herself.  Although during this era hallucinogens were believed to enhance experience and understanding, the side effect and heredity dangers were not fully known.  Guilt brought about by the knowledge their daughter’s permanent health might well have been scarred by their chemical explorations added to their sadness. Ultimately, surgery would prove fruitful, but for a significant while, the prognosis was worrisome. 

Beginning with this candor, Susan Strasberg, born on May 22 1938, reflects upon her life at the apex of the Actor’s Studio, an organization for professional actors, which her father, Lee Strasberg, joined in 1951.

Lee Strasberg, with his wife Paula as voice coach, taught method acting, requiring student actors to find some source in their lives which could be put to use in order to give a naked dimension to a performance.  Hence, if required to portray a character who has just received tragic news, it was viewed as vital to relive such a moment in one’s own life.  

As the fame of the Strasberg’s’ teachings increased, so did requests for inclusion in their acting classes.  In time, their numerous students included James Dean, Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Marilyn Monroe, and the young Susan Strasberg.  Indeed, Ms. Monroe became, for a time, a part of the Strasberg household.  This arrangement was symbiotic in that as Ms. Monroe’s status as an Aphrodite skyrocketed, so did the pre-eminence of the Strasberg classes.  What then was the impact upon Susan of this near-divinity sharing the daughterly role?  At one point, her mother Paula felt forced to follow Marilyn to the location where a film was in process, in order to elicit the needed responses.  

Susan’s feelings towards Marilyn were ambivalent.  While admiring her exquisite looks and allure, Susan could not avoid envying the adoration they created.  Still, in its way, this frustration contributed to Susan’s success in one of her earliest roles as the bright but plain Millie Owens, in the 1955 film “picnic”, written by William Inge.

Millie’s slightly older sister, Madge, is blessed with penultimate glamor.  In a scene where Millie, unused to alcohol, drinks to the point of gut-wrenching cries, she keeps repeating, “Madge is the pretty one!”  In fact, in her mind, the fictional Madge represented the genuine Marilyn.  Still, a genuine sisterly friendship developed between these two young women.  (In her second memoir, “Marilyn and Me” she describes their bond.)  

Susan’s next pivotal role was that of Anne Frank in the 1955 Broadway production of “Diary of Anne Frank” based on the diaries of this young girl, killed during the holocaust. Although her performance received many accolades, she was sorely disappointed when not chosen for the role in the film version.  Years later, when she asked the director George Stevens why he had not chosen her, he said it was because she had not asked him.  Perhaps he was thirsting for a request from Lee Strasberg’s daughter. 

Her later roles were more-or-less consistent but somewhat sporadic. As she once said to fellow actress, Lee Grant, they were both like good, reliable dresses, kept in a wardrobe to be worn, not to elegant soirees, but suitable for any number of events and occasions.

Susan Strasberg’s life went through its romantic vicissitudes. Apparently, her sense of ordinary good looks continued to haunt her.  On the night when she and her future husband Christopher Jones, having connected erotically during a film, were about to spend their first night with each other, she thought of what it would be like to wake in the morning beside someone more attractive than she was.  Still, although their union ended in a hostile divorce, for a time they did share deep passion and tenderness.  

I finished this book with a sense of respect for Ms. Strasberg’s candor, combined with disappointment at her seeming lack of compassion towards her mother Paula. This proved especially true in describing the humiliating manifestations of the cancer which eventually led to her death.  What Paula had tried to attribute, for years, to a series of miscarriages was in fact a terminal illness.
Still, as with any memoir, we enter the memoirist’s framework to the extent we can, drawing our own interpretation in terms of its less than likable aspects.  
Susan Strasberg died of breast cancer at age 60, on January 21, 1999.