1 The most extended account by Mrs. Hapgood appeared as “Explanatory Note by the Translator,” in Building a Character, Theatre Arts Books 1949, pp. vii - x. My Life in Art had already appeared in English translation before Stanislavski and Mrs. Hapgood arrived at the convention by which she would be the authorized translator and legal agent for Stanislavski's writings outside Russia.

2 Selections from the two numbers of TDR make up the bulk of Stanislavski and America, Erika Munk ed., Hill and Wang, 1966.

3 MacGregor's notations appeared in TDR Vol. 9, No. 4 (Summer 1965), pp. 209–215; they were reprinted in Stanislavski and America.

4 See, for example, Laurence Senelick's shrewd study of different versions of My Life in Art, published in Theatre Survey, 22 (1981), 201–211. Also Carnicke's, Sharon Marie “An Actor Prepares/Rabota aktera nad soboi, Chast‘I: A Comparison of the English with the Russian Stanislavski,” in Theatre Journal 36, No. 4 (December 1984), 481–494.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 These two sources are cited here, with additional identification, as “E. R. Hapgood Archive” and ERH Archive, and “TAB Files.” David Hapgood, executor of his mother's estate, and George Zournas, director of Theatre Arts Books, granted permission for my examination of these materials; both the Archive and the TAB Files have been placed under restricted access, however, and will continue so for some years.

6 See pp. 328 ff in Polyakova, Elena: Stanislavsky, English translation by L. Tudge (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982). In this book, which is easily the best biographical study of Stanislavski, Polyakova gives a clear summary of the event, stating the medical diagnosis as “angina pectoris and a myocardial infarction.”

7 ERH Archive: Journal, pp. 114–117. Mrs. Hapgood's Journal, one of the more interesting items in the Archive, was written by her for private distribution to the members of her immediate family. The journal depicts Stanislavski as very touched by the Hapgoods' visit and somewhat overwhelmed by their generous offer.

8 ERH Archive: Fund Raising Letters. According to a memorandum by Mrs. Hapgood dated Feb. 10, 1931, a total of $7500 was raised for “the Stanislavski Fund”; this does not include $750 from Yale University Press, which was to be returned if Stanislavski required “too much delay in finishing book.” Eventually the Yale money was returned.

9 Ibid.

10 ERH Archive: Stanislavski Letters to Mrs. Hapgood. This is one of the earlier letters preserved from the correspondence between Stanislavski and Mrs. Hapgood. Like most of the others, it is undated; one must derive a letter's time of writing from the contents which, in this case, show that it was written before the Alexeyeffs left Badenweiler for Nice because it states that permission from Moscow for the trip had not yet arrived. (Incidentally, the most important of these letters are unmistakably in Stanislavski's hand.)

11 TAB Files: Copyright Office. In Robert MacGregor's letter to the U.S. Register of Copyrights, dated 25 June 1964, he cited a speech by Mrs. Hapgood to the Literary Fund of the Russian Community. (A draft of this speech is also in the file.) In a postscript MacGregor pointed out that Norman Hapgood was editor in chief and publisher of Collier's “in its heyday,” a drama critic, and author of many books.

12 ERH Archive: Journal, p. 121.

13 Letter quoted in Polyakova, p. 331. Just prior to this passage Polyakova writes slightingly of Mrs. Hapgood as a mere “amanuensis.”

14 ERH Archive: Journal, p. 130. In the next paragraph after narrating this incident Mrs. Hapgood observes that she learned long afterwards of Maria Lilina's jealousy. She thought this pointless because “Stanislavski was notoriously constant.” But suspicions of the close, comradely relationship of Mrs. Hapgood and her husband with Stanislavski did not end with the letter's wife, as events would show.

15 ERH Archive: Fund Raising Letters. The carbons of the letters with this data are undated and one of them has no salutation; they seem to represent an effort to raise additional money for the Stanislavski Fund and were probably meant for the Harkness Fund.

16 ERH Archive: Stanislavski Letters. This letter makes it clear that one difficulty of the illness was Stanislavski's inability to meet often with Gurevich, who was also in poor health.

17 The second and third parts of Creating a Role give the only extended treatments by Stanislavski that we have of this method. Both parts are fragments from Stanislavski's attempt to demonstrate how to rehearse and develop a characterization. There is no doubt that he had a lively interest in the application of this approach, because numerous of his colleagues wrote about his enthusiasm for “the method of physical actions.” See for example Vasily Toporkov's Stanislavski in Rehearsal, Christine Edwards trans. (Theatre Arts Books, 1979); Toporkov gives the most complete idea of Stanislavski's intentions with the new approach.

18 ERH Archive: Original Typescript for An Actor Prepares. This is the Russian text from which Mrs. Hapgood worked. Until Spring 1984 it was thought to be lost.

In view of observations by Carnicke, it is worth noting here that the text of the Russian equivalent to An Actor Prepares, Rabota aktera nad soboí (Iskusstvo 1938), is longer and contains re-worked passages as well as new writing which does not appear in the typescript Mrs. Hapgood worked from. As noted above, Stanislavski continued in his effort to improve his explanations of the System almost to his death; in any case, he made many revisions in the text after he sent this typescript to his translator in the U.S.

19 ERH Archive: Journal, p. 147.

20 ERH Archive: Journal, p. 152.

21 TAB Files: Editor's Matter - Letter dated April 20, 1936.

22 TAB Files: Contracts.

23 ERH Archive: Journal, p. 152.

24 Ibid.

25 ERH Archive: Stanislavski Letter dated Dec. 20, 1936.

26 TAB Files: U. S. Copyright Office — Form R 343605 gives the date of first copyright as Nov. 12, 1936.

27 TAB Files: U. S. Copyright Office — Form R 343604. Several misunderstandings arose among those who wished to translate Stanislavski's writings into different languages. The potential translators apparently took it for granted that his writings would not be protected by copyright since the U.S.S.R. was not a party to the international convention until recently. These individuals objected to obtaining clearances and paying fees to the Stanislavski Estate, since they had thought the writings were, in effect, in public domain. However, Theatre Arts Books (acting for Mrs. Hapgood and, latterly, her son David) has been vigilant in enforcing the rights of the Stanislavski Estate, which is precisely what Stanislavski directed and intended through gaining copyright protection for all his work published outside Russia.

28 ERH Archive: Stanislavski Letters.

29 David Hapgood Letter to Hobgood, Sept. 25, 1984. Polyakova's biography gets wrong the month of Mrs. Hapgood's visit to Moscow.

30 Letter and Notes to Hobgood from Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood, dated Nov. 19, 1965.

31 Ibid.

32 My translations of the titles. Jean Benedetti in Stanislavski, An Introduction (Theatre Arts Books 1982) renders the latter title thus: An Actor's Work on Himself in the Creative Process of Physical Characterization; he notes that “incarnation” and “embodiment” are effective translations of the Russian word voploshchenie.

33 D. Hapgood letter to Hobgood, dated Sept. 25, 1984.

34 This position was first promoted in the TDR special issues of 1965, in an article on the method of physical actions by Sonia Moore.

35 See for example the statement made by Stanislavski at the outset of “A Talk with the MAT Master Actors,” in Articles, Speeches, Talks, Letters (G. Kristi and N. Chushkin eds., Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1953) p. 653 ff. A partial translation of this piece may be found in Directors on Directing (Cole and Chinoy eds., rev. ed. 1963) under the title “Creative Work with the Actor: A Discussion on Directing.”