Shirley Booth Wrote: "Actors Need "To Study PEOPLE!"

Shirley Booth once said regarding her acting career: "It takes courage and fortitude, and maybe a family that’s dead set against the stage as a career so there can be no turning back if only to prove them wrong."

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From an article written by Shirley Booth on Acting, the editor offered an explanation...

Most stories that get into print under the bylines of celebrities are ghosted for them. This one is written by Miss Booth herself, and she admits she really labored over it, right down to the matter of putting commas in the right places. But she jumped at the invitation to write it because, she explained, the role she plays in her newest movie—About Mrs. Leslie, due at the Victoria June 27—is one which illustrates so well her basic premise about acting.

When the film bows in, Miss Booth, a native New Yorker, will be starring on Broadway both in person and on the screen, for theatergoers still are cramming the Majestic to see her in her latest musical, By the Beautiful Sea. The dual triumph represents another milestone in a career which began she was 12 with stock company in Hartford, Connecticut...

Shirley Booth writes...

Whenever a young aspiring actress or actor comes to me for advice, I always tell them the best way I know to thoroughly learn the profession is to study people.

It’s very important to know the technique of acting, to master the intricacies of speech, posture and movement, but you must also learn about people, absorb their characteristics and know what it is that makes them tick. Remember, you may be cast to portray just such a character as you’ve studied in real life. And what a head start you’ve got, thanks to your being observant! I try to keep a mental notebook of the mannerisms, odd inflections appealing facial expressions not only of friends, but of strangers, as well.

It’s telltale details, such as a slight twitch of the mouth, a rubbing of the chin, the shifting of the feet, the fumbling of the hands, that I recall, select and often use in rounding out a character I am to play.

For example, when I was first studying for the role of Lola, the pathetic housewife in Come Back, Little Sheba, I remembered seeing a woman walking her dog on sixth Avenue, in New York. She was heavy it seemed to go right into her spirit, and she shuffled somewhat. I used this ungainly walk to show in my characterization of Lola for the play and for Hal Wallis’ screen version of it too....

TO BE CONTINUED...

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For Bill, His Pinup Girl: The Shirley Booth & Bill Baker Story
by Jim Manago
Foreword by Leslie Sodaro
Published December 1, 2010
Further details at: http://shirleybooth.blogspot.com

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Now available on Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0076ZCBM2

Love is the Reason for it All: The Shirley Booth Story
by Jim Manago
Radio Research by Donna Manago
Foreword by Ted Key
BearManor Media, May 2008
http://bearmanormedia.bizland.com