Acting Tips: Analyzing Actors at the Top of their Game

One of the most dismaying things I find about many young performers is how seldom they study veteran actors in classic film and television. (I would add theater to that, but the drawback to stage work is that the nuances in a performance are too often lost in the distance between the performers and the audience.) 

Many years ago, I watched a young actor do an emotionally charged drama-class scene and remarked afterwards that he reminded me of Richard Widmark in the 1947 film Kiss of Death where a crazy-acting Widmark pushes an old woman in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs. Who's Richard Widmark? the actor asked, whereupon the instructor blanched and said, "That's like asking, Who are the Marx Brothers!" (The young man looked baffled at that too.)

The point is, there is so much you can learn by watching a master at work, and so much you lose if your only point of reference are action films and the last 10 years of television.

I was reminded of this the other night while watching character actress Beulah Bondi as Aunt Martha Corinne in "The Conflict," a 1974 episode of The Waltons, airing on Amazon Prime. Bondi was 84 years old at the time this was filmed, having played largely mothers and grandmothers (she played James Stewart's mother four times) over a 50-year career in some of the most memorable films ever made, including six that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. She was herself twice nominated for an Oscar as Best Actress in a Supporting Role and, at 86, she would win an Emmy for playing Martha Corinne in a later episode of The Waltons titled "The Pony Cart."

In this scene from "The Conflict," Aunt Martha Corinne is being evicted from the farm she came to as a bride and has lived in on the mountain for more than 50 years. Her husband Henry and one of her children are buried on the farm. The rhythms of the land are the rhythms of her life. Now the farm has been taken for public use by the federal government as part of a planned national park. After initially resisting eviction, she has finally conceded rather than see her family embroiled in an armed conflict. But she has not given up all control of her life, or her dignity. 

Watch Beulah Bondi totally immersed in her character.

What was so difficult about this role - and you also see it in the 1986 Oscar-winning performance by 60-year-old Geraldine Page in The Trip to Bountiful (Page beat out Meryl Streep/Out of Africa, Anne Bancroft/Agnes of God, Jessica Lange/Sweet Dreams, and Whoopi Goldberg/The Color Purple) - is that Bondi had to tread a fine line between being a stubborn and sometimes mean old woman and yet being terribly vulnerable to an overwhelming sense of loss.  

So notice how she and, one assumes, the director have choreographed this scene. This isn't Method or Meisner. Bondi never married or had children in real life; she was born in Chicago, not on a farm. Richard Thomas here serves only to get the scene started; she's not reacting to him. This is a thinking actress with a strategy. She has to exit the farmhouse, but with a pause to reflect on her life. The scene opens with her sweeping the floor of a now nearly empty room. The house will likely be torn down, but she's still in charge, tidying up the ends of her life, giving away the things she will no longer need. Still the matriarch giving orders, she will leave on her own terms.  

While sweeping, Bondi has been looking down at the floor (perhaps finding her mark?) To get to the memory of her dead husband, she needs a trigger.  She looks up at the doorway, the same doorway she entered as a bride so many years before, and makes a seemingly offhand remark about Henry's nature: he was shy with women. As she turns to the camera for a beautifully lit closeup, the memory then floods over her in vivid detail. Her eyes see her young husband, she smells the lilac and the Bay Rum. Her face softens with warmth and love. And then, in an instant, the memory is gone. She is again an old woman and so terribly alone, a tragic figure, but not destroyed.  She puts on her bonnet, takes a last look at the home that held so much of her life, and resolutely exits through the door, head high. 

In this moment on screen Bondi IS Martha Corinne, and she lives this memory. Consider how much each of her moves says about the woman she is portraying. It is masterfully done. A scene worth studying again and again (although I admit to choking up every time I watch it.)

Having been stereotyped early in her career (Bondi played old ladies from age 39 on), it may have been difficult to find roles with enough depth to make full use of her skills, but she was always the consummate pro. 

Watch this tribute to her from Turner Classic Movies. 

Also check out this wonderful behind-the-scenes look at Bondi in her later Waltons episode, "The Pony Cart," for which she won an Emmy.  Actress Judy Norton, who played Mary Ellen Walton, hosts this YouTube channel, and it's a treasure trove of information for actors and fans of this much beloved series. 

 

Take time to study veteran actors. Develop a love for classic film and television, if you're not there already. Some of the best actors in the world are walking encyclopedias of great performances on screen.  That is, in part, why they're so good.