In Memoriam: Wynn Handman

His goodness, kindness, and generosity shown through in a professional world too often characterized by cutthroat competition and one upmanship. Over the years, an astonishing array of talent passed through Handman's studio. Christopher Walken, Raoul, Julia Richard, gere Anna Davie Smith, Joanne Woodward, Mia Farrow, and on and on. But after seventy years, yes seventy, enrollment is finally closed. In April, Hammon became one of New York's victims lost to COVID nineteen.

I was finally able to get him to record an interview for Here's the Thing in two thousand eighteen, and I'm bringing you our conversation today. I witnessed as when made real progress with some marginally talented actors. But He remained humble about what teachers can do. If they don't have the right stuff inside them, I can't do it. That's the basic thing they need. Yeah, the basic thing is act as a highly suggestible people. If I suggest something to you, you'll go with it. We're too gullible

for everyday of life. So one of the things they have to draw upon is the ability to be suggestible, because what is it You're suggesting something to yourself, so you inhabit the reality in an imaginary situation. And if you can do that, then you can take people on the journey. I have recently noted people I took who had no background and not that much going and now they're doing Shakespeare and the Greeks, and said, hey, that's good.

And uh, I recently said to one, I said, you know, I've been congratulating myself because where I've taken you in your acting. Yes, the tremendous improvements can be made. What's interesting to me when I'm with my children, you see the actor's nature they want to believe. See that's what Sandy minds. Uh. Well, way back, Sandy was my mentor, and uh, he would say, it's like when you play Cops and Robbers, or when you played house when you were a kid. Get that back, that not eve innocence

of believing. Where did you meet meister and tell people who Meisner was? Then he was a member of the Group Theater, and the Group Theater embraced the Santarslawski system and they they trained with that. But Sandy was best known for teaching at the Neighborhood play Out School of the Theater, and he had been teaching there maybe from the late thirties. Uh. I got to him in forties six as a returning g I. I had been in the service four years, so I had the wonderful g.

I Bill. I wanted to say, that's one of the best things that America produced, was the G. I Bill. I went there under the G. I Bill, and uh when I got there, I had no experience whatsoever and only seen a few plays. You discovered the theater yourself in Boston when you came home from the war. I saw Paul Robeson in a fellow with Uda Hogan and Jose Ferrare. I was just on leave and there wasn't maybe about the fourth play I had seen in my life. When I was in the service. I was there for

four years. I had been a jazz musician, but I realized I was a yeah, second rate. I wouldn't have that. He wasn't going to make that my profession. And I absolutely did not know what to do. And I was on the ship waiting for it d be decommissioned. Then I faced the reality that I should have a future. What am I going to do? And I decided to try acting. I had never acted. I had nice experience,

but whose idea was that mine? Because I had good experiences, because I didn't do many things that my father felt I did well. But when I did you my talka Jean in po when you're courted safe out here and you sent to penny fights and old de shot it, then you'll do your work on etcetera, or the face on. When I did those poems for him, he liked it a lot, and so was your first audience. And I got a good, good response. What your dad do? He

had a printing business. Yeah, I lived on a dirt road in an apartment house, you know Wherefore a Triumph Parks was right across the street from what became for a Triumph Park. But when I was a child, it was woods and we had a dirt road and was a farm across the way, a farm with chickens and all kinds of things. When the depression came along, the farm left. The dirt road got paved and it became a miniature golf course. And I was a caddy and

a minute ago I kept the score. But anyway, when I was on a ship was North Atlanta anti submarine duty, escorting convoys up to northeast Greenland. Uh, you are spent a lot of time in the ward room with your shipmates. They play cards, things to do while you're not on watch. And we had some records on the ship that were of minologists. In those days, they were called Yes. The people performed at nightclubs and there's usually a little body, and there was one that I was particularly attracted to.

His name was Dwight Fisk and Uh he had been performing at the Monkey Bar at the hotel what Hotel Elisa when Tennessee Williams died. Anyway, I uh memorized the monologues. I listened to the records and I did him from my shipmates and they liked it. And you like getting laughs. And this is a short when you win the military. When you win, when you win the you win the

Are you in the navy? Well it was the coast Guard, So you're there and with the guys there during the war, you're cracking them up and entertaining that what kind of material did Fisk do? Body's songs? Here's a one line from it an outstepped Mr petty Bone just as naked as a child and twice as cocky. You would have liked to have done that monologue. Anyway. That encouraged me.

So when I was waiting to get out they could be turned to civilian life, I said, well, what I enjoyed was when my shipmates and they enjoyed my doing those monologues. And when my father like that when I did Gunga, then oh I don't I try acting. That's the only thing. How did it go? You tried it? And what happened? I went to the I Luckily I didn't know. I didn't know one school, I didn't know anything.

There was a guy on the ship with me who seems to fistic catered And while we were waiting for the ship to be decommissioned in Norfolk, Virginia, and I said to him, I said, I want to try acting. When I get out, I have the g I bill I can go to school. He said, well, there's only one school to go to, and I said, what's that. He said, the American Academy and Dramatic Arts. So as soon as I got out in May forty six, I went to the American Academy. You know where it was.

He had two flaws on the top of Carnegie Hall and uh. They said, we have too many returning gies. You can't apply. I say, I can't even apply. No, you do monologue. So I saw the pack of monologues and I learned it, but they never let me do my audition monologue. So I was disconsolate because I didn't know of any other school for the American Academy. No, where'd you go? Then? Well, I was dating a Whiman, I believe her name was Doris Well. I said, you know,

I can't. I can't even apply at the American Academy. I want to try acting. She said, we'll go try the Neighborhood Playouts. I hear, that's the best school, and that's the first acting school you attended, the first and only. And what happened was Sandy you know interviewed me and took me. I think he took me because I talked about improvisation, because I did it as a saxophonist. But also I had written one poem when I was on the ship waiting to get out, and he I think

that impressed them. Here's a short poem home now, feeling the years of war spent youth, not time apart, nor interlude furiously lived forgotten now like motion picture with yawning exit two routine. I knew I didn't want the yawning exit two routine, so I wanted to try I acting. So I got into the playhouse. I immediately caught on. How many people are in the program? When you're there, you woke into a classroom. How many are there? It is now there's a couple of maybe a couple of dozen.

And uh, inside of two weeks. Because Sandy saw I was catching on, and a lot of them didn't to what he was trying to get at. Uh, he said, you work with her, you work with him. He had no patience with them. I had such an affinity for what was going on that it was the first time in my life I felt this is what I can do, which is to teach, teach direct, Yeah, work with acting. You no longer want to be an actor. You want to be an acting teacher. Does that happen quickly? Uh? No, No,

I wanted to be an actor. And how much acting did you do? Not that much? Because I moved it into directing. Sandy. Sandy was like my guardian angel, very smart. He latched onto me. I was assisting him at the at the end of the first year, he was doing a play called truck Line Cafe, which had been Yeah brandam was successful on Broadway, and so that was the second year classes graduation and there was an eight year old child in it. He had no patience to work

with that eight year old child. He said, you work with it. It turned out to be someone whose name was Susan Pushett. Oh my goodness. Now when you're there, Uh, you look back now, and you've been teaching for quite a long time. Sandy started me in in the nineteen of fifty. Okay, so you've been teaching for since the stagecoach years without a stop. And so with that in mind, can you look back now from your perspective and say,

what were Meisner's strengths and weaknesses as a teacher. Well, he was enormously perceptive, uh, and could pick out what you weren't doing and what kind of suggests what you should be doing, and expressing it in ways that you could hold on to, Like he'd say, uh, everything prepared but the acting or as if um, you know a metaphors. He had good ways of suggesting that his criticism sometime

could be cutting. He was direct to direct. Uh when when he was gonna see I had been in a naval officer and on a ship if it was gonna ram and hit something, stand by for a ram. Sandy would uh put his glasses on his forehead and I would say, stand by for a ram. I'm gonna use that. When he did that, it was bad because he didn't something You don't get over that fast. Uh. And criticism at that level, you see, it is a tremendous responsibility to be an acting teacher because you can say one

thing I could damage someone for life. It's so By the way, I want to interject from my listeners here, I mean why I was so keen on doing this with you was because that that nurturing and that kindness, your reputation in New York when I first came here was you were a very supportive and kind and nurturing teacher. The late director and teaching legend when happen more coming up,

This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the thing when handman shares with his mentor Sanford Meisner, the move away from so called effective memory. That's the method acting staple of summoning one's own emotional experiences in order to channel the characters trauma or joy. But Hammond's warm embrace of his students stood in sharp contrast to the

man who first gave him his shot. Well, it's not my nature to hurt people, and it's in my nature to bring people along and know how vulnerable they are. See when I be Sandy said you will, He said, you will become my assistant, and you will have an apprenticeship of humility. He said that that directly, and he said you will watch every one of my class and do your own. And I did that. So I saw more Sandford Meisner classes than anyone because he ordered me to do it. And I thank him for it because

I learned from it. But I could see where he set people back because the tension, and I felt it. I mean, why do you think he did that? Did you believe that was in their interest? He had that nature. He could be very mean. And so Meisner was known, obviously in a very kind of a basic sense for this repetition technique, the Meisnerian tank. Did you not see that, President, No,

that wasn't done. Then it wasn't He didn't do it when And I know why he developed it because it was a period of naturalism and you know, strong realism, living off the other person. What the repetition does is he it makes you go off the other person. Fuck you. Well, I said, you know that kind of thing. But then they became his whole system, this whole method, which is absolutely ridiculous. Did you think that's true? That did become

his whole system. Aren't they teachers around who they teach Meisner? And so what do you do? Well, what you do repetition? How long can you do repetition? Maybe a week or something, No, the whole semester. Well, I think it's for teachers who don't have the chops to really teach, so they watch these people go back and forth with their repetition. With Sandy was everything to me. You know, he trained me, and uh, he moved me right along. He could be

very tender. So when my first child, Laura was born, he gave her a little thing from Tiffany, a pearl, and every birthday he gave her another pearl. And I may, I said, he's our godfather. And he got me so out of directing because he there was up in the at Irondack so was a was a leftist adult camp lest it was very He said, you you should direct that company. I was not married yet, but my wife

to be was a truly great woman. Anyway, I sat on a bench with her up at Columbia University where she was a Barnard said, Sandy wants me to direct im. She says do it. Yeah. And when I said, Bobby, that was so right for me. I had my own company. I did play aff to play and Uh, I said, I knew I was a director. Now what do you think Lee's strength was? Uh? Were you critical with him? Yeah? I'm not a fan of Leasia. His speaking gave me

a headache. He is an example. I had a student who took his direct acting course and and he used two of my students. One of them was Dallas from North Carolina. And another woman from Jackson, Mississippi. They did a scene and he was very critical. So he had them do what he had his his emotion memory, and they did it and then he was very pleased. But she said to him, yeah, but Dallas was in North

Carolina and I was in Mississippi. He didn't transfer into saying, well, whatever you're getting from that, now move it into you are now. One of the things you learn in basic acting and acting is doing because you have an intention, a purpose because out of your want. Well, they they got so preoccupied with physical things like itches and and pains and behavior behavior that they us the intention and that was no good. I was critical of that, but

he let that go. Well. There are people who do scene work in classes that can that could be scene work at the actor's studio, which isn't really scene work. It's more like previous circumstances or prior circumstances. They do a lot of different kind of exercises there. Uh for those who don't know what I mean, do you take a scene from uh Cataona hot Tin Roof and let's go back and do the scene that happened a couple

of days before that. We make up and we improvise what are known as the prior circumstances, and we improvise that. But these exercises, which is really the bread and butter of the studio, inhabiting the character. If you get in the character, then the character does the work for you. It's a difficult thing to do. Yeah, well that's training.

So I've developed something called the character interview. So if you're working on the role, I say, well, before you come back in, put down four questions you want to be asked about yourself. Oh well, they make them up for their own, but then I know what the Yeah, I know what the material is about. So then I have my own questions in bon and I don't let them do the scene, but I only get them improvising in this character that we're developing. So then when they

get to the scene, the character is inside. People remember it when it's inhabitant. When do things end with Meisner? You're done with Meisner? You guys part ways? When and then in between exactly what happened? Uh? He taught first year was basic acting. Now, basic acting it's important, but it got boring to me, and I was teaching more basic acting causes than he was So when the new season began and uh I saw the schedule, I said, hey, I can't do this much basic acting anymore. It's like

mountains ahead of me. I just can't take it. So he flew. He got very angry, and I got angry, and uh I left. I had a certain independence which he gave me because I am between fifty five. And when you open American Place, what do you do? You start teaching privately, no teaching classes. I was teaching four classes each with twenty or more people. I had my own studio what was it called? Just to win him

in studio? And when you started American Place theater, I started in the early sixties sixty Why do you want to start a theater? Because it wasn't enough for me to teach. I was reaching I guess it was midlife crisis. What am I going to do with my life? I'm teaching very well and I like doing it, and I can do it, But is there more I can be doing well? What was in the era at the time was not to just do Broadway kind of theater, but to do others. So Bruce Stein had an article about

you know, Robert bruce Stein, the critic and Uh. There was an article called the Plight of the Serious Play which I saw in the New York Times, and uh quotes from George Bernard Shaw, which I'll do one which meant a lot to me, and I'd like to record it. Uh. You see, George Bernard Shaw was a theater critic in the eighteen nineties and he for three years, and when he finished with that he started writing plays. But they published all of his criticism in the collection Our Theater

in the nineties. He said this, more people went to the theater in London when I was reviewing, then went to church. This would be a very good thing if the theater took itself seriously as a factory of thought, an elucidator of social conduct, and armory against despair and dullness, and the temple of the ascent of a man. Well, I carried that around. I said, this is what I have to fulfill. So it got me started looking for plays that well. That He also, in one of his reviews,

said something very meaningful to me. He said, well, this play is an entertainment, nothing wrong with that, not a serious revelation of mankind to itself. That's what we're really about. Give us two examples male female who came through your doors who you just excited you. You knew they had it. They went on to become great act Michael Douglas. He said us me, if it was all right, if I could call your mother and tell her how good you are. I knew his mother, and yes he was. He was

very good. Right. A woman? What's an actress who came through your doors? Alison? Janny, Alison Janny. Yeah, you just give him a role and she can do it all. And I should mention one you never heard of. Her name is Mary Alice By, and I directed her in a summer theater up in the Bosch Belt area in the fifties and I just couldn't get over her talents with one word, this actress. It was a summerstar play

four poster the Evolution of a marriage. And then there's one sequence where the man has gone off and been with another woman. Now he came back. She loved that man. All she said was you and that you was still with me. It just bounced off every wall of every theater because she had so much going down here for

her love for this man. Mary Alice. Now I caught Laurence Olivier at a performance of The Entertainer which was on a Thursday, and David Merrick uh New York in New York, and the word was out, well, he missed his performer. He wasn't as good as he had been in England on the opening night on Wednesday. Well, Mary wanted to gate eight performances in so he had a Thursday matinee and he had a phil of theater, so it was all actors. And when Olivier walked on stage,

they applauded and uh and greeted him. And from that entrance on he was so in that character. He's never been in a character like that. That was absolutely memorable. Not just one moment, but memorable. But there are moments like when I saw the original street Car, when when Malan was hearing the sisters talk about how an animal, Blanche would saying he's an animal. Don't hold back with the apes. He was out there listening. You got so much from him that you see. It's still in the air.

Pig pollock, disgusting, vulgar boards on your lips and your sisters too much around here. Remember what you long said, every man is a king and I am the king. Around even you and I snashed my hand. I go backstage. All my knuckle was all bleeding, but I didn't give a ship that was so happy. I remember how good you were your class. I always remember because you were

so encouraging. I mean, but we got into it. You mean that freedom to who just explore each other emotionally, you know, and that love you know, which you just can't fake on stage. When I teach. Now, I say do yourself a favor. I say, really luxuriate in this now, this process, because when you get older and you go to work, it's all Arthur Murray, It's all steps on the floor and dancing. Hurry. R had a we despair. He told me the ground word there walking around words

told me to take it from there. You know something, We're gonna end with that. We're gonna end with your Arthur Murray song. Well, thank you, right, and you're very glad. We met Win Handman, founder of the American Place Theater, mentor to thousands, father to Laura and Liza, husband to the late Bobby Handman, and a force for good in the world of acting and beyond. Rest in peace. Win. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to here the thing