Harold Clurman: A Life of Theatre.

• Author: Rothenberg, Robert S.

Home Vision / 56 minutes $39.95

It is an axiom of the theater that the people on stage often are not half as fascinating as those who put them there. Harold Clurman--director, producer, author, and critic--unquestionably was one of those to whom this most emphatically applies.

Clurman was one of the driving forces--along with Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford--behind the Group Theatre, which stunned audiences from the Depression to World War II with realistic, socially relevant dramas that never had been seen on the American stage. The roster of those who made up this company is a roll call of the great actors (Stella and Luther Adler, John Garfield, Lee J. Cobb, Morris Carnovsky), playwrights (Clifford Odets, Sidney Kingsley), and directors (Elia Kazan, Bobby Lewis) of the era. The plays that emerged from this talent--"Awake and Sing," "Waiting for Lefty," "Golden Boy," "Men in White"--still are regarded as classics.

After...