Eleonora Duse: A Biography

Sometimes Duse was foolish about men and about writing, and according to the standards of the day she was a bad mother, but other than that, she was sublime in every way. Sheehy claims that her appeal was a plastic one, that her rich warm smile illuminated her face, and took away the slightly doughy and overdone shadows her photos cast in composure. She loved to walk, to relieve stress, and she made one half-hour motion picture, back in the days before exhibitors' demands froze the motion picture into being more or less ninety minutes long. Sheehy says it's great, but by this time, the reader isn't sure whether or not to believe her, because everything is so superlative the tone is pitched too high.


Unsatisfyingly distant   April 12, 2004
 2 out of 4 found this review helpful

I've been a fan of the many theatre books published in recent years by Knopf under the astute editorship of Victoria Wilson and other editors at Knopf. This is not one of their more compelling. Even allowing for the absence of living witness interviewees still available for biographers of, say, the Lunts, I persistently sensed the writer of this book coalescing her picture of Duse from a psychological "mezzanine," rather than "front row," perspective. It is a strangely cold, unhumanized retelling of a striking human being that was anything but. Sheehy is either too awed and respectful of Duse, too afraid of the pitfalls of the so-called pathobiography, or just too uninsightful to bring Duse to life as a three-dimensional personality. She settles for a textbook writer's air of intimate remove, of calculated decorous unfamiliarity with the personality, rather than a biographer's symbiotic fusion that makes the reader feel emotionally with the biographee, whether the biographee's character is admirable or disreputable. Her quotation of Charles Chaplin describing a performance of Duse is in a few paragraphs a far clearer evocation of what specifically and technically made Duse compelling as an actor than anything Sheehy writes of Duse anywhere else in her book. The testimonials she recites of Lee Strasberg, Chekhov, et al. are offered as thirdhand hearsay, generalities to be taken on faith rather than evoking for the reader a clear, singular picture like Chaplin's. The book also reads somewhat desultorily and does not endow Duse's life with a sense of driving drama-- quite a shortcoming for a book about such a great actor. I started to read this book with great expectations and hopes and finally abandoned it more in disappointment than in anger, just wishing it had been better.


A dove in flight   December 26, 2003
 6 out of 9 found this review helpful

My interest in the art of Eleonora Duse grew urgently while I studied the theater of Gabriele D'Annunzio. Strangely Duse's legend had not done more than tantalyze me hitherto. Vague photographs in sepia written words in passing had so far only configured a distant actress that was oddly lackluster. My fascination had remained with the likes of Adrienne Lecouvreur and with Rachel long dead players at the Comedie Francaise. I had lusted for Andromaque and Athalie living feverish candlelit nights among Corneille Moliere and Racine. I had imagined attending one of Sarah's histrionic performances. It was while I read 'La Citta Morta' and 'Francesca da Rimini' that D'Annunzio made me glance closer at the great Duse, shy and transparent with her understated genius for acting. Unhurriedly this seemingly intangible donna assoluta was letting me know that Eleonora Duse was no theatrical bandwagon. She now haunted me a fascinating dove in flight. Her's she claims with a grin, is not the boom enchantment one orders with a Byzantine impetuosity the enraptured hand to the brow. Or the hot stage tear that streaks the bright rouged cheek. That in a scene all Duse is willing to offer is a sigh. Her signature is a beguiling penchant to vanish. This biographical account by Helen Sheehy is like her masterful biography of Eva LeGallienne, a triumph. Both biographies are the product of an inspired and consummate writer. Please look up her life story of LeGallienne if you want quality. Other sources are 'Duse' by William Weaver and 'The Mystic in the Theatre' by Eva LeGallienne herself a great actress and writer. Eleonora wants to say that her's and her's alone is the thespian refinement you invoke with a glance and the faintest of tragic smiles. Many believe Duse to be the parent of modern acting. Both Sheehy and LeGallienne narrate how Eleonora started in the theater from the smallest age, playing with her family of itinerant actors. Duse's was a ragged and browbeaten Commedia dell'Arte peddling town to town in late nineteenth century Italy. I believe poverty and this early perambulating scarred her. There were times when Eleonora watched local urchins tormenting her father, who was neither talented nor enterprising. Her first liaison was with Arrigo Boito who along with Verdi wrote for the opera. They had a daughter. Then soon appeared Gabriele D'Annunzio a genial master of words who enraptured Eleonora with his exquisite theater. Perhaps he loved La Duse he clearly benefitted from her for by the time their convoluted idyll paled she was the most discussed actress in Europe. The philandering playwright and the sublime actress were now both monstruously famous. Sheehy narrates brilliantly her support and torment for Gabriele, as well as her theatrical conquest of America. How lucky are we cinematography captures today in perpetuity the inspirations of our gifted actresses. Locked in a box for all to watch. How sad that time a beast has gobbled up the classical performances of the great Rachel and the incomparable theater of Eleonora Duse. The Italian actress who wore neither makeup nor camellias while portraying Dumas fils. The humble woman who inspired Chekhov and resurrected Ibsen. The one who showed Stanislavski what acting should be. All those theater nights are lost. But if you hold your breath and close your eyes you can see her. How easy it is to imagine Elenora on stage, betrayed and broken as Silvia Setalla in D'Annunzio's 'La Gioconda' Eleonora so evocative in 'La Femme de Claude' droll pert sinewy as Mirandolina in Goldoni's comic 'La Locandiera'. Duse, playing her beloved Ibsen in 'A Doll's House' and 'Hedda Gabler'. Later, an ecclectic and transcendent Eleonora as if transformed by the ocean in 'The Lady from the Sea' Go ahead, go on, you can do it, she'll again appear magically within your mind. Take a deep breath close your eyes and you'll soon find her, fey deft doomed wistful unforgettable, a devastating Marguerite in 'La Dame aux Camellias' a darting cloud in chiffon. Amid applause triumphing and shining, among tremedous curtain calls glowing, so evoking every French romantic nuance as she takes many bows. Regaling a teary audience with tragic glimpses and she gives up Armand. So naturally sketching every enchantment emoting every painful heartbeat. After Isadora Duncan's children died in Paris the dancer went about Europe desperately, hearing words of sympathy urges to be strong. Then she went to stay with Eleonora in her villa in the vicinity of Viareggio. By then Duse was semi-retired notorious for her books and a penchant for solitude. Cry cry, Duse told her, I'll sit by you in silence and won't interrupt your tears. I find this Helen Sheehy's biography, as well as Eva LeGallienne's account of the Duse she knew personally, the best informed and most sensitive protrayals of this unique woman.


The Mother of Modern Acting   September 22, 2003
 4 out of 6 found this review helpful

Lee Strasberg, Charlie Chaplin, George Bernard Shaw, and dozens if not hundreds of others who had the privilege of seeing Duse on stage describe it as if they saw a saint, someone supernatural in her ability to convey thought, feeling, emotion, subtext and that extra something that's finally indescribable. The name Duse has been synonymous with the highest possible attainment in acting, even though she is little known outside the theater. Helen Sheehy has written a detailed, even scholarly biography that stands head and shoulders over the other previous bio in English, by William Weaver. Sheehy succeeds, as far as one can, at analyzing and dissecting otherworldly Genius. But the excellence of Sheehy's book also makes it an unbearable tease. Duse was a stage actress. No traces of her greatness remain, save one thirty minute film that is maddeningly difficult to obtain; for some reason, showings of the film are as rare as UFO sightings. In my mind the film has attained the status of a relic. And I've yet to see it. Frustration aside, Sheehy does much to unveil the very private views of her subject on art and life. I certainly wouldn't recommend this bio to anyone with only a casual interest in acting or theater; however, for anyone with a substantial interest in dramatic art, this bio is simply a must.


Insightful, artful biography of the mother of modern acting   September 8, 2003
 3 out of 4 found this review helpful

As the New York Times has called this an "exemplary biography", there seems little reason to add a review by the average reader. However, you do not need to be an expert in theatre history to find this book a great read.

I had never heard of Duse before Sheehy's work, yet the author makes a convincing argument why the Italian actress is one of the founders of modern acting - a woman who presented a powerful, natural style of acting that George Bernard Shaw, Charlie Chapin, and John Barrymore found overwhelming to behold. Duse created a compelling counterpoint to the highly stylized form perfected by Sarah Bernhardt and she presented a standard of a new acting for all performers in the twentieth century to emulate. Today, we are unaware as we watch film or television, that we are watching Duse's heirs.

Sheehy goes beyond her central thesis of Duse's acting career to describe a very flawed woman. Sheehy enumerates Duse's poor choices in lovers, her neglect of her daughter because of the girl's physical resemblance to Duse's discarded husband, her indulgence in self-pity and hypochondria, and her manipulative use of society friends for favors and loans. Sheehy does not shy away from her hero's defects, but neither does she wallow in them.

This book is of obvious value to people of the theatre or with special interest in Italian culture. For the general reader, it is an artful biography of a compelling and important cultural figure.