Richard Boleslawski was born Bolesław Ryszard Srzednicki on February 4, 1889, in
Mohyliv-Podilskyi, in the
Russian Empire to an ethnic Polish family of Catholic faith. He graduated from the
Tver Cavalry Officers School. He trained as an actor at the First Studio of the
Moscow Art Theatre under
Konstantin Stanislavski and his assistant
Leopold Sulerzhitsky, where he was introduced to the
'system'. During
World War I, Boleslawski fought as a cavalry lieutenant on the Tsarist Russian side until the fall of the
Russian Empire. He left Russia after the
October Revolution of 1917 for his native Poland, where he directed his first movies. As his birth name was difficult to pronounce, he took the name Ryszard Bolesławski. His
Miracle at the Vistula (
Cud nad Wisłą) was a semi-documentary about the
miraculous victory of the Poles at the Vistula River over the superior Soviet Russian forces during the
Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1921. Boleslawski acted in
Love One Another (
Die Gezeichneten, 1922), a German silent film directed by Danish director
Carl Theodor Dreyer. In September 1922, he made his way to
New York City, where, now known as "Richard Boleslawski" (the English spelling of his name), he began to teach Stanislavski's 'system' (which, in the US, developed into
Method acting) with fellow émigré
Maria Ouspenskaya. In 1923, he founded the
American Laboratory Theatre in New York. Among his students were
Lee Strasberg,
Stella Adler and
Harold Clurman, who were all founding members of the
Group Theatre (1931–1940), the first American acting ensemble to utilize Stanislavski's techniques. In 1929 he directed Walter Ferris and
Basil Rathbone's
Judas at the
Longacre Theatre. Offered a contract to direct
Hollywood films, Boleslawski made several significant films with some of the major stars of the day. He died suddenly from a cardiac arrest a few weeks short of his 48th birthday, on January 17, 1937. He is interred in the
Calvary Cemetery, East Los Angeles. ==Personal life==