Jack Garfein, born July 2, 1930 in Mukacevo, Carpathian Ruthenia, Czechoslovakia (now Mukacheve, Ukraine), is an acting teacher and former motion picture and theater director.
Garfein survived imprisonment at Auschwitz and came to the US at the end of World War II. He took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator. He joined the Actors Studio and married his fellow...
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Jack Garfein, born July 2, 1930 in Mukacevo, Carpathian Ruthenia, Czechoslovakia (now Mukacheve, Ukraine), is an acting teacher and former motion picture and theater director.
Garfein survived imprisonment at Auschwitz and came to the US at the end of World War II. He took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator. He joined the Actors Studio and married his fellow student, actress Carroll Baker. Baker and Garfein had one daughter, actress Blanche Baker, and a son, Herschel Garfein.
Garfein's film directorial debut, The Strange One, is an ensemble piece set in a sadistic Southern military academy. It was released without an ending – leaving audiences bewildered and critics annoyed. A crucial scene involved black actors and, in the racially segregated America of 1957, the studio objected on the ground that to use black actors would mean commercial failure. Garfein refused to bow down and filmed the scene...
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