Hapgood, Elizabeth Reynolds

Mrs. Hapgood was born January 29, 1894. She graduated in two years from the three year program at L'Ecole Speciale Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes, the branch of the University of Paris that provided training for the consular and diplomatic service. At 21 she was appointed the first head of the newly created Russian department at Columbia University, a position she occupied until her marriage a year later. In 1916 she married Norman Hapgood, a prominent journalist and statesman. In 1918 she was appointed the first woman instructor and the first instructor of Russian at Dartmouth College.

Elizabeth Hapgood is best known as Konstantin Stanislavsky's translator. She met him in 1924 when her husband arranged for Stanislavsky and several senior members of the Moscow Art Theatre to tour the White House and meet President Coolidge. She translated for them, and Stanislavsky was so impressed that he asked her to translate My Life in Art . In 1928 Stanislavsky suffered a heart attack, and went to Germany to recuperate. Elizabeth Hapgood started a fund raising drive to enable him to publish his acting techniques so that he could financially afford to stay longer in the West and concentrate on preserving his acting techniques on paper. She also arranged publication contracts. He completed An Actor Prepares and An Actor Works on Himself: Part One before his death in 1938. After his death, the remainder of his writings were prepared for publication in the eight volumes that comprise his Complete Works .These works were published in segments throughout the fifties and sixties.

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