LV’s master thespian helps would-be stars get their acts together

David Renzi

Monday, March 25, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

The emphasis was wrong. The inflection was off. Say it like this, Joseph Bernard suggested:

"Listen to those craaaaaazy bastards."

That's the way Henry Fonda said it. Craaaaaazy, extended and languid. Not crazy, loud and emphatic.

Bernard would know. He heard Jane and Peter's pop say it that way for two years, when both had roles in the Broadway production of "Mister Roberts."

"Try it like that," he said, seated in the audience of an empty playhouse.

Standing onstage, the guy setting back acting 100 years obeyed.

"Listen to those craaaaaazy ..."

"LOUDUH!" (That's Brooklyn for "louder.")

"Listen to tho ..."

"LOUDUH!"

Take 3, the bumpkin finally got it.

"THAT'S IT!"

What you have just witnessed is one moment on one night at the Joseph Bernard Acting Studio. It's a typical sight: student exposing, teacher editing.

In this instance it was the last line of "Mister Roberts," one of the five pieces that would comprise his latest showcase -- quarterly performances in which his students (a mix of seasoned pros and terrified novices) recite monologues and act out scenes from plays and films before an audience.

These have been Bernard's calling cards since he arrived in Las Vegas in 1979, fresh off an eight-year run as executive director of the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute, Hollywood.

Getting students isn't difficult. Didn't you know? Everyone wants to be an actor.

"A lot of people want to make a career of it," Bernard says. "From the time I opened until now, I've had 2,000 or 3,000 students."

Initially, they weren't what he anticipated. When he was running the Strasberg Institute, Bernard says, he'd often get long-distance calls from people asking about the possibility of a satellite campus opening in Las Vegas.

"Mr. Strasberg wasn't interested, but when I came out I thought I'd take a look," he says. "I thought, 'There are so many singers and dancers, they've got to be interested in acting.'"

If he could get 10 dancers or singers from each show, he reasoned, he could form a respectable company.

"Well, it didn't turn out that way," Bernard says. "I got mostly dealers, cocktail waitresses and bellhops. They were all interested in acting."

Most, of course, continued to be dealers, cocktail waitresses and bellhops -- as most of his students continue to be whatever it is they are. The reason: They've come to acting for the wrong reason. The desire is not in their hearts, but their heads.

"What I mean by that is, in our heads we like to do a lot of things," Bernard says. "They want to be a big star, but they don't do anything about it. They don't make a commitment to the art of the actor. They make a commitment to the glamour of the actor. The art of the actor is too difficult.

"Most of the actors in Hollywood are committed to the art of acting. Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, they never thought of being stars. That happened by accident. A guy like Dustin Hoffman, he was a shrimp. Nobody would cast him. Mike Nichols cast him in 'The Graduate' and suddenly he became a star."

Bernard never worried about becoming a star. All he ever wanted to do was act. And that is all he has ever done, "as far back as I can remember." Which isn't far these days, Bernard says. He was lying in bed with the wife just the other night when he saw himself in an episode of "Police Story," and "I didn't remember (doing it) till I saw it."

As he was saying, as far back as he can remember, Joseph Bernard has been an actor.

"I would call myself a show-off when I was kid," he says. "I'd memorize (dialogue) and do things at family gatherings. I always liked it so much. It seems I always wanted it."

Bernard received a scholarship in 1941 to study at the New School in New York City with famed drama teacher Stella Adler. He studied there for about a year -- Marlon Brando was one of his classmates -- before he received a draft notice in 1942 to report to the Army and the European theater -- not exactly the kind he had in mind.

"I landed on Normandy eight days after D-Day," says Bernard, who served from 1942-45. "We called it D-Day plus eight."

When he returned to New York, Bernard, still in uniform, went to see Adler, who was doing a Broadway play. He bought a ticket and went backstage to see her.

"The first thing she said was, 'How was the war?'"

Bernard returned to the New School and captured a role in a play called "Winter Soldiers." Next came "Skipper Next to God," with Strasberg directing and John Garfield starring, then "Mister Roberts" in 1948. Soon the plays and parts began to run together. The number had reached 28 by the time he left for California, in 1961, to appear in "Judgment at Nuremberg."

The Oscar-nominated film starred Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, Maximilian Schell (who won a Best Actor Oscar), Montgomery Clift and William Shatner, and won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (by Abby Mann, from his original television script).

Bernard had appeared in Mann's "Exodus," a Broadway play, and impressed him into a writing a part for him in "Judgment." He played Widmark's assistant.

"I was treated royally," he says. "(Director) Stanley Kramer gave me a dressing room off and on the sound stage."

As far as Bernard is concerned, the best route to Hollywood is through Broadway.

"Well, because you're going out there to work instead of going out there looking for work. There's such a big difference."

After "Judgment at Nuremberg" he stayed in California, acting in television and motion pictures throughout the '60s and '70s. He played the father of a girl murdered by Jack the Ripper on the original "Star Trek" series and appeared in "The Untouchables," "The Twilight Zone," "Mission: Impossible," "The Rookies," "The Big Valley," "I Spy," "It Takes a Thief," "Here Come the Brides" and "The Flying Nun," which he also directed.

Bernard really liked Sally Field. "She was wonderful," he says. "I'll tell you something: The bigger they are, the nicer they are."

One of the reasons he left LA and came to Las Vegas was a physical ailment. After a double hip replacement, he could no longer do the things he once did as an actor. Something as basic as running from a building and into a car became difficult, if not impossible.

"If you can't do it, you can't work," Bernard says. Teaching, which he'd always done, was a logical transition.

"If I have one thing as a teacher," he says, "I have patience, which I think is terribly important. That's one good quality I have, and I'm not ashamed to say it."

What he leaves unsaid about himself is spoken by others -- and there are plenty willing to say nice things about this plump, gentle man with thick glasses who speaks with his hands, wobbles on two bum wheels and offers photographers and reporters coffee and cake at his apartment.

This from Diane Lynch, who studied with Bernard for a year in 1993 and landed a feature role in "Sugar Babies" at the Sheraton Desert Inn last year:

"He gets good insight into your personality, and he realizes what's good material for you -- material that's going to push you a little bit. He's always watching. He's studying you as much as you're studying your part. He picks up all your quirks and personality traits, and when he assigns you a showcase he knows what's going to show you off."

Lynch is certain her monologue from "Tribute" in one of Bernard's showcases got her the role of Soubrette in "Sugar Babies."

"Rather than do it straight, because of the freedom of Joe's class we were allowed to try some extreme things," she says. "So I took her way out wacky. We were laughing and kidding around, and Joe said, 'No, keep it.' And we kept it. And she (Hillary, a prostitute) was much bigger than life. When we did it, it made the final scene in the showcase and people were laughing their asses off."

Bernard encourages his students to stretch out, Lynch says.

"I notice a lot of people will hold back. Joe's not going to bite your head off. If he doesn't like it, he'll tell you. He's not going to ridicule you for going out on a limb. Sometimes you come up with a jewel and he can help shape and polish it from there.

"I've had people look at that piece from 'Tribute' and say, 'My God, that's the prostitute? I've never seen it like that.' That's what you're going for in acting."

And this from Ray Favero, a working actor who studied with Bernard in 1982 and Stella Adler in 1986, and has appeared in more than 40 local theater company productions:

"He inspired me to act and to explore the other side of myself, which I think has benefitted me tremendously."

Favero praises Bernard's teaching method of "creating reality where there is no reality" for preparing him to solve acting problems.

"The Actors Repertory Theatre did 'Lips Together, Teeth Apart,' and I was in that play," he says. "Joe came to see it and I told him afterwards, 'Everything you required in your workshops was required in that play: taking a shower on stage, eating, fighting. ... Everything that I learned in your class came to fruition.'"

Cameron Milzer came to Las Vegas a dancer but wanted to keep her hand in theater, which had she studied in college.

"His name kept coming up as the one to study with," she says. "I had gone to several other people in town, and Joe was the one to go with. I just felt he had the most depth because of his extensive background in New York theater and his work with Lee Strasberg."

Bernard, Milzer says, "gave me the confidence that I lacked to go out there and to go eventually to LA and try my hand (she appeared with Melanie Griffith in the unreleased "Cherry 2000"). He was so supportive, not just academically and psychologically, but he also put me in contact (with directors, agents and casting directors). He was there for me across the board."

Bernard responds to all of this with a shrug, as if he's powerless to do anything about it.

"It's my whole life," he says. "I haven't done anything else. I was very lucky that I was able to make a living from being an actor. I just love it. I love everything about it. I hate to sound corny, but I love the smell of a theater, the way a theater looks, the makeup, costumes and scenery.

"And I love when you hear the buzz of the audience before you go on and then they quiet down, and you go out and do something and there's a gasp. Then you know you've got them."

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