Reminiscences of Teresa Wright

New York, June 1959

On Live Television

I do think television is a great school for schooling you for being able to cope with almost anything in the way of doing a job, an acting job under any circumstances -- much better than the old stock used to be -- because you are under such tension, you do have to work in such a short time, and there is just that element of only this one time, and you've got to do the best job you can once, then it's all over.

I know when I went out to Hollywood, and had been doing pictures for quite a time and hoped to come back and do a play, and the found for personal reasons of my home and children that I just couldn't do it -- I began to feel that I'd never be able to do another stage play; that if I didn't get off in some stock company and just do something, that I'd never be able to play a line on stage again. Eventually, after maybe ten years out there, I got to do a small part in stock at La Jolla, and that was a little bit of help to me. But the real thing that got me back to the theatre was live television, because after you've done enough of that, you do build up a certain professional feeling of being able to cope with an acting job.

I really have been doing mainly television for the last four or five years. I've done very few films. Nothing interesting.

© 1959 Columbia University and the Oral History Research Office

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