James Lipton

James Lipton
James Lipton, April 2007
Born	(1926-09-19) September 19, 1926 Detroit, Michigan, USA
Occupation(s)	Poet, talk show host, writer, teacher, actor, producer
Spouse(s)	Nina Foch (1954-1959) Kedaki Turner (1970–present)
Parent(s)	Lawrence Lipton Betty Weinberg

James Lipton (born September 19, 1926) is an American writer, poet, composer, actor and dean emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School in New York City. He is the executive producer, writer and host of the Bravo cable television series, Inside the Actors Studio, which debuted in 1994. He is also a pilot and devoted member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

Life and career

Lipton was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Betty (née Weinberg), a teacher, and journalist Lawrence Lipton. Noted as the author of the popular Beat Generation chronicle, The Holy Barbarians, Lawrence Lipton was a graphic designer, a columnist for the Jewish Daily Forward and a publicity director for a movie theater.

In 1940s Detroit, Lipton portrayed Dan Reid on radio's The Lone Ranger. Moving to New York, he initially studied to be a lawyer, and turned to acting only to finance his education. He wrote for several soap operas, Another World, The Edge of Night, Guiding Light, Return to Peyton Place and Capitol, as well as acted for over ten years on Guiding Light. He portrayed a shipping clerk turned gang member in Joseph Strick's 1953 film, The Big Break, a crime drama.

Lipton was the book writer and lyricist for the short-lived 1967 Broadway musical Sherry!, based on the Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman play The Man Who Came to Dinner. The score and orchestrations were lost for over 30 years, and the original cast was never recorded. In 2003, a studio cast recording (with Nathan Lane, Bernadette Peters, Carol Burnett, Tommy Tune, Michael Myers and others) renewed interest in the show.

In 1968, his book, An Exaltation of Larks, was first published, and has been in print and revised several times since then, including a 1993 Penguin books edition. The book is a collection of "terms of venery" (a variety of collective noun), both real and created by Lipton himself. The dust jacket biography for the first edition of Exaltation claimed his activities included fencing, swimming, and equestrian pursuits and that he had written two Broadway productions. He speaks French fluently.

In 1983, Lipton published his novel, Mirrors, about dancers' lives. He later wrote and produced it as a TV movie. In television, Lipton has produced some two dozen specials including: twelve Bob Hope Birthday Specials; The Road to China, an NBC entertainment special produced in China; and the first televised presidential inaugural gala (for Jimmy Carter).

Inside the Actors Studio

In the early 1990s, Lipton sought to create a three year educational program for actors that would be a distillation of what he had learned in the twelve years of his own intensive studies. In 1994, he arranged for the Actors Studio—the home base of "method acting" in the USA for some sixty years now—to join with New York City's New School University and form the Actors Studio Drama School, a formal degree-granting program at the graduate level.

Lipton created a project within the Actors Studio drama school: a non-credit class called Inside the Actors Studio (1994), where successful and accomplished actors, directors and writers would be interviewed and would answer questions from acting students. These sessions are also taped and broadcast on television for the general public to see. The episodes are viewed in 89,000,000 homes throughout 125 countries. Lipton himself hosts the show and conducts the main interview.

During an interview with the writer, Daniel Simone, when asked if he had anticipated the sudden success, Mr. Lipton's eyes widened, and his deep trained voice boomed, "Not in my wildest imagination." Then he supplemented, "It was a joint arduous effort involving many people. At a point and time, I had three lives. I was the dean of the Actors Studio, the writer of the series, its host and executive producer. I maintained a preposterous sixteen hour schedule." (Refer to Dan's Paper issue of February 8, 2008).

Personal life

Between 1954 and 1959, Lipton was married to actress Nina Foch. He has been married to Kedakai Turner, a model and real estate broker, since 1970. Lipton is an atheist.

See also

• Bernard Pivot

External links

• Bravo biography
• James Lipton at IMDb