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How could such a contradiction of qualities be brought together in one presence on the stage? Julie found the answer in a remarkable statue of Joan by an unknown medieval sculptor -"the figure of a sturdy, stocky girl," as Director Joseph Anthony describes it, "with thick hands, almost like a man's, laid together heavily in prayer. Her head is slightly raised -but demanding, not beseeching, God to hear. Her shoulders are hunched in heavy, earthbound determination. She has a natural concentration, like an animal's. Eye and body and brain are united without strain in simple existence."
A Great Mountain. To Julie, this was Joan; but to Anouilh, Joan was "the lark" -a spirit of "unbodied joy" that sings down out of unseen height upon the desperate world and lifts the human heart up to its hope. Julie set grimly to work, 15 hours a day, to reconcile these opposites in her performance. At the first run-through she had such power that a critical audience of theatrical professionals was sobbing unashamedly at the final line. At the Boston opening the critics cried "tremendous," but one of them fairly noted that she was sometimes "a little childish." Under the strain of the huge part her voice gave out, and one night before the show she broke down and wept in a panic. "I feel as if I'm climbing a great mountain," she told a friend, "and I'm bruised and hurt. In my part a simple country girl has such faith that she can move mountains. I think if only I had that faith I could do the part."
The Quality of Radiance. No matter how hard she tried, Julie could not make her Joan as good as she wanted it to be -or, indeed, as good as most of the critics said it was. It said nothing particularly new about human life; but it did say new and vital things about Julie Harris and about her warm young art.
It said that her essential quality as a performer, as a person, is radiance. Her emotions do not flame out in all directions at her audience. The fire draws inward to a center, and there burns in a still whiteness not unlike the brightness that the mystics live.
In this sense, Julie's emotional power is the opposite of the kind most strong emotional actors have. It is intensive, not extensive. From Booth to Brando, audiences have loved the actor who can spill his guts in their laps. Julie's instinct is not toward dissolution, but solution. In her search for clarity she has developed a more conscious craft than most of her contemporaries have. "When Julie is at the height of her most emotional scene," says Fellow Actor Karloff, "she is always in complete control of herself, just as a fine pianist is always master of his music." Says Anthony: "The most talented of our young actors are all unpredictable stuff. They don't know where their inspiration comes from when it comes, or where it goes to when it goes. The source can dry up and they are dead. But Julie knows. She works with herself as a conscious artist works with his materials. She's the only one of them who is sure to grow, who is sure to be a star for the rest of her life."