In an appreciation of Elizabeth Taylor at salon.com, on the occasion of her death, Camille Paglia had some valuable things to say about screen acting:

. . . both Ava[Gardner] and Elizabeth [Taylor] at the beginning of
their careers didn't have command of basic technical skills,
particularly dialogue.  That's what people laud Meryl Streep for —
“Oh, her accents are so great; oh, her articulation is so perfect.” 
But she doesn't really live in her characters, she merely costumes
them.  Meryl Streep is always doing drag.  But it's so superficial.  It
all comes from the brain, not the heart or body.  Richard Burton, who
was supposed to become the next great Shakespearean actor after
Laurence Olivier, used to say how much he had learned from Elizabeth
about how to work with the camera.  Cinematic acting is extremely
understated.  The slightest little flick of an eyelid says an enormous
amount, and that's where Elizabeth Taylor was far superior to Meryl
Streep.  Streep is always cranking it and cranking it, working it and
working it, demanding that the audience bow down and “See what I”m
going through!  See what I'm doing for you!”  Streep is an intelligent,
good actress, but she doesn't come anywhere near Elizabeth Taylor on
the screen.  Because she wasn't a trained stage actress like Streep,
Taylor has vocal weaknesses — at high pitch, she can get a bit
screechy — which is perfect for Martha in “Who's Afraid of Virginia
Woolf” but not so good for Cleopatra.

Vocal technique can be learned, but the kind of instinctive knowledge about how to present oneself on screen, which Taylor had, seems to be innate.  If you look at early performances in bit roles by Grace Kelly, or at Audrey Hepburn's screen tests for Roman Holiday, you will note deficiencies in vocal technique which brand the actors as inexperienced in their craft, but you just don't care.  They are already stars.  John Ford saw it when he cast Kelly in Mogambo (below), her first important leading role in a film.  William Wyler saw it when he cast Hepburn in Roman Holiday (above), her first role of any kind in a film.

Those two wily old veterans knew that what these actors had was magic, the kind that can't be acquired by any amount of training or experience.

In the studio era, new female acting prospects were put immediately into vocal training classes.  The techniques they learned were simple.  Young, inexperienced female actors have a tendency to speak in too high a register and don't know how to project when speaking softly, tending to swallow their words when trying to convey intimacy.  Lowering the voice and developing the capacity to project an intimate tone are tricks which almost anyone can learn.

I'm working my way through the big DVD box set of Elia Kazan's films, and also through his autobiography.  In both, I'm up to Splendor In the Grass.  In his book, Kazan doesn't have a lot to say about the making of the film, beyond reporting the gossipy stuff, as he always does — he was cheating on his wife with the film's second lead Barbara Loden, Natalie Wood was cheating on her husband Robert Wagner with Warren Beatty.  Yawn.

What he does say about William Inge's original screenplay, though, is fascinating.  “His story had the one essential, an excellent flow of incident to a true conclusion.”  He says that the film was easy to direct — “the scenes Bill wrote were the simplest I'd ever done.  People came together, spoke to each other, a point was made, an issue decided, quietly and meaningfully.  Then they parted and the story went on.  That was Bill's talent.”

In a way, that was Kazan's talent, too — investing each scene with meaning, establishing a narrative momentum, keeping the thing moving, emotionally speaking.  It's why Kazan's films are always entertaining, even when they aren't great.  He developed a good eye for images, though he was rarely capable of creating passages of visual lyricism that lift the spirit.  Even his great films rarely arrive at cathartic climaxes which knit the whole narrative together — one tends to remember moments between the characters rather than the whole sweep of the story.

Kazan seems to see Inge's talent as limited, that of a mere storyteller, yet he admits that the last reel of Splendor In the Grass, the climax, is his favorite of all his last reels.  And he's right to feel that way.  Splendor In the Grass, thanks to Inge's skill as a storyteller, and with some crucial help from Wordsworth, is the most profoundly satisfying of all Kazan's films, because of that ending.

Inge (above) did not have the reputation of Tennessee Williams, who could write dazzling, unforgettable endings that packed a punch, but often in a synthetic way, relying on a great exit line, for example, which seems to say more than it really does.  The ending of Kazan's film of A Streetcar Named Desire doesn't break my heart — its poetic, tragic quality feels too neat.  The ending of Splendor In the Grass does break my heart.  It seems far truer, though certainly less grand and eloquent, than anything Williams ever wrote.

Williams was a better writer than Inge, but Inge was a better storyteller.  We don't often think of making a distinction like this with the work of good dramatists, but it's one that sometimes can be made, and it's one well worth pondering.