If the symbol was a hard nut for Stanislavski to crack, so is Lee Strasberg, symbolically and literally, a hard nut for anyone, friend or foe, to crack. Certainly it is easy to take an emotive view of him whether you admire him or not. In a most remarkably simple-minded way, his friends and disciples adore him while his enemies detest him. He is one of those figures who, like a supreme politician as opposed to an expert statesman, invites no middle ground, no neutral view. He suggests, as much by his nodding silences as by his little attentions, a classically formed love-hate relationship. But when the nut is there to be cracked, it almost always comes out melting love or towering hate, rarely both together.