Larissa Ely

Larissa Ely studied acting in Hollywood, California in 1970 with both Jack Waltzer and Charles Conrad. She was the acting "partner" of Tex Allen, SAG Actor, in 1970, in Charles Conrad's Actor Classes. Charles Eric Conrad used an acting teaching technique in which male and female partners of roughly the same age would be assigned to perform fragments of stage plays before the entire actor class of about 20 actors. Each couple would have a chance to present a prepared scene assigned by Charles Conrad, and Conrad would critique the prepared scene (e.g. from then recent plays such as "Lovers And Other Strangers" [1969] stage play which also became a famous movie produced in 1970). The partnered actor-students would meet outside of the classroom prior to the scheduled classroom presentation, and rehearse/ practice the scene fragment (usually lasting about 5 minutes total) in order to get the lines, agree on the manner of presentation, and become comfortable acting with each other. Partners often remained paired for repeated scenes over the course of the class (for which Charles Eric Conrad charged $40 per month for once weekly 3 hour classroom meetings always held in the early evenings at his studio in Hollywood, California). At the time, Jeff Corey and Charles Conrad (who had come from NYC where he had been Sandy Meizner's "Neightborhood Playhouse" chief assistant) were the two main and most prestigious acting teachers based Hollywood (NYC teachers of fame such as Stella Adler would provide one day workshops each year in Hollywood, but were not based there...just visiting). Larissa Ely (later changed her name to "Larissa Cartier") was a gifted actress and quite ambitious to learn actor work from many teachers. She had natural charisma which resulted in Russ Meyer selecting her for his famous 1970 feature movie in which Larissa Ely got star billing. Larissa Ely was quite beautiful to see and behold, and was a voluptuous, "blooming" young adult woman well suited to the "sexual revolution" theme movies produced frequently in the late 1960's and early 1970's when the "sexual revolution" was an important part of the "counter culture revolution" then popular and trendy, but which ended by the middle 1970's.