#edit: checked the amazon preview and that paragraph doesn't have the new errors so maybe the kobo version just got messed up? hmmm.

[emailsfromanactor]

The official new edition of Letters from an Actor has arrived and I'm working on a post about how my version is better, but for now, I say, this is interesting:

Some thirty years ago, Richardson was rehearsing a play with a man whom I shall call Cyril Sunt. The latter was the last of the old-time directors on the British side of the Atlantic. By “old-time,” I mean abusive, cruel, sarcastic, and contemptuous of actors. He had (and has) his American equivalents, of course, but let them be nameless here.

In my physical copy, printed in 1984, and also in the PDF I worked from, scanned from a copy printed in the '60s (I think), that passage goes like this:

Some thirty years ago, Richardson was rehearsing a play directed by Basil Dean. The latter was the last of the old-time directors on the British side of the Atlantic. By “old-time,” I mean abusive, cruel, sarcastic, and contemptuous of actors. His American equivalent, albeit far younger, would be Jed Harris. Mr. Harris, however, has changed. So far as I know, Mr. Dean never did. 

The PDF also had this author's note pasted onto the title page:

Since publication of LETTERS FROM AN ACTOR, Mr Basil Dean and Sir Ralph Richardson have strongly denied that there is any truth in the anecdote concerning them which appears on pages 51 and 52 of this book. I told it in good faith but I am now quite certain that it has no foundation in fact.

The new edition doesn't seem to have the note - looking for it was how I discovered the weird changes. Did Redfield himself make the changes? If so, why weren't they in the 1984 edition? In the afterword (very interesting, I'd post it but I think I've committed enough copyright infringement), Redfield's son Adam says there are a few changes he (Adam) would have liked to make, but didn't. He didn't even change the part where his dad got his age wrong. So. What's with Cyril Sunt and his nameless American equivalents?