[5] In 1944, Vivian caught the eye of John Golden, a theater producer who was auditioning aspiring stage actors.
[8] Still performing under the name Firko, she made her Broadway debut under Elia Kazan's direction in 1948, in the Actors Studio production of Bessie Breuer's Sundown Beach.
[9] The decision to employ her husband Nathan Schwalb's given name as Firko's stage name appears to have taken place sometime between casting and opening night in the 1949 production of Montserrat, Lillian Hellman's adaptation of the Emmanuel Roblès play.
[3] Vivian Nathan served on the Actor Studio's board of directors until 1999, alongside Ellen Burstyn, Lee Grant, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, and Estelle Parsons.
[3] In 1951, Nathan was cast in the original Broadway opening of Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo, co-starring together with Martin Balsam, Maureen Stapleton, and Eli Wallach.
Roughly one week after that play's Broadway opening, entertainment writer Ed Sullivan devoted several paragraphs of his syndicated column to a profile of Nathan, which concluded with the actress stating: I think that whatever small success I've had is because of my great good fortune in having lived among the old Polish men and women of peasant stock.