My grandfather used to tell me stories about how his family immigrated from Russia to the United States. The majority of them were involved in theatre, the circus, and ballet. Growing up, I watched my great great uncle, Luther Adler in The Desert Fox (1951), The Twilight Zone, and heard about him starring on Broadway. My great great Aunt, is Stella Adler. I know that she was an acting teacher and was the founder of a very respected acting studio in NYC. I heard stories about how she trained Marlon Brando and other famous stars. She died 4 years before I was born. Any books or sources or general knowledge about the Adlers is deeply appreciated.
My doctoral dissertation in theatre is on Adler (and her contemporaries Lee Strasberg and Sanford Meisner), so I can answer a fair amount here (though I let my flair expire). I'll go through a few points about Adler and her family here, and provide a reading list inasmuch as I can.
Stella and Luther Adler were among the most experienced actors to join the Group Theatre in New York when it came together in 1930 and 31. The Group was founded by Lee Strasberg, Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford in an attempt to breathe new life into American theatre - particularly to bring to it something of the work that Konstantin Stanislavsky was doing in Russia/USSR. The Group was somewhere in between a commune and theatre company that only lasted about a decade, and was virtually always short on money and/or riven with internal squabbles, but they largely succeeded in their main goal. They were immediately recognized for the depth of their acting and attention to detail. Lee Strasberg (founder of the Actor's Studio) coined the term "method" to describe their approach to acting, and continued to (problematically) use the term to describe the work of anyone who had been associated with him or the group. Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner, two other Group members, would also go on to become some of the top US acting teachers of the Twentieth Century. The entire tradition of "method" acting springs from this company, even though the specifics of the work are often misunderstood and misapplied.
It's worth noting that Stella Adler was arguably the prime mover behind the eventual split of the group. When they began, Lee Strasberg taught his version of Stanislavsky's work that he had studied with a couple of Stanislavsky's student. Adler found some points in the work limiting and problematic, and the two butted heads in rehearsal. When she (thanks to her then-partner Harold Clurman) met Stanislavsky himself in 1934 in Paris, she blurted out, "I loved the theatre until you came along and now I hate it!" Stanislavsky suggested that she work with him to see what was working for her and what was not, and he coached her for a few weeks that summer. She was the only member of the Group to work directly with Stanislavsky. When she returned to the Group in the fall, she gave a day-long talk about why she had learned that Strasberg was misunderstanding some concepts from Stanislavsky and was still using some things that Stanislavsky had abandoned. In particular, the practice of Affective Memory - recreating a personal memory of a real emotional event in order to recreate the emotion itself (think of the trope of "thinking about my dead grandmother to cry") - had been abandoned as problematic. Lee Strasberg's response, even though he had positioned himself as the leading authority on Stanislavsky (and continued to do so until he died in 1989), stuck to his guns, and the group quickly separated into factions that believed Strasberg, and those who started to work with Adler.
At the beginning of the Group, Stella and Luther Adler were probably the most experienced actors of the bunch, primarily because they had grown up in the Yiddish theatre of New York. Their father, Jacob Adler, was an international superstar of the Yiddish theatre, and had put them both on stage from a very early age. Jacob Adler emigrated from Odessa (in the Ukraine today) before Stella was born, though she always loved to refer to herself as "a Jewish broad from Odessa." Stella Adler worshipped her father throughout her life, still referring to him reverentially as "Adler" late in her own life. When Stella Adler met Stanislavsky, he was in part invested in her work because he was familiar with Jacob Adler. He was incredibly famous within the New York Jewish community as well as within the Yiddish theatre of the rest of the US and Europe.
Feel free to ask followup questions and I will do my best.
Some books for you:
Biographies/Autobiographies
Adler, Jacob. A Life on the Stage.
Ochoa, Rachel. Stella! Mother of Modern Acting"
Clurman, Harold. The Fervent Years (about Clurman's years with the Group)
Other books about the Group Theatre:
Smith, Wendy. Real Life Drama
Krich Chinoy, Helen. The Group Theatre: Passion, Politics and Performance in the Depression Era.
Works on/from Adler on acting:
Adler, Stella. Stella Adler: The Art of Acting (first published as *The Technique of Acting).
Rotte, Joanna. Acting with Adler
Documentary about/featuring Adler:
Stella Adler, Awake and Dream!