Elia Kazan

Elia Kazan

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Kazan, Elia (1909–2003), director and actor. Born in Istanbul but raised in America, he attended Williams College and did graduate work at Yale before joining the Group Theatre as an apprentice. He appeared with the company as an actor in such plays as Men in White (1933), Waiting for Lefty (1935), Johnny Johnson (1936), Golden Boy (1937), and The Gentle People (1939). Kazan's first major directorial assignment was Casey Jones (1938), but it was his freshly imaginative staging of The Skin of Our Teeth (1942) that gave his career its major boost. Among his subsequent successes (some of which he co‐produced) were Harriet (1943), One Touch of Venus (1943), Deep Are the Roots (1945), All My Sons (1947), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), Tea and Sympathy (1953), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957), J. B. (1958), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and After the Fall (1964). He staged this last play when he assumed the co‐directorship (with Robert Whitehead) of the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center, but his tenure was not a success, so he withdrew from the theatre in general. Kazan was also a founding member of the Actors Studio. As his list of credits suggests, he was the most important American director of the late 1940s and the 1950s, bringing a vitality and poetic intensity to virtually all his efforts. John Mason Brown observed of his work on Streetcar, “He succeeds in combining stylization with realism. He is able to capture to the full the inner no less than the outer action of the text. He knows when to jab a climax, when to rely on mood, when to focus the attention pitilessly on the principals, or when to establish . . . the tenement atmosphere.”

Elia Kazan (born 1909) is known as the preeminent director of works by Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. Kazan emerged as the leading exponent of psychological realism via his film and stage productions of the 1940s and 1950s. His works reflect both social struggle and personal pain.

Elia Kazan was born into a large family of Anatolian Greeks near Istanbul in 1909. Kazan's family came to the United States when he was four, and he grew up in the slums and suburbs of New York City. He was a reclusive child who read compulsively, often as an escape from working in the family business, the rug trade. Determined not to follow in his father's footsteps, the young Elia attended Williams College from 1926 to 1930, majoring in English literature. It was here that he developed his initial interest in theater, writing a prize-winning paper on the audience's emotional response to drama.

Kazan considered a career in the film industry and decided that more theatrical training would help him achieve that goal. He applied to the Yale School of Drama and was accepted, despite his lack of practical experience. From 1930 to 1932 Kazan immersed himself in all aspects of dramatic production at Yale. He found that he shared with several others an interest in social drama and the establishment of a left-wing alternative to Broadway theater. Before completing his degree, Kazan left graduate school to apprentice with the Group Theatre, an offshoot of the Theatre Guild.

The Group Theatre, fashioned after Stanislavski's famous Moscow Art Theatre, was founded by Cheryl Crawford, Lee Strasberg, and Harold Clurman. The company's productions were attempts to combine social consciousness and artistic excellence. Kazan worked for the group in a variety of capacities - as press agent, stage manager, and actor. In 1934, with Art Smith, he recruited new playwrights, an effort that resulted in Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty. In its initial performance Kazan played Agate, who delivers the play's final appeal for a strike of cab drivers.

His next association was with the Workers' Laboratory Theatre (re-named the Theatre of Action in 1935), where he realized his ambition to direct, beginning with Peter Martin's The Young Go First The production, implementing Group Theatre techniques of improvisation and rehearsal exercises, featured Alfred Saxe. The Theatre of Action's film division also employed Kazan as a director of left-wing movies. This unit evolved into Frontier Films, known for its documentary realism and called by Variety the "Group Theatre of motion pictures." In 1936 Kazan returned to the group, which was now headed by Clurman only. He stayed until 1941, acting in Odets' Golden Boy and other works. The departure of Strasberg and Crawford also allowed him to direct.

In the early 1940s Kazan began to concentrate solely on directing, and in the first few years of the decade he directed a number of plays, most notably Thorton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, starring Tallulah Bankhead. This production earned Kazan the 1942 New York Drama Critics' Award for Best Director. By 1945 Kazan was receiving offers to direct from both Broadway and Hollywood. He continued to produce successes in both arenas, with the film A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and the play All My Sons, the latter by a then-unknown young playwright named Arthur Miller.

In 1947, with Cheryl Crawford and Robert Lewis, Kazan founded the Actors' Studio as a kind of revival of the Group Theatre, with a focus on actor training rather than producing plays. When Lee Strasberg was eventually recruited as the head of the studio, Kazan's position became that of an occasional instructor and patron.

Kazan returned to directing with the play with which he had the greatest personal relationship - Miller's Death of a Salesman, starring Lee J. Cobb. Believing that the protagonist, Willy Loman, was a man who was "socially mistaught," Kazan considered the play to be "a story of love - the end of tragic love" between father and son. He also noted that "this play has to be directed with COMPASSION." Jo Mielziner's famous setting for this production reflected the fragile physical and psychological realities of Willy Loman. The play was a tremendous success, ran more than 700 performances, and garnered the Pulitzer Prize among other major awards.

During the next few years, Kazan spent more of his time as a film director. Notable among this work are A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), On the Waterfront (1954), and East of Eden (1955). After the shooting of Streetcar Kazan was subpoenaed by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee to testify regarding any connection he had with members of the Communist Party working in the entertainment industry. Kazan, in a very painful position that would determine the future of his work, cooperated with the committee. He admitted that he had adopted communism for a time (which he had since renounced) and named several other party members with whom he had worked. He followed this up with newspaper ads, public addresses, and articles defending his testimony and anti-Communist position. Branded an "informer," Kazan found that a number of former associates would no longer work with him, including Harold Clurman and Arthur Miller.

Kazan threw himself back into his work, but his production of Flight Into Egypt closed on Broadway after only 46 performances. He then went to Germany to take over direction of Man on a Tightrope, but it also was a box-office failure. Kazan's next project was a Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' Camino Real, another financial disaster.

Kazan broke this string of disappointments with two Broadway successes, Robert Anderson's Tea and Sympathy and Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and the Oscar-winning film On the Waterfront, as well as East of Eden, which gave James Dean his first starring role.

After this successful comeback, Kazan established his own film company and produced Baby Doll (1956), A Face in the Crowd (1957), and several others, but they fared poorly. Kazan returned to the theater in 1957 to direct William Inge's Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Archibald MacLeish's J. B., and Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth.

In 1963 Kazan became co-director with Robert White-head of the Lincoln Center Repertory Theatre. The company's opening production was Arthur Miller's After the Fall, directed by Kazan. Miller and Kazan were re-united after a split of nearly a decade. The play was a success, but Kazan's subsequent production of The Changeling, just before the first anniversary of the Repertory Theatre, was a disastrous effort, and he resigned.

Kazan finally decided to produce his own screenplay, on which he had been working for several years. This was America, America, a fictionalized version of his own family's emigration to the United States. The Arrangement, his next film, was quasi-autobiographical and a financial disappointment.

Kazan then turned to writing novels (including The Assassins) and directed one film, The Last Tycoon, in 1976. His 1988 autobiography, Elia Kazan: a Life, touches on the entire fabric of people and productions in a fascinating life. In Kazan's mid-eighties, irony resonated as in a dark script when Arthur Miller's allegory of the Communist blacklisting era, The Crucible, was revived on the New York stage. At the same time, Kazan was denied a Life Achievement Award by the American film Institute because of his cooperation with the UnAmerican Activities Committee.

Further Reading

Thomas H. Pauly, An American Odyssey: Elia Kazan and American Culture (1983, paperback 1985); and in Michel Ciment, Kazan on Kazan (1974). Also see Kazan's 1988 autobiography, Elia Kazan: A Life.

Quotes:

"You've got to keep fighting; you've got to risk your life every six months to stay alive"

• Born: Sep 07, 1909 in Kadi-Kev, Constantinople, Turkey
• Died: Sep 28, 2003
• Occupation: Director, Actor, Writer
• Active: '40s-'60s, '80s
• Major Genres: Drama
• Career Highlights: East of Eden, On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire
• First Major Screen Credit: Blues in the Night (1941)

Biography

One of the most revered directors of his era, Elia Kazan was also one of the most -- arguably the most -- controversial. In addition to making his mark on film history with masterpieces such as A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and East of Eden, Kazan made a more dubious mark with his involvement in the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (HUAC)'s anti-Communist witchhunt of the 1950s; his decision to name alleged industry Communists earned him the ire of many of his peers, resulting in what was essentially his own Hollywood blacklisting. Thus, any biography of Kazan cannot be written without mention of his political involvement, in tandem with the many cinematic contributions he made throughout a long and illustrious career.

An Anatolian Greek, Kazan was born Elia Kazanjoglou in Istanbul (then Constantinople), Turkey, on September 7, 1909. In 1913, he emigrated with his parents to New York City, where his father sold rugs for a living. After an undergraduate education at Williams College and drama study at Yale, Kazan joined New York's left-leaning Group Theatre as an actor and assistant manager. During the 1930s, when Kazan was an active member, the theater was under the leadership of Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford, and Lee Strasberg. A focal point of New York artistic life during the decade, the Group Theatre also was a center for radical thought and activity; Kazan himself was a member of the Communist party from 1934 until 1936, when he quit the party in what he claimed was "disgust." He did continue to maintain close relations with many in and around the Stalinist movement, only terminating these relations in 1952 when he testified before HUAC.

In addition to acting in such plays as Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty and Golden Boy, Kazan began directing in 1935. He went on to become one of the leading figures on Broadway during the next decade, directing debut productions of Thornton Wilder's Skin of Our Teeth, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, and Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Hollywood took notice of the director's talent and in 1945 Kazan had a memorable directing debut with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Two years later, he found further success with Gentleman's Agreement, Sea of Grass, and Boomerang!. Although the latter two were considerable accomplishments, it was Gentleman's Agreement -- a bold exploration of anti-Semitism starring Gregory Peck and John Garfield -- that won Kazan his greatest accolades: the film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress for Celeste Holm, and Best Director for Kazan. The same year, he co-founded the famed Actor's Studio with Strasberg; the school would serve as a training ground for legions of famous actors, including Marlon Brando.

In 1949, the director found acclaim with the interracial love story Pinky, which received three Oscar nominations. Following 1950's Panic in the Streets, a tale of efforts to contain a New Orleans plague epidemic that mirrored the Communist scare taking hold in the U.S., Kazan scored his next major success with a film adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire. Featuring a sensuous, explosive Marlon Brando in the role of Stanley Kowalski, the film garnered 12 Oscar nominations (eventually winning four, including Best Actress for Vivien Leigh), and made a star of Brando. The following year, Kazan and Brando collaborated again on Viva Zapata!, a biopic of Mexican revolutionary leader and President Emiliano Zapata.

It was at this time that Kazan's offscreen life became irretrievably enmeshed with his cinematic work. In January 1952, the director was called before HUAC regarding his involvement with the Communist Party and the Group Theatre. During his hearing, he denied that the group was a "front" for Communist activity and that its three directors were Communists. He also refused to supply HUAC with the names of other Communists in the Group Theatre. However, it was not long before Kazan changed his testimony: in the spring of the same year, after being told by 20th Century Fox President Spyros P. Skouras that he would never work in Hollywood again if he refused to disclose names, Kazan once again testified before the committee. In his hearing, he supplied HUAC with several names, including those of writer Clifford Odets (who himself would later "name names"), Lillian Hellman, John Garfield, and Paula and Lee Strasberg.

After his testimony, Kazan was scorned by many of his peers. Arthur Miller, who had once been a close friend, spoke out against him in a letter to the New York Post. However, the attitude greeting the clash between Kazan's dubious offscreen activities and his inarguable onscreen talents was summed up by Brando, who was quoted as saying: "that was a terrible thing [Kazan] did in Washington. I'm not going to work with him anymore. But he's good for me. Maybe I'll work with him a couple more times, at least once." He did so, collaborating with the director on the 1954 classic On the Waterfront. The film -- which was considered by many viewers to be Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg's elaborate defense of an informer's rationale -- won almost universal acclaim, netting 12 Academy Award nominations and winning Best Picture, Best Actor for Brando, Best Supporting Actress for Eva Marie Saint, and another Best Director award for Kazan.

Kazan's next effort, East of Eden, was also greeted with enthusiasm, netting him another Oscar nomination for Best Director. Aside from the critical acclaim it garnered, the film was notable for being James Dean's first starring vehicle; in directing the actor, Kazan helped him produce the type of nuanced tough-sensitive performance that he famously elicited from other actors such as Brando, John Garfield, and Montgomery Clift. Such performances became known as hallmarks of Kazan's films.

In 1956, the director made Baby Doll, another Williams adaptation, which was memorable not so much for its quality (or lack thereof) as for the controversy its content inspired. Chock-full of steamy sexual suggestion and lots of thumb-sucking, the film was the first major motion picture ever to be publicly condemned by the Legion of Decency, the Catholic organization responsible for instituting the repressive Production Code. Somewhat less controversy surrounded Kazan's Wild River, a 1960 film starring Montgomery Clift, and the director found further success with his 1961 Splendor in the Grass. Starring Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty as ill-fated lovers, the film provided an interesting exploration of lust and insanity, and Wood was rewarded with a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her role as the girl who literally goes crazy over Beatty (screenwriter William Inge won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for his work on the film). Kazan next made America, America, a 1963 film based on the early life of his Greek uncle, and thereafter became largely absent from the film industry, occasionally making acting appearances.

In 1998, the 89-year-old director once again found himself at the center of controversy, this time due to the decision of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to present him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. A deep divide appeared in Hollywood, between those who supported the decision, maintaining that the director's body of work made him worthy, and those who didn't, maintaining that Kazan's offscreen activities amounted to a betrayal of his peers, thus making him an unfit award recipient. The Academy went ahead and presented the award regardless, honoring a director who, political actions aside, had made an indelible contribution to his chosen field. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

Elia Kazan: A Director's Journey Buy this Movie	Harold Clurman: A Life of Theatre Buy this Movie	The Arrangement Buy this Movie	City for Conquest Buy this Movie
The Last Tycoon Buy this Movie	The Visitors Buy this Movie	America, America Buy this Movie	Splendor in the Grass Buy this Movie

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