Elia Kazan - WikiHQ

Elias Kazantzoglou (, ; September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003), known as Elia Kazan ( ), was a Greek-American film and theatre director, producer, screenwriter and actor, described by The New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history".

His films focused on personal or social issues that particularly concerned him. Kazan writes, "I don't move unless I have some empathy with the basic theme." In his memoirs, Kazan writes that he and Odets had made a pact at the time to name each other in front of the committee. Kazan later justified his actions by saying he took "only the more tolerable of two alternatives that were either way painful and wrong". Nearly a half-century later, his 1952 HUAC testimony continued to cause controversy. When Kazan was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1999, dozens of actors chose not to applaud as 250 demonstrators picketed the event.

Kazan influenced the films of the 1950s and 1960s with his provocative, issue-driven subjects. Director Stanley Kubrick called him "without question, the best director we have in America, [and] capable of performing miracles with the actors he uses". Film author Ian Freer concludes that even "if his achievements are tainted by political controversy, the debt Hollywood—and actors everywhere—owes him is enormous". Orson Welles said "Kazan is a traitor ... [but] he is a very good director". In 2010, Martin Scorsese co-directed the documentary film A Letter to Elia as a personal tribute to Kazan.

Early life

Kazan was born Elias Kazantzoglou in the Chalcedon (now Kadıköy) district of Constantinople (now Istanbul), to Cappadocian Greek parents, originally from Kayseri in Anatolia. The family's surname comes from the Turkish Kazancı (), meaning "pot maker", and oğlu, a patronymic meaning "son [of]". Surnames like these were given to or taken by Jewish people. Most of the rest of the Elias’ family also have Biblical, Jewish names. He arrived in the United States with his parents, Athena () and George Kazantzoglou, on July 8, 1913. He was named after his paternal grandfather, Elias Kazantzoglou. His maternal grandfather was Isaak Shishmanoglou. Elia's brother, Avraam, was born in Berlin and later became a psychiatrist.

As a young boy, he was remembered as being shy, and his college classmates characterized him as more of a loner. Much of his early life was portrayed in his autobiographical book, America America, which he made into a 1963 film. In it, he describes his family as "alienated" from both their parents' Greek Orthodox values and from those of "mainstream America".

After attending public schools through high school, Kazan enrolled at Williams College in Massachusetts, where he helped pay his way by waiting tables and washing dishes; he still graduated cum laude. He also worked as a bartender at various fraternities but never joined one. While a student at Williams, he earned the nickname "Gadg" (for Gadget) because, he said, "I was small, compact, and handy to have around." The nickname was eventually taken up by his stage and film stars. In America America, Kazan recounts how and why his family left Turkey for the United States. Kazan observes that much of it came from stories that he heard as a young boy. He says during an interview that "it's all true: the wealth of the family was put on the back of a donkey, and my uncle, really still a boy, went to Istanbul ... to gradually bring the family there to escape the oppressive circumstances. ... It's also true that he lost the money on the way, and when he got there he swept rugs in a little store."

Kazan noted some of the controversial aspects of what he put in the film: "I used to say to myself when I was making the film that America was a dream of total freedom in all areas." Kazan writes of America America, "It's my favorite of all the films I've made, the first film that was entirely mine."

Career

1930s: Stage career

thumb|upright=1.1|Kazan (back row, right) with other members of the [[Group Theatre (New York)|Group Theatre in 1938]]

In 1932, after spending two years at the Yale University School of Drama, he moved to New York City to become a professional stage actor. He continued his professional studies at the Juilliard School, where he studied singing with Lucia Dunham. His first opportunity came with a small group of actors engaged in presenting plays containing "social commentary". They were called the Group Theatre, which showcased many lesser-known plays with deep social or political messages. After struggling to be accepted by them, he discovered his first strong sense of self in America within the "family of the Group Theatre, and more loosely in the radical social and cultural movements of the time", writes film author Joanna E. Rapf.

Kazan's first national success came as a New York theatrical director. Although initially he worked as an actor on stage, and told early in his acting career that he had no acting ability, he surprised many critics by becoming one of the Group's most capable actors. In 1935 he played the role of a strike-leading taxi driver in a drama by Clifford Odets, Waiting for Lefty, and his performance was called "dynamic", leading some to label him the "proletarian thunderbolt".

The Group Theatre's summer rehearsal headquarters was at Pine Brook Country Club, located in the countryside of Nichols, Connecticut, during the 1930s and early 1940s. Along with Kazan were numerous other artists, including Harry Morgan, John Garfield, Luise Rainer, Frances Farmer, Will Geer, Howard da Silva, Clifford Odets, Lee J. Cobb, and Irwin Shaw.

1940s: The Actors Studio, early films

In 1940, Kazan had a large supporting role as a flamboyantly dressed gangster in the boxing thriller City for Conquest starring James Cagney, Ann Sheridan, and Anthony Quinn. His stylishly distinctive but raffish clothing seems to have been copied by Frank Sinatra a decade and a half later, and his part is both sympathetic and extremely dramatic. In 1947, he founded the Actors Studio, a non-profit workshop, with actors Robert Lewis and Cheryl Crawford. In 1951, Lee Strasberg became its director after Kazan left for Hollywood to focus on his career as a movie director. It remained a non-profit enterprise. Strasberg introduced the "Method" to the Actors Studio, an umbrella term for a constellation of systems based on Konstantin Stanislavski's teachings. The "Method" school of acting became the predominant system of post-World War II Hollywood.

Among Strasberg's students were Montgomery Clift, Mildred Dunnock, Julie Harris, Karl Malden, Patricia Neal, Maureen Stapleton, Eli Wallach, and James Whitmore. Kazan directed two of the Studio's protégés, Karl Malden and Marlon Brando, in the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire. Although he was at the height of his stage success, Kazan turned to Hollywood to direct motion pictures. He first directed two short films, but his first feature film was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, one of his first attempts to film dramas focused on contemporary concerns, which later became his forte. Two years later, he directed Gentleman's Agreement, in which he tackled a seldom-discussed topic in the United States, antisemitism, for which he won his first Oscar for Best Director. In 1947, he directed the courtroom drama Boomerang! In 1949, he again tackled a controversial subject when he directed Pinky, which explored issues of racism in the United States, and was nominated for three Academy Awards.

1950s: Rise to prominence

In 1950, Kazan directed Panic in the Streets, starring Richard Widmark, a thriller shot on the streets of New Orleans. In that film, Kazan experimented with a documentary-style cinematography, which succeeded in "energizing" the action scenes.

Life magazine described On the Waterfront as the "most brutal movie of the year" but with "the year's tenderest love scenes", and stated that Saint was a "new discovery" in films. In its cover story about Saint, it speculated that it will probably be as Edie in On the Waterfront that she "starts her real trip to fame". The film used extensive on-location street scenes and waterfront shots and featured a notable score by composer Leonard Bernstein.

After the success of On the Waterfront, he went on to direct another screen adaptation of a John Steinbeck novel, East of Eden (1955). As director, Kazan again used another unknown actor, James Dean. Kazan had seen Dean on stage in New York and, after an audition, gave him the starring role along with an exclusive contract with Warner Bros. Dean flew back to Los Angeles with Kazan in 1954, the first time he had ever flown, bringing his clothes in a brown paper bag. The film's success introduced James Dean to the world and established him as a popular actor. He went on to star in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), directed by Kazan's friend Nicholas Ray, and then Giant (1956), directed by George Stevens.

Author Douglas Rathgeb recounts the difficulties Kazan had in turning Dean into a new star, noting how Dean was a controversial figure at Warner Bros. from the time he arrived. There were rumors that he "kept a loaded gun in his studio trailer; that he drove his motorcycle dangerously down studio streets or sound stages; that he had bizarre and unsavory friends." As a result, Kazan was forced to "baby-sit the young actor in side-by-side trailers", so he would not run away during production. Co-star Julie Harris worked overtime to quell Dean's panic attacks. In general, Dean was oblivious to Hollywood's methods, and Rathgeb notes that "his radical style did not mesh with Hollywood's corporate gears".

Dean was amazed at his own performance on screen when he later viewed a rough cut of the film. Kazan had invited director Nicholas Ray to a private showing, with Dean, as Ray was looking for someone to play the lead in Rebel Without a Cause. Ray watched Dean's powerful performance on the screen, but it seemed impossible that the same person was in the room. Ray felt Dean was shy and totally withdrawn, sitting hunched over. "Dean himself did not seem to believe it", notes Rathgeb. "He watched himself with an odd, almost adolescent fascination, as if he were admiring someone else." Biskind notes also that they "were wildly dissimilar—mentor vs. protégé, director vs. actor, immigrant outsider vs. native son. Kazan was armed with the confidence born of age and success, while Beatty was virtually aflame with the arrogance of youth." In 1961, after a "series of bad films, her career was already in decline", notes Rathgeb. and The Arrangement which was based on his 1967 novel of the same name. America, America earned Kazan his final Oscars nomination for Best Director.

1970s: Later work

Kazan made two final movies in the 1970s starting with The Visitors in 1972, written by his eldest son Chris Kazan and shot entirely on 16mm film. The low-budget film only features five characters and was shot completely on Kazan's country home working with four crew members, and explores the Vietnam War and brutality during wartime. He continued his pattern of making movies with more ambiguous stories and boundaries in his last film in 1976, The Last Tycoon, based on the unfinished novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Featuring an ensemble cast including Robert De Niro, Robert Mitchum, Jack Nicholson, Tony Curtis, and Jeanne Moreau, Kazan has described his interpretation of The Last Tycoon as his own views of Hollywood.

Collaborators

Kazan was noted for his close collaboration with screenwriters. On Broadway, he worked with Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and William Inge; in film, he worked again with Willams (A Streetcar Named Desire and Baby Doll), Inge (Splendor in the Grass), Budd Schulberg (On the Waterfront and A Face in the Crowd), John Steinbeck (Viva Zapata!), and Harold Pinter (The Last Tycoon). As an instrumental figure in the careers of many of the best writers of his time, "he always treated them and their work with the utmost respect."

Among Kazan's other films were Panic in the Streets (1950), East of Eden (1955), Baby Doll (1956), Wild River (1960), and The Last Tycoon (1976). Williams became one of Kazan's closest and most loyal friends, and Kazan often pulled Williams out of "creative slumps" by redirecting his focus with new ideas. In 1959, in a letter to Kazan, he writes, "Some day you will know how much I value the great things you did with my work, how you lifted it above its measure by your great gift." As a result of his efforts, he also gave actors such as Lee Remick, Jo Van Fleet, Warren Beatty, Andy Griffith, Eva Marie Saint, James Dean and Jack Palance their first major movie roles. He explained to director and producer George Stevens Jr. that he felt that "big stars are barely trained or not very well trained. They also have bad habits... they're not pliable anymore." Kazan also describes how and why he gets to know his actors on a personal level:

In order to get quality acting from Andy Griffith, in his first screen appearance, and achieve what Schickel calls "an astonishing movie debut", Actress Terry Moore calls Kazan her "best friend", and notes that "he made you feel better than you thought you could be. I never had another director that ever touched him. I was spoiled for life". Marlon Brando, in his autobiography, goes into detail about the influence Kazan had on his acting:

HUAC testimony

Kazan testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1952 during the midst of the Red Scare that journalist Michael Mills calls "arguably the most controversial period in Hollywood history". When Kazan was in his mid-20s in the Depression years 1934 to 1936, he had been a member of the Communist Party USA.

In April 1952, the HUAC called on Kazan, under oath, to identify Communists from that period 16 years earlier. Kazan initially refused to provide names, but eventually named eight former Group Theatre members who he said had been Communists: Clifford Odets, J. Edward Bromberg, Lewis Leverett, Morris Carnovsky, Phoebe Brand, Tony Kraber, Ted Wellman, and Paula Miller (who later married Lee Strasberg). He testified that Odets quit the party at the same time he did. Kazan alleged that all the persons named were already known to the HUAC, although this has been contested. He later acknowledged that he received a letter detailing how his naming of Art Smith damaged the actor's career. Kazan's naming names cost him many friends within the film industry, including playwright Arthur Miller, although Kazan notes the two did work together again.

In his book How We Forgot the Cold War (2012), historian Jon Wiener wrote: "Lots of people named names, but Kazan went further than any of them, when, two days later [after his April 1952 testimony], he took out an ad in the New York Times explaining his reasons for naming names and urging others to follow his example." In his large, defiant ad entitled "A STATEMENT by Elia Kazan", the director briefly chronicled his 1934–1936 experiences in the Communist Party, and then he wrote: Kazan added that his time in the Party "left me with the passionate conviction that we must never let the Communists get away with the pretense that they stand for the very things which they kill in their own countries." Decades later in his memoirs, he still struck a defiant tone when describing his "warrior pleasure at withstanding his 'enemies,' who judged him for giving names to the HUAC". He also insisted that despite the snubs he received, he felt no lingering guilt: "There's a normal sadness about hurting people, but I'd rather hurt them a little than hurt myself a lot." Stevens speculates on why he, Beatty, and many others in the audience chose to stand and applaud: