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Elia Kazan

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Elia Kazan
Born
Elias Kazanjoglou
Years active1934-1976
Spouse(s)Molly Day Thatcher (1932-1963)
Barbara Loden (1967-1980)
Frances Rudges (1982-2003)

Elia Kazan, (Greek: Ηλίας Καζάν, September 7 1909 – September 28 2003) was a Greek-American award-winning film and theatre director, film and theatrical producer, screenwriter, novelist and cofounder of the influential Actors Studio in New York in 1947. Kazan was a three-time Academy Award winner, a five-time Tony Award winner, a four-time Golden Globes winner as well as a recipient of numerous awards and nominations in other prestigious festivals as the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival.

Biography

Early life

Kazan was born Elias Kazanjoglou (İlyas Kazancıoğlu in Turkish) in the capital city of the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey) to a Greek family.[1][2] Interestingly, his family name 'Kazanjoglou' (an alternate spelling is Kazantzoglou) is actually Turkish meaning "The son of a cauldron maker", where the root word 'kazan' means cauldron or boiler. It was and still is common to find people of Greek, Jewish, Armenian, and Kurdish lineage with Turkish family names or where the root words in the names are uniquely Turkish. His mother born in Kayseri, Turkey.

Suffering the prejudice of being Greek from the newly formed government of the Young Turks, his family emigrated to the United States in 1913 and settled in New York City, where his father, George Kazanjoglu, became a rug merchant. Kazan's father expected that his son would go into the family business, but his mother, Athena (née Sismanoglou),[3] encouraged Kazan to make his own decisions.

Kazan attended public schools in New York City and New Rochelle, New York. After graduating from Williams College, Massachusetts, Kazan studied at Yale University's School of Drama. In the 1930s, Kazan acted with New York's Group Theatre, alongside (among others) Lee Strasberg, Clifford Odets, and Stella and Luther Adler. During this period, Kazan earned his nickname 'Gadg,' short for Gadget - he never learned to love the name. For about 19 months in 1934-36, Kazan was a member of a secret Communist cell.[1]

Career

Theatrical

He became one of the most visible members of the New York elite. Kazan's theater credits included acting in Men in White, Waiting for Lefty, Johnny Johnson, Golden Boy, and the 1940 revival of Liliom, and directing A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), two of the plays that made Tennessee Williams a theatrical and literary force, and All My Sons (1947) and Death of a Salesman, (1949) the plays which did much the same for Arthur Miller. He received three Tony Awards, winning for All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and J.B.

Film director

Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Kazan's history as a film director is equally as noteworthy, if not more impressive. He won two Academy Awards for Best Director, for Gentleman's Agreement (1947) and On the Waterfront (1954). He elicited remarkable performances from actors such as Marlon Brando and Oscar winners Vivien Leigh, Karl Malden and Kim Hunter in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) (the film version of Tennessee Williams' play), James Dean and Oscar winner Jo Van Fleet in East of Eden (adapted from the John Steinbeck novel), and Andy Griffith in A Face in the Crowd.

Before he began directing films, however, he occasionally played supporting roles in them, one of those films being the 1941 Blues in the Night.

HUAC controversy

Kazan's later career was marked by his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during the postwar "Red Scare", in which he "named names."

Kazan had briefly been a member of the Communist Party in his youth, when working as part of a theater troupe, the Group Theater, in the 1930s. At the time, the Group Theater included several theater professionals who had Communist or other left-wing sympathies. A committed Socialist, Kazan felt betrayed by Stalin's atrocities and the ideological rigidity of Communists in general. He was personally offended when Party functionaries tried to intervene in the artistic decisions of his theater group.

At first, although Kazan agreed to testify before HUAC, and readily admitted his former membership in the Communist Party, he refused to name others who had been members. But Kazan felt increasing pressure from Hollywood studio management to cooperate with the Committee and provided the names of former Party members or those connected with Party activities, in order to preserve his career.

He knew that the names were already known to the Committee, since HUAC had already obtained copies of Communist Party membership archives, and that his testimony would be used primarily to increase media attention. After a delay, during which he asked for and received permission to release the names of former members of the Party, he was recalled to testify, and at the second examination Kazan provided testimony to the Committee.

The 'naming of names' by some in Hollywood was used as a tactic by HUAC to validate the Committee's actions and galvanize reaction against those who were merely friends or relations of the accused. One of those named as being a Party member was the wife of noted actor John Garfield, with whom Kazan had worked in the Group Theatre troupe, and who was being investigated by HUAC. HUAC failed to uncover any evidence of Communist Party membership by Garfield himself, but Garfield was nonetheless subpoenaed.

As Kazan later explained, he felt that it was in the best interest of the country and his own liberal beliefs to cooperate with HUAC's anti-communist efforts in order to counter Communists in Hollywood who were co-opting the liberal agenda. Kazan felt no allegiance to Communism, and had been disillusioned by the Soviet Union's brutal record of murder and repression during Stalin's Purges, and massacres in Poland during World War II. He still resented the Party's attempt to force their agenda on him during his theatre group days. American playwrights Lillian Hellman and Arthur Miller publicly and bitterly disagreed with Kazan's reasoning. Though Kazan testified to HUAC under threat of ostracism and blacklisting by the Hollywood studios, he was in turn shunned and ostracized by many of his former friends. Always a confirmed liberal and progressive, even socialist in his political outlook, Kazan now found himself hated by the left, yet mistrusted by many on the right.

Some have perceived elements of Kazan's own reaction to his critics in the film On the Waterfront, in which the protagonist courageously agrees to testify against his former mentor, a corrupt dockland union boss. Miller in his turn responded with the play A View from the Bridge, also set among dock-workers, in which his main character informs on two illegal immigrants based on ignoble, self-serving motivations.

Personal life

Elia Kazan was married three times. His first wife was playwright Molly Day Thacher. They were married from 1932 until her death in 1963; this marriage produced two daughters and two sons. His second marriage, to the actress Barbara Loden, lasted from 1969 until her death in 1980, and produced one son. Lastly, he was married to Frances Rudge from 1982 until his death in 2003 at the age of 91. He also had a long-term affair with Constance Dowling during his first marriage, which ended when Dowling went to Hollywood in 1944 to make Up in Arms under contract to Samuel Goldwyn.

The life of a Greek-American

In 1967, Kazan published The Arrangement, a novel about Evangelos Arness, an emotionally-battered middle-aged Greek-American living a double life in California as both an advertising executive, under the name 'Eddie Andreson', and a serious, muckraking magazine writer under the name 'Evans Arness'. The character's 'arrangement' of his life takes a huge toll on him, eventually leading him to a suicide attempt and a nervous breakdown. Critics saw parallels to Kazan's own life, including that the character had briefly been a member of the Communist Party prior to World War II, the character's Anatolian Greek background and the anglicisation of his birth name. Kazan disclaimed any autobiographical elements and stated that the novel was a work of fiction, nothing more or less. It served as the basis for his 1969 film of the same name.

Awards and nominations

In 1999, Kazan received an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement. He was accompanied by Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro who warned the audience sotto voce not to misbehave. Robert De Niro himself had appeared in a film about the Hollywood Red Scare. While many in Hollywood who had experienced the Red Scare felt that enough time had passed that it was appropriate to bury the hatchet and recognize Kazan's great artistic accomplishments, others did not. Some Hollywood celebrities expressed outrage, and former blacklisted writer Abraham Polonsky stated that he wished Kazan would be shot onstage.[4]

Filmography

Year Film Oscar nominations Oscar wins
1937 The People of the Cumberland
1945 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 2 1
Watchtower Over Tomorrow
1947 The Sea of Grass
Boomerang! 1
Gentleman's Agreement 8 3
1949 Pinky 3
1950 Panic in the Streets 1 1
1951 A Streetcar Named Desire 12 4
1952 Viva Zapata! 5 1
1953 Man on a Tightrope
1954 On the Waterfront 12 8
1955 East of Eden 4 1
1956 Baby Doll 4
1957 A Face in the Crowd
1960 Wild River
1961 Splendor in the Grass 2 1
1963 America, America 4 1
1969 The Arrangement
1972 The Visitors
1976 The Last Tycoon 1

Bibliography

  • Kazan, Elia (1951). The Arrangement: A Novel. New York: Stein and Day. OCLC 36500300.
  • Kazan, Elia (1962). America America. New York: Popular Library. OCLC 21378773.
  • Kazan, Elia (1972). The Assassins. London: Collins. ISBN 0002210355.
  • Kazan, Elia (1973). Kazan on Kazan. London: Secker & Warburg. OCLC 221452156.
  • Kazan, Elia (1988). Elia Kazan: A Life. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0394559533.
  • Kazan, Elia (1975). The Understudy. New York: Stein and Day. OCLC 9666336.
  • Kazan, Elia (1977). A Kazan Reader. New York: Stein and Day. ISBN 0812821939.
  • Kazan, Elia (1978). Acts of Love. New York: Warner. ISBN 0446855537.
  • Kazan, Elia (1982). The Anatolian. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0394525604.
  • Kazan, Elia (1999). The Master Director Discusses His Films. New York: Newmarket Press. ISBN 1557043388. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Elia Kazan (1909-2003) - Elia Kazanjoglous". Pegasos. 2003. Retrieved 2008-05-28.
  2. ^ "Biography of Elia Kazan". The Kennedy Center. 2008. Retrieved 2008-05-28.
  3. ^ http://www.filmreference.com/film/31/Elia-Kazan.html
  4. ^ "Some Rude to Kazan". CyberAlert. 4 (52). Media Research Center. 22 March 1999. Retrieved 2008-05-28.

Further reading

  • Schickel, Richard (2005). Elia Kazan: A Biography. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0060195797.
  • Jones, David, Richard (1986). Great directors at work : Stanislavsky, Brecht, Kazan, Brook. Berkeley ; London: University of California Press. ISBN 0520046013.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Murphy, Brenda (2006). Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan : a collaboration in the theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521035244 (pbk). {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)

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