Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was a prominent Greek-American director, producer, and writer, known for his influential contributions to both theater and film. Emigrating to the U.S. at age four, Kazan graduated from Williams College and studied drama at Yale University before making his mark in the Group Theatre. His Broadway career took off in the 1940s, and he gained recognition for directing acclaimed plays, particularly those by Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Kazan transitioned to film, debuting in 1945, and earned his first Academy Award for "Gentleman's Agreement" in 1947.
He co-founded the Actors Studio, where the "Method" acting style flourished, and directed iconic films such as "A Streetcar Named Desire," "On the Waterfront," and "East of Eden," helping to launch the careers of actors like Marlon Brando and James Dean. However, Kazan’s legacy is complicated by his testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, where he named fellow artists as communists, an act that sparked considerable controversy. Despite this, he received numerous accolades throughout his career, including three Tony Awards and a lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, reflecting his lasting impact on American cinema and theater.
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Elia Kazan
Film Director
- Born: September 7, 1909
- Birthplace: Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey)
- Died: September 28, 2003
- Place of death: New York, New York
During the 1950s, Elia Kazan was one of the most honored directors of the theater and of film, although he became controversial after his appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), when he provided the committee with names of suspected communist sympathizers in Hollywood.
When Elia Kazan was four years old, he and his Greek parents emigrated to the United States, settling in New York City. He graduated from Williams College and studied drama at Yale University. He joined the Group Theatre in 1932 and directed his first play in 1935; by the 1940s, Kazan had become an established director on Broadway. He made several documentaries during the 1930s and began directing feature films in 1945 with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. He won his first Academy Award for Gentleman’s Agreement in 1947. In that same year he cofounded the Actors Studio, the birthplace of the “Method” style of acting.
During the 1950s, Kazan's directing career flourished. After directing Panic in the Streets (1950), he adapted to the screen Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire, which he had directed in 1947 on Broadway. Kazan cast Marlon Brando, one of the Actors Studio’s most famous students, as the film’s lead, an appearance that made Brando a star. The next two films Kazan directed also featured Brando, Viva Zapata! (1952) and On the Waterfront (1954). The later film became an American classic and showcased more Actors Studio alumni: Eva Marie Saint, Rod Steiger, Karl Malden, and Lee J. Cobb.
Critics of On the Waterfront have written that it reflected a defense of Kazan’s own 1952 testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), in which he admitted his membership in the Communist Party but also named eight other members, an act many felt was a betrayal of friendship to save his own career. His experience before the HUAC highlights one of the most contentious episodes of the 1950s: the communist witch-hunts that devastated the entertainment world. Like many others in the business, Kazan found himself caught up in the communist hysteria generated by the Cold War. Many students of film eventually came to judge his performance before the committee as a lapse in moral judgment and to regard Kazan’s politics separately from his talent as a director, which remains highly regarded.
Kazan’s next film was a 1955 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden (1952), and it tapped into the youth rebellion movement of the mid-1950s. The director again starred a young actor, James Dean, who, like Brando, would become an idol of the period. Kazan followed this success with Baby Doll (1956), a film that made a star out of Carol Baker, and A Face in the Crowd (1957), a movie about the rapid rise of an unknown actor to television stardom.
Throughout the 1950s Kazan also continued to direct a series of Broadway plays, such as Williams’s Camino Real (pr. 1953) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Robert Anderson’s Tea and Sympathy (pr. 1953), and William Inge’s The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (pr. 1957).
Impact
Kazan’s impact on theater and American cinema of the 1950s was substantial. Although his film career ran from 1942 to 1976, his most notable successes came during the 1950s, when he was noted especially for his direction of the plays of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. However, his testimony before the HUAC plagued him for the rest of his life and colored his reputation within Hollywood. Despite his past, Kazan was honored time and again, not only for his film work but also for his theater direction, winning a total of three Tony Awards. In 1963, he was named codirector of the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. In 1983, he was given a Life Achievement award at the Kennedy Center, and in 1999, he accepted a lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
Bibliography
Kazan, Elia. Elia Kazan: A Life. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1988.
Michaels, Lloyd. Elia Kazan: A Guide to References and Resources. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1985.
Pauly, Thomas H. An American Odyssey: Elia Kazan and American Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983.