Elia Kazan

Elia Kazan (; born Elias Kazantzoglou ( el, Ηλίας Καζαντζόγλου); September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003) was an 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".

Born in Constantinople (now Istanbul), to Cappadocian Greek parents, his family came to the United States in 1913. After attending Williams College and then the Yale School of Drama, he acted professionally for eight years, later joining the Group Theatre in 1932, and co-founded the Actors Studio in 1947. With Robert Lewis and Cheryl Crawford, his actors' studio introduced " Method Acting" under the direction of Lee Strasberg. Kazan acted in a few films, including '' City for Conquest'' (1940).

His films were concerned with personal or social issues of special concern to him. Kazan writes, "I don't move unless I have some empathy with the basic theme." His first such "issue" film was '' Gentleman's Agreement'' (1947), with Gregory Peck, which dealt with antisemitism in America. It received eight Oscar nominations and three wins, including Kazan's first for Best Director. It was followed by ''Pinky'' (1949), one of the first films in mainstream Hollywood to address racial prejudice against African Americans. '' A Streetcar Named Desire'' (1951), an adaptation of the stage play which he had also directed, received twelve Oscar nominations, winning four, and was Marlon Brando's breakthrough role. Three years later, he directed Brando again in '' On the Waterfront'', a film about union corruption on the New York harbor waterfront. It also received 12 Oscar nominations, winning eight. In 1955, he directed John Steinbeck's '' East of Eden'', which introduced James Dean to movie audiences.

A turning point in Kazan's career came with his testimony as a witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1952 at the time of the Hollywood blacklist, which brought him strong negative reactions from many friends and colleagues. His testimony helped end the careers of former acting colleagues Morris Carnovsky and Art Smith, along with the work of playwright Clifford Odets. Kazan and Odets had made a pact to name each other in front of the committee. Kazan later justified his act by saying he took "only the more tolerable of two alternatives that were either way painful and wrong." Nearly a half-century later, his anti-Communist 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, ndcapable of performing miracles with the actors he uses."Ciment, Michel. ''Kubrick: The Definitive Edition'', Faber and Faber, Inc. (1980; 1999)''International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers – 2: Directors'', St. James Press (1997) pp. 519–522 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."Freer, Ian. ''Movie Makers: 50 Iconic Directors'', Quercus Publishing (London) (2009) pp. 84–85 In 2010, Martin Scorsese co-directed the documentary film '' A Letter to Elia'' as a personal tribute to Kazan."Scorsese Film Defends Anti-Communist Informer Kazan"
ABC News, September 4, 2010
''Variety'', September 4, 2010

Early life

Elia Kazan was born in the Kadıköy district of Constantinople (now Istanbul), to Cappadocian Greek parents, originally from Kayseri in Anatolia. He arrived in the United States with his parents, George and Athena Kazantzoglou (''née'' Shishmanoglou), on July 8, 1913. He was named after his paternal grandfather, Elia Kazantzoglou. His maternal grandfather was Isaak Shishmanoglou. Elia's brother, Avraam, was born in Berlin and later became a psychiatrist.

Kazan was raised in the Greek Orthodox Church and attended Greek Orthodox services every Sunday, where he had to stand for several hours with his father. His mother read the Bible but did not go to church. When Kazan was about eight years old, the family moved to New Rochelle, New York, and his father sent him to a Roman Catholic catechism school because there was no Orthodox church nearby.

As a young boy, he was remembered as being shy, and his college classmates described him as more of a loner. Much of his early life was portrayed in his autobiographical book, '' America America'', which he made into a film in 1963. In it, he describes his family as "alienated" from both their parents' Greek Orthodox values and from those of mainstream America. His mother's family were cotton merchants who imported cotton from England and sold it wholesale. His father had become a rug merchant after immigrating to the United States and expected that his son would go into the same business.

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'' he tells how, and why, his family left Turkey and moved to America. Kazan notes 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. He wrote "I used to say to myself when I was making the film that America was a dream of total freedom in all areas." To make his point, the character who portrays Kazan's uncle Avraam kisses the ground when he gets through customs, while the Statue of Liberty and the American flag are in the background. Kazan had considered whether that kind of scene might be too much for American audiences:

Before undertaking the film, Kazan wanted to confirm many of the details about his family's background. At one point, he sat his parents down and recorded their answers to his questions. He remembers eventually asking his father a "deeper question: 'Why America? What were you hoping for? His mother gave him the answer, however: "A.E. brought us here." Kazan states that "A.E. was my uncle Avraam Elia, the one who left the Anatolian village with the donkey. At twenty-eight, somehow—this was the wonder—he made his way to New York. He sent home money and in time brought my father over. Father sent for my mother and my baby brother and me when I was four."

Kazan wrote of the film, "It's my favorite of all the films I've made; the first film that was entirely mine."

Career

1930s: Stage career

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.

In Kazan's autobiography, he writes of the "lasting impact on him of the Group", noting in particular, Lee Strasberg and Harold Clurman as "father figures", along with his close friendship with playwright Clifford Odets. Kazan, during an interview with Michel Ciment, describes the Group:

Kazan, in his autobiography, also describes Strasberg as a vital leader of the group:

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 describe him as the "proletarian thunderbolt".

Among the themes that would run through all of his work were "personal alienation and an outrage over social injustice", writes film critic William Baer. Other critics have likewise noted his "strong commitment to the social and social psychological—rather than the purely political—implications of drama".

By the mid-1930s, when he was 26, he began directing a number of the Group Theatre's plays, including Robert Ardrey's well-known play '' Thunder Rock''. In 1942 he achieved his first notable success by directing a play by Thornton Wilder, '' The Skin of Our Teeth'', starring Tallulah Bankhead and Fredric March. The play, though controversial, was a critical and commercial success and won Wilder a Pulitzer Prize. Kazan won the New York Drama Critics Award for Best Director and Bankhead for best actress. Kazan then went on to direct ''Death of a Salesman'' by Arthur Miller, and then directed ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' by Tennessee Williams, both of which were also successful. Kazan's wife, Molly Thacher, the reader for the Group, discovered Williams and awarded him a "prize that launched his career".

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: 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 systemizations of 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''.

Though at the height of his stage success, Kazan turned to Hollywood as a director of motion pictures. He first directed two short films, but his first feature film was '' A Tree Grows in Brooklyn'' (1945), 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'', where he tackled a seldom-discussed topic in America, antisemitism, for which he won his first Oscar as Best Director. In 1947, he directed the courtroom drama ''Boomerang!''. In 1949 he again dealt with a controversial subject when he directed ''Pinky'', which dealt with issues of racism in America, and was nominated for three Academy Awards.

1950s: Rise to prominence

In 1950 he directed '' Panic in the Streets'', starring Richard Widmark, in a thriller shot on the streets of New Orleans