Elia Kazan: A Biography

by Richard Schickel

Book Overview

From the late forties through the sixties, Elia Kazan was the most important and influential director in America, and the only one who managed simultaneously to dominate both theater and film. In that role he manifestly shaped the conception and writing, as well as the presentation, of many of the period's iconic works, reshaping the values of the stage and bringing a new realism and intensity of performance to the screen. His various achievements...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060955120
• ISBN13: 9780060955120
• Release Date: November 2006
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

So Much and Not Enough at the same time!

Elia Kazan is a director's director and an actor's director. He was partly responsible for actors like Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Eva Marie Saint, Kim Hunter, and Vivien Leigh earning Oscars for their roles. He was partly responsible for introducing the world to Marlon Brando. Of course, this book is interesting and well-researched by the author about the director's controversial honorary academy award despite his past behavior during the McCarthy hearings and the Communist witch-hunt. Whatever happened in the past happened and some were not willing to applaud or thank the man who directed blue collar classics like "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "On the Waterfront," to be in the league of Shakespeare tragedies. The book is more about his professional and personal approach to directing whether stage or film. I don't recall him directing television. When Elia directed Streetcar, he directed the most perfect film adaptation of a stage play. He helped maintain most of the cast and brought in Oscar winner Vivien Leigh to play unstable Blanche Dubois who was unstable herself unfortunately off-screen. Most of us will never see the actual stage production and I think he would encourage stage productions to be recorded for legacy of the involved cast and crew members. Elia was a team player and he worked very hard with various types of characters onscreen and offscreen with partners like Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford. We can still use Elia Kazan today. There is nobody close to him today.

A Defining Moment, a Black Cloud and a Legacy Obscured

It is amazing how one decision can discolor the image of a man who should be otherwise revered for his pioneering and enduring role in American theater and film during the middle of the 20th century. Time Magazine film critic Richard Schickel, a notable film historian in his own right, gives an insightful, unblemished account of Elia Kazan's career, which gives the man his professional due and also provides much-needed context for Kazan's perceived act of betrayal. The deep shadow that hangs over his legacy is related to just one's day testimony before the communist-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952. At the US Senate hearing, Kazan identified 16 names and two others more directly connected to the Communist party. Not only did he disclose their identities, but taking a defensive posture, he also took out an ad in the New York Times defending what he did. From that point forward, Kazan became known infamously as an informer. Moreover, his most enduring classic, "On the Waterfront", specifically Terry's decision to become a government informant, came to be viewed by some critics as a veiled defense of his naming names. Stepping back though, Schickel recognizes Kazan for the major creative force he was, well worthy of the praise heaped upon him during his lifetime. The journalist delves into how Kazan helped mold promising young actors like Marlon Brando and James Dean into legends and establish the careers of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, all doing their best work under his aegis. Kazan's best work is a slate of unsurpassable movies and plays - the stage versions of Miller's "All My Sons" and "Death of a Salesman", the stage and film versions of Williams's "A Streetcar Named Desire" and transcendent films that were either socially conscious (anti-Semitism in "Gentleman's Agreement", racism in "Pinky", labor unions in "On the Waterfront") or expansions of literary works (Steinbeck's "East of Eden", William Inge's "Splendor in the Grass"). He was able to elicit memorable performances from diverse performers ranging from Tallulah Bankhead (Thornton Wilder's "The Skin of Our Teeth") to Andy Griffith ("A Face in the Crowd") to Natalie Wood ("Splendor in the Grass"). This is where Schickel writes lucidly about Kazan's emphasis on the essential rightness of his aesthetic, which seamlessly led characters' psychological events into personal behavior. Yet, for all his accomplishments, Kazan is defined most by what he said that day and destroying the careers of those he named, including actor John Garfield who died of a heart attack the year after the testimony. Within personal and historical context, Schickel makes Kazan's thinking seem reasonable given his subject's brief membership in the Communist Party during his youth when Kazan worked with a radical theater troupe in the 1930s. As a committed liberal, Kazan felt betrayed by the atrocities of Stalin and his followers' ideological rigidity. With his liberal beliefs fortified

I've got something better for you to read....

I apologize to Mr. Schickel. I didn't read his book. Perhaps it's very good but that's for others to decide. I am however familiar with Elia Kazan's AUTOBIOGRAPHY having read the first 200 pages of this massive work (I am in the process of reading it), written in 1988. It's a masterpiece, as good as any piece of fiction or non-fiction you're likely to come across. I mean 'any'. Kazan does as good a job as anyone at being honestly self-reflective, and his writing style is crisp, clear, fresh and insightful. Powerful. Surprising. You can learn alot about human nature and desire from this book. Its emotions and insights into character ring true...some of it is disturbing, some sad, much of it funny... often riveting. Read it. You won't be disappointed.

The artist as a court-jester or play lefty for me.

The well researchedand terribly honest bio KAZAN by SCHICKEL opens old wounds that haven't healed yet. Stalin was a monster that admired Hitler and they signed a pact in 37 that Hitler violated. (Dominique di Santi's book Les staliniens should be another eyeopener about 20Mil.people killed in goulags)It is obvious again reading KAZAN that the soulless HUAC and their revolting red scare should have spared the artists. Since the artists write or film the human condition they are "par la force des choses" LEFTIES. Let us reconcile Elia Kazan and Abe Polonsky and salute both as great artists, one a realist and the other one a utopist. Knowing how hard it is to write a thought-provoking bio from my late husband's Samuel Fuller's auto-bio A THIRD FACE, my tale of writing, fighting and filmmaking, I recommend SCHICKEL's KAZAN as a great read not only for filmlovers, but for everyone interested in history and the world we live in.

A Director's Director On Stage and Screen

It can be argued that Elia Kazan is the greatest director of all time for his landmark successes both on Broadway ("Death of a Salesmen" and "A Streetcar Named Desire) and in Hollywood ("East of Eden" and "On the Waterfront"). Over a 17 year span covering 1946-1963, he was nominated for 7 Tony Awards (winning thrice) and 7 Oscar nominations (winning twice). Even more impressive, his actors earned 21 Oscar nominations and nine wins under his direction. Only William Wyler directed more Oscar-winning performances (admittedly, directing Charleston Heston to an Oscar for "Ben-Hur" is pretty impressive). Richard Schickel, film critic for Time magazine, had the difficult task of picking and choosing which ascepts of Mr. Kazan's life to focus, which stories to tell and which stories to omit. This biography easily could have been double its 500+ pages. Mr. Schickel covers his immigrant childhood and college days rather quickly (a pity when one realizes that the overriding theme of many of his plays and movies was being an outsider, like his immigrant family). His interest is in Mr. Kazan's craft and he does credit to his artistic creations. He covers Mr. Kazan's controversial testimony of naming names during the McCarthy era of the 1950's and the equally controversial Honorary Oscar awarded to him in 1999. For a film buff, "Elia Kazan: A Biography" would make a great gift.