Universal Film
Issue 10 - 2013
www.ufmag.biz 66
oppressed people, America is still a dream.
Before undertaking the film, Kazan wanted to confirm many of the de-tails 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 hop-ing 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 don-key. At twenty-eight, somehow—
this was the wonder—he made his way to New York. He sent home money and in time brought my fa-ther over. Fafa-ther sent for my mofa-ther and my baby brother and me when I was four.
In 1932, after spending two years at the Yale University School of Drama, he moved to New York City to become a professional stage ac-tor. His first opportunity came with a small group of actors engaged in presenting plays containing “social commentary”. They were called the Group Theater, 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 “fam-ily of the Group Theater, and more loosely in the radical social and cul-tural movements of the time,” writes film author Joanna E. Rapf.
In Kazan’s autobiography, Kazan 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:
The Group was the best thing pro-fessionally that ever happened to me. I met two wonderful men. Lee Strasberg and Harold Clurman, both of whom were around thirty years old. They were magnetic, fearless leaders. During the summer I was an apprentice, they were entertaining in a Jewish summer camp... At the end of the summer they said to me:
“You may have talent for something, but it’s certainly not acting.”
Kazan, in his autobiography, also
de-scribes Strasberg as a vital leader of the group: He carried with him the aura of a prophet, a magician, a witch doctor, a psychoanalyst, and a feared father of a Jewish home.... He was the force that held the thirty-odd members of the theatre together, and made them permanent.
Kazan’s first national success came as New York theatrical director. Al-though 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 driv-er in a drama by Clifford Odets, Wait-ing 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 “per-sonal alienation and an outrage over social injustice”, writes film critic William Baer. Other critics have like-wise noted his “strong commitment to the social and social psychologi-cal—rather than the purely politi-cal—implications of drama”.
By the mid-1930s, when he was 26, he began directing a number of the Group Theater’s plays. In 1942 he achieved his first notable success by directing a Pulitzer prize-winning play by Thornton Wilder, The Skin of Our Teeth, starring Montgomery Clift and Tallulah Bankhead. He then went on to direct Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, and then directed A Streetcar Named Desire, writ-ten by Tennessee Williams. Kazan’s wife, Molly Thacher, the reader for the Group, discovered Williams and awarded him a “prize that launched his career.”
The Group Theater’s summer re-hearsal headquarters was at Pine Brook Country Club, located in the countryside of Nichols, Connecti-cut, during the 1930s and early 1940s. Along with Kazan were nu-merous other artists: Harry Morgan, John Garfield, Luise Rainer, Frances Farmer, Will Geer, Howard Da Silva, Clifford Odets, Lee J. Cobb and Irwin Shaw.
In 1947, he founded the Actors Stu-dio, a non-profit workshop, with actors Robert Lewis and Cheryl
Crawford. It soon became famous for promoting “Method,” a style of theater and acting involving “total immersion of actor into character,”
writes film author Ian Freer. Accord-ing to Rapf, “the Studio rode the bandwagon of method fashionabil-ity, and Kazan was its clear star and attraction.” Within a short time, as word spread, “everyone wanted to be at the Studio—not least because of the chance of being in a Kazan production in one medium or an-other.”
Among its first students were Mar-lon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Julie Harris, Eli Wallach, Karl Malden, Pa-tricia Neal, Mildred Dunnock, James Whitmore, and Maureen Stapleton.
In 1951, Lee Strasberg became its director, and it remained a non-prof-it enterprise, eventually considered
“the nation’s most prestigious acting school,” according to film historian James Lipton.
Student James Dean, in a letter home to his parents, writes that Ac-tors Studio was “the greatest school of the theatre, the best thing that can happen to an actor”. Playwright Tennessee Williams said of its ac-tors: “They act from the inside out.
They communicate emotions they really feel. They give you a sense of life.” Contemporary directors like Sidney Lumet, a former student, have intentionally used actors such as Al Pacino, a former student skilled in “Method”.
Kazan directed one of the Studio’s brightest young talents, Marlon Brando, in the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire. He cast him again in the film version in 1951, which made Brando a star and won 4 Oscars, and was nominated for 12.
Among the other Broadway plays he directed were “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, “Sweet Bird of Youth”, “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” and
“Tea and Sympathy”, This led some, such as theater critic Eric Bentley, to write that “the work of Elia Kazan means more to the American theater than that of any current writer.” Film critic David Richard Jones adds that Kazan, during the 1940s and 1950s, was one of America’s foremost Stan-islavskians, and “influenced thou-sands of contemporaries” in the
Issue 10 - 2013
Universal Film
theatre, film, and the Actors Studio that he helped found.
At the height of his stage success, Kazan then turned to Hollywood where he soon demonstrated equal skill as director of motion pictures.
He first directed two short films, but his first feature film was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), one his first attempts to film dramas focused on contemporary concerns, which became his forte. Two years later he directed Gentleman’s Agree-ment, where he tackled a seldom-discussed topic in America, anti-semitism, for which he won his first Oscar as Best Director. In 1949 he again dealt with controversial sub-ject when he directed Pinky, which dealt with issues of racism in Amer-ica, and was nominated for 3 Acad-emy Awards.
In 1947, he directed the courtroom drama Boomerang!, and in 1950 he directed Panic in the Streets, starring Richard Widmark, in a thriller shot on the streets of New Orleans. In that film, Kazan experimented with a documentary style of cinematog-raphy, which succeeded in “energiz-ing” the action scenes. He won the Venice Film Festival, International Award as director, and the film also won two Academy Awards. Kazan had requested that Zero Mostel also act in the film, despite Mostel be-ing “blacklisted” as a result of HUAC testimony a few years earlier. Kazan writes of his decision:
In 1951, after introducing and direct-ing one of the Actors Studio’s bright-est young talents, Marlon Brando, in the stage version, he went on to cast him in film version of the play, A Streetcar Named Desire, which made Brando a star and won 4 Oscars, be-ing nominated for 12. The film popu-larized Method acting with Brando’s role as the earthy and unmannered Stanley Kowalski opposite the clas-sical dignity of British actress, Vivien Leigh, as his sister-in-law. Despite the plaudits, the film was consid-ered a step back cinematically with the feel of filmed theater, however Kazan did at first use a more open setting but then felt compelled to revert to the stage atmosphere to re-main true to the script. He explains:
Birthday party for Kazan during film-ing of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) On “Streetcar” we worked
very hard to open it up, and then went back to the play because we’d lost all the compression. In the play, these people were trapped in a room with each other. What I actu-ally did was to make the set smaller.
As the story progressed ... the set got smaller and smaller.” Brando’s role as a virtually unknown actor at age 27, would “catapult him to star-dom.” His next film was Viva Zapata!
(1952) which also starred Marlon Brando playing the role of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. The film added real atmosphere with the use of location shots and strong character accents. Kazan called this his “first real film” because of those factors.
In 1954 he again used Brando as co-star in On the Waterfront. As a continuation of the socially relevant themes that he developed in New York, the film exposed corruption within New York’s longshoremen’s union. It too was nominated for 12 Academy Awards, but won 8, includ-ing Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor, for Marlon Brando. To some critics, Brando gives the “best performance in American film his-tory,” playing an ex-boxer, Terry Mal-loy, who is persuaded by a priest to inform on corrupt unions. Surpris-ingly, Brando writes that he was ac-tually disappointed with his acting upon first watching the screening:
On the day Gadg showed me the completed picture,
I was so depressed by my perfor-mance I got up and left the screen-ing room. I thought I was a huge failure. I was simply embarrassed for myself. ... I am indebted to him for all that I learned. He was a
won-derful teacher. Actor Karl Malden be-came an early student at the Group Theater in 1937, where he first be-gan acting under Kazan’s direction.
Kazan would play a “prominent role in Malden’s stage and film career”, including convincing him to change his name from Mladen Sekulovich.
He played a drunken sailor in Ka-zan’s “Truckline Cafe,” which also included a young Marlon Brando. In 1947, he co-starred in the stage play
“All My Sons,” written by Arthur Mill-er, with Kazan directing, and began being recognized as a serious actor.
However, his first major stage suc-cess was his role as an awkward suit-or of Jessica Tandy in the Broadway production of A Streetcar Named De-sire, which also helped make Brando a star on stage.
After two years in the role, he played the same part in the 1951 film ver-sion, this time playing opposite Vivien Leigh, where he won his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Ka-zan next directed him in On the Wa-terfront (1954), where he was also nominated as Best Supporting Actor for his role as a sympathetic priest.
In 1956, Kazan directed him in a starring role in Baby Doll, alongside Carroll Baker and Eli Wallach, a con-troversial story written by Tennessee Williams, and he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor.
Malden remained friends with Kazan despite his unpopular appearance at the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952. Many mutual
“friends who turned on Kazan also refused to speak to Malden.” He fur-thered his support in 1999, when, as a member of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, he proposed that they give Kazan an honorary Oscar for “lifetime achievement”. Mal-den’s proposal was bold, as film fes-tivals, critics associations, and the American Film Institute, had already refused to bestow similar honors because of Kazan’s testimony given nearly 50 years earlier. Malden re-called giving his proposal:
According to the Los Angeles Times, when Malden finished speaking, “he was greeted by a rousing burst of ap-plause.”
On the Waterfront was also the screen debut for Eva Marie Saint, who won the Oscar for Best
Support-Universal Film
Issue 10 - 2013
www.ufmag.biz 68
ing Actress for her role. Saint recalls that Kazan selected her for the role after he had her do an improvisa-tional skit with Brando playing the other character. She had no idea that he was looking to fill any particular film part, however, but remembers that Kazan set up the scenario with Brando which brought out surprising emotion. I ended up crying. Crying and laughing ... I mean there was such an attraction there ... That smile of his... He was very tender and fun-ny ... And Kazan, in his genius, saw the chemistry there.
The film made use of extensive on-location street scenes and water-front shots, and included a notable score by composer Leonard Bern-stein. British film critic Ian Freer notes that despite Kazan naming Communist party members to the House Committee on Un-American Activities two years earlier, “the film is ambivalent about the act of in-forming.”
After the success of On the Water-front he went on to direct the screen adaptation of John Steinbeck’s nov-el, East of Eden in 1955. As director, Kazan again used another unknown actor, James Dean. Kazan had seen Dean on stage in New York and af-ter 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 in a plane, bringing his clothes in a brown paper bag. The film’s success introduced James Dean to the world and established him as a popular ac-tor. He went on to star in Rebel With-out a Cause (1955), directed by Ka-zan’s friend, Nicholas Ray, and then Giant, (dir. George Stevens, 1956) Author Douglas Rathgeb describes the difficulties Kazan had in turn-ing Dean into a new star, notturn-ing how Dean was a controversial fig-ure 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 wouldn’t run away during pro-duction. Co-star Julie Harris worked overtime to quell Dean’s panic at-tacks. In general, Dean was
oblivi-ous to Hollywood’s methods, and Rathgeb notes that “his radical style did not mesh with Hollywood’s cor-porate gears.”
Dean himself 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 acting on the screen; but it didn’t seem pos-sible that it was the same person in the room. Ray felt Dean was shy and totally withdrawn as he sat there hunched over. “Dean himself did not seem to believe it,” notes Rathgeb.
“He watched himself with an odd, al-most adolescent fascination, as if he were admiring someone else.”
The film also made good use of on-location and outdoor scenes, along with an effective use of early wides-creen format, making the film one of Kazan’s most accomplished works.
James Dean died the following year, at the age of 24, in an accident with his sports car outside of Los Angeles.
He had only made three films, and the only completed film he ever saw was East of Eden.
In 1961, he introduced Warren Be-atty in his first screen appearance with a starring role in Splendor in the Grass (1961), with Natalie Wood;
the film was nominated for two Os-cars and won one. Author Peter Bis-kind points out that Kazan “was the first in a string of major directors Beatty sought out, mentors or father figures from whom he wanted to learn.” Biskind notes also that they
“were wildly dissimilar—mentor vs.
protege, director vs. actor, immi-grant 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.” Kazan recalls his impres-sions of Beatty:
Warren—it was obvious the first time I saw him—wanted it all and wanted it his way. Why not? He had the energy, a very keen intelligence, and more chutzpah than any Jew I’ve ever known. Even more than me.
Bright as they come, intrepid, and with that thing all women secretly respect: complete confidence in his sexual powers, confidence so great
that he never had to advertise him-self, even by hints.
Biskind describes an episode dur-ing the first week of shootdur-ing, where Beatty was angered at something Kazan said: “The star lashed out at the spot where he knew Kazan was most vulnerable, the director’s friendly testimony before the HUAC.
He snapped, ‘Lemme ask you some-thing—why did you name all those names?’”
Beatty himself recalled the episode:
“In some patricidal attempt to stand up to the great Kazan, I arrogantly and stupidly challenged him on it.” Biskind describes how “Kazan grabbed his arm, asking, ‘What did you say?’ and dragged him off to a tiny dressing room ... whereupon the director proceeded to justify himself for two hours.” Beatty, years later, during a Kennedy Center tribute to Kazan, stated to the audience that Kazan “had given him the most im-portant break in his career.”
Beatty’s costar, Natalie Wood, was in a transition period in her career, having mostly been cast in roles as a child or teenager, and she was now hoping to be cast in adult roles.
Biographer Suzanne Finstad notes that a “turning point” in her life as an actress was upon seeing the film A Streetcar Named Desire: “She was transformed, in awe of Kazan and of Vivien Leigh’s performance... who became a role model for Natalie.” In 1961, after a “series of bad films, her career was already in decline,” notes Rathgeb. Kazan himself writes that the “sages” of the film community declared her as “washed up” as an actress, although he still wanted to interview her for his next film:
When I saw her, I detected behind the well-mannered ‘young wife’
front a desperate twinkle in her eyes... I talked with her more quietly then and more personally. I wanted
front a desperate twinkle in her eyes... I talked with her more quietly then and more personally. I wanted