Oscar Profile #16: Elia Kazan

Born in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire, now Istanbul, Turkey, to Greek parents in 1909, Elia Kazan emigrated with his parents to America as a child. An actor before he became a director, he was a co-founder of the Group Theatre in 1932 and the founder of the Actor’s Studio in 1947.

The earliest proponent of “method” acting, his early students included Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Julie Harris, Karl Malden, Patricia Neal, James Whitmore, Mildred Dunnock, Maureen Stapleton and later, James Dean.

As an actor he was best known for his supporting roles in 1940’s City for Conquest and 1941’s Blues in the Night. His direction of Thornton Wilder’s 1942 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Skin of Our Teeth with Tallulah Bankhead and Montgomery Clift, changed the course of his career. Thereafter he alternately directed stage and screen masterpieces of uncommon worth.

On Broadway he won Tonys for directing 1947’s All My Sons; 1949’s Death of a Salesman and 1959’s J.B.. He was nominated for his direction of 1956’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and 1958’s The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. He received additional nominations for producing The Dark at the Top of the Stairs; the 1963 revival of Strange Interlude and 1965’s Tartuffe. He also won acclaim for his direction of 1949’s A Streetcar Named Desire and 1954’s Tea and Sympathy during this period.

The first film he directed was 1945’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, from Betty Smith’s beloved novel, which won a Juvenile Oscar for child star Peggy Ann Garner and a Supporting Actor for James Dunn. Although filmed on studio sets, the film was so rich in detail of city life at the turn of the 20th Century that it had the feel of having been filmed on the actual streets. He would later make all his films on location, adding a realism to his films that became an inspiration for younger directors in the 1960s and 70s.

His second film was 1947’s Sea of Grass, a rare flop for not only Kazan, but stars Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn as well. He quickly rebounded, however, with two other 1947 films, the thriller, Boomerang! about the murder of a priest, and the film version of Laura Hobson’s expose of anti-Semitism in America, Gentleman’s Agreement, which won a slew of Oscars including Best Picture and Kazan’s first for Best Director.

In 1949 he took over the direction of Pinky from John Ford and managed to direct all three of his female stars, Jeanne Crain, Ethel Barrymore and Ethel Waters, to Oscar nominations. His 1950 film, Panic in the Streets won an Oscar for Best Original Story. It is more famous, however, for giving a prominent role to Zero Mostel, then under heavy suspicion of the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Mostel would be blacklisted in 1951.

Kazan directed Marlon Brando to his first Oscar nomination in 1951’s A Streetcar Named Desire, Vivien Leigh, Karl Malden and Kim Hunter to Oscars and himself to his second Oscar nomination. He directed Brando to another nomination and Anthony Quinn to a win for 1952’s Viva Zapata!

Kazan’s appearance as a friendly witness before HUAC in 1952 did irreparable harm to the people he named. It also sullied the director’s reputation and caused him personal anguish from which he never really recovered. Remarkably, however, it didn’t affect his work, which many believe only got better.

Kazan’s 1953 film, Man on a Tightrope with Fredric March as a circus owner who outwits the Communists was not a success, but his 1954 film, On the Waterfront, an ode to informing, was. It earned twelve Oscar nominations and won Kazan his second for directing as well as Brando his first for acting.

His 1955 film of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden earned him his fourth Oscar nomination and a posthumous one for star James Dean. It also won an Oscar for Jo Van Fleet as Dean’s whorehouse madam mother.

1957’s A Face in the Crowd made a star of Andy Griffith as a beloved TV star who was a louse and a phony in real life. 1960’s Wild River was a vivid study of an old lady (Jo Van Fleet) who refuses to leave her home, which needs to be flooded by Montgomery Clift and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in order to build a dam in the 1930s.

Natalie Wood received an Oscar nomination, Warren Beatty became a star, and Kazan found his second wife (Barbara Loden) in 1961’s Splendor in the Grass. Kazan’s 1963 adaptation of his immigration novel, America America, won him nominations for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay. His subsequent films were not successful either artistically or commercially, and he retired after 1976’s The Last Tycoon.

He was given an honorary Oscar at the 1999 Academy Awards when he was 90 years old. It was presented by Martin Scorsese, one of the younger directors heavily influenced by Kazan’s work, and Robert De Niro who starred in Kazan’s last film. The honor was one of the most controversial in Oscar history as many in the entertainment industry still felt wounded by his HUAC testimony nearly fifty years earlier. Several attendees sat on their hands and refused to applaud, but others such as Gregory Peck believed a man’s work should be considered separate from his life.

He died in 2003 at 94.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN (1945)

Kazan’s sensitive handling of actors, as well as his command of the medium, was apparent from the first frame of his masterful first film as a director. Oscar winner Peggy Ann Garner’s portrayal of the bright girl struggling to overcome her humble surroundings was the most realistic portrait of a real child the screen had yet seen. She was no cutesy-poo Shirley Temple or easy-to-cry Margaret O’Brien. She was a fully rounded flesh-and-blood character, torn between emulating her serious, realistic mother, beautifully played by Dorothy McGuire, and her carefree daydreaming father, played with just the right amount of self-recrimination by James Dunn in his doozey of an Oscar-winning comeback performance. There were memorable turns as well by Joan Blondell as McGuire’s happy-go-lucky sister, Lloyd Nolan as the beat policeman with more than a friendly interest in McGuire, James Gleason as a soft-hearted barkeep, Ruth Nelson as a concerned schoolteacher, and the film’s only surviving cast member, Ted Donaldson as Garner’s devoted little brother.

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951)

Vivien Leigh won her second Oscar as Blanche DuBois, the faded Southern belle who could almost be an older version of Leigh’s Scarlet O’Hara from Gone With the Wind. No stranger to the material, she had played the part on the London stage while co-stars Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden had played their roles in the original Broadway production under Kazan’s direction.

Leigh, Hunter and Malden all won Oscars for their performances, but Brando, whose searing performance is perhaps even more memorable, lost to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen. He plays the animalistic Stanley Kowalski who is married to Blanche’s younger sister, Stella (Hunter). The film, in which Blanche and Stanley dance a delicate sexual tango culminating in rape and madness, was exceptionally mature for its time. It is brilliantly lit and scored. Its art direction and set design justly won an Oscar, but once again, Kazan’s handling of his actors is what makes the film so extraordinary. Numerous stage revivals and TV remakes have failed to completely capture the magic of the film.

ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)

Kazan’s film of corruption on the New Jersey docks was an enormous critical and commercial success. Marlon Brando’s portrayal of the ex-prizefighter turned longshoreman is generally considered his best screen performance. He and Eva Marie Saint, as his girl, won two of the film’s eight Oscars out of twelve nominations. Lee J. Cobb as the waterfront boss, Rod Steiger as Brando’s mob-connected brother and Karl Malden as the compassionate waterfront priest were all nominated, and Kazan won his second Oscar for directing.

In later years the film has come under attack from certain critics who have reassessed the film, which is about informing on the mob, as a thinly disguised attempt by screenwriter Budd Schulberg and Kazan to make themselves out as heroes for informing on members of the Communist Party at the 1952 HUAC hearings. Perhaps, but the film is based on the 1949 Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper articles by Malcolm Johnson and had been in the planning stages for several years.

EAST OF EDEN (1955)

Based on the second half of John Steinbeck’s novel, James Dean and Richard Davalos are Cain and Abel to their father Adam, played by Raymond Massey, their mother Eve (Jo Van Fleet) having abandoned them as babies.

Beautifully shot in California’s Salinas Valley, the film made an instant star of Dean who made two more high profile films, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant, dying in a road accident just after completing the latter, days before the release of the former. East of Eden was the only one released while he was alive and the one for which he would receive the first of two posthumous Oscar nominations. Giant would be the second.

Though Dean’s performance was the centerpiece of the film, he was not the whole show. Kazan’s direction and Paul Osborn’s screenplay were also nominated for Oscars, and Jo Van Fleet as the estranged mother he tracks down won for her unforgettable portrayal of the mean old woman.

AMERICA AMERICA (1963)

Based on the experiences of an uncle who emigrated from Constantinople in the late 19th Century, Kazan’s America America is a moving portrait of a young man’s determination to seek a better life in a new land. The struggles of the young dreamer, played by Stathis Giallelis, are heart-rending. Giallelis, whose good looks and smoldering intensity were compared to the young Marlon Brando, seemed to be on the brink of major stardom. Alas, although he won a Golden Globe for Best Newcomer, his fame did not last. The film, despite its four Oscar nominations and win for Art Direction, was not a commercial success. Although he made several more films, Giallelis quickly faded into obscurity.

Kazan’s own fade-out began with this film as well. He would make only three more films, none of them successful.