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Arts > Movies > Directors > List > Elia Kazan 1909-2003
Film producer Elia Kazan (L) editing "Baby Doll" film.
Location: US
Date taken: May 1956
Photograph: Gordon Parks
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=664d9850d9b8219a
Elia Kazan USA 1909-2003
immigrant child of a Greek rug merchant who became one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history
(...)
Mr. Kazan's achievements in theater and cinema helped define the American experience for more than a generation.
For Broadway, his legendary productions included ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' and ''Death of a Salesman.''
His movie classics included ''On the Waterfront'' and ''East of Eden.''
To many critics, he was the best director of American actors in stage and screen history, discovering Marlon Brando, James Dean and Warren Beatty and redefining the craft of film acting.
In 1953 the critic Eric Bentley wrote that ''the work of Elia Kazan means more to the American theater than that of any current writer.''
Mr. Kazan was a founder and longtime co-director of the Actors Studio; a founder with Robert Whitehead of the first repertory theater at Lincoln Center;
a member of the fabled Group Theater in the 1930's;
the favorite director of a generation of new American playwrights, including the two most important, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller; and in his later years a best-selling novelist.
(...)
Mr. Kazan also received an Oscar for lifetime achievement in 1999.
The lifetime achievement award was controversial because in 1952 Mr. Kazan angered many of his friends and colleagues when he acknowledged before the House Un-American Activities Committee that he had been a member of the Communist Party from 1934 to 1936 and gave the committee the names of eight other party members.
He had previously refused to do so, and his naming of names prompted many people in the arts, including those who had never been Communists, to excoriate him for decades.
Asked why he had identified others, he cited a ''specious reasoning which has silenced many liberals'' that ran like this:
''You may hate the Communists, but you must not attack them or expose them, because if you do you are attacking the right to hold unpopular opinions.''
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/29/
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/sep/29/
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/29/
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/apr/03/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/17/
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/01/10/
https://www.npr.org/2010/11/11/
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/29/
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/sep/29/
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/28/
https://www.nytimes.com/1972/02/03/
Related > Anglonautes > History > 20th century > USA > Cold War
McCarthyism anti-Communist witch hunts Joseph R. McCarthy (1908-1957)
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Jason Solomons interviews film-makers on video, discussing their latest work, career to date and their visions
https://www.theguardian.com/film/series/
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