Posted on 01/01/2006 6:16:47 AM PST by Liz
AMERICA has produced some great screen directors like: John Huston ("The Maltese Falcon"); Michael Curtiz ("Casablanca"); Orson Welles ("Citizen Kane"); Charles Chaplin ("City Lights"); Billy Wilder ("Double Indemnity"); John Ford ("The Grapes of Wrath"); Steven Spielberg ("E.T.").
Elia Kazan must be included in this august group, if only for his 1954 production of "On the Waterfront" which won eight Oscars. That film starred a 30-year-old Marlon Brando, remembered for his earlier Broadway portrayal as the loutish Stanley in Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire."
But Kazan, who died two years ago at the age of 94, in addition to weighty screen credits, was also a great theatrical director, winning three Tony awards for staging "Death of a Salesman" and "All My Sons" by Arthur Miller and "JB" by Archibald MacLeish.
Between 1943 and 1953, he directed 14 plays, nine of which became long-running hits, and 10 Hollywood films.
Richard Schickel, Time movie critic, film historian and biographer of Brando, Clint Eastwood and D. W. Griffith, is a daring writer, especially because his book must compete with Kazan's own 1988 memoir "A Life," which Janet Maslin said "remains arguably the best show-business memoir ever written."
The most important political event in Kazan's life — for himself, his friends and the American public — is that he named names. When asked by a congressional committee to disclose the members of his cell during a short-lived enrollment in the Communist Party, he obliged.
For this act, he was pilloried by America's liberal and fellow-traveling bien pensants. Of course, as Schickel points out, the same bien pensants would have pilloried Kazan if, had he been a member of the Nazi Bund, he had refused to name names.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Not really........just the title of Kazan's book evidences that Kazan is just another of the destructively self-absorbed denizens of Hollywarped.
His book was no big deal. One of the more illustrative passages about Kazan's self-absorption was writing about looking contemptuously at a starlet he was bedding down b/c she would have sex with him whenever he asked.
The Big Lie surrounding Kazan is that b/c he named names he became a pariah in Hollywood. Nothing could be further form the truth. Kazan continued to write books, which were made into movies.........underlining conservatives' suspicions that Kazan was no hero, just Hollywarped's sacrificial lamb.......... To get the feds off their backs, the moguls made a deal with Kazan that if he made the feds sap-happy by naming names-----which let the Commie moguls off the hook----- Kazan would continue to be on Hollywood's moviemaking A-list.
And so he was for many years.
In the 1960s, Elia Kazan completely abandoned his theater work, took up fiction writing, and focused his film career on much more personal, independently produced projects. America, America (1963) was a critically acclaimed adaptation of his own novel about his family's emigration to the US. His subsequent efforts, The Arrangement (1969) (again from his own novel) and The Visitors (1972) (shot at his home in 16mm), were resounding failures. Kazan made a successful though unexpected return to mainstream filmmaking with Harold Pinter's adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon (1976).
Screenwriter Nicholas Kazan (Reversal of Fortune, 1990) is Kazan's son by his first wife, the late Molly Day Thatcher; he was also married to the late actress Barbara Loden.
His contribution to freedom was not insignificant. For this, he was hated.
It was interesting to watch the audience reaction at the Academy Awards presentation of his Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999. You could really tell who the commie sympathisers are.
Perhaps you were one of those starlets? and please let us know what film credits/oscars you have.
Ratting out the commies, proved Sen.Joe McCarthy right.
Credit is due for Kazan's film works, based on the merits, and without qualification.
Look what happens to anyone in Hollywood that "comes out" of the political closet as a repub/conservitive.
poof career death!
Of course I find it interesting that a bunch of ppl who beleive in the ole "each to his needs" socialism...live the most needless lifestyles...hmmmmm I guess some ppl are more equal then others.
Really? Is that why McCarthy died in disgrace and is still considered a pariah----while Kazan is lionized even today for his film achievements?
Seems to me it worked out perfectly-----exactly as the Commie moguls planned.
They were proud of being Commies----it didn't bother them being named---but they were concerned that their liberal bona fides went bust.
They all turned on each other and began eating their own.
To the world around them, they looked not like tolerant and compassionate liberals, but like a bunch of savage cannibals.
McCarthy is considered a pariah by closeted commies and their sympathizers. He was right, you know.
"..audience reaction at the Academy Awards presentation of his Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999. You could really tell who the commie sympathisers are."
Isn't it interesting that they fall all over themselves supporting the Tookie's and Roman Polanski's of the world, yet couldn't (and wouldn't) give Kazan anything more than sub-polite applause. Moral to the story being, they don't like people who tell the truth. They never have.
For 14 years, I had quite a lot of exposure to the So. California "film community." On the basis of that, I think many of those people are well beyond being 'commie sympathizers.' I believe they are the real thing.
They were proud of being Commies----it didn't bother them being named---but they were concerned that their liberal bona fides went bust. They all turned on each other and began eating their own. To the world around them, they looked not like tolerant and compassionate liberals, but like a bunch of savage cannibals.
Of course McCarthy was right. No question. The Venona papers proved him right, and uncovered a lot from that era, and beyond.
However, liberals' penchant for reinventing themselves, the constant need to stroke their massive egos, and their obsession with refurbishing their tarnished reputations, all have to be factored into the latter day retelling of the McCarthy era.
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