Elia Kazan, Movie Director, Oscar winner, HUAC witness, dies at 94

The Hollwywood Reporter ^ | 9/28/03

[lowbridge]

ELIA KAZAN DIES AT 94

Director Elia Kazan, who was honored with best director Academy Awards for "Gentleman's Agreement" and "On the Waterfront," but also vilified in some quarters for "naming names" of alleged Communists in the 1950s during the House Un-American Activities Committee probe, has died at his home in New York. He was 94. In 1999, the Motion Picture Academy presented him with an honorary Oscar for his body of work, which revived the controversy among living actors, writers, directors and producers who were blacklisted in Hollywood as a result of the HUAC investigation.

[Bonaparte]

Kathy Bates made a point of standing and clapping very enthusiastically.

She gets it.

[Tacis]

Wait 'til you see the obits from the neocommunists at some of our leading propaganda mills. They will be like cockroaches over week old food. The Hollywood commie traitors who worked against America and them congratulated each other for doing so will damn Kazan with faint praise.

My bet is that CNN will interview any of the old generation traitors still living and allow them to criticize Kazan and praise those who would have put most of us in the gulags.

When will we realize that most "celebrities" are no talent hacks set up by groups of parasites who take percentages of their false success?

[Reagan Man]

A remarkable filmmaker who had superior skills, talent and ability and who made some unforgettable movies. Thanks for the entertainment Mr.Kazan and RIP.

[lainie]

One was Clifford Odets, playwright, radical.. who named names himself later, according to sad accounts on Slate of "Kazan's victims."

They don't name the rest of the names in this article; they just say, "and several actors since forgotten, in part, perhaps, because they were blacklisted."

[lowbridge]

The link doesn't work and I can't find this news anywhere else!

Works just fine for me.

Go to google, to the news section, and put in a search for: Kazan

[Bonaparte]

Bozell's commentary on all this

[TommyUdo]

Yes, it is.

I'm watching "On the Waterfront" as I type.

Terry Malloy just said...

"I was rattin' on myself all these years..."

Top on the list of unwritten screenplays and never-to-be-produced movies is one I've entitled "Best of Friends," about the death of the friendship of Arthur Miller and Elia Kazan. Compare and Contrast (Back to Skoo) "On the Waterfront" and the Miller play "A View from the Bridge." Both shared the favors of MM, by the by...a story all by itself.

[Sub-Driver]

ping...

[Reagan Man]

Elia Kazan's "Baby Doll", on TCM right now!

[annyokie]

Amy Madigan looked like she could spit. What's she done since "Field of Dreams"?

[Guenevere]

#17...I simply 'Googled' Elia Kazan, and there's a tribute to him by a writer, called Postage Paid...and tells the fleshed out facts of what happened in 1952, including why he named them and who they were.

[at bay]

Nick Nolte wouldn't stand, either. And others..

Kazan was an opportunist of the worst kind during the McCarthy era, taking out ads in the NYT and pandering to the now disgraced HUAC committee. If you want to see courage, watch Gary Cooper's testimony, and others who stood for american 1st amendment rights over the phony ravings of a drunken Senator. That DeNiro could have played a blacklisted director AND bring out Kazan for the award in '99 says he has no personal integrity regardless of what he actually believes.

[Sir_Humphrey]

..phony ravings of a drunken Senator

Yep, you're right-no Soviets infiltrating the government. Ignore the Verona Files, ignore Algir Hiss, ignore the Rosenbergs, they were all just figments of some drunken Senator's imagination.

[ShadowDancer]

I don't at all doubt the veracity of what you're saying. However, what about those that were falsely accused? Verona files to the side? McCarthyism had it's merits, most definitely. What about where it didn't? Where it was blanketed without just cause? How do you remedy those accusations?

[lainie]

phony ravings of a drunken Senator

You're referring to McCarthy?

[at bay]

-- Kazan a "Traitor." From a March 16 CNN online story by Paul Clinton:
And in another sign of the controversy, a full-page ad against Kazan's upcoming Oscar recognition appeared in the March 15 issue of the Hollywood Reporter. Jules Dassin, 87, a former screenwriter and director now living in Greece, was blacklisted in the 1952. He paid $2,160 for the advertisement, which read:
"There is the story in our history of a man who was proclaimed a hero of the American Revolution. In one of the battles against the British he suffered a mutilating leg wound. Sadly, after the revolution he became a traitor. It was ruled that for treason he be hanged. But before they hanged him, the leg that was wounded was amputated so that the better part of him be not dishonored.
Elia Kazan too was a traitor. Some of those betrayed were his close friends. Their lives and futures were destroyed. He became ally and accomplice to an infamous committee which shamed his country. There is no way for the films of Kazan to be amputated from the rest of him. Yet, if there were any decency left in him he should have refused the award so as not to once again sow discord and bitterness among those whose lives and devotion are given to cinema." Signed, Jules Dassin.

Dassin directed the 1948 classic Naked City, and he wrote and directed the 1960 Greek film that made Melina Mercouri an international star, Never on Sunday...

[inquest]

watch Gary Cooper's testimony, and others who stood for american 1st amendment rights over the phony ravings of a drunken Senator.

Typical of the incoherent ramblings of the media-brainwashed. Your so-called "drunken Senator" had nothing to do with HUAC and its investigations of the film industry. It was the HOUSE (of Representatives, get it?) Un-American Activities Committee.

Another thing that the media won't tell you is that the committee was initially set up at the request of FDR to investigate (non-existent) Fascists. It was only when it began to be used against (abundantly existent) Communists that our professional opinion molders decided that it was "disgraced".

[beckett]

Both shared the favors of MM, by the by...a story all by itself.

A documentary recently aired which claimed that on the night of her engagement to DiMaggio Marilyn crawled into Kazan's bed to celebrate.

Hollywood Babylon indeed.

[Guenevere]

Besides Odets, it was Lee and Paula Strasberg, Lillian Hellman, John Garfield, and one I can't remember.

According to Kazan's memoir, Arthur Miller was his personal friend to whom he trusted for advice...

...he seemed to think Miller would support any decision Kazan made, but afterwards Miller turned on him.

In fact, didn't Miller pen The Crucible...
...ostensibly the story of the Salem Witch Trials..... with the HUAC in mind?

[at bay]

McCarthy grilled the Rosenbergs? I had no idea. My recollection is that they were justly put to death for espionage and treason of the highest order. Please detail the HUAC connection to the Rosenbergs.