Elia Kazan dies

Associated Press | September 28, 2003

[Timesink]

NEW YORK (AP) Elia Kazan, Academy Award-winning director of "On the Waterfront," has died, his lawyer says.

[montag813]

One of the all-time greats, who also stood up against Communist sympathizers in Hollywood. A giant among men.

Amen!!! Kazan denounced and exposed the Commies amongst him, and for that was despised by the current Marxist-leaning set in Hollywood. Didn't George Clooney and other refuse to attend when he was given a special Oscar a few years ago?

[montag813]

Maybe now they'll make a DVD of A Face In The Crowd.

Just tape it or burn it...it's on Turner Movie Classics this week. Check your local listings.

[Destro]

His family's story of how his Greek Christian boy escaped from Muslim Turkey and that he turned into a movie "America, America" explains why he loved his nation and why he turned on the communist who he did see as a subversive threat and identified them as such.

If you watch his "America, America" you will understand the plight of Christians in a Muslim land.

America, America (1963)

In his 1988 autobiography, A Life, director Elia Kazan recounts a disagreement he had with his production advisors while working on America, America. The film’s protagonist, a twenty-year-old Anatolian Greek of humble origins named Stavros (Stathis Giallelis), arrives as an immigrant in the United States, whereupon he falls to his knees in gratitude and kisses the ground. Kazan was told that the gesture was a cliché and should be cut from the movie. He at first relented, but then had second-thoughts: “I doubt that anyone born in the United States has or can have a true appreciation of what America is.” The ground-kissing scene was left intact. America, America was too close to Kazan’s heart for compromise. He wrote the screenplay (and novel) as a means of exploring his family’s cultural heritage and honoring the dreams that brought Europeans pouring into America at the turn of the century. Kazan, born in Turkey, was four years old when he came to the U.S. with his parents in 1912.

The character of Stavros Topouzoglou is based on Kazan’s uncle, who was the first member of the family to immigrate. America, America primarily concerns Stavros’ journey from central Turkey to the harbor city of Constantinople, where he eventually boards passage to the States. Filmed on location under difficult circumstances, the movie looks and sounds unlike anything Kazan had directed before. The first hour is an extraordinary depiction of impoverished villages percolating with vibrant folk music and whispered political tensions. Fog-shrouded mountain vistas stretch across the landscape. Oppression rears its head when the Turkish Army sets fire to a church filled with Armenian women and children. No small measure of the impact of these powerful images is due to cinematographer Haskell Wexler and editor Dede Allen. Wexler’s framing at times recalls the classic compositional rigor of Potemkin or Citizen Kane. (While praising his camerawork, Kazan claims that Wexler was a “pain in the ass” who despised the director’s reactionary politics and hated the script.)

[quietolong]

Do you want to see how many Communist there still are in Hollywood?...Protesting Kazan's Award

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/975677/posts

[dix]

There is one important fact that many people fail to point out about the blacklist. The group that did the blacklisting was the Hollywood producers, because it was bad for business. The American people despised communism.

The Hollywood Ten also went to jail if I remember correctly, for contempt of court, not for being communists, or taking the fifth.

God bless Kazan. I’m sure he arrived in heaven to a standing ovation.

[CFC__VRWC]

(I need to know this for the choreography work prior to dancing on his grave).

The real shame is there will probably be a lot of champagne bottles popping in Hollywood tonight as the leftist filth that has completely taken over the entertainment industry celebrates his passing, looking at it as a warm up for the huge party they'll throw when Ronald Reagan's time comes.

The fact that you will celebrate with this communist vermin tells volumes about you, and none of what it says is good.

[Revolting cat!]

THe "Hollywood blacklist" is a nice myth promoted by the Communists and their sympathizers in the media and the university history departments. It is all about how history is written by the victors: the Communists.

There is a Broadway play about one Dalton Trumbo, an unrepentant Communist during the time millions were being murdered by Stalin. The play was written by the scumbag's son, he is presented as a helpless victim, and nowhere in it is there a mention of Mr Trumbo having bragged of blocking screenplays with any hint of anti-Communism (this according to a recent review of this travesty in the Wall Street Journal.)

[Theodore R.]

PBS had a special on Kazan and Arthur Miller earlier this month. I taped it but have yet to finish watching it. Apparently the two were BOTH involved with the Robert F. Kennedy paramour, Marilyn Monroe.

[Theodore R.]

Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't Kazan a defector from communism, much like Whittaker Chambers? I know that one of his staunch defenders has been the actress Irene Dunne.

[quietolong]

Lint to thread on that show

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/991200/posts?page=44#44

[Antoninus]

My wife and I just rented "On the Waterfront" last night on a whim. Neither of us had ever seen it before. Great movie, although both of us though that Leonard Bernstein's score was awful and didn't really fit the movie at all.

[MHT]

Also, two of the greatest crossword puzzle names of all time.

[Antoninus]

Ah, red-baiting. Don't ya just love it!

Jam your cheesy catch phrases, pal. Was it "brown-baiting" when we flushed all the nazi-symps out of Hollywood and everywhere else in the 1930s and 1940s? No, of course not. And all the commies supported that action. Of course, it turned out that the "reds" were and ARE a terrible threat to the US--worse than the Nazis ever were. Personally, I hope any entertainer who openly espouses anti-American/pro-Communist opinions is never able to make another dime in this country. We've made too many of these scum-bags rich already.

[Atlas Sneezed]

My first reaction was the same mistake, associating him with the anti-communist efforts, and assuming wrongly that he was one of them.

[cold_dead_fingers]

May this great man RIP

[jellybean]

Elia Kazan threads from the past:

Elia Kazan's Courage

Elia Kazan, Victim of Reverse Blacklist, to Get Honorary Oscar

Elia Kaan: One of the 'Martyrs' Will Applaud

Elia Kazan: A Great American

Elia Kaan Deserves His Award

[Havisham]

Make that the great Elia Kazan. He loved this country and defended it inspite of the Hollywood jackals who peddle the virtues of the Stalin TO THIS DAY. Kazan saw what the commies were really about, repudiated the ideology, and when forced, named the traitors who wouldn't repent. I loved your films, Elia. I can even forgive you teaming up with that stinker of a 'writer', Arthur Miller. (cringe)

[NCC-1701]

What is going on? There has been a growing list of the "Old Guard" of the entertainment industry leaving us. There has been quite a few in the last two weeks alone. It seems that room is being made to accommodate the new breed of self-absorbed, me-generation "entertainers". By thatI'm talking about the likes of Madonna, Brittany, Bono, the Dixie Chicks, etc. Please help all of us of the Cash, Palmer, Kazan, etc. generation, look who we are stuck with now.

[pawdoggie]

Ah, red-baiting. Don't ya just love it!

"Red-baiting" was a charge that had some sting to it back in the day when the USSR was a clear and present danger, and calling someone a "Red" was tantamount to labeling him/her a traitor. Today, with the Soviet Union nothing but a bad memory, calling someone a "Red", a Communist or a "commie" is the same as saying that he/she adheres to a disproved and largely defunct socio-political theory of economics. In other words, you may no longer be a "traitor", but you are still a fool and a dupe.

[xJones]

Thanks, and bump for your #43.