Free Republic

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...

WHEN ELIA KAZAN, one of history?s greatest film and theater directors, received his Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 1999, more than a few Hollywood glitterati refused to applaud this small man of gigantic artistic accomplishments. The reason: He named names. He had been a member of the Communist Party for two years in the 1930s. He quit when the party ordered a takeover of his theater group and ordered him to follow the party line. Years later when asked to name other party members, he did. The eight names he divulged to the House UnAmerican Affairs Committee already were...