Elia Kazan: A Biography

Recounting the accomplishments of director Elia “Gage” Kazan (1909-2003) is daunting. His career is a humanities class in twentieth century American culture: membership as actor/director in the influential Group Theatre (where Method Acting had its fractious origins); receiving Academy Awards for directing “Best Picture” winners “Gentleman’s Agreement” (1947) and “On the Waterfront” (1954) ; providing Marlon Brando, James Dean, Andy Griffith, and Warren Beatty with their big breaks; coaxing career-defining performances from Anthony Quinn, Natalie Wood, and Raymond Massey, giving Leonard Bernstein the opportunity to write his only film score, and what has to be one of the most distinguished resume listings of all time – directing the stage premieres of “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1947) and “Death of A Salesman” (1949).

However, Elia Kazan’s life is also a history lesson that neither this book nor any other can answer. In 1952 the director “named names” for the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Gage was far from only “friendly witness” who did, but his lifelong lack of public contrition for doing so made him a pariah. Kazan never received the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award (no doubt Tom Cruise and Brangelina one day will) and his Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement was bestowed towards the end of his life. It is this 1999 Oscar ceremony that frames Richard Schickel’s “Elia Kazan: A Biography.”

Schickel repeatedly drives the point that his book is “critical” biography, and it is. He does a fine job recounting Kazan’s dual Hollywood and Broadway careers and keeping it “A Biography’s” primary focus. The accomplishments of Kazan, his colleagues, and contemporaries make for exciting reading; the results of their work did not just become required reading and/or viewing, but the stuff of legend. The chronological listing “Elia Kazan: A Life in Public” Schickel provides as an Appendix is an excellent resource for both students and enthusiasts.

The chapters leading up to and dealing with Kazan’s HUAC testimony are cross-checked with references and pertinent background information. Among the documents Mr. Schickel quotes from is Kazan’s unapologetic “Statement” published in The New York Times after his HUAC appearance. It can be interpreted that while being a “friendly witness” caused professional unease, it was this ad that made him a polarizing figure in both left and right-wing Hollywood circles. There is little subtext on Schickel’s part that two of Kazan’s masterpieces, “On the Waterfront” and “A Face in the Crowd” (1957), were made after he appeared in front of HUAC. The great irony is that both films deal with falsehood.

Where “Elia Kazan: A Biography” falls short has nothing to do with politics but with the author’s intrusive personal comments. Richard Schickel is Time Magazine’s usually even-handed film critic and an outstanding film historian, but in “A Biography” he is occasionally too protective of his subject. Statements such as Jessica Tandy not deserving to play Blanche onscreen (she created the role on Broadway) or dismissing the various incarnations of Lincoln Center Theatre because they dismissed Kazan are undeveloped and unconvincing.

One of Gage’s frequent collaborators gets the brunt of Mr. Schickel’s abuse. “A Biography” should have been subtitled “I Hate Arthur Miller.” The author cannot forgive the playwright for not “naming names,” claiming “On the Waterfront” was his idea, or for his “Marilyn Monroe” play “After the Fall,” the last major play Kazan directed in 1964. (What is truly unforgivable was the Roundabout Theatre’s 2004 production of the play, which relied on a gorgeous set design rather than hiring a leading man who could say his lines with conviction or feeling. “After the Fall” is flawed but not undoable. Like Miller’s “The Crucible” and “A View from the Bridge,” it might make a good opera.) “After the Fall” not only caused problems for Kazan but for Miller as well – it was only towards the end of his life that Miller’s plays written after 1964 were fairly re-assessed.

Another writer Schickel goes after is Archibald MacLeish; Kazan directed his 1958 Pulitzer-Prize winning play “J.B.” Schickel’s unspoken problem with the poet/playwright seems to be that for many years he was, after Hemingway, the most publicly lauded (he was Librarian of Congress) member of “The Lost Generation.” In dismissing “J.B.,” Mr. Schickel may succeed in making readers curious about it – especially since nothing quite like it is currently produced on commercialized, tourist-hungry Broadway.

If the reader can look past these excesses, “Elia Kazan: A Biography” is a solid portrait an artist who will forever be controversial – but essential.