Elias Kazantzoglou (Greek: Ηλίας Καζαντζόγλου, IPA: [iˈli.as kazanˈdzoɣlu]; September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003), known as Elia Kazan ( EE-lee-ə kə-ZAN), was a Greek-American film and theatre director, producer, screenwriter and actor, described by The New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history".
Born in Constantinople (now Istanbul) to Cappadocian Greek parents, his family went to the United States in 1913. After attending Williams College and then the Yale School of Drama, he acted professionally for eight years, later joining the Group Theatre in 1932, and co-founded the Actors Studio in 1947. With Robert Lewis and Cheryl Crawford, his actors' studio introduced "Method Acting" under the direction of Lee Strasberg. Kazan acted in a few films, including City for Conquest.
His films focused on personal or social issues that particularly concerned him. Kazan writes, "I don't move unless I have some empathy with the basic theme." His first such "issue" film was Gentleman's Agreement, with Gregory Peck, which dealt with antisemitism in the United States. It received eight Oscar nominations and three wins, including Kazan's first for Best Director. It was followed by Pinky, one of the first films in mainstream Hollywood to address racial prejudice against African Americans. A Streetcar Named Desire, an adaptation of the stage play which he had also directed, received twelve Oscar nominations, winning four, and was Marlon Brando's breakthrough role. Three years later, he directed Brando again in On the Waterfront, a film about union corruption on New York's waterfront. It also received twelve Oscar nominations, winning eight. In 1955, he directed John Steinbeck's East of Eden, starring James Dean.
A turning point in Kazan's career came with his testimony as a "friendly witness" before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1952 at the height of the Hollywood blacklist. His decision to cooperate and name names brought him strong negative reactions from many friends and associates. His harshly anti-communist testimony "damaged if not shattered the careers of his former colleagues, Morris Carnovsky and Art Smith, both actors, and the playwright Clifford Odets". In his memoirs, Kazan writes that he and Odets had made a pact at the time to name each other in front of the committee. Kazan later justified his actions by saying he took "only the more tolerable of two alternatives that were either way painful and wrong". Nearly a half-century later, his 1952 HUAC testimony continued to cause controversy. When Kazan was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1999, dozens of actors chose not to applaud as 250 demonstrators picketed the event.
Kazan influenced the films of the 1950s and 1960s with his provocative, issue-driven subjects. Director Stanley Kubrick called him "without question, the best director we have in America, [and] capable of performing miracles with the actors he uses". Film author Ian Freer concludes that even "if his achievements are tainted by political controversy, the debt Hollywood—and actors everywhere—owes him is enormous". Orson Welles said "Kazan is a traitor ... [but] he is a very good director". In 2010, Martin Scorsese co-directed the documentary film A Letter to Elia as a personal tribute to Kazan.
Kazan was born Elias Kazantzoglou in the Chalcedon (now Kadıköy) district of Constantinople (now Istanbul), to Cappadocian Greek parents, originally from Kayseri in Anatolia. The family's surname comes from the Turkish Kazancı (Ottoman Turkish: قزانجی), meaning "pot maker", and oğlu, a patronymic meaning "son [of]". He arrived in the United States with his parents, Athena (née Shishmanoglou) and George Kazantzoglou, on July 8, 1913. He was named after his paternal grandfather, Elias Kazantzoglou. His maternal grandfather was Isaak Shishmanoglou. Elia's brother, Avraam, was born in Berlin and later became a psychiatrist.
Kazan was raised in the Greek Orthodox Church and attended Greek Orthodox services every Sunday, where he had to stand for several hours with his father. His mother read the Bible but did not go to church. When Kazan was about eight years old, the family moved to New Rochelle, New York, and his father sent him to a Catholic catechism school because there was no Orthodox church nearby. When meeting with the Turkish filmmaker Yılmaz Güney, it was revealed he had retained fluency in the Turkish language from childhood.
As a young boy, he was remembered as being shy, and his college classmates characterized him as more of a loner. Much of his early life was portrayed in his autobiographical book, America America, which he made into a 1963 film. In it, he describes his family as "alienated" from both their parents' Greek Orthodox values and from those of "mainstream America". His mother's family were cotton merchants who imported cotton from England and sold it wholesale. His father had become a rug merchant after immigrating to the US, and he expected his son to take over the family business someday.
After attending public schools through high school, Kazan enrolled at Williams College in Massachusetts, where he helped pay his way by waiting tables and washing dishes; he still graduated cum laude. He also worked as a bartender at various fraternities but never joined one. While a student at Williams, he earned the nickname "Gadg" (for Gadget) because, he said, "I was small, compact, and handy to have around." The nickname was eventually taken up by his stage and film stars. In America America, Kazan recounts how and why his family left Turkey for the United States. Kazan observes that much of it came from stories that he heard as a young boy. He says during an interview that "it's all true: the wealth of the family was put on the back of a donkey, and my uncle, really still a boy, went to Istanbul ... to gradually bring the family there to escape the oppressive circumstances. ... It's also true that he lost the money on the way, and when he got there he swept rugs in a little store."
Kazan noted some of the controversial aspects of what he put in the film: "I used to say to myself when I was making the film that America was a dream of total freedom in all areas." To make his point, the character who portrays Kazan's uncle Avraam kisses the ground when he gets through customs, while the Statue of Liberty and the American flag are in the background. Kazan had considered whether that kind of scene might be too much for American audiences:
I hesitated about that for a long time. A lot of people, who don't understand how desperate people can get, advised me to cut it. When I am accused of being excessive by the critics, they're talking about moments like that. But I wouldn't take it out for the world. It actually happened. Believe me, if a Turk could get out of Turkey and come here, even now, he would kiss the ground. To oppressed people, America is still a dream.
Before undertaking America America, Kazan wanted to confirm many of the details about his family's background. At one point, he sat his parents down and recorded their answers to his questions. He remembers eventually asking his father a "deeper question: 'Why America? What were you hoping for?'" His mother gave him the answer: "A.E. brought us here." Kazan states that "'A.E.' was my uncle Avraam Elia, the one who left the Anatolian village with the donkey. At twenty-eight, somehow—this was the wonder—he made his way to New York. He sent home money and in time brought my father over. Father sent for my mother and my baby brother and me when I was four." Kazan writes of America America, "It's my favorite of all the films I've made, the first film that was entirely mine."
In 1932, after spending two years at the Yale University School of Drama, he moved to New York City to become a professional stage actor. He continued his professional studies at the Juilliard School, where he studied singing with Lucia Dunham. His first opportunity came with a small group of actors engaged in presenting plays containing "social commentary". They were called the Group Theatre, which showcased many lesser-known plays with deep social or political messages. After struggling to be accepted by them, he discovered his first strong sense of self in America within the "family of the Group Theatre, and more loosely in the radical social and cultural movements of the time", writes film author Joanna E. Rapf.