Search results
Elia Kazan was an American film and theatre director, producer, screenwriter and actor, known for his issue-driven films and his testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He was born in Constantinople to Cappadocian Greek parents and co-founded the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg.
- Frances Rudge
Born Frances Wright in Brighton, England.She has a B.A. in...
- Nicholas Kazan
Kazan was born in New York, the son of Greek-American...
- Zoe Kazan
Zoe Swicord Kazan (/ k ə ˈ z æ n /; [2] born September 9,...
- Pinky
Pinky is a 1949 American drama film directed by Elia Kazan...
- Blues in The Night
Blues in the Night is a 1941 American musical film noir [1]...
- Category:Films directed by Elia Kazan
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Films by Elia Kazan.
- Frances Rudge
- Overview
- Early work
- Films of the 1940s
- Stage work in the 1940s
Elia Kazan (born September 7, 1909, Constantinople, Ottoman Empire [now Istanbul, Turkey]—died September 28, 2003, New York, New York, U.S.) Turkish-born American film director and author noted for his successes on the stage—especially with plays by Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller—as well as for his critically acclaimed films and for his role in developing a revolutionary style of acting that embodied psychological and behavioral truth. His reputation as one of the most accomplished and influential American stage and film directors of the 1940s, ’50s, and early ’60s was clouded by his cooperation in 1952 with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), to which he “named names,” identifying fellow artists as members of the Communist Party.
(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)
The child of ethnic Greeks who lived in Turkey, Kazan immigrated to New York City at age four with his parents (who shortened their surname from Kazanjoglous). His father operated a rug business and eventually moved the family to suburban New Rochelle. Kazan was educated at Williams College, where he felt like an outsider among his privileged, pred...
By the mid-1930s Kazan had branched out into directing documentary films, including The People of the Cumberland (1937), about coal miners in Tennessee. As an actor he distinguished himself in gangster roles in two films directed by Anatole Litvak, City for Conquest (1940) and Blues in the Night (1941). In 1945 the Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation hired Kazan to direct his first commercial feature, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, from the best-selling novel by Betty Smith. It was a high-profile project with which to debut, but Kazan acquitted himself impressively, eliciting an especially strong performance from James Dunn, who earned an Academy Award as best supporting actor.
Britannica Quiz
Best Picture Movie Quote Quiz
In his early days in Hollywood, Kazan shadowed director John Ford, whose films were a huge influence on Kazan’s work, as were those of Soviet filmmakers Sergey Eisenstein and Aleksandr Dovzhenko. Kazan followed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn with The Sea of Grass (1947), which featured Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, and Boomerang! (1947), a taut film noir thriller with a cast that included Lee J. Cobb, Arthur Kennedy, and Dana Andrews. Kazan’s next effort, the Darryl F. Zanuck-produced Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), won him an Academy Award for best director and also took the award for best picture. An adaptation of Laura Z. Hobson’s best-selling novel of the same name, the film was considered a scathing assault on anti-Semitism by contemporary audiences, though 21st-century viewers might find it less shocking. Gregory Peck plays a journalist who poses as a Jewish man to experience and expose discrimination. Pinky (1949) was yet another Zanuck-produced “social problem” film, this time about a light-skinned African American woman (Jeanne Crain) who returns to her Southern hometown after turning down a marriage proposal from a white man who was unaware of her racial heritage.
In 1947 Kazan and directors Cheryl Crawford and Robert Lewis founded the Actors Studio in New York as a workshop dedicated to Method acting. The next year Lee Strasberg, with whom Kazan had worked at the Group Theatre, became the director of the studio, which began producing a bounty of skilled performers who had a huge impact on American stage and screen acting, many of them in plays and films directed by Kazan. Even as he was making his mark in Hollywood, Kazan continued to direct for the stage. Particularly noteworthy were his collaborations with playwrights Arthur Miller, who became one of his closest friends, and Tennessee Williams, a number of whose plays benefitted from Kazan’s guidance long before they went into production. In 1947 alone Kazan directed the premieres of Miller’s All My Sons, for which he received a Tony Award as best director, and Williams’s classic A Streetcar Named Desire. In 1949 he won another Tony Award as the director of the landmark production of Miller’s Death of a Salesman.
Students save 67%! Learn more about our special academic rate today.
IMDb provides an extensive overview of Elia Kazan's life and career as a director, writer, and producer of films and plays. Learn about his achievements, controversies, and legacy in the entertainment industry.
- January 1, 1
- Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA
- January 1, 1
- 1.73 m
Learn about the life and career of Elia Kazan, a renowned director of stage and screen who won two Oscars and influenced many actors. Find out his birth name, family, films, awards, controversies and trivia.
- Director, Writer, Producer
- September 28, 2003
- September 7, 1909
Elia Kazan was a Turkish-born Greek-American director, producer, writer and actor. He won two Academy Awards, three Tony Awards and four Golden Globe Awards for his films and plays.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Films by Elia Kazan.
Sep 3, 2003 · Learn about the filmmaker's achievements, controversies, and relationships in this comprehensive timeline. From his Oscar-winning films to his testimony before HUAC, from his collaborations with Miller and Monroe to his later works, explore Kazan's legacy.
