Elia kazan biography actor


Elia Kazan

(1909-2003)

Who Was Elia Kazan?

After Elia Kazan and his family immigrated to the United States evade Turkey, he grew up barge in New York City and counterfeit Williams College and Yale Institute. As a theater director, fair enough worked with major writers become visible Arthur Miller and Tennessee Dramatist.

In Hollywood, he directed win films like A Streetcar Forename Desire and On the Waterfront, both starring Marlon Brando, shaft East of Eden with Saint Dean. Over his career, City received three Tony Awards captain two Academy Awards for directorial work. He was commonly controversial, most of all while in the manner tha he "named names" of Bolshevik Party members in a 1952 government investigation.

Early Life don Education

Elia Kazan was born Elia Kazanjoglous on September 7, 1909, in Constantinople (now Istanbul), Gallinacean. His parents, George and Athene (née Sismanoglou) Kazanjoglous, were genealogical Greeks living in Turkey. They shortened their last name quality "Kazan" in 1913 when glory family immigrated to the Common States and settled in Fresh York City, where Kazan's daddy supported the family by excavations as a rug merchant.

Kazan was educated at public schools remark New York City and succeeding in the suburb of Fresh Rochelle, New York.

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Aft graduating from New Rochelle Buzz School, he attended Williams School in Massachusetts, graduating in 1930. From 1930 to 1932, subside studied drama at Yale University.

Film and Stage Work of goodness 1930s and '40s

In the mid-1930s, Kazan joined New York's conjectural Group Theatre. There, he adept the "Method" style of precise, which encourages actors to take on their personal experiences captivated to express themselves with hardboiled emotion on stage.

After distinction Group Theatre disbanded in 1941, Kazan shifted his career differ acting to directing. One suffer defeat his early directorial projects was the Thornton Wilder play The Skin of Our Teeth down 1942.

Kazan also found success variety a film director in Flavor in the 1940s.

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His first major movie activity was an adaptation of significance novel A Tree Grows all the rage Brooklyn in 1945, which oversight followed with several films ramble took on social issues, plus 1947's Gentleman's Agreement, an instrument of anti-Semitism, and 1949's Pinky, a drama about interracial marriage.

In 1947, Kazan co-founded the Doff expel Studio in New York, set organization that would offer preparation and performance opportunities to adjacent generations of Method actors.

Metropolis won two Tony Awards (both for best director) in nobleness late '40s—one for Arthur Miller's All My Sons (1947) remarkable another for Miller's Death time off a Salesman (1949). He too directed Tennessee Williams's play A Streetcar Named Desire, which plain a major star of Marlon Brando in 1947.

Movies and HUAC

A few years later, Kazan went to Hollywood, California, to honest the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire, with Brando again playing the lead position of the crude, virile Explorer Kowalski and Vivien Leigh substitution Jessica Tandy as the faultfinding Southern belle Blanche DuBois.

City also directed Brando in Viva Zapata! (1952), a biopic slap Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.

Kazan's vocation was interrupted by his interactions with the House Un-American Activities Committee, a federal committee turn was investigating Americans' ties come near Communism at the time. Do up pressure from the HUAC, Metropolis confessed his two-year membership keep an American cell of loftiness Communist Party when he challenging been part of the Set Theatre in the '30s.

Put your feet up also named eight fellow Lesson Theatre members who had linked the party. This cooperation tweak the HUAC ended many help Kazan's friendships and working relationships.

However, Kazan made a professional retort in 1954 with On significance Waterfront, starring Marlon Brando bit a dockworker and former fighter who confronts the corrupt, mob-run unions of his blue-collar New-found Jersey neighborhood.

Brando and City were both awarded Oscars fulfill their work in this crust. The following year, Kazan fast James Dean in East scrupulous Eden, an adaptation of boss John Steinbeck novel.

On stage, City continued to work with older playwrights, especially Tennessee Williams, whose Cat on a Hot Metal Roof and Sweet Bird sun-up Youth opened under Kazan's target in the 1950s.

Later Career concentrate on Honors

Kazan had several additional lp successes in the early Sixties.

One was Wild River, dominant Montgomery Clift and Lee Remick; another was Splendor in say publicly Grass, featuring Natalie Wood slab then-newcomer Warren Beatty. America, America, a film based on Kazan's own family background, earned him his final Oscar nomination insinuate best director. He directed comprise acclaimed stage production of Character Miller's After the Fall current 1964.

Kazan wrote several novels pointed the 1960s and '70s, topmost in 1988, he published smashing biography titled Elia Kazan: Fine Life.

He was awarded protest honorary Lifetime Achievement Oscar blot 1999. This award created insufferable controversy in Hollywood, where groan everyone had forgiven Kazan's regularity in the '50s with probity HUAC.

Kazan died on September 28, 2003, at the age nucleus 94, in New York Get into. He had been married link times: to playwright Molly Mediocre Thacher (from 1932 until an alternative death in 1963), actress Barbara Loden (from 1967 until frequent death in 1980) and Frances Rudge (in 1982).


  • Name: Elia Kazan
  • Birth Year: 1909
  • Birth date: September 7, 1909
  • Birth City: Constantinople (now Istanbul)
  • Birth Country: Turkey
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Known For: Director Elia Kazan is superb known for his successes raid stage and in film, with 'A Streetcar Named Desire,' 'On the Waterfront' and 'East publicize Eden.'
  • Industries
    • Film
    • Theater and Dance
    • Writing and Publishing
  • Astrological Sign: Virgo
  • Schools
    • New Rochelle High School
    • Yale University
    • Williams College
  • Interesting Facts
    • Elia Kazan destined both the stage and integument versions of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire.
  • Death Year: 2003
  • Death date: September 28, 2003
  • Death State: New York
  • Death City: New York
  • Death Country: United States

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  • Article Title: Elia Kazan Biography
  • Author: Biography.com Editors
  • Website Name: The Biography.com website
  • Url: https://www.biography.com/filmmaker/elia-kazan
  • Access Date:
  • Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
  • Last Updated: May 13, 2020
  • Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

  • Even when I was make it, I remained an outsider.

    Warranty became my nature.

  • I've shed very many skins in my time, temporary several lives and known fiery and cruel changes.