with the Group Theater in the 1930s.Ka- zan named names, causing many in the film industry to look upon him with disap- proval if not contempt for the rest of his life. “I believe what I did was necessary and right,” he wrote in 1952, and many people believe that his film “On the Water- front”is, among other things, an apologia for informing. But Kazan would eventually become uncertain about his testimony, admitting to aFrench interviewer years later that “I don’t think there is anything in my life towards which I have more ambivalence, because, obviously, there’s something disgusting about giving other people’s names.” Kazan would pay a steep price for his Lincoln Center photo testimony: losing out on the Oscar for the film version of “” and, eventually, being blackballed from the ’s Life Achieve- ment Award, which his body of work as a Brilliant but unsavory filmmaker clearly warranted. And when the 89-year-old Kazan was finally awarded aspecial Academy Award in 1999,several BY TOM MORAN and Budd Schulberg. despise. audience members at the ceremony sat on Kazan spent most of He learned early to dissemble, flatter their hands in protest. member of the legendary his life trying to mask and do whatever was needed to get what Kazan was not a born writer or a par- Group Theater,co-founder of his inveterate anger he wanted from friends, lovers, co-workers ticularly elegant prose stylist (as readers of the Actors Studio,director of and hostility. An un- and eventually actors (he got Andy Griffith his novels can attest), and these letters, four Pulitzer Prize-winning attractive immigrant, drunk before a crucial scene in “A Face in while fitfully engrossing to those who are Aplays (including “A Streetcar yearning in college for the Crowd”to get the notoriously jovial already immersed in his life and times, Named Desire” and “Death of a Sales- the nubile women who actor in the correct hostile mood), and may prove somewhat discouraging to the man”) and such classic films as “On the snubbed him (a rejec- some of that ability to dissemble is on view uninitiated. Nor are the notes, by editors Waterfront” and “East of Eden,”Elia Ka- tion, however uninten- in his letters. He could write studio head Albert J. Devlin and Marlene J. Devlin, zan was as important (and as polarizing) a The tional, for which he Jack Warner a fawning letter, saying that entirely free from error (it was Yale Uni- figureas anyone in show business in the would overcompensate “I’ve never had a happier experience, or versity Press, not Random House, that 20th Century. His tempestuous life is Selected later in life through been treated better than during the weeks published Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s amply documented in “The Selected Let- Letters of compulsive woman- Imade STREETCAR at Warner Bros. Journey into Night”). But if read in tandem ters of .” Elia Kazan izing — which makes Studios,” then turn around and say to com- with “A Life,” Kazan’s superb autobiogra- “Its (sic) a more exact way to communi- some of his letters to poser Alex North “I hate Warner Brothers. phy, these letters provide an intimate cate — when I want to be exact,” Kazan Edited by Albert his first wife painful to Ihope they drop dead — even more than glimpse into one of the most protean tal- said to producer Sam Spiegel of his letter J. Devlin with read), he learned to that I hope they go out of business.” Not ents in the history of American theater and writing.One suspects that his letters also Marlene J. Dev- subsume his anger and long after that, he would work for Warner film — and, more important, they might were a badly needed creative outlet for a lin, Knopf, 650 take on the appearance Bros.again, making “East of Eden.”(This is inspire you to watch his films, especially frustrated would-be author who was un- pages, $40 of the agreeable jack of par for the course in Hollywood.) underappreciated classics such as “Wild able (at least for the majority of his career) all trades, always eager Easily the most contentious act of Ka- River” and “America, America.” They are to express himself except through inter- to please and able to repair anything zan’s life was his testimony in front of the worth rediscovering. preting the works of such playwrights and around the theater that needed fixing. This House Committee on Un-American Activ- screenwriters as Thornton Wilder, Arthur is how Kazan acquired the nickname ities regarding his involvement with the Tom Moran is a freelance writer who lives in Miller, Tennessee Williams, William Inge “Gadget,”amoniker he would come to Communist Party while he was working New York.

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