ELIA KAZAN - A BIOGRAPHY

Few figures in film and theater history tower like Elia Kazan. Born in1909 to Greek parents in Istanbul, Turkey, he arrived in America withincomparable vision and drive, and by the 1950s he was the most importantand influential director in the nation, simultaneously dominating boththeater and film. His productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Death ofa Salesman reshaped the values of the stage. His films — most notablyOn the Waterfront — brought a new realism and a new intensity ofperformance to the movies. Kazan's career spanned times of enormous changein his adopted country, and his work affiliated him with many of America'sgreat artistic moments and figures, from New York City's Group Theatre ofthe 1930s to the rebellious forefront of 1950s Hollywood; from KatharineHepburn and Spencer Tracy to Marlon Brando and James Dean. Ebullient andsecretive, bold and self-doubting, beloved yet reviled for naming namesbefore the House Un-American Activities Committee, Kazan was an individualas complex and fascinating as any he directed. He has long deserved abiography as shrewd and sympathetic as this one. In the electrifyingElia Kazan, noted film historian and critic Richard Schickel illuminatesmuch more than a single astonishing life and life's work: He paysdiscerning tribute to the power of theater and film, and casts a new lighton six crucial decades of American history.