Fri 25 Nov 2005
Great article on the life and times of Elia Kazan ‘31.
When Elia Kazan, one of the twentieth century’s great American theater and movie directors, died two years ago, the obituaries almost all struck the same sour note. As the New York Times put it, in addition to his artistic accomplishments, Kazan committed “what many still consider one of the great ideological betrayals in American performing arts history.” The Los Angeles Times, the movie business’s hometown paper, announced his death with a straightforward page one headline, elia kazan, 1909-2003, but then got down to cases in the subhead: stage and screen triumphs were eclipsed by his testimony against colleagues in the blacklist era.
For many “progressives” — especially in the entertainment business — “eclipsed” doesn’t begin to tell the story. Over the entire half-century after he “named names” to the House Un-American Activities Committee on April 12, 1952, Kazan remained the very embodiment of a self-serving, backstabbing rat bastard. The assumption about his moral turpitude rests on another assumption, so often echoed in books, movies, and classrooms that by now it appears an indisputable fact: that the blacklist was a straightforward case of good versus evil, pitting decent Americans defending free thought and expression against the vilest forces of reaction.
Like the most heavy-handed Hollywood “message” movie, such a view allows for zero ethical complexity — and it is nonsense. While no one can deny or excuse the bullying and moral corruption of federal investigators, the term routinely applied to their work —- “witch hunt” —- is entirely misleading. Mid-twentieth-century Hollywood, California, had nothing in common with seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts. In Hollywood, the witches —- communist activists, working surreptitiously to advance Soviet interests —- were all too real.
Exactly so. There is a great senior thesis waiting to be written about Kazan and the effect that his time at Williams had on his career. Who will write it?
November 25th, 2005 at 1:57 pm
Yes, Williams back than was a very different place… (or was it?):
“Nor did Kazan fit in at Williams College–”a pompous, reactionary gentleman’s school,” he later called it. He couldn’t get in to a fraternity and had to wait the tables and wash the dishes of his fellow students to make ends meet. His sense of being nothing to the school’s moneyed swells laid “the emotional groundwork for me to join the Communist Party,” he later reflected.”
November 25th, 2005 at 11:36 pm
David, I doubt this thread is going to lower your reputation as an “axe-grinder” amid left-wing critics. Surely no objective reporter would point to this article…
I look forward to reading the two books mentioned at the end of the article.
In the category of “errata,” the GUL discussion led me breifly past Kazan when I came across this copy of the 1930 GUL for sale, wherein Kazan’s yearbook photo is featured, with the note that Kazan “is otherwise mentioned only in passing.”
I then found Kazan in mentioned briefly but with high praise in Gore Vidal’s autobiography Palimpsest:
Palimpsest is a wonderful reflection on life’s hidden connections and the value of others– and the intersections of politics and history. I can only hope that kind considerations mentioned above played no role in Vidal omitting to give us more of his memories of Elia. Sadly, I suspect I am wrong.
Amid the London bombings, I also found the following in Fred Cook’s (left-leaning) history of the FBI– a book which partially follows the history of Soviet-led communist groups in the US:
Personages and events which Vidal knew well, and one day, in a very trying year, which Hoover might have filed under “Terrorism, Comparative– United States, Historical– Acts of the COMINTERN.”
November 27th, 2005 at 2:02 pm
Eh.
Jacob Weisberg’s short piece in Slate covered the ground much more succinctly.
I find it funny that Stein starts by mocking Hollywood message movies, given that Kazan (Gentleman’s Agreement, Pinkie, A Face in the Crowd) pretty much invented the modern message picture. The truth is, Stein is not looking for a nuanced portrait — he thinks he is redressing a wrong done to Kazan. No honest criticism of Kazan is given equal time.
The core issue, as Weisberg clearly observes, is balancing a denunciation of Communism with a respect for civil liberties. Stein does not like Clooney’s film because it gives short shrift to the former, but Stein also doesn’t give any mention to the former. He describes a bunch of old leftists complaining about being railroaded by the government — as if they _weren’t_ railroaded by the government. Norma Barzman and Abe Polonsky had their careers destroyed by the blacklist, and nowhere does Stein directly address whether that should have happened — he certainly doesn’t suggest they were spies; only fools.
I am amazed that Stein doesn’t see the similarity of the show trial confession asked of Kazan at the Group Theater and the show trial confession asked of him by HUAC. It seems that for Stein the first was wrong because of the Group was Communist, while the latter was right because HUAC was anti-communist. That is why he can stand with Kazan when he was blacklisted by the Group, but he stands against those blacklisted by the Hollywood studios — and that is also why he doesn’t play up the fact that it was the _studios_, those hotbeds of Communism, that actually _enforced_ the blacklist. The implication is that a blacklist is alright, as long as the right people are blacklisted. (It is surely this attitude that allows him to see taking the Fifth amendment — which, as Weisberg points out, make being a Communist sympathizer a _crime_ — is more acceptable than taking the First — which makes being a Communist sympathizer a matter of personal opinion (moronic though it may have been).)
Then Stein is peeved that history has made martyrs of the blacklisted. Is he shocked that history becomes simplified when one side of the debate is silenced? The clearest record of the folly of the left’s embrace of Stalin is given to us by those who continued to write, act, and direct. Their arguments are shallow; their failure to embrace history obvious. (Of course, the greatest legacy, probably, is that much of it wasn’t political at all, and much that was political was pretty bad.)
A nuanced portrait of Kazan would attempt to explain why his approach to these issues (in particular his early defiance) made him so much more hated than others who also named names (like Budd Schulberg). It might also discuss how his views evolved over time. It would also point out that the greatest record of this debate is in the work Kazan left behind — made, I reiterate, in Hollywood, that hotbed of Communist sympathy that supposedly held him in contempt — and that the belated lifetime achievement award reflected not only the controversy of his actions but the sordid actions of the Hollywood studios themselves. As an aside, it might even attempt to address how to make sure governments respond to potential threats to the nation in a _proportionate_ manner.
P.S.: As for Williams, by all accounts I’ve read (including this one) Kazan generally disliked the people he met there — an opinion he kept throughout his long life. You might find more nuance in John Sayles and Maggie Renzi, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
P.P.S.: It seems clear enough that Stein’s impetus for this article is Clooney’s movie, which he for some reason doesn’t want to discuss directly. For actual nuance, see Jack Shafer’s review. (Since I’m wandering around the Slate archives anyway.)
Anon