Elia Kazan: A Life by Elia Kazan Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $14.03 You Save: $18.92 (57%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $7.30 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Elia Kazan: A Life
Book Review: A Show Stopper
Summary: 5 Stars
Elia Kazan was arguably one of the most influential people that theatre has ever produced. He had an amazing life through his art, and outside of it.
Here, at the age of 77, past the point of modesty, conceit and pride, he tells his remarkable story of learning his craft, harnessing his incredible God-given talent, and channelling his drive into success.
We learn about his trysts and liasons with other icons, his marriages, his faults and missteps.
He owns up to many things that have not made him proud, including naming names during the deplorable McCarthy communist witch hunts of the 1950's.
He talks openly of his failures as a parent and a husband, his infidelity, and his loss of faith.
He also recounts his many astounding successes in film and theatre, including the many great actors and actresses he worked with.
His honest self-assessment is a breath of resh air.
This is one of the greatest autobiographies I have ever read.
Book Review: America's greatest Director
Summary: 5 Stars
A fascinating read about the life of America's greatest stage director. Included are stories about the original productions of "The Skin of Our Teeth" (where Kazan went up against Tallulah Bankhead and lived to tell about it!), "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Death of a Salesman." He also writes about his life as an immigrant, his "informing" during the Red Scare, and his subsequent career as a film director and author. Anyone who loves the theatre must read this book by one of it's giants.Book Review: An epic and personal journey of a theatrical giant
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is perhaps one of the greatest autobiographies of the modern Theatre. Kazan pulls no punches in depicting his epic journey from Greek immigrant to one of the greatest theatre and film directors of all time. His life parallels the crucial artistic movements and conflicts of the Twentieth Century: The Group Theatre, The HUAC hearings, The height and fall of the Hollywood Studio System, the founding of the Actor's Studio, and the development of the American Theatre. Kazan, along with Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams played a crucial role in creating a strong and vibrant American Theatre. All throughout this amazing journey are insights into the craft of acting as well as the trials and tribulations of a man struggling for personal identity. This book demands to be on the shelf of any student, practitioner or fan of the Theatre. Five out of five starsBook Review: Conflict
Summary: 5 Stars
A Life in Letters (Penguin Modern Classics)The Goring Collection
Elia Kazan had no desire to work for his father as a rug merchant. The magnet that drew Kazan in was show business, but in the early days of his career he showed little aptitude for any place in the theatre. He was quite good at painting sets and by simply hanging around was eventually given a few bit parts in several plays. He got little notice from the critics but Harold Clurman took him under his wing and Kazan grew some as an actor within the Group Theatre. Most of the group had socialist leanings and early on Kazan went along with the crowd. However within a year or so it became obvious that he was too much of an individual to follow any structured ideology and he let it be known that he would never become a part of the communist party.
During the 30's there was very little money to be made by working with the Group Theatre. He finally found a way to augment his income, and that was doing radio plays and was pretty good at it.
Kazan's wife Molly's great grandfather was president of Yale University. Kazan slipped around the edges of conflict; Molly stood up right in the center of the storm. He learned to compromise when he was young in order to avoid confrontation. Molly's principals permitted no deviation from her obligations of what was right.
In the late forties and early fifties the Stanislavsky method of acting was making its way from the Moscow Arts Theatre to New York. Lee Strasberg and Kazan opened the Actors Studio on West 44th Street in an old church building. At the time there were a number of adherents to the Stanislavsky Method teaching their brand of the method and each claiming to have tapped into the authentic Stanislavsky system while pointing out the others as imposters.
In time Lee Strasberg and the Stanislavsky method were one.
Kazan asked the question, what is the best performance you've ever seen? Was it Garbo in Camille, Judy Garland at the height of her career, Walter Houston in the Treasure of Sierra Madre or Lee J. Cobb in Death of a Salesman?
Those were all inspiring, but you may have someone else in mind.
During one summer in Hollywood Kazan turned his life around. He made the decision that he would never make it as an actor. His friend Clifford Odets wrote a screenplay for Lewis Milestone and it gave Kazan a chance to spend time with and learn from one of the great film directors the art of script writing as well as the basic mechanics of directing. The film they worked on was never made but Kazan got the guidance and the inspiration he needed to begin his career as a director.
Back in New York Kazan was hired to direct `The Skin of our Teeth' and in spite of fighting over every line with Tallulah Bankhead from start to finish he managed to bring a successful play to Broadway.
He then followed that up by rescuing a play starring Helen Hayes called Harriet. Kazan brought the play back to life from the brink of disaster. Then he suddenly had two Broadway hits on his hands at the same time. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn came a bit later, and that also turned into a big hit.
Kazan paid his dues in Hollywood with a couple of lack luster films followed by Street Car Named Desire with Marlon Brando on Broadway and film. Then his big success came with On the Waterfront.
Kazan had more than a little conflict in his personal life, that of a wife and family and a mistress along with the HUAC Hearings in Washington.
Elia Kazan has written in the highs and lows of his life and career, and there are times you might find the book a bit tedious in detail - but if you'll follow along to the end you will be richly rewarded for your effort.
Tom Barnes author of `Doc Holliday's Road to Tombstone.'
Book Review: Elia Kazan--What A Life!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Before I read this book, I knew a little about Elia Kazan. For example, I knew that he had been a successful Hollywood film director in the late forties and early fifties. Indeed, I had seen some of his films: East Of Eden, in particular, came to mind. I had also read somewhere that he had also been a prominent and successful theatre director on Broadway; that he had given the likes of Marlon Brando and James Dean their first starts; that he was one of the influential people behind the advent of the Method Acting style; and finally, that he had been a `friendly' witness-that means naming names, of course--at the HUAC hearings in the early fifties: what a snake, I thought! But hey, I've now read the book, and I know the real story and the real Elia Kazan. The book is an 800+ page epic. And an epic in every sense of the word. Kazan's autobiography is a long, brooding, and fascinating recall of his eventful life. He has, as he acknowledges in the later pages, lived a variegated and full life, he has no regrets about any of it, and he realises that he has been fortunate to have led such an interesting life. And `interesting' it certainly is. The book, though, is no glamorous odyssey of a life lived in Broadway and Hollywood; neither is it a chronicle of the great and the good of America's creative talent. Yes, there are valuable insights and vivid portraits of people like Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, Clifford Odets, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando and John Steinbeck. You will also meet some of Hollywood's movie moguls, particularly Darryl Zanuck at Fox. Yes, those stories are told, but all in the context of the main enterprise: the laying down for posterity of the intimate detail of the life of one of America's most celebrated creative talents of the middle of the twentieth century. Kazan unashamedly reveals his inner thoughts, his recollections, reasons, reminiscences and experiences-whether they show him in a good, bad or indifferent light. The book is brutally frank and you can only admire the author's unstinting honesty-possibly a cathartic aspect to the work aided Kazan along the way.
Remarkable for a book of this size, there is never a hint of unevenness or flagging. It's an enthralling, engrossing book from start to finish. Much of life's rich tapestry, to use the euphemistic cliché, is explored here. Kazan is clearly an astute and perceptive observer of life. Life essentially means human beings, of course, and this brings us to the essence of the book, human nature, particularly the behaviour between man and woman. Manipulation, expediency, lust, deceit, hurt, love, the passion and the platonic: it's all here in a very stark black and white. Yet still the book continually sparkles, even when the reader faces some genuinely sad and pitiful moments, particularly relating to Kazan's fiercely supportive and loyal first wife, Molly. There is no cherry-picking of `the good times' in this book: highs and lows, triumph and disaster, they all co-exist side by side. Kazan doesn't shirk from revealing his overwhelming determination at the time to have his cake and eat it ie. a loving wife at home and a passionate mistress outside.
Apart from the inherent problems that male/female relationships spawn, if you forgive the pun, Kazan also talks extensively about his rather frustrating and unfulfilling time at college; his less-than-perfect relationship with his father; reflections on the life of a Greek immigrant family trying to make their way in the `new world', in this case, New York; more reflections on Greeks, this time those living in another `foreign' country, Turkey (where Kazan's parents had emigrated from), and the altered behaviour necessary to survive amongst `the enemy'; and, of course, he describes the whys and wherefores of his `friendly' HUAC testimony, and the subsequent vitriol directed against him as a consequence from many quarters, including so-called `friends'; we learn of the unsavoury modus operandi of both the Communist Party in America and the HUAC authorities in the late forties and early fifties; and Kazan's single-mindedness and determination as, post-HUAC, he persevered and produced his best work as a film director; also, an interesting account of how Kazan's second wife, Barbara, and her confused but brave struggle against cancer; and so on.
The book is a courageous and brutally honest self-expose, if you like, of a man who has remained largely silent over the years. He doesn't gloss over his extra-marital activities, and the hard-heartedness and guile required on his part to maintain his passionate love for his mistress and, at the same time, his more platonic love for his first wife. This reflects the `insoluble' (Kazan's word) nature of man's relationship with the opposite sex.
The book is beautifully-written-quality throughout--and the prose intimate, inviting and lucid. The honesty and intimacy of Kazan's words, as he describes his thoughts, feelings and rationale at the time, ensure that you live his life with him, and by the end of the book, you also feel you've been through one hell of a life.
Over a year ago, I read an excellent book called A Child Of The Century, Ben Hecht's autobiography, published in the fifties. I never thought I'd read another autobiography to match or surpass it. I have, and it's called A Life, by Elia Kazan. Waste no more time and buy this book. Alternatively borrow it or steal it, but whatever you do, read it!!