Acclaimed, Controversial Kazan Dies

When Elia Kazan accepted his honorary, if controversial Oscar in 1999, the frail filmmmaker promised to quietly "slip away."

Sunday, at his Manhattan home, Kazan slipped away. The Academy Award-winning director of classic Hollywood social dramas Gentleman's Agreement and On the Waterfront was 94. Cause of death was not known.

Kazan's career-achievement Oscar was as much for those two films as it was for a body of work that included the Broadway and film versions of A Streetcar Named Desire, East of Eden, Splendor in the Grass and A Face in the Crowd. It also was a nod for the new faces he brought to film, many of whom--Marlon Brando, James Dean, Karl Malden--came up in the ranks at New York's Actors Studio, which he cofounded in 1948.

The breadth of Kazan's credits is breathtaking: He was a radio actor ("Playing hoodlums for bread," he once said). He was a stage actor. He was a film actor. He was a Tony-winning Broadway director, introducing classics such as Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and Tennessee Williams' Streetcar. He was a best-selling novelist, turning two of his tales, America, America and The Arrangement, into films. He was an original teacher of the Method, revolutionizing acting with the naturalistic, internalized technique.

But it was one role that in some minds overshadowed, and diminished all that came before and after: In the late 1940s, Kazan named names before the Communist-hunting House Committee of Un-American Activities.

While the committee, and its instigator, U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy, ultimately were denounced, its hearings reverberated through Hollywood. Writers, actors and directors whose names had been bandied about as possible Communist sympathizers found themselves unemployable--blacklisted.

Kazan, who briefly ran in Communist circles in the 1930s, claimed he made a best of a bad situation, only giving the committee names they already had. "There's a normal sadness about hurting people, but I'd rather hurt them a little than hurt myself a lot," he once said.

If Kazan never quite apologized, than those who felt they suffered for his actions never forgave. "I hope somebody shoots him [at the Oscars]," blacklisted screenwriter Abraham Polansky said in 1999. "It will be an interesting moment in what otherwise promises to be a dull evening."

Kazan--the Cliff's Notes version of Kazanjoglous--was born on September 7, 1909, in modern-day Turkey. He moved with his Greek parents to New York at age 4. His experiences in his new homeland would be dramatized in the book and movie America, America.

He made his big-screen directing debut in 1945 with the atypically sentimental A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, about a down-on-their-luck family and its perpetually pickled patriarch.

The breakthrough year was 1947. He earned his first of three Tony Awards for helming Arthur Miller's All My Sons. He shocked Broadway sensibilities with Tennessee Williams' steamy new A Streetcar Named Desire, and its steamy new star Marlon Brando. And he directed the movie that would bring him his first Best Director Oscar, Gentleman's Agreement, about a magazine writer (Gregory Peck) who poses as a Jew to learn about anti-Semitism.

In 1949, Kazan and Miller reteamed for the seminal Death of a Salesman. The production became the gold standard of American drama, and won both men Tonys.

Professional success continued in the 1950s. His 1951 film version of Streetcar successfully introduced the Brando Method to movie audiences, even if, thanks to censors, it wasn't entirely successful in introducing the totality of Williams' vision.

Kazan Oscar'd for On the Waterfront, the 1954 drama about a dock worker (Brando) who rebels against his union and famously laments about how he "coulda been a contender."

"I didn't really direct the scene, [the actors--Brando and Rod Steiger] did it," Kazan once said. "They made the scene, those two men."

In 1956, he racked up another Oscar nomination for the John Steinbeck epic East of Eden, with James Dean, and a Tony nomination for Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. While his relationship with Miller cooled after the HUAC testimony, Kazan continued his association with Williams, directing the playwright's Sweet Bird of Youth for a 1960 Tony nomination.

In all, Kazan earned Seven Tony nominations, and seven Oscar nominations, including three for writing, producing and directing 1963 Best Picture contender America, America.

He wrote more and directed less in the 1960s. In the 1970s, he made just two films, including his final major release, 1976's The Last Tycoon, an attempt to finish F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished Hollywood novel, with Robert De Niro as the titular mogul.

"Elia was a great influence in my life, and in the lives of so many others of my generation," De Niro said in a statement. "He was a truly great director and his work will influence filmmakers for years to come. I'll miss him."

De Niro along with Martin Scorsese stood up for Kazan in 1999, presenting the then-89-year-old with his long-awaited honorary Oscar. De Niro hailed Kazan as a "man whose work is vitally important to the history of film."

Blacklist veterans such as Polansky sought to use the award presentation as payback, urging Academy Award attendees to "sit on their hands" and not clap for the director as he took the stage.

Come Oscar night, most of the big names, including former Kazan pupils Karl Malden and Warren Beatty, honored the director with a standing ovation. Some of the big names, including Nick Nolte and Ed Harris, did not.

In the end, Kazan was grateful for the reception.

"I thank you very much. I really to hear that," he said on stage. "I really want to thank the Academy for its courage and generosity."

"[And now] I'm just going to slip away."

Kazan married three times and, per his 1988 autobiography, dallied with many, including Actors Studio grad Marilyn Monroe. Survivors include screenwriter son Nicholas Kazan (Enough), and third wife Frances Rudge.