US director Elia Kazan, who rose to the top of Hollywood and Broadway fame but became embroiled in controversy over the naming of suspected Communists during the McCarthy era, has died at the age of 94, his long-time attorney said.
“He did pass away this morning at his Manhattan home,” Floria Lasky, who served as Kazan’s lawyer for over half a century. “His wife and all his children were around.”
Lasky said she did not know the exact cause of the famous filmmaker’s passing, which occurred on Sunday, but added that “he has not been too well in the last few years.”
Kazan has two surviving sons and two daughters.
“I suppose they expected it at some point,” she said of Kazan’s family. “But it is always bad news, especially when a genius passes away.”
Kazan’s theatre credits include classics such as A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, The Skin of Our Teeth, All My Sons, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sweet Bird of Youth, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, “Tea and Sympathy and J. B.
Among his best known movies were A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, Viva Zapata!, East of Eden, Splendour in the Grass and America, America.
His films received 21 Oscar nominations and won nine.
But Kazan was shunned for decades by many in Hollywood for “naming names” of Communists he had met while he was a member of the party in the 1930s.
Even his Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement, presented in 1999, was controversial for many who remembered his testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952.
Kazan was born in Constantinople in what was then the Ottoman Empire in 1909 and emigrated with his Greek parents to the United States a few years later. He studied drama at Yale University.
A leftist by conviction, Kazan joined the US Communist Party in 1934 and was active in left-wing artistic circles before World War II.
His rose to fame with the establishment of the Actors Studio, where Kazan directed two plays by Arthur Miller: All My Sons (1947) and Death of a Salesman (1949).
Celebrated playwright Tennessee Williams worked with him on the production of his A Streetcar Named Desire in 1947.
When anti-Communist fervor whipped up by Senator Joe McCarthy swept the United States, Kazan was one of the so-called “friendly witnesses” appearing before a House of Representatives committee probing “un-American” activities.
During his testimony, he named some fellow members of left-wing groups he was involved with in the 1930s.
As a result, these people were summoned before the committee, and those who refused to name names were blacklisted and in some cases sent to prison.
His cooperation with authorities saved his artistic career: Kazan was allowed to continue making movies.
But the episode haunted him. During the Oscars ceremony in 1999, many Hollywood celebrities remained seated and did not applaud when Kazan was presented with the lifetime achievement award. – AFP