We Shouldn’t Be Forcing Anyone to Make the Hard Choice Elia Kazan Faced

The recent Hollywood release Trumbo, concentrating upon the film industry’s notorious post-World War II blacklist, concludes with Dalton Trumbo, a blacklisted screenwriter and member of the Hollywood Ten, receiving the 1970 Laurel Award from the Writers Guild of America. In his acceptance speech, Trumbo shocked many of his associates on the political left by asserting that both the blacklisted and informers were victims of the Hollywood inquisition conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) amid the hysteria of the Cold War. Among those called before the committee was film director Elia Kazan, who initially refused to cooperate, but in April 1952 agreed to name names of associates, including his good friend playwright Clifford Odets, once involved with the Communist Party. What made Kazan’s testimony particularly offensive to many was that rather than being repentant, the director prepared a paid statement for the New York Times in which he expressed pride in his actions. In fact, Kazan never really made any formal apology, although there is a degree of ambiguity in his 1992 autobiography. In 1999, the director received a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award, which divided the film community, and his legacy continues to be controversial. The director described the Communist Party as a criminal conspiracy, yet HUAC and the anticommunist crusade was a greater threat to fundamental American freedoms than communists in Hollywood.. Kazan’s testimony hurt the livelihood and families of those whom he named, and his cooperation legitimized the actions of HUAC. On the other hand, Kazan’s post HUAC testimony films, including the Oscar-winning On the Waterfront, suggest that he did not abandon his progressive principles.

Kazan was an Anatolian Greek who immigrated to the United States when he was four years of age. His father was a rug merchant, who was extremely disappointed that his eldest son was more interested in pursuing a career in the theater than following his father into business. Kazan graduated from Williams College and attended Yale Drama School, where he remained an immigrant outsider—something that marriage into a prominent New England family would not change. He found a home in the New York City Group Theatre, and in response to the Great Depression, Kazan joined the Communist Party. However, Kazan left the party in 1936 due to what he described as an attempt to take over the Group Theatre. Kazan continued to maintain his friendship with party members and supported progressive causes. In the post-World War II period, he became one of the most celebrated figures in American theater; directing such notable plays as Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. Hollywood sought his services, and he developed a reputation for directing films with a progressive political slant such as Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)—for which Kazan won his first Academy Award—dealing with anti-Semitism in America and Pinky (1949) focusing upon race relations. Thus, in 1952 many on the political left felt betrayed by Kazan’s testimony.

Around the time that Kazan testified before HUAC, 20th Century-Fox was releasing his film Viva Zapata! based on a screenplay by John Steinbeck. While Steinbeck and Kazan were both Cold War liberals and the real villain of the film is a communist organizer, there is certainly sympathy for Zapata’s struggle to bring about land reform in Mexico. While applauding his testimony, many Hollywood conservatives remained suspicious of Kazan for making a Mexican revolutionary the hero of his picture. To placate those who still harbored doubts about Kazan’s politics, Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century-Fox insisted that the director make an anticommunist film. The result was the lackluster Man on a Tightrope (1953) dealing with a circus performer fleeing communist Czechoslovakia for the freedom of Austria and the West.

Kazan’s next film was the acclaimed On the Waterfront (1954) for which Kazan won his second Academy Award as Best Director. The film is often interpreted as Kazan and his screenwriter Budd Schulberg, who also named names before HUAC, justifying their actions. Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) decides to testify before the Crime Commission about waterfront corruption orchestrated by Johnny Friendly for whom Terry once worked. His conscience has been awakened by his girlfriend Edie (Eva Maria Saint) and Father Barry (Karl Malden); as well as the murder of his brother Charlie (Rod Steiger), who was part of Friendly’s inner circle. Yet, the film’s conclusion offers a degree of ambivalence that challenges this conservative reading of the picture. Although initially upset with Terry breaking the code of silence and speaking with the authorities, the workers finally decide to overthrow Friendly and follow Terry into work. However, the man whom Friendly calls Mr. Upstairs remains in charge of the docks. When Terry denounces Friendly on television, we see Mr. Upstairs watching the proceedings, and he informs his butler that if Friendly calls he is unavailable. In the final scene, Mr. Upstairs seems to accept Terry as the new leader of the workers, but the corrupt capitalist is still in control of the waterfront. And in the final shot of the film, the workers enter into an enclosed warehouse whose door is closed on them; signifying that the workers are still enclosed within an exploitive system despite Terry’s actions.

Kazan’s other post HUAC films contain similar elements of ambivalence and progressivism. For example, films such as East of Eden (1955) and Splendor in the Grass (1961) deal with themes of young people rebelling against the patriarchy and values of an older more materialistic generation. A Face in the Crowd (1957) was a film ahead of its time in its examination of how media, advertising, big business, and demagogic politicians might bring fascism to America. In this film, Kazan anticipates the idea of selling a candidate as a product which was well documented in The Selling of the President 1968 by Joe McGinniss and is all too common today. The often overlooked Wild River (1960) is a complex look at the price sometimes paid for progress. In Wild River, a Tennessee Valley Authority agent must evict an elderly woman from her home so that dams and electricity may be brought to the region. The dam is built but at the cost of the woman losing her traditional home. In America America (I963), Kazan tried to address a troubling relationship with his father by examining his family history and immigration to the United States. The result was a film that raised serious questions about the American dream and the price paid by immigrants in pursuit of that dream.

Accordingly, the legacy of Kazan is also an ambivalent one. He directed some of America’s greatest films. His films are progressive in their treatment of white working-class Americans. The films include strong female characters, although in his personal life and attitudes Kazan was rather sexist. He is sympathetic to black Americans, and Kazan avoids the racial stereotypes presented by Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. Nevertheless, his films set in the South focus on whites with black characters only in the background. The director offers a better understanding of the immigrant experience. Kazan never moved away from his denunciation of the Communist Party; however, his films indicate strong support for the progressive ideology of his youth. Although certainly not an apology, in his autobiography, Kazan came close to echoing the sentiments of Dalton Trumbo, writing, “I did what I did because it was the more tolerable of two alternatives that were, either way, painful, even disastrous, and either way wrong for me. That’s what a difficult decision means. Either way you go, you lose.” Kazan named names and was able to continue working, while Trumbo and the Hollywood Ten were blacklisted and imprisoned. As the United States again struggles with issues of liberty and security, let us not repeat the mistakes of the past and force individuals to make such choices.