English prof's book profiles film-maker Elia Kazan, whose upcoming award has sparked controversy

In An American Odyssey: Elia Kazan and American Culture, Tom Pauly traces Kazan's involvement with the Group Theatre, the Actors' Studio and his Broadway and Hollywood careers. He also examines the demons that drove this "outsider" to direct dramas of alienation that were at first blatantly political and, later, as the sympathies of the country shifted, more subtle.

Kazan's controversial testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), where he renounced his former Communist beliefs and identified fellow Communists, also is examined.

Despite all the controversy of his HCUA testimony, Kazan remains the director responsible for such Broadway classics as Cat on A Hot Tin Roof, Death of a Salesman and Tea and Sympathy and Hollywood masterpieces like On the Waterfront, Splendor in the Grass and A Streetcar Named Desire, which he directed on both stage and screen. With those productions, he worked directly with some of the country's leading playwrights and authors, such as Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and John Steinbeck, and helped launch the careers of such stars as Marlon Brando, James Dean, Barbara Belle Geddes, Lee Remick and Warren Beatty.

"Young people today will see Kazan get this award and wonder why he hasn't gotten one before," Pauly said. "His influence on the stage and screen is enormous. It will be hard for them to imagine how older people could harbor such intense resentment over his HCUA testimony. They will probably wonder how a political act could be so damaging to his directing career."

According to Pauly, the development of Kazan's early career parallels that of American audiences, as his Broadway and Hollywood successes and failures reflected the change from the Democratic liberation of the 1930s to the Republican conservatism of the 1950s.

In the book, he explains, for example, how important it was for Kazan to understand audience expectations and cue his efforts to them. But, the success of his work during the 1940s blinded him to the dangers that were coming. He writes, "Kazan was in trouble and too preoccupied to heed the dangers rising up around him. Throughout the 1940s, through the war years and their wrenching aftermath, he had perceptively read the shifts in the cultural climate and come up with dramas cued to them. But, his remarkable success had significantly altered his outlook. He had become a visionary eager to make his presence felt and his voice heard....In thus growing more confident of his power...Kazan lost touch with his audience and America. First, he failed to notice and then he badly misread the menacing turns in the commercial and political conditions over the next two years. And he paid dearly."

Pauly also looks at the profound impact television and Cinemascope were to have on the kinds of films Kazan wanted to produce.

He discusses, for example, the irony of Kazan's testimony. Having testified to save his career, he discovered Hollywood was turning its back on the controversial social-drama films that were his forte.

"Kazan testified to hold onto his career while at the same time that which was his lifeblood was being eliminated. Black-and-white films were judged too much like the newly popular television, the political atmosphere forbade the making of films that questioned social problems. Fox wanted him to produce big screen pageants like The Robe," Pauly said.

Kazan's remarkable comeback after the debacle of his HCUA testimony also is explored in the book. After a menacing series of failures, he began to gravitate toward plays and films that handled social injustice gingerly and used it as a stimulus to romance. With the enormous success of Tea and Sympathy and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof on Broadway and On The Waterfront and East of Eden in Hollywood, he proved his skill with this modified material.

Pauly writes: "All four were to focus on a young, deeply troubled male protagonist whose reluctant, misunderstood waywardness was linked to a developing love affair that opened up the possibility of relief from his alienation. Consequently, the plight of this young rebel was less a social problem than a debilitating sense of self, which a generous, understanding woman helped him to overcome...through their love they were able to offer these troubled males the sort of salvation associated with political action back in the 1930s."

Pauly also notes the special significance of Kazan's involvement with On The Waterfront, and its ironic glorification of a stool pigeon.

"A journalist named Malcom Johnson had won a Pulitzer Prize for his stories exposing problems on the New York waterfront," Pauly said, "so this social problem was real and not a potentially subversive indictment of American injustice. It had also been publicized by a major Senate investigation."

Although the movie has strong parallels to Kazan's life following his HCUA testimony and viewers today come to the film well aware of this, Pauly said audiences at the time didn't make the connection. "That was an insider sort of thing," he said. "The public only began to notice much later."

Pauly tracks Kazan's career through the establishment of his own film company and its releases of Baby Doll and A Face in the Crowd--both box office failures, his Broadway directing of The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Sweet Bird of Youth. Also discussed are the failed venture of establishing a national repertory theatre at the new Lincoln Center in the early 1960s and the failure of his epic film, America, America, an intensely personal story of Greek immigrants. Writing that screenplay, however, had the accidental effect of changing the direction of Kazan's career, and Pauly's book ends with Kazan becoming a novelist and his direct recognition of the self-expression that was always at the center of his directing career.

"Kazan resolved to concentrate upon his writing. He would no longer strain to get the attention of an audience and he would avoid the fights for which he used to spoil. He would be a spectator more interested in the game than the victory."

Discussion of a disastrous film version of his highly successful novel, The Arrangement and the failure of The Last Tycoon in 1976 end the book.

Pauly received his bachelor's degree from Harvard and his doctorate from the University of California. He has been at the University of Delaware for 28 years and researches 20th century American culture.

--Beth Thomas