Today is September 7in 1909, the distinguished Greek origin was born in Istanbul director, screenwriter and writer Elia Kazanwho with his inspired direction for cinema and theater became one of the most important figures in American culture in the mid-20th century.

The first steps

The son of carpet merchant Giorgos Kazantzoglou and Athena Sismanoglou, Elia Kazan immigrated with his family to New York in 1913. Despite his father’s objections, he decided to pursue acting, studying for about two years at the Drama School of the University of Yale and working as a waiter to make ends meet. In 1932 he joined the New York theater group Group Theater, one of the most important experimental troupes of the modern theater, as an actor and assistant director.

Theater

He began directing plays from 1935, gaining attention with productions such as the popular comedy Café Crown (1942) and Thornton Wilder’s With Teeth (1942), the latter with an outstanding cast including Tallulah Bankhead and Montgomery Clift. In 1947, the staging of Arthur Miller’s masterpiece “They Were All My Children” (Tony Award for Direction) and Tennessee Williams’ “The Lust Bus” established him as the favorite director of perhaps the greatest generation of American dramatists.

Other important plays directed by Elia Kazan were: “Death of a Salesman” (Arthur Miller, 1949 – Tony Award for Director), “Camino Real” (Tennessee Williams, 1953), “Rabid Cat” (Tennessee Williams, 1955), “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” (William Inge, 1957), “Sweet Bird of Youth” (Tennessee Williams, 1959), “JB” (Archibald MacLeish, 1959 – Tony award for Director) etc.

Dealing with cinema

He first appeared on film as an actor in 1934 in a short film by photographer and director Ralph Steiner and in supporting roles in Anatoli Litvak’s gangster films City of Conquest (1940) and Blues in the Night (1941). He made his first feature film in 1945. Entitled “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”, the film deals with the story of a family of Irish immigrants, who are faced with poverty and the father’s alcoholism (a wonderful performance by James Dunn who won the Oscar for Best Actor).

His first success came in 1947 with the film “Agreement of Gentlemen”, winning his first Oscar for directing. This was followed in 1951 by the big-screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s play A Bus for Desire, turning Marlon Brandon into a major movie star and giving Vivien Leigh the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Blanche DuBois. Elia Kazan’s other important films in the cinema were: “The Harbor of Agony” (1954 – Oscar for Director), “East of Eden” (1955), “Baby Doll” (1956), “A Figure in the Crowd” (1957) , “Blood Fever” (1961), “America, America” ​​(1963) etc.

“Director of Actors”

He went down in history as the “Director of Actors” both on stage and screen, with the actors under his direction earning a total of 21 nominations and 9 Academy Awards. The intimacy created between him and his protagonists during filming resulted in natural, “relentless” performances, flooded with a flood of psychological truths.

During his career he defined a modern acting style that continues to inspire today, while also discovering some of the biggest movie stars including Marlon Brando, James Dean and Warren Beatty. His teaching of actors combined the Constantin Stanislavsky-influenced method of psychological realism of the Actors Studio (which he co-founded in 1947) and the method of the actor Osgood Perkins, which involved clear external action, fully controlled by skill.

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