A Life
Kazan, Elia
Their notion of value is by no means identified success with the particular as absurd as it may seem today, now kind of success accorded by Broadway. that Broadway has all but expired. Why Most of...
...that there could be a kind of theatrical elan...
...I wanted to know...
...I knew what that would mean: I'd have to cheat, lie, fake, dissemble—all shameful, all humiliating, all necessary if you want to have what I've called "both...
...What abort the garde, cannot even with the best of quality of his direction...
...I agree he is not and sexual...
...re for a play, while a novel can await has done it...
...These were very different types of plays, and must have required very difLionel Abel, professor emeritus at the State University of New York at Buffalo is author of Metatheatr The Intellectual Follies, anct most recently, Important Nonsense (Prometheus Books...
...And my second comment is this: However one judges his chosen policy of lying, cheating, and faking (in matters of politics, 48 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1988 In a heated discussion of theater and its values with Harold Clurman—discussions with Clurman always tended to be heated—he remarked that the final and definitive critic of a play can be none other than its director...
...A case in point is his treat- something on which its own denial ment of Harold Clurman...
...Unlikely, to say the least...
...A few pages later hold of it once more, in what could be one may find the acquaintance round- called the tentative turning toward ly damned...
...About his double dealing he is quite forthright...
...He draws them enthusiasti"They are unworthy of trust...
...But I must distinguish the qualiFrom all of which one must conclude success for plays not at all intended for ty of the storytelling from the moral that Kazan was by no means a critic of Broadway...
...and Kazan was simply this: they ter (morally...
...Yet J. Hoberman, in reviewing A theless it is true that success on the stage Life in the Village Voice (May 17, 1988), is required for any play to have effect, writes that if it had not been for the in-and even to be understood...
...Kazan reminds me of the image Kazan writes with pride of his Ulysses gives of time in Troilus and Greek heritage, and I believe Cressida, comparing it to the host who, there is a connection between the lying as he greets each newcomer, looks over to which he admits and the reputation the latter's shoulder towards the next for untrustworthiness of the ancient to enter...
...it did not promise suc- Broadway bound...
...A learned friend of mine that...
...Never- him...
...I am referring to a time, of course, when Broadway had a meaning it is quite bereft of today...
...Hoberman assume ly directed...
...in stage direction involve quite different qualities, and call for different kinds of praise...
...He conversation, said pretty much the bed with another woman by his wife, turned down The Blacks when he was same—were due to an unwillingness, no "It's not me...
...For an Obie given by the Voice...
...On the one falls...
...A great-sized monster of in-Greeks...
...He left it to pecially sensitive to the dependence of Bukharin...
...Endgame...
...But ing treacherously informed on his pals no playwright can take satisfaction in in crime, calling such treachery "beauferent directorial decisions...
...So if success on the tries to draw from it, as from his other cess on Broadway, and such success stage is important to our estimation of recountings, i.e., in life, one has to entered into the very concept of good theatrical work, the mistake of Clurman deceive others or oneself, and it is bettheater dear to both directors...
...Their the German philosopher wrote, " . perfidy," he said...
...Barrault would have to be called the real critic of Racine's Andromache, and not Charles Peguy, who had the insight to note that in this, as in Racine's other tragedies, the victimizer is a good deal less cruel than his victim...
...Arthur Miller's foolish re- slant Kazan gives his tales...
...Deception was almost the rule by which Kazan conducted his sexual affairs, and his transgression against the left, when he informed on his Communist friends and acquaintances, was of a piece with his politics in matters of sex and sentiment...
...I quote: What I had decided without knowing it, was that I would live in conflict and confusion...
...Genet lost none of his apits readers...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1988 49...
...What Simmel called "a flirt...
...Sartre did dub him a traitor, but never tried his hand at any of the avant- the stage...
...And in cally into his domain, and as their James Joyce's Ulysses, Stephen backs are turned, vigorously boots Dedalus refers to "argive Helen" as them in the behind .. . "the wooden mare of Troy in whom a Shifts in judgment are typical of score of heroes slept," thus summing Kazan, and he fears to be taken—he up in a single image Greek cleverness thinks this would be mistaking him—and deceit in matters political, military, for a scoundrel...
...There is not only the line in gratitude," Ulysses calls Time...
...I submit that virtue in politics and playwright a tyro...
...A contender for "One can't know the worth of a play what...
...I think rather that he was and once remarked disparagingly of Nietz- still is in all his endeavors, literary, sche, "There is one thing he never theatrical, political, sexual, what Georg understood about the Greeks...
...Why Most of the plays Kazan directed do I say this...
...can be enjoyed by offered its direction, and for the same doubt shared by Kazan, to think everyone, but there are not a few who reason Kazan would not take on any seriously of any theater piece not will find unacceptable the moral Kazan play of that type...
...Here I have two comments: According to Kazan, he did not know the decision he was making, but did know what the meaning of the decision he did not know he was making would be...
...I am told that David were indeed Broadway successes, and I Mamet, who is anything but avant think deservedly so...
...It is introduced us to a notion neither Clur- are in the stories about Kazan's famous thus that Beckett and Genet were man nor Kazan even considered, i.e., acquaintances, told with good, gossipy served, in the main, off Broadway...
...Stendhal could hope that peal to the left in France, or here for sixty years after his death his books that matter, when he confessed to havwould find their rightful audience...
...By Clurman's standard, the definitive critic of the late forties, the fifties, and the sixties, could not be Clurman himself: it is his own finger which points to Elia Kazan...
...But the fifties The strengths of this autobiography Blacks and Quintero The Balcony...
...How can matters of the theater, but a few pages we take his word for anything...
...Gene Frankel directed The think are likely to flop...
...later on we learn that he was hopelessly inept as a director...
...there also is the judgment of the treatment of those he has greeted ad-Greeks in the Electra of Euripides: miringly...
...until it is properly cast and intelligent- And who does Mr...
...He it was who directed (and with success on Broadway) the outstanding plays of the period: The Skin of Our Teeth, A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof...
...But Vergil, "I fear the Greeks bringing Kazan is even more ill-mannered in his gifts...
...When in his tive way of acting . . . in the act of pages one reads some praise of a taking hold of something only to let it famous acquaintance, it is best not to fall again, of letting it drop only to take take this as heartfelt...
...True, Kazan the thought of posthumous success on tiful...
...Certainly real stature, and one must add marks against Beckett—Clurman, in the shout of Boris Aronson, caught in something against Clurman, too...
...And on the matter of informing: So immediate success is important its morality depends apparently on who 1...
...As Kenneth formation Kazan gave to the Un-AmeriRexroth once wrote in reviewing a play can Affairs Committee, "he might have of mine for the San Francisco Examiner, been a contender...
...I have seen productions of was the champion director of the periOedipus that might make one think its od...
...to deceive others...
...But Bukharin was no Herbert Berghof to put on Waiting for a play on its staging, and are not to be traitor, as the Russians have now Godot, and to Allen Schneider to do criticized for turning down plays they conceded...
...I at once confronted him with the consequences of holding such a view...
...But Harold held to his view, which was based on a particular notion of value, involving, as a component, success on Broadway...
...I think it must notices succeed on Broadway, which is be granted that he was the best director now restricted to theatrical monstrosi- on the Broadway of his time, as Jed ties like a musical—a comedy?—about Harris had been in the decade before the "wretched of the earth...
...theater, and sex), how are we to know hand he tells us that Clurman was the that he has not continued that policy wisest and most knowledgeable in all in the writing of this book...
...is the form in which the indecisiveKazan has written perfidiously of ness of life is crystallized into a posithose he claims to admire...
...Now directors have to be es- forgave him with the phrase "like garde works of the period...
...Flirtation," was that...
...It would follow—for our generation, at least—that the definitive critic of Hamlet could be none other than Laurence Olivier, and could not possibly be Hazlitt or Coleridge or Goethe (who explained the presence of Fortin-bras in the play...
Vol. 21 • December 1988 • No. 12
