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Elia Kazan[ilI´u, El´yu kuzan´, –zAn´] Pronunciation Key, 1909–2003, American stage and film director, producer, writer, actor, b. Turkey, as Elia Kazanjoglous. Immigrating to the United States in 1913, Kazan began his acting career with the New York Group Theatre in the 1930s. He became a founding member and director of the Actors' Studio (see Strasberg, Lee). In 1952, appearing before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, he admitted to membership in the Communist party in the 1930s and named other Hollywood figures who were also members. Kazan's outstanding stage productions included The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), All My Sons (1947), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947; film version, 1951), Death of a Salesman (1949), and Tea and Sympathy (1953). Among his major films are A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1944), Gentlemen's Agreement (1947), On the Waterfront (1954), East of Eden (1955), and A Face in the Crowd (1957). He directed the films America, America (1963) and The Arrangement (1969) from his own novels of 1962 and 1967, the first of a series that also includes The Anatolian (1982) and Beyond the Aegean (1994). In 1999 Kazan received an honorary Academy Award.
See his autobiography (1988); J. Young, Kazan (1999).
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