8 December 2014 Book Review Elia Kazan As Revealed By His Very Own Letters While Elia Kazan was undoubtedly one of the most influential directors in Hollywood history — helming such classic fare as East of Eden, On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire — he’s probably most commonly remembered as a onetime Communist who named names before the U.S.’s House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1952. Revered by some for his work and reviled by others for his personal politics, Kazan has long been considered a controversial figure, which makes him all the more fascinating. In The Selected Letters of Elia Kazan (Alfred A. Knopf, 649 pages, $27.26), edited by Albert J. Devlin with Marlene J. Devlin, readers are privy to nearly 300 letters that the late, great director sent to everyone fromhis first wife to playwrights Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams to actors like Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy. And he never minced words. Each and every dispatch is peppered with Kazan’s unique charm and startling honesty. Whether it was telling his wife he thought it best for them to divorce or telling a writer that he completely disagreed with his vision, Kazan always made sure to get his point across — no matter how harsh or abrupt it might seem, and regardless of whether the person on the other end would despise him for it. In one memorable missive, after his wife of nearly 10 years, Molly Day Thacher, learned of his affair with actress Constance Dowling, Kazan — who one might think would be remorseful and apologetic — instead wrote: “I had plenty of chances to be promiscuous. But I never in my life slept with a whore, and I really only had one other affair. The rest never came off, one way or another. What am I telling you anything for I don’t know. I know I love you. I want you. You think I’m a shit.” Two years later, he wrote Molly to tell her that he’d started the affair up again. “I’m going with Constance again. I enjoy it. It’s not as deep a well or as wide as a church door, but twill serve. She’s tender and simple and uncomplicated. She’s loving and graceful. Put it this way: she has no problem with me, except the fundamental one, whether she really has me or not… Divorce me. Make other friends. Let’s take the stew which is spoiled and throw it out. Then anything we feel and anything we really actually want of each other, we’ll have of each other.” This is almost the equivalent of a modern-day break-up text message. What kind of husband writes a letter to his wife, the mother of his children, to tell her not only of an indiscretion but also of a desire to break up, to destroy the family and the life they built together? It seems heartless…but it also seems unquestionably Kazan-esque — simultaneously full of himself and filled with self-hatred. And the fact is that Molly actually stayed with Kazan another 20 years — through other affairs, including one with doomed starlet Marilyn Monroe — until her sudden death of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1956. And it wasn’t just his wife who was on the receiving end of this brutal brand of honesty. In a 1963 letter to Warren Beatty, he told the famed pretty-boy that he needed to stop being sodifficult on sets or he’d soon find himself unemployable. “It’s very regrettable that so many people think of you as a special problem,” he wrote. And in a 1967 letter to Marlon Brando, he called the actor “terribly overweight.” He also used letters to convey his thoughts on how certain plays that he directed ought to be staged and what specific changes he felt needed to be made with regard to casting, rewriting or set changes on movies he worked on. He seems to have put pen to paper to commemorate nearly every waking thought he had — be it related to life or work. Nowadays, it seems that people — especially those Hollywood types who’ve received some type of media training — know never to put anything inwriting that might eventually be used against them. Although he might have benefited from such media training, watching his every word would have fundamentally changed Kazan from the candid straight-shooter that he was into something lesser — something unlike himself. These letters portray the director as a flawed but truthful individual, with a commitment to honesty that might seem at odds in a man who cheated on his spouse at every turn. The letters are also an unmistakable product of their time with a casual racism and homophobia that would be considered despicable today. Words like “fairy” and “queer” are thrown around carelessly. But Kazan seems to have actually been a relatively open-minded guy, as many drama lovers are. He doesn’t appear to hold people’s race or orientation against them. He just makes mention of it more than an open-minded, enlightened individual would in today’s more progressive, more tolerant, more free-thinking world. A few of the letters touch on the HUAC controversy, but seeing as how many people picking up this book — this reviewer included — would probably be more familiar with his testimony than with his actual body of work, it might have been better to include more information on the scandal. Then again, maybe there simply weren’t many letters in which Kazan even alluded to the incident. Maybe he was more embarrassed by it than he let on. Maybe he just wanted the dust to settle, the talk to die down. He lost more than a few friends for so willingly collaborating with the committee. In one memorable note to screenwriter and producer Budd Schulberg, he wrote about his feelings regarding his testimony, “I’ve been a little depressed now and then, but every time I go over things, I feel I did right, so there is nothing to do but go on and do my work.” That line almost perfectly encapsulates what made Elia Kazan who he was. He had definite ideas about how things should look, how things should be, and he didn’t hesitate to share his thoughts. He might occasionally regret what he’d done, but that passed quickly and he continued on as usual. But others in Hollywood never could find a way to get past what they saw as an act of betrayal. In fact, in 1999 — nearly five decades after the initial controversy, when Kazan was awarded an honorary Oscar at the 71st annual Academy Awards — many in the audience remained silent and refused to clap for him. While his bluntness definitely made for a fascinating group of letters for modern-day readers to enjoy, those folks who actually received letters from Kazan might not have been as jazzed to read them as we are. After all, would you want your husband to tell you of his affair and intention to leave you via the postal service? I should think not. The editors of the book might have been wise to try and track down a few of the responses sent back to Kazan. It would have been nice to know that he got as good as he gave. Or at the very least that his wife wrote him back a nasty, expletive-filled letter or two that told him what she really thought about him. LHR
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