Elia Kazan: A Biography

Elia Kazan: A Biography.Few figures in film and theater history tower like Elia Kazan. Arguably the most important and influential director in the nation by the 1950s, Kazan´s Broadway productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman reshaped the values of the stage, while his films - most notably On the Waterfront - brought a new realism and intensity of performance to the movies. Ebullient and secretive, bold and self-doubting, beloved yet reviled for "naming names" before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Kazan was an individual as complex and fascinating as any he directed. In the electrifying biography Elia Kazan, noted film historian and critic Richard Schickel illuminates a single astonishing life and life´s work, pays tribute to the power of theater and film, and casts a new light on six crucial decades of American history.