Backlisted - A Life by Elia Kazan

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

We explore Elia Kazan's memoir A Life (1988) with veteran biographer and critic John Lahr, author of Notes on a Cowardly Lion, Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton and Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, amongst others. Kazan enjoyed a dazzling career in both theatre and film, directing the original stage productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman, before making a series of cinematic masterpieces: On the Waterfront, East of Eden, A Face in the Crowd, Wild River. He discovered both Marlon Brando and James Dean. But his decision to testify in front of the House Unamerican Activities Committee compromised and complicated his artistic legacy. In A Life, Kazan comes out swinging; his personality is stamped on every page of this fascinating, pugnacious and still-controversial book, echoing the defiant words of Terry Molloy at the climax of On The Waterfront: "I'm glad what I done".  * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm John Mitchinson. And I'm Andy Miller from The Backlisted Podcast. Now people always ask us how we read so many books for this show. John, how many did you read for the last one in about four days? It was five books, Andy. Five books in four days. Why? Why?

It's hard to talk about books if you haven't read them. And I know that you're reading heavily this week as well, aren't you? Well, I'm only reading one book, but don don't worry everyone it's 850 pages long so I won't be I won't be doing much else this week. Surely you must have a secret helper. No but what I do use is a serious reader's lamp as do you John I believe. It's true we spent hours squinting at the pages of the books we have to read for our show so we know the importance of good light and the serious readers HD Lite has transformed how we read. It replicates daylight, making every word crystal clear and reducing eye strain so we can read for longer.

For £150 off and free UK delivery of a Sirius Readers HD Lite, go to SiriusReaders.com forward slash backlisted and use the discount code BAK. go to seriousreaders.com forward slash backlisted and use the discount code back B A C K. That's seriousreaders.com forward slash backlisted with the code back and even better there's a 30 day risk free trial. Now on with the show. Hello and welcome to backlisted the podcast which gives new life to old books. The old book featured in today's show is A Life by Ilya Kazan, the autobiography of one of the 20th century's greatest theatre and film directors. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher at Unbound.

And I'm Andy Miller, the author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And we are honored and delighted to be joined today by a guest making his backlisted debut, the writer and critic John Law. What a thing. John Law, welcome to backlisted. Thank you so much for coming. I'm really looking forward to this. John is the author of 20 books, including

Notes on a Cowardly Lion, the biography of Burt Lahr, Prick Up Your Ears, the biography of Joe Orton, which was adapted in 1987 into a film directed by Stephen Frears with a screenplay by Alan Bennett, and Tennessee Williams Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, which won the National Book Critics Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. For 21 years, he was the senior drama critic of the New Yorker, the longest run at that position in the magazine's 100 year history. And he is also the first critic to win a Tony Award,

which he did for co-authoring, and long time listeners will know how thrilled I am at this particular detail. Elaine Stritch's, one woman show, Elaine Stritch at Liberty. We did a show about Sondheim, about Sondheim's books. These books about songwriting, John, a few years ago. And Sondheim is a great love of ours on this show. So I'm sure I'll be asking you about Elaine Stritch as well. But before I do that, I do have John,

I have one question for you. I was in Manchester yesterday and I bumped into a friend of mine, the writer Jeff Young. And Jeff has been a guest on Batlisted and I said we were gonna be recording with you today. And he said, go, that's a strange coincidence. I've just finished rereading notes on a cowardly lion. Amazing.

And I said, you know, and how is it? He said, it's amazing. I quote, it's amazing, says Jeff Young. It's even better than I remembered it. Well, that's nice to hear. And I wondered how you feel about that book, because that was your first book, wasn't it, about your father.

And you wrote that how long ago? Well, I was 21 when I started it and 28 when it was published. And first of all, it's still in print, which is amazing to me after 50 years, because of The Wizard of Oz and because Dad's career, thank God, has extended beyond normal lifespan because of the film. It's evergreen. And that's great because the character contains

all the moves and all the things that he had distilled over by then. He was 45 when he made the film. His burlesque and Broadway performances. But it was the only way I could get to know my father. I mean, he was sensationally absent. I mean, he was there, but he was entirely self-involved. I mean, at one point my mom said, would you call, call and, and, uh, get the

kids back for dinner as a friend of ours. And he got on the phone and he said, um, is, uh, is, and mother had to say John and Jane. He was adorable in his own way, but all we knew about him growing up was he had a scar on his forehead for being hit by a trolley that he was often set out to get beer in a pail that he liked to swim in the East River. And that was more or less it. We had no knowledge of him, nor he of us. And so the fact that I was able to write about him seems extraordinary to me that he let me do it. He died the week I finished the book and I had mourned him while I was writing it. And the book has sustained to a degree, the legend of his performing.

So in a sense, we're quits. Even he gave me this big chance and I I kept his story, such as it is, in the public domain. I didn't think I was ever gonna be a critic, but people would come, I was writing for $10 a column a little theater, just to get tickets, because we were broke, my first wife and I, just to get out of the house.

And the way that theater was written about was so hidebound. It had no sense of the culture, of the theater culture. And I suddenly thought, wow, I'd like to, you know, I wanna try something different. And one of the appeals of my interest, particularly in comedy, and one of the appeals with the book on dead was these were people, the culture called low comedians. They weren't regarded as serious. They were worthy of a lot of print representation.

And so Keaton and my father and Laurel and Hardy, all those people weren't properly documented. And also that their language was much more vivacious about the theater than the Lit Crit chat, which we still have about the art. And that seemed to be a great loss. And so one of the great things and satisfying things for me is dad is in that book. That's his voice. That's his experience. That's his idiom.

That's going to overlap with the Kazan book in terms of being a record of the contradictions of someone who did great work, important work on the stage particularly. Can I just ask you one more thing about your father or rather about the last 50 years of your life? You write the book in your early 20s and did you imagine, I don't know if you would imagine it or not, if you would have had a thought about it, but when you were writing it in the early 70s, did you think that the cowardly lion as a figure would continue to be as recognisable in 2025, if not more so than it was then? if not more so than it was then. Your idea of his omnipresence is not quite historically correct because the film did

well but it dropped out of the out of the sort of zeitgeist until the early 60s and then over Thanksgiving they started playing it on television and it took off there. Yeah. You want a bit of trivia about that, about your book, John, this is very trivial, but it was the first book I ever sold. No way. On the first day working in Wolstein's in Regent

Street in 1987. I was at that, they put, they put me in the cinema section and it just happened to be on the till, so I started reading it and was completely captivated by it. Somebody came and said, I'm just looking for a really good memoir. I said it's not a memoir but it's a biography. But you've seen Wizard of Oz, right? This book, if you're even remotely interested in the history of American cinema and in comedy, this book is, I said I'm going to buy a copy myself, which I did then go and do. I still remember it really clearly

because of the, I mean, the jacket hasn't changed much over the years. No, no, the thing that's really interesting to me is that none of these old guard, these guys were terrific artists and wonderful theater performers with great understanding of audiences. And none of them, I mean, Keaton had one day of

education, one. My father, I think, was kicked out after the sixth grade. Chaplin, until he educated himself, Chaplin was learning a word a day. They had, they had an intensity and urgency. There was no plan B in their life. It was, you know, this or bust, which gave a great urgency to their performance. But also they were called low comedians in their time. But when you go to the next generation of playwrights, you know, people talk about Artaud, who was Artaud's theater of cruelty?

Who did he have in mind? The Marx brothers. And Meyerhold. Who was Meyerhold's kinetic theater? Who was his idea? Chaplin. And who did Beckett use to deconstruct? Laurel and Hardy, so that these low comedians in their time became the

inspiration for the modern avant-garde in many ways. So it's a fascinating synergy there. That's why I think they're important to examine and chronicle. AL – Yeah. I'm going to ask you later in the show about another of your books about a similar, who could be argued to be a low comedian, which is the late Barry Humphreys, but hold that thought, hold that thought because we need to talk about our book first. I can't account for about two minutes of my life because I actually slipped off my seat at one of his performances just passed out. I was completely floored. Anyway.

You know what, John, just hold on one minute. I must ask John Larbis. So I read your book about Barry Humphreys, which is called Day Mednor Average and Day Mednor Average and the Rise of Western Civilization. That was published in 1992. And Mitch, I read that when I was a bookseller. And there is a detail in that wonderful book that has stayed with me ever since, John. And I wonder whether you can remember this. So one of the things that you do in that book

is you shadowed Barry Humphreys throughout the creation and production of one of the Dame Edna residences in the West End of London. Right. Correct? Back with the vengeance. Yeah. Back with the vengeance.

And there was a detail on myself as a student of comedy, there was a detail in it that I've never forgotten, which is that before every show, because Edna would pick out members of the audience to come up on stage for ritual humiliation, that Barry would send out fake program sellers, is this right, to go into the audience with a map so that on the seats they could make notes about which kind of person was sitting where. Is that right? No, that's not right. Oh, great. I'll tell you what the deal is.

First of all, I'm very proud of that book because it's the only book that I think has ever been written from backstage about a comedian. I don't think there's another that exists. Indeed. It's wonderful. And one of the things that I got to do backstage was to choose the guests that were going to be called up because there's a map, but there is a map. But the map is by the stage manager's desk. And it's very interesting. It all is about visual contrast to Barry. There's the fat person, there's the old person, there's the old person,

there's the hip person. There are a series of, I don't have the book right to hand, but if you go, the map is included in the book. And so it's really about visual contrast, you know? And just to think about it, and he's gonna pick a very chic woman and talk to her about the nude cartwheeling that she's going to be doing But but not to be not to be nervous

Not to scratch her ex about The part that I loved about it we'd be sitting sitting back, I mean, the wonderful contrast with Barry, was Barry was a dandy, that's what he was. Yes, for sure. And he had a great disdain for ordinary things. Of course, but he was also an Arabist. And so he had to be polite. So all his vindictiveness,

which is absolutely what makes him a great comedian, and Kazan, a great director, at the center of Kazan, at the center of Barry, at a sense of most of all of these really, really dynamic figures, is revenge, is getting even. And so he's sitting there and he's getting dressed and he's putting on the rouge and the dots. And he's, he's strapping on, and I'm not, I'm not lying, about a six foot cotton shawl. So he's sitting, he's wiping, he's getting into this thing, which he, during the course of the act, he'll scratch him and the audience will go, we'll just gasp.

Do you know what I mean? It's just, it's, well, anyway, so we're sitting there and he does, he gets it all in and the last thing Barry does, and this was blew me up, so he's in these high heeled shoes, he's dressed in a tuxedo with a lot of ruffles. The last thing he does before he goes on is he reaches over to his dressing, in his dressing room, and he picks up a bottle of Worcestershire sauce and drips it down the front of his tuxedo shirt. And why? The smell of the Worcestershire shots keeps him in character before he goes out. I mean it was such a fascinating job. It's thrilling.

My memory of the map, John, is that there was a, is that because Barry was concerned that if you got someone who had mobility issues, they would bring the show down. Oh, sure. Right, so you had to know where they were sitting in the auditorium and they had a shorthand for them. And do you remember what P.S. stood for? You tell me. where they were sitting in the auditorium. And they had a shorthand for them.

And do you remember what P.S. stood for? You tell me. Pathetic Senior is what P.S. stood for. So that Barry knew not to go to that particular seat holder because they take too long to get on the stage, receive a round of applause for it and ruin the comedy. Wait, you know, one of my great all time thrills, I mean, it really was a thrill.

I took the second string critic of The New Yorker, a woman called Nancy Franklin, who had never seen Barry, to the show, the particular iteration which got to Broadway, he was born again. So he starts to sing this song about his new condition, which is that he was born again. So he starts to sing this song about his new condition, which is that he's born again. And I'm sitting there taking notes to review the show. And so he says, he's singing. I can't do the voice, but, spin doctors have spun me. Dominic's done me. I'm even a book by John Larr. Call me old-fashioned. I'm a

born-again Broadway star. I was completely flabbergasted. And the thing about Barry, which is so interesting, this whole act was for his pleasure. He knew I would be coming in. He knew I would blow my mind and I would never forget it. And he used to do that when he was really depressed. He would get dressed up as a tramp and go down to a London bus stop. And he would bury in those trash cans a split of champagne and some chicken.

And he would go away. He would wait until there was a long queue. And he would come back. And you know how terribly embarrassing it is when and he would root through the garbage and find champagne and chicken and walk away. And he would say afterwards, those people will never forget the day that Tramp went through the garbage and found. In fact, Kazan even says it in this book. He says it's wonder, not information that the culture needs.

And that sense of wonder or credibility was one of Barry's great gifts. Just the extreme joyousness of the extreme surprise. It's wonderful. Well Mitch, I feel like John has done this before because he's carried us over from a reminiscence of Barry Humphrey's right back into the book we're about to talk about. So would you like to take us in please? Yes indeed the book on the table for discussion which you already mentioned is big in all kinds of ways weighing in at over 800 pages a life Charles Hillier-Kinzans astonishing

career as both a director of theatre and film covering his early days days with the revolutionary group theatre in the 1930s, the establishment of the actor's studio, Home of the Method, in 1947, and covers in detail his epoch-defining theatrical productions of A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, as well as in-depth accounts, a long list of classic movies he directed, which John Law himself has described as a form of, that form a kind of flow chart of the mid-century's influence on the psyche of its citizens. Those films include On the Waterfront, East of Eden, Splendour in the Grass, the list goes on. In the middle of that career stands his controversial decision to name names to the House for Un-American Activities Committee, which in the book he tackles the subject several times with characteristic candor.

Variously described as tough-minded, unbridled, fierce, bruising, gutsy, and compulsively readable, Alife moved Norman Mailer to write that, quote, it offers the kind of human wealth we find in a major novel. It also gives detailed insight into the methods and techniques of a director who, despite his controversial reputation, no less a coeval than Stanley Kubrick considered, quotes, without question,

the best director we have in America. Given John Lahr's deep understanding of the world of theater and film, we look forward to exploring some of the Law's deep understanding of the world of theatre and film, we look forward to exploring some of the more technically revealing aspects of the book, as well as indulging ourselves in the top-drawer Hollywood gossip. But before we do any of those things, here is a message from our sponsors. And we're back before we start on the main course. It's a good moment to

mention that we'll be picking up elements of today's discussion in next week's Lock Listed, our show for patrons. You can subscribe for that at patreon.com or backlisted and five years of superior book, film and music chat plus ad free early versions of the main show will be yours. Right to business. John Law, if possible, where were you, who were you, what were you doing when you first became aware of the work of Ilya Kazan or Kazan himself? Well, if you grew up in the house of a Broadway star,

Kazan was part of the ozone. You know, there was that, they used to say, Kazan, Kazan, the miracle man, bring him in as fast as you can. He was the dynamic center of, remember in the 50s, there was no off-Broadway really, of theater. Theater was still the central storytelling mechanism. And it hadn't been completely overtaken by Hollywood. And he was just everywhere.

He directed all the major work of 20th century theater. He directed Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, All My Sons, Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder, The Plains of William Ange, and on and on. I mean, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, all of Williams' major oeuvre, and the plays that he didn't direct of Williams' like Rose Tattoo, he gave Williams the notes

that allowed Williams, who was blocked, to finish and get right. He couldn't organize and structure, for dramatic purposes, a play as well as Kazan could. And then there was the movies. It was a dynamo. And the thing that can't be stressed too much is that, especially for contemporary audiences, that can't be stressed too much is that,

especially for contemporary audiences, both here and in America, because the memory in America is short, as you know. Very short. The crucial events of American theater that changed it or were the highlights, almost everyone involved Kazan. When Odette's broke through in 1935 with his one act play, Waiting for Lefty, Agitpura play, it was Kazan promoted from being a stage manager to an actor who yelled the final rebellious

words of that play which were, strike, strike, strike. That made overnight virtually Clifford Odette's the reigning playwright of America. I met Kazan at the end of his life when he was no longer, he was a few sandwiches short of a picnic, but on the other hand, he was still there. And the thing that was astonishing about him was how vigorous he was. He was old, but you felt a real, you could see how powerful he was as a personality.

I was coming to him because I was writing a biography of Tennessee Williams and that took 12 years. So I was early in that process because I needed his blessing to have access to his letters. But he was strong and that was a very surprising thing because of course he was a sort of diminutive. He wasn't a picture postcard to look at. But you could see the power of his personality. These were part of the world that I grew up in and came to know. And Miller I knew very well because I wrote about him

in The New Yorker and went up to his house. He took me to where he wrote Death of a Salesman. The cottage in the woods that he built by himself and wrote the first half of Death of a Salesman in eight hours. And then he took another month to finish it. But anyway, so it's redolent for me because I knew these people, but as a piece of theater history,

it's absolutely wonderful because when you're writing biography, the memory is a really not a very effective tool. And what you wanna do, I think, is you wanna get as close to the metabolism of the writer as possible. And to do that, you have to stay as close to the primary source material as possible. With a book on my father, I had dad, and he could talk to me and then tell me a lie, and

I'd go find out what the truth was, and then we'd go back and forth, and I'd put it in like that. But the idea was to sort of get a sense of the kind of terrible complexity that goes into creating the particular thing that he did, which was laughter. On that basis, Mitch, you know, what John's saying there about the personality of the subject or of the author or both in the case of Kazan's book. John Lahr, I'm not going to lie when Nikki told us you wanted to do this 850 page book at a week's notice, I slightly blanched, but it gripped me totally for exactly the reason you've just outlined. Mitch, I wanted to ask you, how would you define Kazan's personality from page one of

this book? As a man to spend time with, how do you feel about it? Vigorous was the word used, pre-apic is another I think you would use, but also just endlessly, endlessly fascinating. I think the ruthlessness with which he, that he turns on everything, he turns on himself all the way through the book. There'll be people who will not be convinced ultimately that he did the right thing in the naming of names,

which was the moment, that was a moment of transformation. But he was chaos. He was a merchant of chaos. You can see that. And do you get that feeling from the voice? What I'm asking is, do you get that feeling from the voice in the book? Right.

He's like charming and angry, right? Charming and angry, simultaneous. Charming and angry. And the book is all over the place. But also, I have to say, one of his great gifts as a director, but also a person, is he made great contact. He listened, something very rare in showbiz. He really listened and understood or tried to understand the person because he wanted to manipulate them, tried to understand where that person was coming from. So he was a good listener. He's unabashed. He's not polishing the apple of his, you know, he's not the apple of his own eye,

polishing it. And that's so refreshing because, you know, most of this particular genre of which this is absolutely, in my view, the most, the outstand, I mean, not in the business of praising other people's biographies and stuff, but this is really the Yeah. Because it's so close to events which were so crucial. What was it like meeting Tennessee and doing, and getting Streetcar Named Desire on? What was it like directing Brando, who by the way said that Kazan was by far the best directory ever had, because Kazan got in there and acted

the part with him, which is what he did with playwrights. He completely joined them. It was a mind meld, but a real one. We would only have two plays of Tennessee Williams if Kazan hadn't worked on those plays. Big Daddy, for instance, one of the great characters of modern 20th century theater was not even when Williams' third act until Kazan said, go back and do it.

This isn't right. You're not ready to have, we're not ready to talk this. So he was involved in all these wonderful characters, which was part of his success, but also as you'll no doubt tell me, a part of his problem because he wanted to be more than an interpretive. He wanted to also explore himself and his own concerns, but it took a long time and a lot of success before he had the confidence to do that. And one of the ironies of the House on American Activities Committee is that actually it forced him to rely on himself and to define himself. He had nothing to lose.

He'd lost the prestige of his reputation in terms of popularity. He was anathema. prestige of his reputation in terms of popularity. He was anathema. As he said, he was on the social grid. I mean, he was, what does he say? I was on the social grid and frying, you know? He just sucked it up, got tough, and did the work on the waterfront, East of Eden, Splendour in the Glass. He didn't apologize, but he also says somewhere there,

I didn't give myself the relief of expressing my feelings. I just did the work and his feelings come through the work. When this book was first published, so it was a big deal when it was first published. In 1988, it was published by Knopf. And I have a round up of some of the reviews and various publications put their best guys on it, John Law. And I have a list of who reviewed this book on publication amongst the critics who reviewed Elia Kazan's

A Life in 1988 were, and incidentally no two of them quite agreed were David Denby, Anthony Lane, Christopher Hitchens, Anthony Burgess, Dirk Bogard and John Law. Now when we were chatting before John you said you'd forgotten that you'd reviewed this book, is that right? Yeah, absolutely. Would you like to hear your first paragraph back? Go ahead. I hope I'm not going to embarrass myself here, but go for it. You're not. You're really not. And I'm not going to embarrass

you either. I promise. Right, here we go. This was published in The Listener in 1988. So this is John Law's Contemporaneous Review. And then we're going to hear a bit from Dirk Bogard's Contemporaneous Review. So here we go. Here's John Larr first. Fierce, raw, reckless, incisive, Kazan's A Life is one of the great books on modern American theatre. Kazan dramatizes not only the story of his extraordinary career in show business but also the tumultuous spirit of revenge behind his compulsive need to display his theatrical and sexual powers.

The picture is not pretty. Kazan is a bastard, and he disarms his critics by celebrating his ruthlessness and calling it self-awareness. Get mean. Get selfish. Find out who you are, he writes, sounding the hard, unforgiving, clarion call of revenge which was always his quote motive in life the haunting subtext behind Kazan's brazen theater history is the horrible price other people have had to pay for his great success. Wow. I mean John I'm in John La from from from 40 years ago. I mean, I want that book. Yeah, me too. Me too, right? Yeah.

Now here's Dirk Bogard. In contrast, this son of a crafty Turkish carpet dealer barges and weaves his way through the marketplace as to the man abhorrent, fawning, stabbing and dealing. I know he was responsible for On the Waterfront, for amazing performances of A Streetcar Named Desire and others, but he was equally responsible for the destruction of a number of good and honourable people, whom he named as a friendly witness. I knew

a number of them and worked with them. I knew their despisal of the man. In Paris, at the premiere of a film I had made with Joseph Losey, for example, the theatre was packed. Seats were set up in the aisles. So full! Amazing! Even Elia Kazan has to sit on a wooden chair, said some idiot presswoman. Losey suddenly dragged me from my seat and bustled me through the crowd into the street and down to Fouquet's where we dined. I'll be damned, he said, if I let you sit with an informer. So if you like this sort of tittle-tattle and if you have 18 quid to spare for the thrill, then go ahead. Otherwise, leave it strictly where it belongs, on the shelf. Now that's a fairly powerful dialectic to set up.

I think it's ignorant. It's just ignorant. What can you say? I mean, it's just, it's also European in that sense, you know. There were 73 people who spoke, the 73 people who were, spoke as friendly witnesses in the House on American Activities. In January of that year, he appeared in a closed session and did not give names. Four months later, he did give names. I think it's impossible to understand or to… It's very easy for people to, you know, be righteous about it, you know, the sanctimony of righteousness. But Kazan had been a member of the Communist Party when he was in the group theater. He had been kicked out of or quit the Communist Party because he wouldn't take the group theater out on strike. And even Miller admits this in Time Bends. Why would he give up his career? Because he

felt that there were communists in the group theater. They did want to change the direction of what was being said and to enforce certain points of view. He was fiercely anti-communist. Why would he surrender his career for that? Now, that said, and if you say anything in his favor, you're damned. But the reality was that a lot of the people were already known to the committee. were already known to the committee and it's, you know, it's, it's, it's really hard to judge someone whose whole life, his whole creative life at the point he had made the decision that he wanted to spend the rest of his creative life in films

and not doing plays. So it was the, it was the least good, um, two alternatives is how he puts it. And you know, he had a real calling. So if, if he was going to, if he was going to, um, give that up, he was also giving up the core of his being, his talent. Now I'm not saying he was right. I'm just saying it's a much harder decision

than you get in this sort of black and white, you know, little tiff that Dirk Bogard is having. And the person who really was hurt most by his testimony was him. And the, it's interesting when you compare it with Miller's story because Miller comes out of that as a hero. But nobody mentions that in giving his testimony, which was wordy, but he wanted, you know, he would not give names, he wouldn't take the fifth, he just refused. He was being asked, he wanted a passport. But on the day he went on the House of Un-American Activities Committee and testified, he testified at that time that he was going to England

with his soon-to-be wife, Marilyn Monroe. She didn't know that. She learned that he was going to marry her on the news. So in other words, whatever odium might have been laid at his feet or not, this distraction took the whole performance in front of the House of Un-American Act. It took the odium or the event, took it in another direction. And as Lillian Hellman said, it's true. It's not, I don't want to decry Miller, but you know, Miller said he'd been, he'd been to, uh, to hell and back because of the House and the Backstreet Act too. And I can believe that.

But, but Lillian Hellman said, well, if, if he was, went to hell, it was only as a tourist. Which I think is really good. Mitch, I think Kazan said that he may, he says in the book that he made his best films after testifying and going through that. And I don't know if you've seen Wild River, but by the time you get to 1960, 61, when he makes the film Wild River starring Montgomery Clift, that is a fascinating film about, how can I put this, if no good deed goes unpunished,

no bad deed is entirely without merit. It's about ambivalence, about someone who thinks they're a good man doing a progressive thing can still, it comes at cost. And he believed everything came at a cost, right? In making the choice that he did, which when he was sort of public enemy number one, it defined him. It made him define himself. What would American culture be like if we hadn't had the list of names that you mentioned and the books? It would have been, it was defining, it was dynamic.

An impossible choice. So it's a trade, I mean, who's to know? An impossible choice. Okay, when we come back, we're going to hear a reading from Elia Kazan's A Life. But first, let's hear from our sponsors. And we're back. We're talking about Elia Kazan's memoir, A Life First Published in 1988. We haven't actually heard from the book itself rather than Kazan. And so I think Mitch, have you got a bit you could read to us just to give us a flavour of how Kazan represents himself on the page? Well, we've said this book glories in its refusal to just tell the story chronologically.

He's always dipping in and out and reflecting. Some of the reflections, I think, are what make the book reflections on his art, on his craft, on writing. This is a really interesting one. The group was very political, 1930s, very political. as craft on how and on writing. And this is a really interesting one. You know, the group was a very political 1930s, very political. He was a member of the Communist Party. We talked about how that sort of unraveled for him later on in the 1950s. But this is why I think he was a great director. He had a kind of an insight into how to communicate things on stage which wasn't didactic. He's talking about working on the stage. He began to learn not to try to pin down a play's meaning to a didactic theme. We used to do that in the group. It was the essence of our work as

directors. We were teaching the audience with each play. Clifford Odets felt it necessary in his third act to grab the audience by their shoulders, shake them and say, don't you see what all this means? No, well, I'll tell you. And he did. Now, I preferred an opposite effort to tell a story that was as human and therefore as ambivalent, as unresolved as life itself,

so that the audience would leave the theater asking, I wonder what the hell all that means? Which is the same experience one has in life, isn't it? Or when reading a great novel, you can't boil either down to a homily motto or slogan, life is a puzzle and you're generally left feeling, how do people get through it? If they're both right then who's right? And God Almighty isn't life awesome? The emotion of wonder is better in the theatre than the emotion of recognition. Even Brecht in his so-called learning plays preserved an element of doubt unresolved. The audience should

keep puzzling about a play long after they've left the theatre. When the play is worthy and the performance fine, an audience will ponder it for days. But if you sum it all up for them, they won't. It's precisely what happens after a dramatic experience in life. It unsettles you for a long time. You keep trying to puzzle it out. So it's here that I realize that the theme should not be insisted on. In fact, should be constantly and repeatedly contradicted. The viewer should not be bullied into agreeing with what the character says about the theme. He should be sent out of the theater, marveling at the richness and complexity of life, the mystery of it, and the contradictions that defy understanding.

Any theme that can be stated in a single simple sentence is inevitably a simplification of life and meaningless. Don't tell me your play is about responsibility or loyalty or truth. Tell me it's about mankind. Yeah. No good deed goes unpublished, no bad deed. It's entirely without merit. Indeed. Okay, so now I'm going to ask, I'm going to tell you a little story about James Dean after we hear this clip. Here is Kazan talking about how he goes about finding the right actor for the right part.

And this is from an interview in French TV, possibly with Michel Simon in 1962. It's very dangerous to select actors by tests or readings, in my opinion. Very often a mediocre actor can give a brilliant reading. Very often a man trained in radio or in television to approach a part very superficially but slickly with a good exterior form can give a good reading. And this can be seductive and it can be a temptation to use them, but it's extremely dangerous. Very often the most talented people cannot work quickly and need care, patience in their

handling. The only way I can find talent is to do it very slowly, to get to know them, to take a walk with them, to meet their girlfriend or their mother and father and so forth. And to, with James Dean, he had a motor bicycle and I rode around on the back of the motor bicycle around town and very slowly his guard drops. And the same with all the others, their guards drop and I find out who they are and what is inside them, what their souls are, what materials they have inside them for our art. And when I find that, I know whether they're talented enough. Yeah, well, that's so great. You know, he talked about James Dean there, John Lahr.

So he famously, he finds Dean and he, he says, well, I don't like this guy, but he's it. And he sends him off to meet John Steinbeck, the author of East of Eden. And Steinbeck says, yeah, I don't like him either, but he's definitely the guy. You know, it's great. Well, he's, he's choosing his paint. He's painting with the personality. And also, you know, one of the things you haven't mentioned, which we should, is he started essentially a co-found, the Actors Studio, which was essentially to provide him

with actors who could do this thing. That was part of his great skill. He said, behavior is psychology in action. So to be able to call out of these people what he perceived as the some part, essence, the hurt, the limitations of their personality, which might actually fit the outlines of the character. I mean, in All My Sons, I think he hired Ed Begley, who had been a recovering alcoholic, because of that battle. You know, he would take to play the father in that piece, his name, I'm gonna forget. But, you know, he had very special relations with actors. And Miller writes

in, let's see, I have it here, he writes about his particular ability to sort of create one-on-one relationships with the actors. He doesn't give them lectures. He says this, this is Miller talking about Kazan, life in a Kazan production had that hushed air of conspiracy. Conspiracy not only against the existing theater, but society, capitalism. In fact, everybody who was not part of the production, he goes on to say, he would send one actor to listen to a particular piece of jazz, another to a certain novel, and another to see psychiatrist,

another he would simply kiss. Kazan's trick was to make the actors feel as though his ideas were actually their own revelation. I tried to be the author, he said. That's also ironic because in the end, in making a film, he was the author in a sense, he and the editor. And subsequent to that, when his film life was over and his films had lost sufficient money that the studios wouldn't invest in them, he became a best-selling author.

He wrote five. Best-selling. The best-selling, the arrangement was 36 weeks on the best-selling, number one on the best-seller list. So he ended up being able to tell his own stories and to mine himself as the subject. Can I read just a section and I'll ask you both to comment on it. One of the things I really liked about this book is a kind of reckless level of candor in analyzing his own contradictory motives and emotions for any action.

And I'll just read you this because I think this is a very clever piece of manipulation of the reader. So here we go. He writes, I've acquired contradictory reputations over the years. Aloof and social, secretive but open-faced, agreeable or cantankerous, concerned, indifferent, generous, cheap, given to unannounced appearances and to sudden disappearances. The reputation I'd rather not have picked up is for being a betrayer of trust. I haven't liked that. I believe it unjust. But there are reasons for it.

Like many of you, I've worn the friendship mask. I often look friendlier than I feel. But then, when I have what I have sought, the mask would clatter to the ground, and what I truly am would be revealed. From time to time I do not know what one is prepared for. Then someone is hurt or insulted or abandoned or simply puzzled. I let people come skin close until they trust me entirely and feel sure that I like them. But when the need is eased, the production opened, the seduction completed, I back away, suddenly become cool and remote,

and those I've lured close don't know what happened. For years, I declared myself an ardent liberal in politics, made all the popular declarations of faith, but the truth was and is that I am, like most of you, a bourgeois. I go along disarming people, but when it gets to a crunch, I am revealed to be a person interested only in what most artists are interested in. Himself. I come on as a guy you can trust, but I'm just an ordinary searching, surviving get along Nick who doesn't like to be crossed, never forgives an insult and despite the ready

smile is angry a lot of the time, or at least looks angry for reasons that are never quite clear. So I can't blame people for what they think of me. I think that is a magnificent, but also John, we have a catchphrase on this show, the best books are books about books. That is a perfect description of what the memoirist is seeking to achieve with the reader. How can I make this person like me? You know, by whatever means at my disposal. Yes or no, do you think? I don't think it's quite fair about trying to make, I think, yes, it's called a memoir. Yes, a million of what? I mean, I think, you know, you were trying, yes, of course, I suppose. I mean, what's

refreshing is he's sort of embracing himself in all his complexity. But I come back to this. The best defense against envy is success. One of the things he says when he's young, and he's at Wesleyan, and he's an outsider, he calls himself a freak, and he had hardly any friends, he says, and this is such a telling apropos of his recklessness, he says of his college mates, I wondered what they had, their style, their looks, their clothes, their cars, their money, the jobs they had waiting for them. I wanted all that and I wanted it soon.

And he says in the book, throughout his early life, he said to himself privately, fuck you all big and small. So that the spirit of revenge, the spirit of getting even, the spirit is even and in a sense that's what that great passage you just read, there's that's all part of it. You know you're going to admire me though I am this bastard that I've done this.

I can show you things. I can make things that can take you places. I have this gift of being able to understand and have empathy for high rollers and low riders. Very few people have that. Or are willing to show the ugliness that accompanies, that that's what's so extraordinary about it. It's like spinning into gold the psychological dross of one's personality. We love Barry Humphreys, but it's completely infantile. You know, he wants

to get even. We love Kazan, who was saying, look, I'm not a very nice guy and I might betray you. It is a seduction, but isn't all art a seduction in some way? Isn't there some clue too to why he was such a great director? That he was able to look at, he had a great capacity to understanding emotional complexity. But the great skill was to translate that into action on the stage, making those scenes on stage or in the movies, and how he worked with actors to get them to unlock that. But it's not just a question of saying the lines, it's about the way a shot is framed or the way an actor looks, where an actor's looking.

The difference, I think he's brilliant in the book about the difference between acting on a stage and acting for camera. I mean, he had real skill, you know, his nickname was Gaj for a long year because he was a fixer. He was a really hardworking fixer who studied really clever people around him and then was able to sort of synthesize that into something that changed culture. I mean, he changed his, he says in the book before that the producer was king, after Kazan became the first director who became more important than the producer.

Well, funny you should say that because we're now used to seeing a Mike Nichols production or a Martin Scorsese production. The first person to get that billing in the history of show business was Kazan. He was the first. Well, I'll say, I didn't know that. Yeah, he was the first.

He was kind of an auteur avant-le-let, wasn't he? I mean, before the French, it was his vision of, and working so closely, obviously, with Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. One of the great things about Williams and Kazan was that they were great letter writers. The same man who edited Williams's two volumes, a guy called Albert Devlin, edited Williams's letters and Kazan's and the vigor and the detail and the fun and the the sort of astuteness of how closely they scrutinized every little bit of the play is really wonderful.

There's another book which is wonderful to read, Kazan on directing, where he breaks down all the plays in his notebook before he takes it on. And you know, he's sometimes wrong about but about interpretation, but it's still interesting to see his, the thought and energy that goes into it. I was very interested in a film of his that was made in 57 or 58, Kazan's film A Face in the Crowd with a script by Bud Schulberg and a lead performance by Andy Griffith. I was not a fan of the film, which I thought was strident. You don't like the film, I know, yeah. And melodramatic.

And whenever, and I think that's, I think even Kazan agreed after his film career that a lot of his scripts were melodramatic. Yeah, okay. And in this one, I mean, and sometimes corny, not all, they transcend that. I don't think myself, the face in the crowd transcends it.

I found A Face in the Crowd totally fascinating to watch simply because it's a film about populism, about how a folksy TV star can rise through the social and political firmament to become a darling of the right. It'll never happen. Right, Exactly. Foolish, foolish me. I think that's true of On the Waterfront as well, which is a magnificent film, but also a melodrama, but a melodrama which is incredibly powerful. Yes, but it's a melodrama, but it really works. Right. Brando and Eve Murray's song.

And there's so much underneath it. He's talking about his own situation through these characters. And there are people who still to this day won't accept the greatness of that film because they see it as a sort of a long exercise in special pleading, which on some level, it kind of is, but I mean.

But why is, if, even if that's true. Even if that's true. Why not? Why not take the film for what it is, which kind of is. But I mean, why is, if even if that's true, why not? Why not take the film for what it is, which I think is magnificent. I'm glad what I've done. That's what Brando says. I'm glad what I've done. I'm glad what I've done. And what does Kazan himself said? He said, you know, the horrible and moral thing I would do, I did out of my true self. Everything before was 17 years of posturing. The people owe you an explanation, no apology expected. Those who year after year held the Soviets blameless for all their crimes. And that is an important thing, you know, that a lot of the communists

were still at that time, that he was kind of, his former colleagues were refusing to accept what was going on in the Soviet Union. I would like to ask John Lahr a question, which hopefully, I want to ask you about Orton, but I think it's relevant to Kazan as well. So you started writing about research and writing about Orton in the 1970s. Orton died in 66, is that right? Or 67?

I think so, 67 I think. So he had not been dead 10 years when you started work on that. Oh no, no, no. And I wonder where you feel Orton's work, the plays, I wonder where you feel the work stands today, now. Do you's they've stood the test of time The reputations of plays and playwrights Changed with the sort of tastes of the of the public. So I'm sure Orton at the moment because he's He's so outspoken. I think he's probably not as popular at the moment as he was. I think his

influence on modern comedy is immense. I think the plays will, especially what the Butler saw in Loot will endure. The whole point of Orton was to let it all hang out, you know, to say everything, to say the unsayable. So it might make people uncomfortable, which is also good. Yeah. I mean, for what it's worth, I've been reading Alton, you know, since the 1980s. That's when I first found Alton. Uh, we did a show about books, about the Beatles a while ago. And I chose Alton's script for Up Against It, which is not his best work, but manages to be full of that transgressive energy still. If you want to go back and find some of the crackling energy of the 60s, it's in there.

And so that was a moment, oddly enough, of optimism, which. Yeah. You know, uh, which it catches the mood of that, which is like 18 months or so. The work I think will endure. I mean, if you look at, say the history of reaction to people like Noel Coward, his stock has gone up and down over, but it always gets done because there is just so much entertainment, yeah.

Thought provoking ideas underneath it. Same with Orton. Yeah. I mean, if you want to talk about police corruption or any sacred cow, as he said, every sacred cow pastor is in England. Yeah. It's there. It teases the culture. The tone of frivolity is really a refusal to suffer.

And I think the culture at the tone of frivolity is really a refusal to suffer. And I think the culture at the moment is too threatened and scared to actually enjoy and engage frivolity. The sense of humor and lightness has gone out of our moment, which I think I regret. It'll be back. A lot of the plays I see don't have, they can be good, but they stew entertainment. The entertainment element is not there too much.

It mattered to Kazan as well. Entertainment mattered to him hugely. Absolutely. He was a showman. And John Lahr, which then of Kazan's works here now do you think really endure? Oh, obviously Streetcar, the film, which is great, a sort of unique and culturally changing performance by Marlon Brando and on the waterfront, for sure. I mean, two great, great stories. And in the theatre, do you think, I'm interested in what you were saying about memory being

short. You know, it's sort of mind boggling if you don't know this, but the idea that one man, as it were, in the cinema, discovered Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Montgomery Clift, and in the theater, discovered Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, worked with Steinbeck. These are incredibly important. And not only that, we even haven't mentioned, we mentioned Actors Studio just once, and then he went on to found the Lincoln Center and Durham Lincoln Center. Yeah.

I mean, so he had this just enormous cultural impact that is not duplicable. enormous cultural impact that is not duplicable. I mean, as great, you know, it was just huge, huge. And of course, his reputation was tainted and he faces that as best he can. But he made a huge difference to the dynamism in the culture, just as the House on American Activities Committee banished liberal thought from the cinema into large extent, made it afraid as we're becoming afraid now again.

His refusal, his tenacity, what you might call it recklessness, just to call it like he sees it and to be unafraid, it just made a whole difference. There's real oxygen to the culture, which we might not get now because people don't necessarily know his name. He would probably have fallen foul of the Me Too. Yes, I'm afraid so. I'm afraid so, yeah. But he writes, I think he writes with incredible chorus skating honesty about his own character

and his own, you know, his need to create chaos and his need to have affairs. You know, he pretty much says that being unfaithful is a kind of a necessary condition for the creation of great art. Yes, that's one of the bonds he had with Williams. They both believed that promiscuity was very important to their art and to their confidence and to the American gallery that they're drawing on, you know. What a century the 20th century was.

Well, yeah. So like all good things, including even Kazan's monumental memoir, this show must come to an end. So huge thanks to John for persuading us to dive in and to our producer, Nicky Burch, for bringing us all together with her usual skill and charm. If you want show notes with clips, links, and suggestions for further reading for this show

or the 233 that we've already recorded, please visit our website at batlisted.fm. John Law's just laughing at the thought that we've done 233 of these. I know it's- No, I'm laughing at the amount of books I haven't read. Yeah okay okay yeah and but John if you want to buy the books discussed on this or any of our other shows please visit our shop at bookshop.org and choose Backlisted as your

bookshop and do subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash backlisted remember if you subscribe at the lock listener level, you'll get two extra exclusive podcasts every month. The next one will feature Andy, Nikki and I talking about this show recommending other books, films and music we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight. People who subscribe at this level also get their names read out on the show. Like this. Miles Sabin. Thank you. Tara

Kennedy. Thank you. Paul Stevenson, thank you. Tara Kennedy, thank you. Paul Stevenson, thank you very much. Nicholas Zinner, thank you. Ian Hosling, thank you. Mary Rickett, thank you. Robin Hanson, thank you. M.E. Gray. Catherine Thompson, thank you.

And we must salute a new entrant to the highest circle in the Batmister permanent. The Guild of Master Storytellers welcomes Llewellyn Powers. Thank you Llewellyn for your faith and excellent taste. Thank you Llewellyn Powers. Now before we go, our lovely guest there, John, is there anything else that you would like to add that we haven't covered that you will not be able to sleep tonight if you don't feel is included in this show on the topic of this book on Eli Kazan. We never got into the area of his psychology, but Kazan's father hated him more or less for his entire life, thought he was a good for nothing and he had no real relationship. And his closest friend until he was about 12 was his mother and they created a sort of special world.

And she's the one who got him to Williams, sort of guided him to Williams, who when she told her husband, it was an arranged marriage, that he was not going to be going to the business, but he was going to college, the husband knocked her to the business, but he was going to college. The husband knocked her to the ground. And one of the things, one of the appeals of directing, psychologically it feels to me, is that he was, it replicated in his life being the center of attention, the bliss of his connection to his mother and to the, it's not the first time I've heard directors say that. It was a family,

it's a reiteration of the family constellation in some way. So that's the only extra thought I've had. He said, didn't he? He says in the book that he only ever really hated two people in his entire life, his father and Tallulah Bankhead. Tallulah Bankhead. I mean, the other thing is to say there are so many great stories in this book. I mean, you know, throughout the Tallulah Bankhead story is a particularly great story. This one I loved also is Boris Aaronson, who was, I think, a producer. He was found in bed with another woman and his wife came in unexpectedly and found them there and he leapt out of the bed saying, it's not me, it's not me. Which, because that has quotes as being psychologically true.

Okay. If actually not kind of morally defensible. Well, listen, thanks so much everybody. Thanks, John and John and Nikki. And this has been so much fun. The book is Eliya Kazan Alive. It is in print. It is available.

It is 850 pages long, but, but my God, it was fun. Yeah, we're good. Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks everyone. See you next time. Bye bye. See you in a fortnight. Bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.