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 ActivitiesCommittee, 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.