Elia Kazan: Top Oscar Directors for Actors
Elia Kazan is best remembered today for two things: His association with Marlon Brando during the first half of the 1950s, and the fact that he claimed to be unrepentant about naming names, and ruining careers and lives during the Red-baiting hysteria of the post-World War II years.
Kazan’s 19 feature films are wildly uneven — for every great A Streetcar Named Desire there is a dreadful America, America, plus everything in between. Yet, probably because of his Broadway training, Kazan was definitely an outstanding actors’ director.
Tough-guy Brando, irritating mannerisms and all, remains the best-remembered Kazan star, even though the director coaxed superb performances from a wide range of players, ranging from child actress Peggy Ann Garner, who won a special "juvenile" Oscar for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, to Deborah Kerr, who plays a bored housewife in The Arrangement; from thumb-sucking child-woman Carroll Baker in Baby Doll to Jo Van Fleet’s tough, mature types in both in East of Eden and Wild River.
Patricia Neal, Andy Griffith in A Face in the Crowd
There were also Joan Blondell and Dorothy McGuire in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; Dorothy McGuire and Gregory Peck Gentlemen’s Agreement; Vivien Leigh and Kim Hunter in A Streetcar Named Desire; Ethel Waters in Pinky; Richard Widmark, Paul Douglas, and Barbara Bel Geddes in Panic in the Streets; Eva Marie Saint and Lee J. Cobb in On the Waterfront; Mildred Dunnock in Baby Doll; Patricia Neal in A Face in the Crowd; Montgomery Clift and Lee Remick in Wild River; and Natalie Wood and Zorah Lampert in Splendor in the Grass.
Kazan was nominated for five best direction Oscars: Gentleman’s Agreement, 1947; A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951; On the Waterfront, 1954; East of Eden, 1955; and America, America, 1963.
He won twice, for Gentleman’s Agreement and On the Waterfront.
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Tags: A Face in the Crowd, A Streetcar Named Desire, Academy Awards, Andy Griffith, Classic Movies, Elia Kazan, Film Awards, Marlon Brando, Patricia Neal, Peggy Ann Garner
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Dean should have won for East of Eden.