Director Elia Kazan Dies;

Former Sandy Hook Resident

By Dottie Evans

Elia Kazan, 94, renowned stage and motion picture director and author, died September 28 at his home in Manhattan.

Born Elia Kazanjoglous on September 7, 1909, in what was then Constantinople, Turkey, he was the son of a Greek rug merchant. The family came to New York City when he was 4 years old. He grew up in a Greek neighborhood in Harlem and later in suburban New Rochelle.

Mr Kazan attended Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., where he picked up the nickname “Gadget.” As he later said, “I guess [that was] because I was small, compact, and eccentric.”

During his senior year at Williams, he saw Sergei Eisenstein’s film Potemkin, an experience that led to his decision to focus on the performing arts. He attended Yale University Drama School where he met his first wife, Molly Day Thatcher. They married in 1932, and he then joined the Group Theatre in New York in 1933.

Mr Kazan married three times. With his first wife, Molly, he had four children: Judy, Chris, Nick, and Katharine. After Molly’s death, he married Barbara Loden and they had two sons, Leo and Marco. In 1982, he married Frances Rudge.

Mr Kazan started out as a stage actor but he soon realized that directing was what he really wanted to do. He staged Thornton Wilder’s The Skin Of Our Teeth in 1942, for which he won a New York Drama Critics Award. He then teamed up with playwright Arthur Miller, directing the Pulitzer Prize-winning Death of A Salesman.

He staged a total of five Pulitzer-winning Broadway plays, including three by Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), followed by Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth. Mr Kazan won three Ton Awards for directing. He also directed the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire and won Oscars for Gentleman’s Agreement and On the Waterfront.

Mr Kazan is credited for launching many talented young actors, such as Marlon Brando, whom he “discovered” at the Actors Studio, which he co-founded in 1947. His sensitive direction of Mr Brando in the 1950 film, The Wild One, followed by On The Waterfront, were examples that led to his reputation an “actor’s director.”

After World War II, when Senator Joseph McCarthy was bent on ridding the country of all communist influence, Mr Kazan testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It was in January 1952 that he made the still-controversial decision to name eight people in the entertainment and film industry who had been members of the Communist Party along with him in the mid-1930s. Those individuals were subsequently blacklisted, and several left the country.

By this time, Mr Kazan had turned to writing novels. After completing The Arrangement, he remarked that it had been a relief to express “exactly what I felt.”

“I like to say what I feel about things directly, and no matter whose play you direct, or how sympathetic you are to the playwright, what you finally are trying to do is interpret his view of life…When I speak for myself, I get a tremendous sense of liberation.”

Regarding his prolific career and many creative accomplishments, he once remarked, “Even when I was a boy, I wanted to live three or four lives.”

In 1999, he was awarded a special Academy Award for his life’s work. After nearly 50 years, the film industry had not entirely forgiven him, since his appearance was greeted by silence and a smattering of applause.

A Long Time Living Off Old Mill Road

It was in the early 1930s that Elia Kazan and his wife Molly first moved to the Sandy Hook section of Newtown, where they lived and raised four children in an 1885 farmhouse on Old Mill Road off Route 34.

In 1961 they purchased adjacent property that included the “Mill House,” a 14-acre pond, and a historic mill site –– all part of the estate of international sculptor John Angel. During the 1800s, what was originally called Warner’s Mill had been used as a saw mill during spring and summer, as a cider mill in the fall, and as a grist mill in the winter.

The Kazans’ purchase of the “Mill House” took place in the Main Street office of Newtown attorney John Holian.

For three more decades, the Kazan family continued to use the expanded Old Mill Road property, with its two houses, as a summer and weekend retreat. The property was finally put up for sale in 1998 with strict constraints against development. This discouraged real estate investors and a buyer could not be found.

Finally in July of 2002, the entire 153-acre property was purchased for $1.1 million by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) with funds from the Recreation and Natural Heritage Trust, a transaction that was handled by Linnell Real Estate of Sandy Hook. It was owner and broker Pat Linnell who was instrumental in bringing the deal to a satisfactory close.

Ms Linnell spoke briefly Tuesday about her recollections of working with Elia Kazan and his family.

“At the time they put it on the market, the property was in Molly Thatcher Kazan’s name, and it belonged to their children. A lot of parcels had been added over the years. They kept adding more pieces. What they wanted was to make sure it was not developed, and luckily, they were able to do it while he was still alive.

“I don’t know how the DEP is handling it. It has been set aside as open space, preserved for passive recreational use only with no motorized vehicles,” she added.

Ms Linnell’s memories of Elia Kazan were that he was “very cordial and very pleasant, with a good strong handshake. I only saw him on two occasions at the house.”

During the many years the family lived in Sandy Hook, Mr Kazan had been a regular customer at “The Brick Store” during the days when Hawley Warner was owner and operator of a grocery store in the historic building.

Margaret Warner, Hawley’s widow and a longtime resident of Pole Bridge Road in Sandy Hook, recently recalled those days.

“A personal memory is that he once gave us tickets to Death of a Salesman. I remember his lovely wife, Molly, who was an author and playwright. They had a place in New York City at the same time. When I think of him, I always remember that he gave a wonderful speech at Hawley’s retirement party when he sold the store [May 7, 1978].”

(Associated Press reports were used in this story.)