Kazan Talks

Hollywood and Broadway have long suspected that brilliant Stage & Screen Director Elia Kazan (Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire) had once been a Communist, along with some other members of New York's now defunct pink-arty Group Theater. The professional martyr-makers were, as always, ready to cry persecution. But last January, in a secret session of the House Un-American Activities Committee, Kazan admitted that he had in fact been a party member for 18 months from 1934 to 1936. In that confession--no word of which reached the public--Kazan stubbornly refused to name any fellow party members. Last week Kazan volunteered to name several onetime party comrades: Playwright Clifford (Waiting for Lefty) Odets (who, Kazan testified, later quit the party), the late Actor J. Edward Bromberg, Actor Morris Carnovsky.

In 1934, Kazan said, he was a $40-a-week stage manager and bit actor dreading "the depression and the ever-growing power of Hitler. The streets were full of unemployed and shaken men." The Communists claimed to have a cure, so Kazan joined up. But he found that the party represented totalitarian thought control. In 1936, Kazan quit.

Why did he wait till now to tell his story? Partly because of the "specious reasoning which has silenced many liberals," i.e., "You may hate the Communists, but you must not attack them or expose them, because if you do, you are attacking the right to hold unpopular opinions." Added Kazan: "I have thought soberly about this. It is, simply, a lie."

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