Ghosts Of '50s Haunt Oscar

The decision to present director Elia Kazan with an honorary Academy Award at the Oscar ceremony has reopened old wounds from a bitter controversy that rocked the glittering worlds of Hollywood and Broadway back in the early 1950s.

But in the spate of articles that have been written recently on the subject, almost no mention has been made of the profound impact the political quarrel had on the work of both Kazan and his onetime partner in creative excellence, the distinguished playwright Arthur Miller.

Both men were driven by political passions to produce powerful dramas that would endure as artistic achievements long after the angry emotions that inspired them had subsided.

In the years leading up to the controversy, Miller and Kazan had collaborated on projects that had taken Broadway by storm. In 1947, Kazan - already established as one of America's most gifted film and theater directors - staged Miller's first play, All My Sons. It was a smash hit, and two years later Kazan directed Miller's next play, Death of a Salesman, which was destined to become a classic.

In the process, the two men became close friends as well as highly successful collaborators. But their friendship came to an abrupt end in 1952 when Kazan testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee - or HUAC, as it was called.

Arthur Miller

Witnesses summoned to testify were not only pressured to confess their own past political transgressions, but also to provide the names of colleagues who had shared their Communist associations. Those who refused, in the popular phrase of the day, to "name names" soon found themselves blacklisted, which meant they could no longer work in the film industry.

In the eyes of many liberals and other left-wingers, witnesses who resisted HUAC's interrogations were martyrs to the cause. Indeed, they were hailed as heroes who chose to sacrifice their careers (and, in some cases, their freedom) rather than betray old friends and colleagues.

Kazan, it turned out, did not measure up to their idea of a hero. When he was called to testify in April 1952, he gave HUAC the names of eight people who had shared his brief allegiance to the Communist Party in the 1930s.

Not content to leave it at that, he then placed an ad in The New York Times, defending his action and urging others to speak out against communism, which he denounced as a "dangerous and alien conspiracy."

Among those enraged by Kazan's testimony was Miller, whose on past included a mild flirtation with communism. Turning his art into a political weapon, he proceeded to write The Crucible, a play about the 17th-century witchcraft trials in Salem, Mass.

The play's central character is John Proctor, who chooses to die rather than give false testimony or implicate others. At one point during the trial, Proctor declares, "I speak my own sins - I cannot judge another. I have no tongue for it."

When it opened on Broadway in 1953, many critics were quick to grasp the connection, to see the play as an allegory of McCarthyism, which already by then was being characterized, in some circles, as a modern witch-hunt. Needless to say, Miller did not ask Elia Kazan to direct The Crucible.

But Miller was not through venting his wrath. In 1955, he wrote another provocative play that had heavy political undertones.

Called A View from the Bridge, its main character is an Italian immigrant named Eddie Carbone who lives and works on the New York waterfront. Driven by a jealous rage, he turns against his Sicilian nephew, who is an illegal alien, and informs on him to the immigration authorities.

According to a story that made the rounds in the gossipy world of the Broadway theater, Miller sent a copy of the script to Kazan shortly after he finished writing it. After reading the play, Kazan dispatched a wire to Miller saying he would be "honored to direct it."

"You don't understand," Miller reportedly explained in a return message to Kazan. "I didn't send it to you because I wanted you to direct it. I sent it to you because I wanted you to know what I think of stool pigeons."

The story may be apocryphal, but it accurately depicts the smoldering enmity Miller felt toward informers in general and Kazan in particular. But by the time Miller wrote A View from the Bridge, Kazan had already weighed in with a powerful artistic statement of his own on the subject of "stool pigeons."

In 1954, he and screenwriter Budd Schulberg (who also named names in his testimony before HUAC) collaborated on a movie about the New York docks that differed dramatically - in plot, theme and point of view - from the waterfront world portrayed in Miller's play.

On the Waterfront was a huge success, the movie of the year in 1954. Among the seven Oscars it received, one was for best picture, another went to Kazan for best director, and a third was awarded to Marlon Brando as best actor in what many regard as the finest performance of his illustrious career.

In the years since then, On the Waterfront has only grown in stature, and it is now often cited as one of the greatest American movies of all time.

The focus of the story is on Terry Malloy, the character played by Brando. In the course of the film, he evolves from a punch-drunk patsy into a deeply conflicted man who eventually comes to recognize that he has a moral obligation to testify against th corrupt labor practices of his boss and longtime mentor.

In finding the courage within himself to turn against his waterfront cronies, Malloy achieves a kind of a spiritual redemption that is almost religious in its intensity. (Among those who guide Malloy to his moment of heroism is a gutsy, tough-talking priest played by Karl Malden.)

At the end of the film when he defiantly stands before the men he has betrayed - the labor boss and his henchmen - Malloy proclaims, "I'm glad what I done. I been ratting on myself all these years, and I didn't know it. I'm glad what I done!"

And that, in essence, is what Elia Kazan had to say about the moral values of an informer, or stool pigeon.

So when the time comes to bestow on Kazan an honorary Academy Award, the film clips lauding his career will undoubtedly include scenes from that landmark movie.

It promises to be a wrenching moment for the few survivors who were caught up in the raw passions of an era in our history when careers were destroyed, friendships severed forever, and both sides in the raucous dispute over "naming names" were utterly convinced of their righteousness.

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