Elia Kazan

Elia Kazan (September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003) was an American director, producer, writer, and actor, born in Turkey but of Greek ancestry, and described by The New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history".

Quotes

• He carried with him the aura of a prophet, a magician, a witch doctor, a psychoanalyst, and a feared father of a Jewish home.... [H]e was the force that held the thirty-odd members of the theatre together, and made them permanent.
  • Elia Kazan: A Life (1988), p. 61 in the 1997 reprint
  • Quote about Lee Strasberg

• The Group was the best thing professionally that ever happened to me. I met two wonderful men. Lee Strasberg and Harold Clurman, both of whom were around thirty years old. They were magnetic, fearless leaders. During the summer I was an apprentice, they were entertaining in a Jewish summer camp... At the end of the summer they said to me: "You may have talent for something, but it's certainly not acting.
  • Interview by Michel Ciment in Kazan on Kazan (Viking, 1974), pp. 15 ff. Originally published 1973 by Secker and Warburg, London.
  • Quote about the Group Theatre

External links