Elliot Norton Interviews; Elia Kazan

These are but a few of the plays and movies that one man has brought to Broadway theaters and motion picture screens in the last quarter of a century. Winner of the Internet Kerry Award for JB and the Academy Award for Gentlemen's Agreement and on the waterfront, he has directed the works of some of America's leading playwright, Thornton Wilder, Arthur Miller, Tennessee William, William In. As co-founder of the actor's studio, Ilya Kazan has been responsible for training a group of Broadway and Hollywood's leading young actors. One of his critics and close friends is Elliot Norton, Mr. Norton, a frequent contributor to this country's leading publications on the theater today, and columnists for the Boston Record American and Sunday advertiser is one of America's foremost drama critics, Mr. Norton.

Good evening. Ilya Kazan is a graduate of William's College who did graduate work at the Yale School of the Drama. Before he became a director, he was an actor in the professional theater. I remember seeing him for the first time in Clifford Odette's play, Night Music. As a director, he has staged some of the great classics of the American theater. For instance, he directed Death of a Salesman, a street car named Desire, Kat on a hot tin roof, and Archibald McLeish's drama JB. In the motion pictures, his credits include such pictures as on the waterfront and the current hit, Spunder in the Grass. He's one of the founders and supporters of the Actor Studio, which is the most discussed professional training program. The American theater has yet produced four actors. This is the program that's popularly called The Method. He's one of the founders of the Method School of Acting. He's also the artistic director of the most promising project the theater has at this

particular time. The Repertory Center, the Repertory Theater proposed for the Lincoln Center in New York City. I'm going to begin tonight by asking him, Mr. Kazan, what about Lincoln Center? Are there any plans now for just what you're going to do at Lincoln Center? Well, we're working hard on them, Elliot. We are seeing the outstanding authors in the American theater. We've talked to Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Sydney Kingsley, Bill Inge, Bob Anderson, Paul Osborne, a lot of the Patty Chayewski, a lot of the very best playwrights. They've signified a great eagerness to work with us there and to give us plays there. At the same time, we hope to produce classics, so-called classics, but only when the director has a very live and pertinent contemporary idea. I don't mean to bring them up to date or to put them in modern dress, but some reason why he feels our audiences today should see them and be interested in them.

I see. You mean classics in the sense that if you're going to do Shakespeare, you're going to do a scene, perhaps, on Molière? Yes. One of the things that we're talking about is the Oristaya of Esquilis, to do all three plays in one evening, cut them down a bit, but to deliver all three plays in one evening, the way they were done originally at the Great Greek Festival's 500 BC. And that will need an adaptation, and we're beginning to make plans for that. We hope to do Shakespeare. We hope to do some of the American classics. I think we've got a body of American plays since then. Why would you say, for instance, that constitutes a body of American drama that can be ranked this class? I just said death of a salesman street car named desire. Wouldn't you accept those? Oh, yes. I do. And I think the two great Thorn Wilder plays, Skin of our teeth in our town, especially Skin of our teeth. That's a favorite play of mine. I directed that originally, and I think some young director would come in and do a wonderful job. Well, in that case, you'd yield to somebody else, huh?

Yes, I think I've done it once. I think a new voice and a new attack on it would be very interesting. Would that be true? Would death of a salesman find a street car? I wouldn't do it again. But I hope to do a short play by C. Ad Lincoln Center. We're having two theaters in the same billiard alley. Building. We have the 1,100 seat house upstairs, and downstairs we have a 300 seat house. And I've been talking to Miller, and one of the plays I hope to do is a memory of two Mondays, which is a beautiful one-act play of his. So I didn't think it was very well done on Broadway, and I've always liked it enormously. And I'd like to do a downstairs, the small theater. We're going to open the building with two theaters running concurrently at the same time. So when you go in there, you either go upstairs and see the show upstairs, or you go downstairs and see the more experimental work. The small one will be for experimental. Yes, or for odd and unusual plays that won't get a general interest. Will the small one cater perhaps to playwrights who are unknown? Will this give them a chance, perhaps, rather than Arthur Miller? Yes, I think so.

Or the work of, for example, Camino Real by Tennessee Williams, a play I did extended into a full evening. Was perhaps better in its short version. I'm not sure it wasn't, you know? And we'd do a play like that. We'd also like, if we could find someone like Ed Orby and do the equivalent of his zoo story. Do you remember that play? Do they? Yes, yes. And let's see. A hat full of rain was first time of the act of studio. Well, we try out plays like that down there, which we're going to make the plays just alive with all kinds of effort in the theater. Now, how much self-supporting is that going to be? You have money for the building, as I understand. The building now is, I expected any day that would start to dig the hole for the building. Siren and died, you know, which was a great loss. He was a great architect, and his plans are wonderful. They'll start to dig that. And we have the money for the building, or Rockefeller does, I have nothing to do with financing. Mostly, we're still expecting some money from the city of New York. If that comes in, fine.

If not, I think Rockefeller will have to go ahead and guarantee it, which will be a great drain out of mine, though, but I think we can manage it. But anyway, that building will be up, and as I say, it will contain these two theaters. But now, how much money do you get? Where is the money coming from to putting on the plays and hiring the actors? Is that? Well, what we hope to do is to, well, the first thing we're going to do is to have a subscription audience. We're going to guarantee every play 35 performances. We're also going to have a great gala opening, and we may sell seeds for as much as $500 a seat, and then we're going to get us going. It'll always be a partly subsidized theater, though. By whom? Well, by Rockefeller. I hope. He's interested in the plays, as well as the playhouse. He's interested in the venture. He's interested in it, that there be a cultural center for theater in New York, a theater that's not an expense account theater, or a theater for buyers, out of town buyers, a theater that's a little more than somewhere to dally away and eat, something more than somewhere to dally away and eat. And so far, he's not done anything but encourages, though.

This is David Rockefeller. You know, John III. John III. Oh. Well, I hadn't known that before, but then you know you can rely on him if you need it for money, but the venture itself. I hope. I hope. I hope we'll be almost self-supporting. With 1,100 seats, I hope we'll be almost self-supporting. Bob Wighthead. Bob Wighthead. Bob Wighthead. Bob Wighthead. Bob Wighthead. Hope has figured that with 80% capacity, we'll gross about a million dollars. Oh, yeah. Yes. Which would be pretty close to what we need to write, quite close to what we need to write. If we do a little better, we'll, I think, we'll get along all right. Well, how much are you likely to be affected by box office? Suppose there isn't too much subsidy. Is there any danger of panic, of putting on something that will sell out? Well, one of the things that's fun about the theater is that there's always an element of gamble in it. You know, I like that part of the theater, and I think if one of our plays is a dead flop after 35 performances, we'll take it off and move something else and have something else ready to move in.

And we're trying in advance to get enough plays out of here, enough projects, so that the place is always moving and always living and adjusting to circumstances. You said that Miller and Inge and the rest of the top modern playwrights are in the rest. Is this mean they're going to create for the theater? Well, exactly. I mean, this hasn't happened before in America. No. There's been nothing like this in America. First place, a reputory theater means that there's a reputory of plays, we keep changing the place. So that night after night, you'll see the same actor playing different roles. That's one of the thrills we don't get in the theater in this country. Then there'll be a reputory company. A permanent company, a fine actors and promising young actors who'll be playing bits one night and large parts the next night, they'll be also, you know, part of a full theater life. How will you cast that? Have you already selected people for that company? We can't quite do it until we know what we're going to open with. I'm a little leery of, we know generally, I'd love Jerry Page to be in it. I hope Carl Morgan says he'll leave Hollywood in a minute to come.

No, you know, the actors I've worked with have passed, they're all eager to come. But I'm waiting a little longer until I know what two plays I'll open with. It won't make a crucial difference, but it'll live still in somewhat the choice of actors I make. When do you expect to open, do you have anything like an opening day? Four out of 63. That's set, eh? Well, that's what we're going towards, yes, I hope we make it. Well how about these actors, can you give them now? Some of you mentioned Carl Morgan. We must, at this particular point, be getting a very fancy fee in Hollywood, since he's become a star. Can you cope or compete with any of the Hollywood or Broadway salaries, or will they take less for the fun of working in this? We can't compete with them in any way. All we can do is give them a good living wage. You won't give them the off-road wage? No. No, we'll give them a good living wage, but we'll guarantee them 36 weeks and we'll promise them, I'll say, 14 to a dozen weeks off in the summer where they can do a spectacular TV or do a motion of electricity, so that they can increase their amplifier, their income.

We can't pay in the thousands, but see what an actor needs most is self-esteem to feel that his life's worth something, and after they've been out there playing the same part over and over and over again in Hollywood, they're pretty darn tired of it. Yeah. Excuse me, go ahead. Donald made an interesting statement, just last week you about Brando. It's a heartbreaking thing that Boy said. He said, I've wasted the last 10 years of my life. Now a man to say that publicly must be hurting somewhere, and he means it, and Karl Maul then indicates a trim to me by letter, a tremendous impatience with what happened to him out there. These men are just bored repeating the same thing. Well wouldn't you say that that's true of Brando? My feeling about Brando is that this is one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest acting talent we have at this time, and yet he is repeating the same thing, even the same tricks and mannerisms. Be being asked to and being bored to death and spending his life squabbling with directors and squabbling with producers and promoting the picture and taking a year and a half over

something. He hasn't got a great deal of respect for, I think there's a tremendous loss there that he must feel. He's a very sensitive, fine person. He's not a fool. No. Well now a man like that, would you think he would come in if you talked to him at all about coming in to Lincoln Center? I don't think he'll come in and I don't think we can finally ask him. In the first place he's a corporation now, like many actors John Wayne and Bill Moldem and Carrie Grant, they're all corporations now, you know, they have a lot of people working for them and agents depending on them and they're organization men, and I don't think you can get them. But Jerry, I don't think Jerry's ever going to become a popular movie star, she's a great actress. Maybe the best actress we have in the theater. I'm going to ask Julie Harris, I hope, I think Julie Harris, one of our best actresses, Karl Moldem, Pat Hingel, Cliff Chris Plummer, you know, Chris will never be a movie idol. This is, this kind of endeavor is the thing that's been looking for all his life and these people will come and work with us right now.

Hingel, for instance, I saw a Hingel on your picture splendor in the grass. Now that to me is performances that is the best thing I've ever seen him do, I've seen him do some good things. But that's an actor who I saw in Macbeth in Connecticut and I thought he was just awful. There's no point to fooling around. I thought he was just totally incompetent, incapable of doing that. Now it's splendor in the grass he couldn't be. I don't know anybody who could give a better performance. Do you suppose after playing in Lincoln Center that a man like that could extend his range so that he could play the Macbeths or something comparable? Is this one of the aims of it? Yes. I think it is one of the aims. It'll be one of the pleasures of the thing. You'll go there and you'll say, gosh, I never thought he could do that. I would say that Pat would be very self questioning about Macbeth. He'd wonder whether he did it right or what people thought of it and be anxious about it. I think sometimes the more talented person has, the more he can go from here to here. Sometimes a person with less talent can't go wrong so far.

Well, I just felt that perhaps in his case, a reason why he can't play Macbeth is that he hasn't had reputery training. That his training so far has been limited to a certain kind of part. Would you agree with that? Very much so. Not only that, but I think his voice may not be trained enough. His body is not trained enough. One of the things I'm going to insist on with these older actors, they're not so old, is that they do body, that they do singing and speech both, that they do body work, that they take up fencing. And gradually, well, I've been amazed off in the theatre, Elliot, how quickly people have improved, how great advance they made so quickly. In here we have no training at all. A man gets to a certain run-up party, just repeats it and repeats it and repeats it. And then when he starts repeating, he has to stay in it because it's economically difficult. Isn't it to get something else to support yourself? It's all it offers. It's all it's offered. And gradually becomes cynical and bored and disillusioned and sort of half-dozen before you know the town's gone.

You know, town is like certain types of food. It spoils quickly. If you don't take good care of it and keep it under the right conditions, it'll spoil quickly. Well, then you're going to have to work with a lot of young actors, aren't you, so that they won't become type-back. That's right. We're going to have, I hope, 20, 10 girls and 10 boys, 20 young actors. How would you pick them? Well, I'm going to go around the country. I've just been to the Goodman and I've been to Carnegie Tech. And I spoke at both places, answered questions, I didn't speak. And I was very impressed with the how informed they were, how eager they were, how, oh, idealistic they were, how much they wanted to be good, what the theater meant to them. And I'm going to tour around all over this country. Well, hold auditions? Yes. Hold auditions and find the best talent all over this country and bring them into Lincoln Center. Lincoln Center, I hope, will be the beginning of a national theater, a sadly-needled country. In what way will you begin to make it national by recruiting your young people from outside? Then how will you expand it into America, beyond Lincoln Center?

But one thing is, I am proud of what America has done as far as playwriting goes. I think that our plays have our expressive of our problems, of our way of life, of the things that are there, they're art. And I'm going to keep certain plays alive. I think death of a salesman should be seen every five years. Should be available to people, not just be at a library shelf. I think the Glassman Agency, Tennessee Williams Play, which I did not direct, should be seen every five years. I think skin of our teeth should be seen. I think these plays should be made alive for people, so they're not just dusty volumes on the shelf of a library. That's one thing I'm going to do. I also hope that we'll have a reputory of unusual plays, in other words, plays that are trying to do something offbeat or odd. And that would be maybe the all-be plays, or like that play, but once you start a thing like that going and encourage it and provide a frame for it, a setting for it, a hospitality for it, you'll get more and more of them, you see.

It'll stimulate playwriting. I think it will. Well, I'm thinking in terms now, you're going to have your playhouse, your acting company, your reputory there. I'm thinking in terms of, can any of this get to the rest of the company? Can you bring your reputory company into Boston, into Detroit, Philadelphia, and so on? Is that going to be possible to tour them after a while? It's part of our plan to spend a number of weeks each year touring. Ah, good. With that, the small theater downstairs will be a home where we hope to bring in amateur groups, semi-professional groups, and all over this country. For example, there's a good group in San Francisco that I'm curious to see myself. That's the actors' workshop. And I hope to bring them in for a four week season. So everything good in this country will be shown off there, will be available there for people to see. Now, that both gives them kudos and standing, but it also allows us all to exchange opinion, exchange actors, exchange information, and so on. And of course, if this works, it will actually decentralize the theater so that you won't

have to have the Broadway reputation to be accepted as professional. Is that so? That's correct. Don't you think that that's a wrong thing? Oh, it's just horrible. First place, the Broadway theater now is largely an expense account theater. No one can afford it. I can't afford nine, sixty for a musical. I have four children. I can't take it. I don't want to take it. I don't want to spend the money that way. Then the other thing is that some of the most imaginative productions seen in this country are seen outside New York, at the cost rate in New York, you can't afford to be experimental. I got fed up when I did JB. I did JB in nineteen days for a highly experimental play. Suppose I'd taken some missteps. I wouldn't have time to retrace my steps, you see. And that whole system of quicker rehearsals is deadly, boring. If you were to do something like JB at Lincoln Center, how much would you, the time would you feel it would require? Four or five weeks to? Well I'll answer that by telling you what we're going to do.

We're going to start February of sixty-three and take six months to rehearse two productions fully and go say halfway in another month. Six months. Six months. That part of that six months is going to be training our company for special problems connected with the players. But we're going to really take our time, not waste time, but take enough time to do a really good job. When you open the first play you put on instead of having three and a half or four weeks rehearsal as they have on Broadway. Maybe eight weeks. We'll have, yes. We'll have six months rehearsal. We've never seen in this country a true, reputory theater in operation where really good actors are playing small parts where the ensemble acting is a feature. I was an East Berlin and I saw there the two best performances I've ever seen in the theater. Everything was the comic opera directed by Walter Felsenstein, which did just a brilliant job.

And then I saw the breakfast. Have you seen that before? No. Well, you ought to go. This is the Berliner ensemble. The Berliner ensemble. I've never seen acting like that. I've never seen production like that. How long have they been together? I think fifteen years. Wouldn't you say that this is true that we have more talent in the United States acting talent, potential acting talent than they have in Germany or anywhere else? Much more. But it's dissipated. Somehow it gets lost. Felt as like Brando got a California in their garden. He should have stayed here and played thirty-fourty plays like Larry Olivier's played. Different parts, different performances. He must be dying of suffocation. Well you see somebody like Olivier play the entertainer. Then you see him do Beckett. And you see him do two or three other things. Then you see Brando do one picture in a year. And I often think two years. Two years, yes. If he were working as Olivier in a number of different things that he would have Olivier's power and qualities that Olivier doesn't have, wouldn't you say that's true? I would.

And I'd feel it about any talent. It's either growing or shrinking. It's an organic thing. And if I were Marlon, I'd make a radical break with my past now and do something that would bring me back to life. Is he young enough? He's thirty-seven. I thought he was perhaps a little older than that. And you reach the point of no return with talent like that's hard to say, isn't it? Depends on the person. Now you say Kassals, you know. I would say that his recordings now, the cellar concertos are as good as anything played by anybody. They're remarkable pieces. Depends on the person. How alive he stays inside himself. Have you talked to Brando lately? No, I haven't talked to him in five years. He's there and I'm here. I'm an independent film producer in New York. I don't go near California. I haven't done a picture there in ten years. When you cast for the stage or for a motion picture, I was thinking in terms of splendor in the grass. When you cast, how do you cast those parts? You read the script first, it's splendor in the grass, you read the script first.

As you read it, do you think in terms of those actors, or do you go out and find them afterwards? Well, I've been working in New York so long and I cast them entirely from New York or New York. We don't cast from Hollywood then. I don't. I mean, I looked around everywhere in New York for the leading girl and I decided that Natalie Wood was a Hollywood actress and was the best one for it. I tested her and I used it. But when did you see her? I remember her from a picture called Rebel Without A Cause with Jimmy Dean. It was Jimmy Dean's second picture and I thought she was a 16-year-old girl then. I thought she was brilliant and she stayed in my mind and she's done a lot of pictures after that that I thought were very poor. I thought she was poor in them. But her good performance in that state with me, so I had her in my mind. But otherwise, they're all New York actors. Absolutely new to a screen audience and very familiar to a person like yourself and myself. Pat Hingle, you know. He played the lead J.B. Audrey Christie has seen a score of time. She's a brilliant actress. And then there are some people like Barbara Loden, the girl you were talking about before,

who are absolutely new. They really are. Well, where would you find her, for instance? A girl plays that part of a girl who is, she's young and she's beautiful, number one. You can find plenty of actresses like that, but what this girl does is break your heart. Every once in a while she does something with her eyes that just breaks your heart because you know that she knows that she's on the skid, so to speak. How do you find the, how do you anticipate that she's going to be able to act like that? That's one of the things we keep track of. We keep track of the dramatic schools in New York. We, she comes from Paul Mann's, dramatic school. Paul Mann's a good teacher. I keep track of his best pupils. She read for me for a sweet bird of youth for the part of heavenly. She wasn't right for it. Whenever I have general readings for a play, I keep a list of people who are not right for that play, but who might be useful later.

Barbara was one of these. She was on a list. I remembered her and there it was. And Geraldine Page for Sweet Bird. Now this is the best thing she said. This is one of the great performances of my play going career. How did you, did you think of her the minute you read the script? No, it was a terrible job getting her in that play. I thought of her quickly because I'd seen her do a scene at the actor studio. She'd up till then in the professional theater played nothing but sort of fidgety virgin ladies of 35 in the middle of the years who were frozen assets, what they call them. And I remember the scene of the actor studio. And I brought her around and had her read for Tennessee and the agency's agent Miss Wood and Gerald Crawford, the producer and they didn't particularly like her. And then I stalled and I stalled and I said I just can't find anybody else. I was convinced she could do it. And then I read a for Tennessee alone again and he liked her and that was it. What about the Radigan plays? Now I saw her in some a stock doing the two Radigan plays. You know the pair in which she changed character. Had you seen her in the role?

No, I didn't. Because in these it's the first time that I saw her do something like that to indicate that kind of thing. Arthur Miller told me once that he was convinced that Lee Cobb would never play Willie Lohman. But that you knew from the beginning and that Cobb was in the beginning of the rehearsals for quite a while, Cobb was not Willie Lohman and suddenly at one point, you and he sat down and talked and after that one talk, he turned into Willie Lohman. Miller said in front of the arise. But that you had apparently known from the beginning that Lee Cobb could play Willie Lohman brilliantly. Elliot, I acted with him. And this was in the group theater. I acted in Boston here. I played the lead and golden boy I'm tour and he played my father and I have acted a lot of times with Lee Cobb. I directed Lee Cobb a lot. I know him. He's a nuisance at the beginning of rehearsals. He fidgets and fusses and intellectualizes and drives your nuts and then all of a sudden he sort of something happens to him and you can count on him, he's a brilliant actor.

And I had a hunch it would happen. It's just that I knew him and I didn't that song. But you know him and this is what you draw on. This is the important thing you draw on when you're going to cast a player or a picture. My knowledge of I used to be an actor and it helps. And I know that I have a sense of process in acting. Some directors don't, I mean I do your guest here, Cyr Richard, a brilliant comic actor, one of the very best and he knows that things take a little time to happen. He knows that's a sense of process in acting. What would you look for in these young actors that you take in Lincoln Center? Would you look for a wide variety are you thinking of in terms of types or are you thinking in terms of potential? Are you thinking in terms of a Marlon Brando who might be able to play be an American or Livia is that what you'd be looking for when you cast these youngsters? Well I'm also going to think yes, but I'm also going to think in terms of the needs of a reputory company that is versatility. The ability to play all kinds of parts, various ages and in various styles.

For example, these ten girls and ten boys I'm going to get must be able to play the chorus in the Eskulls plays. Must be able to dance and speak at the same time. You mean on the basis of what they've already done? Yes. But what I've seen and then on the basis of training that will give them in the first months before we perform. But you see there are special requirements in a reputory company that you have to meet. Are you likely to do O'Neill? You know one of the curious things about your own record is that you've never directed O'Neill. How does that happen? Well, I offered myself to Mr. O'Neill and he wanted an Irishman and there's no way I could pretend I was one. What was that for? I wanted to do the Iceman come it fatly. I think that's a great play. And I think it was beautifully done on television by Sidney Lamell. I didn't see it. It was beautifully done. I mean, Sidney did a beautiful job with it. But I wanted to do that badly and I talked with O'Neill and it was at the end of his life. And he just said to me, frankly, he was very honest and said, no, he said, I see an Irishman doing it and I said, well, I'm Greek, goodbye.

But you would do. You haven't any feeling against it. No, no. I think he's the greatest American playwright. What would you think he or what would you do there? Would you do? Morning becomes electrophoresis. I want to do morning becomes electrophoresis. Bob Wright has very anxious to do Marco Millions, which is a charming play and a fine play. It depends a lot on our finding the right girl for it. You know the play? The girl has to be just right. And if we have such a girl, I'll be willing to. I mean, I'll be for doing it. Well, I hope you get them. I hope you have great success. It seems to me this is the most, this is the first promising venture in the American theater for a long time. I wish you luck. Thank you. And good night, catch. Thanks a lot. Mr. Norton appears through the courtesy of the Boston Record American and Sunday Advertiser. Kazan on Broadway and Hollywood is a presentation of the Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council WGBHTV, Boston.

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