![]() Named Desire in 1947 had broken exciting new ground. His work with Marion Brando in the first stage production of A Streetcar His association with Miller and Williams had earned him a reputation for being a playwright'sĭirector, but he was also clearly an actor's director. On Broadway, he had directed three Pulitzer Prize-winning plays. Kazan was then probably the most powerful director in America. Always the director, he controlled people and situations he didn't like being controlled by them. Evidently, Kazan was notĪbout to give either playwright reason to take him for granted. Afterward, when Williams had had every expectation that Kazan would do his new play, The Rose Tattoo, on Broadway, the director jumped ship at the last minute, going off to Los Angeles for The Hook. Kazan, wavering provocatively between the two, had finally chosen to film A Streetcar Named Desire instead of Death ofĪ Salesman. In a period dubbed by the critic Brooks Atkinson "the Williams-Miller era," Kazan seemed at times to enjoy playing each against the other. He was a creature of routine, who found it difficult to write in unfamiliar surroundings.Īdding to the playwright's pressures was the threat of losing Kazan. Unfortunately, Miller was not like his rival Tennessee Williams, who could work anywhere, under almost any conditions. Yet the pressure was on to revise quickly while they pitched to Twentieth, Miller began to worry that for a man his age, he had not lived enough. The screenplay did notĬome out of a crisis that he himself had endured, and as a result he did not completely trust it. ![]() Yet The Hook was not based on anything Miller had actually experienced. He needed to find his material in his own life. When Miller wondered whether he would be able to write another play at all.Īs Kazan perceived, Miller was not a playwright who invented stories. After the premiere, Miller confided to his producer, Kermit Bloomgarden, that he knew he was going to have a hell of a time topping that. There was a price to be paid for acclaim of that magnitude. Many critics thought the thirty-three-year-old Miller had written the great American play, and some pronounced it the century's finestĭrama. It was to be the work with which Miller followedĭeath of a Salesman, which had been a huge success on Broadway in 1949, directed by Kazan. To understand the strain he was under, it is essential to keep in mind that The Hook was not justĪny screenplay. In the garden, steps led up to a heated swimming pool, beside which Miller set up his typewriter on a glass table. There were T'ang and Chou horses and birds. The furniture, mostly English antiques and modern pieces, was kept to a minimum to emphasize the Chagalls, Renoirs, and Toulouse-Lautrecs that covered the walls. An inveterate collector, Feldman purchased paintingsĪnd bibelots in quantity, often sight unseen. Feldman, away on business and anxious to keep the director happy, had offered Kazan the run of his art-filled house. The holidays, but some post-production work remained to be done. Kennedy, he believed that Kazan's work had been outstanding. As Feldman told his friend and investor Joseph P. Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Marion Brando and Vivien Leigh. ![]() He was producing Kazan's latest project, the film of Tennessee Greeted at the front door by a servant, Miller and Kazan entered the home of Charles Feldman, a prominent Hollywood agent and independent film producer. Kazan made it clear that the script needed to be much better. On the Brooklyn waterfront, and he'd been disappointed by what Miller had accomplished so far. On the train, Kazan had read the most recent draft of The Hook, a story of union corruption Miller had written a screenplay for Kazan to direct, and both had a great deal riding on the venture. The men were in Los Angeles to set up their first film together. Kazan, known as Gadget or Gadg to his friends, was small with a large nose and a mop of wavy black hair. Miller, tallĪnd lean, had a dark, angular, weathered face and a receding hairline. Arthur Miller and Elia Kazan had just traveled cross-country by train from New York. On January 16, 1951, a black Lincoln convertible pulled into the driveway at 2000 Coldwater Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills. ![]()
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