Heston: 'Very Glad Academy Will Honor Kazan'
19 March, 1999
By Lawrence Morahan
CNS Staff Writer( Editor's Note: This article first appeared on CNS March1,1999, Mr. Kazan will be honored this coming Sunday by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a special lifetime achievement Oscar. For more information on this see the current Media Research Center's CyberAlert.)
(CNS) – Charlton Heston, a veteran stage and screen actor and former president of the American Film Institute, said he was "very glad the Academy has decided to honor Elia Kazan" with a special Oscar for his lifetime body of work in movies.
"It's outrageous this honor has been consistently denied to him," Heston said in an interview with CNS.
The decision by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to honor Kazan, 89, has drawn a sullen protest among the friends and sympathizers of his former colleagues who Kazan denounced before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) almost 50 years ago.
One Hollywood observer estimated there will be roughly "500 hundred protesters outside the auditorium and many inside who will boo and hiss."
Many leading actors, writers and directors are outraged because the director of such movie classics as "On The Waterfront," "A Streetcar Named Desire," and "East of Eden" "named names" during the HUAC's inquiry into communists in Hollywood in the 1950s.
According to Kazan's critics, testimony from him and others led to the blacklisting of dozens of writers and directors and caused hundreds of people to lose their jobs during the era of Sen. Joe McCarthy.
Acknowledged as a director of enormous achievement both on Broadway and in Hollywood in the 1950s and 1960s, Kazan also was a onetime member of the Communist Party. This affiliation was not uncommon in the artistic and intellectual community of his youth.
However, in 1952, Kazan denounced his former colleagues from the New York-based Group Theater before the HUAC.
In addition to his testimony, Kazan took out an ad in The New York Times denouncing communism and urging others to speak out. He never went back on his decision to inform and in a memoir entitled "Kazan: A Life," published in 1988, he said he would do the same given the same circumstances.
Now a group of former blacklisted writers, calling themselves the "Committee Against Silence," promised they will protest the award and called on everyone in the audience of the Oscar ceremonies to sit on their hands when Kazan receives his award.
Heston, who never worked with Kazan, told CNS political opinions should have no place in the decision to honor or not to honor a director.
"I think it's very unfair to deny him an honor voted unanimously by the Motion Picture Academy because of his political differences," Heston said.
Kazan has been denied honors for many years because of his testimony. He was proposed as a candidate for the American Film Institute's lifetime achievement award three times, and denied each time, Heston said.
Heston was present at an AFI meeting in 1989 when the subject of an award for Kazan was discussed. It looked like the award was a sure thing when producer Gayle Hurd objected, Heston said. "'We can't give this award to him," she said. 'He named names'" Heston quoted her as saying.
| Home | FlashNews | In-Depth |
| Fact-O-Rama | Bulletin Boards | Viewer Poll