Regardless of political sentiment, it's hard to imagine a director who had more influence over 20th century American acting than Elia Kazan. Just read a list of his important films and Broadway plays or the names of the actors he discovered who had a seminal influence on not only acting but American culture: "On The Waterfront," "East of Eden," "Death of a Salesman," "A Streetcar Named Desire," and the actors Lee J. Cobb, Marlon Brando, James Dean, and of course Warren Beatty! :-)

It's too bad there is such a cloud hanging over his legacy because of his testimony to Sen. McCarthy's HUAC hearings in the early 1950s. Maybe he did "rat" on some of his peers and colleagues, but at the time, he was simply defending his work, his career, and his family.

Kazan's talents as an actor (he was a founding member of the Actors' Studio and a proponent of "The Method" style of acting), a director of screen and stage (he earned two Academy Awards, half of his 23 films are considered American classics, and his Broadway triumphs included "The Skin of Our Teeth," "All My Sons," "Streetcar," and "Death of a Salesman"), and writer (he wrote half a dozen best-selling novels as well as an autobiography and several non-fiction books about his filmmaking) are beyond comparison.

Elia Kazan was born September 7, 1909 in Contantinople, Ottoman Empire. He died on September 28, 2003 in New York City.

For more information about Elia Kazan's life and work, go to the Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001415/).

To hear a very interesting interview with him discussing his work with Brando and Dean, go to National Public Radio's "Fresh Air" program (http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml?display=day&todayDate=09/29/2003).