Elia Kazan - Early Life

Early Life

Elia Kazan was born in the Phanar district of Istanbul, then the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia. His parents, George and Athena Kazantzoglou (née Shishmanoglou), emigrated to the United States when he was four years old. He was named after his paternal grandfather, Elia Kazantzoglou. His maternal grandfather was Isaak Shishmanoglou. Elia's brother, Avraam, was born in Berlin and later became a psychiatrist.

As a young boy, he was remembered as being shy, and his college classmates described him as more of a loner. Much of his early life was portrayed in his autobiographical book, America America, which he made into a film in 1963. In it, he describes his family as "alienated" from both their parents' Greek Orthodox values and from those of mainstream America. His mother's family were cotton merchants who imported cotton from England, and sold it wholesale. His father became a rug merchant after emigrating to the United States, and expected that his son would go into the family business.

After attending public schools in New York, he enrolled at Williams College in Massachusetts, where he helped pay his way by waiting tables and washing dishes, although he still graduated cum laude. He also worked as a bartender at various fraternities, but never joined one. While a student at Williams, he earned the nickname "Gadg," for gadget, because, he said, "I was small, compact, and handy to have around."

In his book and later film by the same title, America America, he tells how, and why, his family left Turkey and moved to America. Kazan notes that much of it came from stories that he heard as a young boy. He says during an interview that "it's all true: the wealth of the family was put on the back of a donkey, and my uncle, really still a boy, went to Istanbul ... to gradually bring the family there to escape the oppressive circumstances... It's also true that he lost the money on the way, and when he got there he swept rugs in a little store."

Kazan notes some of the controversial aspects of what he put in the film. He writes, "I used to say to myself when I was making the film that America was a dream of total freedom in all areas." To make his point, the character who portrays Kazan's uncle Avraam, kisses the ground when he gets through customs, while the Statue of Liberty and the American flag are in the background. Kazan had considered whether that kind of scene might be too much for American audiences:

I hesitated about that for a long time. A lot of people, who don't understand how desperate people can get, advised me to cut it. When I am accused of being excessive by the critics, they're talking about moments like that. But I wouldn't take it out for the world. It actually happened. Believe me, if a Turk could get out of Turkey and come here, even now, he would kiss the ground. To oppressed people, America is still a dream.

Before undertaking the film, Kazan wanted to confirm many of the details about his family's background. At one point, he sat his parents down and recorded their answers to his questions. He remembers eventually asking his father a "deeper question: 'Why America? What were you hoping for?'" His mother gave him the answer, however: "A.E. brought us here." Kazan states that "A.E. was my uncle Avraam Elia, the one who left the Anatolian village with the donkey. At twenty-eight, somehow—this was the wonder—he made his way to New York. He sent home money and in time brought my father over. Father sent for my mother and my baby brother and me when I was four.

Kazan writes of the movie, "It's my favorite of all the films I've made; the first film that was entirely mine."