Elia Kazan - Personal Life

Personal Life

Elia Kazan was married three times. His first wife was playwright Molly Day Thacher. They were married from 1932 until her death in 1963; this marriage produced two daughters and two sons, including screenwriter Nicholas Kazan. His second marriage, to the actress Barbara Loden, lasted from 1969 until her death in 1980, and produced one son. Lastly, he was married to Frances Rudge from 1982 until his death in 2003, aged 94.

In 1978, the U.S. government paid for Kazan and his family to travel to Kazan's birthplace where many of his films were to be shown. During a speech in Athens, he discussed his films and his personal and business life in the U.S., along with the messages he tried to convey:

In my own view, the solution is to talk about human beings and not about abstracts, to reveal the culture and the social moment as it is reflected in the behavior and the lives of individual people. Not to be "correct." To be total. So I do not believe in any ideology that does not permit—no encourage—the freedom of the individual.

He also offered his opinions about the role of the U.S. as a world model for democracy:

I think you and I, all of us, have some sort of stake in the United States. If it fails, the failure will be that of us all. Of mankind itself. It will cost us all. . . . I think of the United States as a country which is an arena and in that arena there is a drama being played out. . . . . I have seen that the struggle is the struggle of free men.

Elia Kazan died from natural causes in his home in New York, 28 September 2003 aged 94.