Read the following short article (slightly excerpted below) about the impact that Elia Kazan’s HUAC testimony had on his career in theater and film.  In the article, Weinraub states:

The day after his appearance in Congress, Mr. Kazan took out a full-page ad in The New York Times that denounced Communism as a ”dangerous and alien conspiracy” and said that ”liberals must speak out.” In his autobiography, ”A Life,” published by Knopf in 1988, Mr. Kazin said, ”I wanted to name everybody, break open the secrecy” of the Communist Party. But there was a firestorm of criticism against him at the time, as he was described as an opportunist selling out his friends for a lucrative movie career.

His career flourished after 1953, with such films as ”On the Waterfront,” in which the character played by Marlon Brando informs on the mob, ”East of Eden,” ”A Face in the Crowd,” ”Wild River,” ”Splendor in the Grass” and ”America, America.”

Do you feel that Kazan’s career should be judged by his artistic accomplishments, or should his role as a HUAC informant be considered essential to his legacy?  Writing in 1997, Weinraub stated that Kazan’s “action remains for some a raw wound that has not healed and probably never will.”  

Why do you think that the wounds of the HUAC era have remained so durable in American culture?

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Bernard Weinraub, “A McCarthy Era Memory That Can Still Chill,” New York Times, January 16, 1997.

The shadow of Elia Kazan still hovers over Hollywood [in 1997].

At the age of 87 and in uncertain health, the director who was arguably the most formidable film maker of the 1950’s and 1960’s and has had a powerful impact on many film makers today has just been rejected again by the American Film Institute and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association for life achievement awards.

The reason was simple: Mr. Kazan has not been forgiven by some film critics and members of the Hollywood elite for an appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities on April 10, 1952, when he informed on eight friends who had been fellow members of the Communist Party. Mr. Kazan’s testimony took place at the height of the McCarthy era, when the House panel was zealously looking for evidence of Communist influence in Hollywood . . .

[Kazan] spoke haltingly but unapologetically about the reaction to his appearance before the House panel. ”That whole time wasn’t very nice,” he said. ”People were really hurt by what went on. I was part of it, I suppose. I spoke my mind and I had a right to do it.”

To his critics, many of whom weren’t even born in the 1950’s, Mr. Kazan’s decision to name names . . . was so repugnant that forgiveness seems out of the question. His action remains for some a raw wound that has not healed and probably never will.

Joseph McBride, vice president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, stated: ”When you’re honoring someone’s entire career you’re honoring the totality of what he represents, and Kazan’s career, post 1952, was built on the ruin of other people’s careers . . . Ironically, Kazan’s films became richer and were more morally complex after he informed . . . But to give our highest award to him would be ignoring a serious moral issue. We would be passively saying, ‘We don’t care if people inform on their colleagues.’ ”

Mr. Kazan’s decision to inform on his friends from his days in the Communist Party in the mid-1930’s came at a tense, heated time when Hollywood studios demanded that their directors and actors cooperate with the House panel or be blacklisted. Certainly his testimony damaged if not shattered the careers of his former colleagues, Morris Carnovsky and Art Smith, both actors, and the playwright Clifford Odets. Other figures in entertainment also named names, among them the actors Lee J. Cobb and Burl Ives and the choreographer Jerome Robbins. But none of them had had the success or fame of Mr. Kazan, whose movie career would have been seriously damaged had he not testified but whose theatrical career as Broadway’s top director would probably have flourished anyway.

The day after his appearance in Congress, Mr. Kazan took out a full-page ad in The New York Times that denounced Communism as a ”dangerous and alien conspiracy” and said that ”liberals must speak out.” In his autobiography, ”A Life,” published by Knopf in 1988, Mr. Kazin said, ”I wanted to name everybody, break open the secrecy” of the Communist Party. But there was a firestorm of criticism against him at the time, as he was described as an opportunist selling out his friends for a lucrative movie career.

His career flourished after 1953, with such films as ”On the Waterfront,” in which the character played by Marlon Brando informs on the mob, ”East of Eden,” ”A Face in the Crowd,” ”Wild River,” ”Splendor in the Grass” and ”America, America.”

His stage work in the 1950’s and 1960’s included ”Tea and Sympathy,” ”Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” ”Dark at the Top of the Stairs,” ”J B,” ”Sweet Bird of Youth” and ”After the Fall,” the autobiographical drama by Arthur Miller that reunited the playwright with Mr. Kazan after the two had become estranged over the director’s Congressional testimony.

Some of Hollywood’s most vocal liberals worked with Mr. Kazan after his testimony, including Marlon Brando, Warren Beatty, Kirk Douglas and the cinematographer Haskell Wexler.

Even his critics acknowledge that Mr. Kazan, who started the careers of Mr. Brando and James Dean, has had a powerful impact on contemporary acting. He has influenced many directors, too, including Mr. Spielberg and Martin Scorsese . . . In his book, ”A Biographical Dictionary of Film,” David Thomson wrote of Mr. Kazan: ”For good and ill, this is one of the great lives in American theater arts.”