Hello I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For Wright's reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1979 and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. Our castaway this week is the American stage and film director and novelist

Eliea Kazan. Kazan is an abbreviation of your real name, isn't it? Yes, our name in

Anatolia where my father and mother were born was Kazanji or glue which means the son of the man who makes

cauldrons or pots or ovens but usually it means a great big cauldron that sits over an open fire.

How old were you when you went to the United States?

Four. I was four.

My father went ahead of me and then, as is the custom with the Greek families,

Anatolian families, all, all immigrants.

He brought the whole family over when he had money enough to keep us.

How big a family?

Well, I had three brothers, mother and three brothers, but there are a whole mess of

uncles and aunts and they all one by one came over.

So Greek of course was your first language.

Yes, Turkey too, both.

Turkish I mean, I learned both together.

How important in your life is music?

Oh, I can't describe it. It was the first great luxury I had. The first thing I did

when I had money enough was to buy quartets and then of course I bought all Beethoven symphonies. I bought the symphonies of Mozart,

then I bought a lot of jazz and it was the first real thing I did with a little extra money.

Books I could always get in the lending library. I always used to go to the lending library, but I used to just sit by the hour and listen to music. I don't do it as much anymore. Have you any musical scale yourself? you play an instrument? Just the phonograph. I'm quite good at that. No, I have none. I have none. I have none. You've never directed a stage musical. Yes, I have. I did three of them. Did three? I did two by Kuit Weil, and one that was based on American folk songs.

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