ELIA KAZAN : THE DEATH OF HIS WIFE BARBARA LODEN

 

Excerpted from Google Books

Then one day she stood naked before me, took my hand, and put it on her left breast. "Do you feel it?" she asked.

I found a lump there.

It was January of 1978.  She died in September 1980, on the fifth.  Here is a record of what happened in those thirty three months.

As soon as she found the lump in her breast, she did what a well trained actress does, she researched it, read books, interviewed friends, particularly one friend, a woman who had come through it - "at least so far." She consulted physicians, weighed their advice, came to her own conclusions. The record is notable for her desperate wavering from one course to another. What I saw when it was over was that no one, no expert oncologist, no spiritualist, has the vaguest idea of what to do about cancer.  We live in the dark.

...she was looking for a way to deal with it that didn't call for an operation. Reading books of the subject and a magazine called East-West, she decided to become a vegetarian and undertake a macrobiotic diet.  She came upon the writings of Michio Kushi, a Japanese doctor who'd had some success treating cancerous patients with diet and acupuncture, she went to the Acupuncture Center of Massachusetts and adopted his wheat plant  juice diet, which she found distasteful, and the macrobiotic diet of kale, brown rice, no meat.  A consultation with Kushi drew this opinion that the problem was not in her breast but in her liver. He said her liver was "feeble." Ginger presses were to be applied to her liver area.

(Barbara had other consultations and resisted having the lump removed due to the fact that permission pre surgery was that the entire breast as well as muscle could be taken off as well. I believe this is still a standard permission. About two years before she died she did have the lump removed.  She continued to try what we would call Holistic or New Age remedies but as the disease progressed she did try radiation and then chemo - what she dreaded most.)

KAZAN ON HIS CONFUSED AND MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT BARBARA

 

Excerpted from Google Books

(Kazan reports that he dreaded marrying Barbara, although he was free to and they had their son Leo. He reports that Barbara gave him an ultimatum, though she is also prepared to pack up her junk and move out. He reports that his friend has advised against it. He goes off to Europe, taking a woman he met in the park, doesn't know anything about, who when asked said she would go anywhere with him. However, in Europe he begins to write with extensive exploration into his own life, what becomes his book and film The Arrangement, saying that he could not write about Molly, his wife, and that the wife character is not Molly.  As he traveled from Greece to France and beyond, he also was having correspondences, and he wrote to Barbara and told her where he was going so she could write back to him.  Eventually the woman from the park ended her travel with Elia and Barbara agreed to meet up with him in Japan.

EXCERPT:  The basic premise was the same.  No enduring relationship was to be formed.  But as I went on planning the structure of my book, I found the character of the woman who stirred up the discontent (in the male character's life) of the hero was inspired by Barbara.  She had some sort of effect on me, one that I now dramatized in fiction. I felt a continuing interest in her and I also felt gratitude that the relationship was still meaningful for me.

... When she arrived I noticed a striking difference in her manner. A female wise in her sex might have tipped me off that this change was a manipulation, chosen to achieve an end.  I would never exclude craft from a place in Barbara's bag of techniques, nor would I deny that any dog could wag its tail and I'd be charmed. Sill I truly believed in her altered personality, even if it was an effort to reassure me that she could make good in a more permanent connection, one in which different personal qualities are required. I was delighted with how we were together for the next two weeks. She was always interesting, frequently surprising, ever loving, and would listen when I talked.. without her mind wandering as it often had in the past...

(He prolongs his stay in Japan two weeks because they are getting along so well. He even confesses that he had another woman along for the trip. But back in New York, he becomes determined to keep both women.)

Missy here: Hopefully you'll be intrigued enough to read this book for yourself.  The feeling I got was that Barbara was not being manipulative, that she was changing and actually becoming more independent and accommodating as much as she could, but that Kazan felt entitled.  If she behaved as he did, such as being secretive about where she was or who with, he resented it.  

Have you ever been in such a situation yourself?  If so, leave me a comment!

SUITE FOR BARBARA LODEN by NATHALIE LEGER is a MULTI GENRE MASTERPEICE

 The book was authored by French writer Nathalie Leger.

THE NEW YORKER : REVIEW FROM 2016 ON SUITE FOR BARBARA LODEN

This is an excellent review of the book, which was an accomplishment of Nathalie Leger.  The author had difficulty in researching Barbara Loden.  Sadly the Elia Kazan archives do not contain anything about his second wife.

EXCERPT :  Here, now, is a remarkable new book that does everything - biography, criticism, film history, memoir, and e3ven fiction, all at once, all out in front.  The book is "Suite for Barbara Loden," by French author Nathalie Leger, which was originally publishe4d in 2012 and is recently out in English translation from the small press Dorothy.  It's all the more remarkable for doing so much in a mere hundred and twenty-three pages (in translation by Natasha Lehrer and Cecile Menon). Barbara Loden direct3ed one feature film, "Wanda" from 1970, in which she also starred.  She was already an actress, including  in "Wild River" and "Splendor in the Grass," both directed by Elia Kazan, whom she married in 1968.  She won a Tony Award for her stage role in Arthur Miller's "After the Fall," from 1964.  But Loden's place in artistic history is assured y "Wanda," one of the best American independent films ever made.  She had other projects in minds (including an adaptation of Kate Chopin's novel "The Awakening" but was unable to find financing for them.  She died of cancer in 1980, at the age of forty-eight.

THE ARRANGEMENT : A NOVEL BY ELIA KAZAN THAT MAY BE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL

The script by Arthur Miller for the film After The Fall was thought to have been based on his personal experience in a marriage with actor Marilyn Monroe, an ex wife, and she was said to have been the female character. Elia Kazan's 1967 novel that was turned into a film in 1969, The Arrangement, was thought to be based in his relationship with Barbara Loden, also using her as a character. The film started Kirk Douglas as a successful man having a midlife crisis. Faye Dunaway acts as a girl named Gwen - the character possibly based on Barbara.

If interested in when Marilyn Monroe was a Mistress, you can find her in the archive of May 2016:

MARILYN MONROE - ACTRESS - "SEX GODDESS" - and MISTRESS OF TALENT AGENT JOHNNY HYDE

BARBARA LODEN IN HER FILM WANDA

Called "a hard luck drama" the film that was written by BARBARA LODEN, who also acted in it and directed it, is thought to be based on her own life growing up in the Ashville area of North Carolina. But actually, it's more like what happened to women from her background who didn't move to New York and pursue a career.  The film is about a women with no advantages who goes with the flow. 

Barbara was in her 40's when she came into her own and gained personal career success.

The first YouTube video I posted expired so I'm replacing it on 9/30/2021

BARBARA LODEN AS ERNIE KOVACK'S COMEDIC SIDEKICK

In New York, Barbara relied on her looks to get modeling jobs.  Her first husband, Larry, acted as her promoter and agent and got her an audition with Ernie.  She looks quite thin to me.  Stick with it as she gets sawed in half.

ELIA KAZAN : AN EXCERPT ON WHEN BARBARA'S SON WAS BORN

 

I was unable to obtain this book, copyright 1988, to read it cover to cover but was able to excerpt due to Google Books. - Missy

"On the second of January, 1962, I flew to Stockholm to publicize a film I'd recently completed, Splendor In The Grass.  The big studios were still doing things in style in those years, and we stayed at a hotel where we were attended by servants who looked as if I should be serving them.

On the day after our arrival I received a cable from New York  City informing me by a prearranged code, that I'd had a new son by a woman not my wife.  I can't remember that I was flustered. I went to a press conference and did my best to "push" my film."

At the time, Barbara continued to be married to her first husband, Larry.  The relationship with Kazan was a bit off and on, but ultimately, after the death of his first wife, Molly, who had been married to Elia for many years, he was free to marry Barbara.  Despite his having had many affairs of shorter duration while married to Molly, and while involved with Barbara, Elia married Barbara.

Missy here: Ultimately I feel that Elia Kazan was not a man who could be faithful to any one woman. He had earned respect as a film director and certainly met a lot of women, famous and not. I keep wondering though how much the sexual revolution and a new urge for sexual exploration and "loving the one you're with" had to do with the choices that these people made to accept what would have been considered to be marital infidelity or adultery just a few years earlier.

Are we "liberated" by having sex with whomever we wish? Does a man prone to Mistresses get a new one after he marries one?  I'm not sure we have the answers to these questions a half a century later.