Welcome to "Saturday Night at the Movies".

I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

Tonight's film is the period drama "East of Eden", directed by Elia Kazan for Warner Bros and released in 1955.

The Oscar nominated screenplay was written by Paul Osborn, based on the 1952 novel by John Steinbeck.

"East of Eden" stars James Dean, Julie Harris, Raymond Massey, Richard Davalos, Burl Ives, and Jo Van Fleet.

The story of "East of Eden" takes place in 1917, on the eve of the United States' entry into the First World War.

Its events unfold in Salinas, an agricultural community in the Central Valley of California, and in Monterey, a coastal fishing port about 15 miles away.

It's there that a troubled young man, Cal Trask, shadows a well-dressed woman as she visits a bank before returning to a large house.

Cal follows her into the house to try to talk to her but a burly man throws him out.

Cal catches a freight train to return to a house in Salinas where he lives with his twin brother Aron and their father Adam, a deeply religious rancher.

Aron is pious and obedient, while Cal is moody and embittered.

Cal is convinced Adam thinks he is bad and only loves Aron, who is good and on his way to college.

Aron has a girlfriend, Abra, who is also drawn to Cal.

Adam has told his sons their mother, Kate, died when they were infants, but Cal has learned that she's alive and owner of a brothel in Monterey.

A fact he keeps from Adam and Aron.

Adam has plans to ship lettuce, the valley's primary crop, to the east using ice packed railroad freight cars, but his efforts fail and he loses his savings.

Cal decides to replace his father's money by investing in beans, a crop that will bring a tidy profit as the United States enters the war.

But in order to do that, Cal needs to raise $5,000.

Now, there's only one person he knows who has that kind of money and might be willing to make him a loan.

His estranged mother, Kate.

John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California on February 27th, 1902.

He grew up doing agricultural work alongside migrant workers and had an aptitude for mechanical repairs.

After high school, he studied literature at Stanford University, but left in 1925 without obtaining a degree.

Steinbeck published his first novel, a pirate tale titled "Cup of Gold", in 1929.

But most of the subsequent writing focused on the Salinas Valley.

He first found success with "Tortilla Flat" in 1935, made into a film starring Spencer Tracy, John Garfield and Hedy Lamarr in 1942.

He wrote a series of California novels, including "Of Mice and Men", published in 1937 and made into a movie starring Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr. in 1939.

That same year, Steinbeck published his most famous novel, "The Grapes of Wrath", to considerable controversy and wide acclaim.

John Ford directed the 1940 motion picture with a cast headed by Henry Fonda, who was nominated for an Academy Award for best actor for his role as Tom Joad.

During the Second World War, Steinbeck was a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, and worked with the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA.

He continued to write after the war, in 1952, published what he considered his magnum opus, "East of Eden", focused on three generations of two families living in Salinas in the first two decades of the 20th century.

The novel included people and incidents from Steinbeck's own family history, and the author himself appears briefly in the novel.

"East of Eden" deals with the human struggle for acceptance and capacity for self destruction, guilt, freedom and love, all set within a story with many parallels to the biblical story of Cain and Abel in the fourth chapter of Genesis.

The title is taken from Genesis 4:16.

"And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden."

Elia Kazan decided to base his movie only on the last part of "East of Eden", dealing with the conflict between Cal Trask, his brother Aron and their father Adam.

As a result, the beginning of the film sets its audience in the middle of a story, then skillfully fills in the details about situations and characters as the movie progresses.

Kazan was worried about how Steinbeck would react to the film cutting out most of material in the novel.

But the author liked and trusted Kazan, so he made no objection.

Steinbeck's son Tom later said of his father, "He'd bend over backwards to help if he thought you were going in the right direction, and he thought Kazan was.

They worked very well together."

"East of Eden" was both a popular and critical success, thanks in part to the performance of James Dean in his first major motion picture role Dean had received a lot of publicity as the new Marlon Brando in the months preceding the film's release.

Director Elia Kazan was shocked at the reaction of the young people in the audience at one of the film's previews.

"The moment he came on the screen, they began to screech.

They began to holler and yell," Kazan said.

"Every movie he made, it was a landslide."

Dean's dedication to the method school of acting was particularly active in his relationship with Raymond Massey, a veteran of both stage and screen.

Massey held himself aloof from much of the rest of the cast.

According to Tom Steinbeck, anyone he hadn't done rep with wasn't worth working with.

Since Dean's character, Cal Trask, was supposed to be at odds with his father Adam, played by Massey, Dean found various ways to provoke the older actor, something Kazan did nothing to discourage.

Massey, a devout Christian, became outraged while shooting the early scene where Cal reads to his father from the Bible.

But it gave Kazan the anger he was looking for.

Later, Kazan said he hadn't done justice to the character of Adam Trask because Raymond Massey had only one color.

Massey, by contrast, considered the role to be one of his best, precisely because Adam Trask was one of the few three dimensional characters he'd ever played in a motion picture.

Critic Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote in a retrospective review in 2005 that the tension between Cal and Adam Trask in "East of Eden" is the paradigmatic generational conflict in all of American film.

Elia Kazan co-founded the actors studio in New York in 1947 with Lee Strasberg, who was a leading proponent of method acting.

Among its alumni in "East of Eden" are not only James Dean, but Julie Harris, who played Abra, and Jo Van Fleet, who played Kate.

Julie Harris found Elia Kazan easy to work with.

She said, "He adored actors because he was an actor.

He was exciting to be with and got everyone excited about what they were doing.

Although Dean would often not memorize his lines and ad lib instead, Harris was able to keep up with him.

He was always inventing," she said.

"You never knew what was coming.

You had to listen, watch.

You had to be there."

"East of Eden" was Jo Van Fleet's motion picture debut.

Director Kazan thought she was brilliant because he could tell her the effect he was looking for in a particular scene, and she would achieve it with apparently spontaneous emotion.

She was only 38 when she played the mother of James Dean and Richard Davalos, who were both in their mid twenties.

She also won the only Academy Award given to "East of Eden" for best supporting actress.

Bosley Crowther, film critic for the New York Times, wrote at the time of the film's premiere that it had energy and intensity, but little clarity and emotion.

He gave special praise to Kazan's direction and the cinematography by Ted D. McCord.

"In one respect, it is brilliant," he wrote.

"The use that Mr. Kazan has made of cinemascope and color in capturing expanse and mood in his California settings is almost beyond compare.

His views of verdant farmlands in the famous Salinas salad bowl sharply focused to the horizon and the sunshine are fairly fragrant with atmosphere.

In fact, much of the location work on the film was shot in Mendocino, California, about 257 miles north of Salinas, the city at the heart of Steinbeck's story.

Elia Kazan had become friends with John Steinbeck in 1952 while they worked closely together on the screenplay for Kazan's "Viva Zapata", starring Marlon Brando.

During production of "East of Eden", Kazan wrote letters to Steinbeck to keep him informed about the film's progress.

Steinbeck thought James Dean was the perfect choice for the leading role.

When the two were introduced, Steinbeck said, "My God, he is Cal."

Steinbeck was also very pleased with the final film, even if it only represented a small portion of the novel he had written.

James Dean played a leading role in only three motion pictures, and of those three, only "East of Eden" was released before his death.

He received a posthumous nomination for an Academy Award for best actor as he also did later for his role in "Giant", released in 1956.

Kenneth turan summarized the popular acclaim for Dean and for "East of Eden" in 2005, calling it not only one of Kazan's richest films and Dean's first significant role, it is also arguably the actor's best performance.

Please join us again next time for another "Saturday Night at the Movies".

I'm Glenn Holland.

Good night.