AN OLD WOUND; FEELINGS OF ANGER, BETRAYAL RESURFACE WITH KAZAN'S HONOR.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

Despite all the talk of wide-open Oscar races this year, the most suspenseful moment at the 71st Academy Awards ceremonies March 21 will come when 89-year-old Elia Kazan accepts an honorary award for his distinguished body of work.

There's a very good chance that the director of such acclaimed movies as ``A Streetcar Named Desire,'' ``On the Waterfront'' and ``East of Eden,'' the stage genius who was probably more responsible than any other individual for making the naturalistic Method the dominant acting style in American movies, will be greeted by silence, by only scattered applause or, even, by catcalls.

That's because, while few if any would question that Kazan was a great and highly influential filmmaker, many have never forgiven him for naming names to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, at the height of Washington and Hollywood's anti-communist witch hunts.

Hundreds of film-industry careers were damaged during the McCarthy era. Those accused of, to paraphrase the government's official question, now or having ever been members of the American Communist Party, were given the damnable choice of either naming colleagues and friends who had also been party members or, by not informing, being blacklisted. Landing on the latter, secret roster meant that individual would no longer be employed in the movie industry.

Kazan, whose brief membership in the party in the mid-1930s genuinely soured him on communism, was the highest-profile liberal to name names. Like many who cooperated with HUAC, he surely despised the horrors of Stalinism and was concerned about America's safety at the height of the Cold War.

But unlike others who buckled before the committee in order to save their careers, Kazan has refused to apologize for his actions since. Indeed, the day after his testimony, he took out an ad in The New York Times that rationalzed his decision on political grounds. The first film Kazan made after testifying was the anti-communist ``Man on a Tightrope.'' The next one, ``On the Waterfront,'' for which he won his second directing Oscar (the first was for the 1947 expose of anti-Semitism ``Gentleman's Agreement''), makes the most indelible case for whistle-blowing in all of cinema.

No wonder, then, that while the academy maintains the honorary award was (and should be by others) considered purely in the spirit of artistic merit, its action has rekindled 50-year-old animosities and detonated a mushroom cloud of heated debate.

``It's interesting that the academy - which, normally, goes out of its way to avoid controversy, particularly politically related controversy - is willing to stick its neck out in this instance,'' observes ``Entertainment Tonight'' film critic Leonard Maltin. ``Obviously, in doing so, they are trying to say that there are two separate issues here. I kind of think they're right. But at the same time, I wasn't around then, my life and career were not ruined as a result of that witch hunt. I don't take lightly at all the still-smoldering emotions that go with this.''

``I just don't understand why they feel compelled to do this; all they're doing is opening old wounds,'' adds Rick Jewell, associate dean of the Universty of Southern California's Film School. ``If Kazan had never won an Oscar, then it would be a different story because his artistic output is certainly worthy of this kind of recognition. But since he won two of them, I just don't get it.''

Indeed, while there certainly have been exceptions to the rule, by far the majority of honorary Oscars have been given to the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Charlie Chaplin, major talents who unaccountably failed to win competitive Oscars during their distinguished careers.

``What they're trying to do, I guess, is to put a period to this whole, inflammatory history,'' Jewell says of the academy's Board of Governors, which reportedly voted unanimously to give Kazan the honorary award at the urging of the director's longtime friend and collaborator (and past academy president), Karl Malden. ``Instead, they've just caused it to flare up again.''

Abraham Polonsky and Edward Dmytryk were deeply affected by the blacklist. Polonsky, whose script for the 1947 ``Body and Soul'' was nominated for an Oscar, made his directing debut with the highly acclaimed film noir ``Force of Evil'' a year later. Blacklisted for refusing to divulge his political connections to HUAC, he didn't direct again for 21 years.

Dmytryk was a member of the Hollywood Ten, a group of writers, producers and directors whose refusal to cooperate with the committee led to their being imprisoned for contempt of Congress. But Dmytryk had a change of heart, became one of HUAC's star witnesses and resumed his directing career, during which he made such admired '50s films as ``Broken Lance,'' ``The Caine Mutiny'' and ``The Young Lions.''

Polonsky, 88, is among a group of blacklist survivors who are encouraging Oscar ceremony attendees not to applaud when Kazan is feted at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

``He gave in to the House committee, gave them the names of friends and people he knew so he wouldn't be blacklisted, but they were,'' Polonsky says of Kazan. ``I consider that immoral conduct. But they say the award has nothing to do with a person's moral conduct. In other words, if you are a mass murderer but you write a good picture, the academy a right to give you an award for deeds well done.

``In my mind, it's illogical that a great artist doesn't have a morality and a point of view that goes into his work. That's why I think the whole thing is a mess.''

The 91-year-old Dmytryk argues that Kazan, like himself, was indeed operating on moral principle when he told HUAC all that he knew.

``It's long past time to (give Kazan) this award,'' Dmytryk says. ``And I think the academy is being very courageous because I know how much courage it takes. It's great in all ways; I don't have any exceptions like so many people do, great work but lousy politics. His politics were also good; he helped to undermine the Communist Party.

``One thing I want to make clear: The producers met on Nov. 25, 1947, and laid out the proposition, which they adopted, that nobody who was a communist or an ex-communist could work in the business at all unless they recanted. Now, that's long before Kazan testified. In other words, the blacklist was not his fault or my fault or anybody else's fault. So the constant blame that's been made about the horrible things that happened to these families because of the blacklist has been directed at the wrong people.''

It's always been a quagmire of conflicting recriminations. Hollywood communists often did support, or at least made excuses for, Stalin's brutally repressive Soviet regime. Still, to persecute members (or, more so, former members) of a legally constituted political party, was, well, un-American in the extreme.

``Our whole system of government is based on the whole idea that you don't shut people up this way, that you have a right to have your opinion,'' Polonsky notes.

Then again, as Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley, the politically conservative author of the highly critical study of communism in the film community ``Hollywood Party,'' points out, ``Let's not forget, this is the movies, this isn't the government. There's no constitutional right to a lifelong, lucrative job as a screenwriter in Hollywood.''

And then again, as the widespread public disdain for Linda Tripp proves, Americans have a fundamental revulsion for snitches.

At the same time, there are reasonable rebuttals to the more hyperbolic claims of both the left and the right. It's doubtful, for example, that the eight people Kazan named before the committee were hurt any more, at that point, than they already were. Most historical accounts agree that these individuals were already known to HUAC's investigators.

Conversely, the fact that, at the time, America was strongly anti-communist takes the wind out of the argument that justified the whole Hollywood inquisition: that red influence in the movies was somehow subverting the republic from within.

``I'd like to ask Kazan, `Do you really think these people were dangerous, a threat to this country?' '' says Richard Walter, chairman of the screenwriting program at the University of California, Los Angeles. ``They were self-important and, probably, incredibly pompous, but a threat to this nation? Where is the damage that they did?''

Whatever damage the Kazan honor does - to individuals for whom its brought back painful memories, to the academy's reputation or, perhaps, to whomever agrees to present the honorary Oscar (noting that it never reveals who will present which award, the academy would not confirm widespread rumors that impeccably credentialed liberals Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro are the designated presenters) - there could be a silver lining to the whole imbroglio.

Much as the recent, agonizing impeachment proceedings and Orange County video store protests triggered extensive examinations of freedom, morality and law, the highly publicized Kazan controversy could lead to a wider and deeper understanding of those troubled blacklist times - a period which, as Hollywood Ten member Dalton Trumbo famously noted, produced only victims.

Director Ulu Grosbard (``The Deep End of the Ocean''), who worked with Kazan in the 1960s, expresses an objective attitude shared by many who appreciate the devastating complexities of that trying time.

``I found him very charming. I got a good deal out of working with him. I liked him,'' Grosbard says of Kazan. ``Yet you were always aware of what he did. It's difficult. I'm conflicted about it.''

Del Reisman, a past president of the Writers Guild of America, currently sits on the guild's Blacklist Credits Committee. The committee has researched and assigned proper credit to 82 films that were written under pseudonyms or through a front by blacklisted writers between 1948 and 1961. Six new corrections were announced last week to somewhat more media attention than usual.

``It wasn't really timed (to capitalize on the Kazan controversy); however, people make that implicit connection, which is fair,'' Reisman says. ``It's just there. I think that there will be more public awareness about the blacklist now. It does bring it to the fore because of Kazan's prominence.''

Which may, in the long run, be good for society. Although of course, some would understandably rather forget, if not forgive.

``I'm irritated, but not cast down by this,'' Polonsky says, ``because I know, having lived a long life, that one of the things I can always count on is that whatever happens will be frustrating.''

Polonsky laughs, but there's no mistaking the sad resignation in his voice when he says, ``I thought the blacklist was over with. Now I find out it's still alive.''

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

PHOTO (1) Elia Kazan, in a 1963 photo, will receive an honorary award at the Oscars March 21.

(2) ``On the Waterfront,'' which co-starred Rod Steiger, left, and Marlon Brando, brought Kazan his second Oscar for directing.