Kazan Named To Give Next Spencer Talk

Stage and screen director Elia Kazan will give this year's Theodore Spencer Memorial Foundation lecture, Archibald MacLeish, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory and chairman of the Foundation's invitation committee, announced yesterday.

The Foundation was set up in the spring of 1949 to honor the memory of the late Theodore Spencer, who held the Boylston chair from 1946 until his death three years later. T.S. Eliot '10 gave last year's initial lecture in an annual series on various aspects of the public arts, on "Poetry and Drama."

Kazan, recognized as one of the top men in his field, has staged such plays as "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Death of a Salesman." He also won the 1942 New York Drama Critics' Circle director of-the-year award for his staging of Thornton Wilder's "The Skin of Our Feeth."

Also Worked in Hollywood

His work for the screen won him the Motion Picture Academy's "Oscar" in 1947 for his direction of "Gentleman's Agreement." He has also directed "Boomerang," and "A Streetcar Named Desire."

Reached at his New York office, Kazan said he did not know when he would be able to come to Cambridge, but added that "it would probably be in February or March."

"I don't know yet what the lecture is going to be about," he said.