PENN, Arthur Hiller

(b. 27 September 1922 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), stage, television, and film director whose Bonnie and Clyde (1967) proved to be one of the most influential films of the 1960s.

Penn was the second of two sons born to Harry Penn, a watch repairman, and Sonia (Greenberg) Penn, a nurse. His parents divorced when he was three years old. From 1925 to 1936 Penn lived with his mother, who struggled financially during the depression, in New Jersey and New York. His mother had to move frequently, and Penn attended thirteen different schools. When he was fourteen Penn returned to Philadelphia to assist his ailing father in the running of his watch-repair shop. His parents' divorce was traumatic for Penn, and he credits an affinity for alienated heroes in his films to his youthful identity crisis as the product of a broken home. Penn later asserted that the French filmmaker François Truffaut's movie The 400 Blows stunned him, because it so resembled his own childhood.

During his youth, however, he was not a particular fan of the cinema, after being terrified by a horror film when he was just five years old. Penn, instead, was more drawn to the stage. At Olney High School in Philadelphia he did some acting and was attracted to the technical aspects of theatrical production. He was also active in the Neighborhood Playhouse, located near his home. Following the death of his father in 1943, Penn was drafted into the U.S. Army. Stationed at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, he spent considerable time in nearby Columbia at the Civic Theatre, where he met Fred Coe (who would later bring Penn into the television industry). He joined the Soldiers Show Company to entertain American occupation troops in Europe. After his discharge from the military, Penn used the GI Bill benefits to study art and literature at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. From 1947 to 1950 he studied literature in Italy and took acting lessons from the Russian actor and director Michael Chekhov in Hollywood.

Penn was working as a floor manager and assistant director for the television division of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and living in California in 1953, when Coe invited him back to New York City to direct live teleplays for such series as Philco Television Playhouse and Playhouse 90. Penn's distinguished television work included The Miracle Worker, William Gibson's dramatization of the teacher Anne Sullivan's efforts to open the world of sight and sound to the deaf and blind Helen Keller. In the late 1950s and early 1960s Penn gave his attention to the New York stage and directed a string of Broadway hits: Two for the Seesaw (1957–1958); The Miracle Worker (1959–1960), which won the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award; Toys in the Attic (1959–1960); Fiorello! (1959–1960); All the Way Home (1960–1961); Golden Boy (1964–1965); and Wait Until Dark (1965–1966).

Meanwhile, Penn tried his hand at film direction. His first feature was The Left-Handed Gun (1958), starring Paul Newman as a neurotic Billy the Kid. The film contained elements, such as identification with an alienated hero and critique of the violence in the American frontier and society, that would characterize Penn's outstanding cinematic work in the 1960s. Penn, however, was disappointed with his initial incursion into Hollywood. Warner Bros.' editing of the film distorted Penn's more pessimistic conclusion, and the film was panned by both film critics and audiences, although in Europe the film was well received. A disillusioned Penn returned to the New York stage until an opportunity to do a cinematic adaptation of The Miracle Worker (1962) drew him back to Hollywood. The film was a critical and box office success, earning Penn an Academy Award nomination for best director and Oscars for Anne Bancroft as best actress and Patty Duke as best supporting actress.

After he was inexplicably fired and replaced with John Frankenheimer on The Train (1963), Penn vowed to take personal control of his next film. Mickey One (1965), featuring Penn's friend Warren Beatty, explores the theme of an alienated individual at the mercy of forces beyond his control. The story concerns a nightclub comedian who is on the run from underworld forces attempting to kill him for committing a transgression of which he has no knowledge. The film borrows from the work of the Austrian writer Franz Kafka and was criticized by some critics for its pretentious symbolism. According to Penn the paranoia in Mickey One was representative of the continuing impact of McCarthyism and government surveillance upon the lives of American citizens. (Named for Senator Joseph McCarthy, McCarthyism referred to the unsubstantiated claims and witch-hunting tactics that colored the investigation of purported Communists in the U.S. government in the early 1950s.) While audiences were cool in their response to Mickey One, it was a film of which Penn was proud.

For his next film project Penn collaborated with the playwright and screenwriter Lillian Hellman on an adaptation of Horton Foote's novel The Chase. Hellman viewed the film as an examination of American violence in microcosm through the dissection of a small Texas town. Penn had high hopes for the 1966 film starring Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, and Robert Redford. Penn's artistic vision, however, clashed with the perception of the producer Sam Spiegel, who made the final cut. A dejected Penn regretted making the film and again vowed to maintain control over his projects.

Bonnie and Clyde (1967) offered such an opportunity. Working with the stars Estelle Parsons, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Michael J. Pollard, and Warren Beatty (also the film's producer); the writers David Newman and Robert Benton; the special consultant Robert Towne; and the cinematographer Burnett Guffey, Penn directed a film that baffled executives at Warner Bros. Initially, the studio believed that the film would work only with drive-in audiences, and they targeted the picture for a limited release. Also, many critics were upset that the film glorified the violent behavior of the real-life depression-era bank robbers and killers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Influenced by the French New Wave films of Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Penn crafted a film that was experimental in narrative structure and undermined audience expectations with rapid shifts in mood. While he drew on European influences, Penn's focus was definitely on the American experience and the role of violence in the nation's history. Responding to critics of the film's violence, Penn observed, "I think violence is part of the American character.… America is a country of people who act out their views in violent ways—there is not a strong tradition of persuasion, of ideation, and of law."

Against the background of the Vietnam War, coupled with urban and campus unrest, Penn's film of two young people rebelling against an oppressive establishment that repossessed people's homes struck a responsive chord with many filmgoers, especially young people. The film's unexpected popularity led many critics to revise their initial negative assessments, praising the film's artistic merits as well as its social relevance. Bonnie and Clyde received ten Academy Award nominations, including best picture and best direction, and won three Oscars.

Penn continued to express his affinity for young people with his next screen project, Alice's Restaurant, a film adaptation of the folksinger Arlo Guthrie's popular narrative song detailing his avoidance of conscription because of an arrest for the heinous crime of littering. Penn was attracted to the film owing to his empathy for rebellious youth in the 1960s and because it was set in his adopted home of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. When contrasting the counterculture youth to his own generation, Penn asserted, "These kids are on to something much more genuine, much more tender, and loving.… I'm hoping that the film will be able to elucidate that part of their subculture." The youth culture, as well as the critics, responded favorably to Alice's Restaurant, making it one of the major box office hits of 1969.

Penn next turned his questioning gaze to the history of the American West with his cinematic adaptation of Thomas Berger's comic novel Little Big Man (1970). The traditional heroic depiction of western settlement is turned on its head in this film narrated by Jack Crabb (played by Dustin Hoffman), the 121-year-old survivor of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The film and novel are an indictment of American history, drawing an analogy between nineteenth-century expansionism into the West and American involvement in the Vietnam War. Little Big Man was a box office and critical success, gaining Penn his third Oscar nomination for best director.

After the acclaim for Bonnie and Clyde, Alice's Restaurant, and Little Big Man, all of which reflected Penn's support for the antiestablishment values of the 1960s youth generation, the director took a break from making films, but he was never able to regain the momentum of his film career fully. In 1975 Penn made the detective film Night Moves with Hackman, followed by the Western The Missouri Breaks, with Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson, in 1976. The films were highly anticipated but were panned by critics and avoided by filmgoers. Both films are better appreciated today than when they were originally released. Penn's few films since the 1970s, such as Four Friends (1981), Target (1985), Dead of Winter (1987), and Inside (1996), have found only limited release and reception. In a 1986 interview Penn retorted, "It's not that I've drifted away from film. I'm very drawn to film, but I'm not sure that film is drawn to me."

In 1955 Penn married the actress Peggy Maurer, and they had two children. While Penn's cinematic vision waned after 1970, his films of the 1960s well represent the artistic and political questioning of American society and institutions during that tumultuous decade.

For background information on Penn and a discussion of his artistic vision, see Robin Wood, Arthur Penn (1969); Robert Phillip Kolker, A Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Kubrick, Coppola, Scorsese, Altman (1980; rev. ed., 1988); and Joel Zuker, Arthur Penn: A Guide to References and Resources (1980). Analysis of Bonnie and Clyde may be found in Sandra Wake and Nicola Hayden, eds., The Bonnie and Clyde Book (1972); John Cawelti, ed., Focus on Bonnie and Clyde (1973); and Lester D. Friedman, Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (2000).

Ron Briley