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<\/p>\nEngin Cezzar’s passion for theater, which he had developed during his high school years, led him to New York and became a student at the Actors’ Studio in the 1950s. This school was a temple of acting where even the biggest stars of those years, such as Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando and Ben Gazzara, attended from time to time. During the same period, Jane Fonda and James Baldwin were among the drama students being trained by legendary teacher Lee Strasberg. The acquaintance between Cezzar and Baldwin brought the famous writer to Istanbul and he added life on the Bosphorus to his biography.<\/p>\n
The 1950s were the heyday of the Actors Studio. His instructors, such as Elia Kazan, were also Hollywood professionals and acting coaches to stars. Every graduate of the school would find a job as a star candidate and easily pass many stages. Engin Cezzar, the only student from Istanbul who attended this school, met James Baldwin, a young aspiring writer, there. Racial discrimination had not yet been fully eradicated, and Baldwin was working on a play project that was extremely daring for the time. He had published the novel Giovanni’s Room and wanted to adapt it for the stage.<\/p>\n
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When Cezzar, who wanted to play the gay character in the story, wanted to help with the adaptation, Baldwin had no faith that it was possible to be truly friends with a white person. However, they got along well and their creativity increased when they worked together. Two young people who looked at the world with similar eyes believed they could eradicate racial discrimination. Seeing that Baldwin had never had a real friend before and could not define friendship, Cezzar made a proposal one day and offered to become blood brothers. This meant promising to support each other for life. They made small cuts on each arm and rubbed the blood together. Now they were brothers.<\/p>\n
Baldwin, who grew up on the streets, was bullied, and suffered a lot of abuse. Although he gained fame within a few years for his extraordinary writing talent, he chose to distance himself from American society and Harlem and moved to France. Cezzar accepted the offer to become the world’s youngest Hamlet, returned to Istanbul, and began building a brilliant theater career. The blood brothers corresponded for twenty-five years, meeting at every opportunity to catch up. This relationship also introduced the Istanbul years into Baldwin’s life in the 1960s. He frequently came to T\u00fcrkiye and spent time in the Bebek district on the Bosphorus. Their mutual friends were young writers such as Ya\u015far Kemal, Zeynep Oral, and Cevat \u00c7apan, as well as American literature instructors in Istanbul. Engin Cezzar had married G\u00fclriz Sururi, another theater star, while Baldwin was trying to finish Another Country, which would become one of the novels of the century. Ultimately, that novel was finished in the newlyweds’ home. First, he rented a beautiful mansion in Rumelihisar\u0131. He hired a cook and a maid. Then he settled in Bebek and his brother David joined him. Thus, the writer, affectionately known as “Jimmy” by Istanbulites, enjoyed life on the Bosphorus. A photo taken in 1966 commemorates those years. David Baldwin, Engin Cezzar, Marlon Brando, James Baldwin and David Leeming eat fish caught in the Bosphorus at Urcan Restaurant in Sar\u0131yer.<\/p>\n
That year, students at Amavutk\u00f6y American Girls’ College had the opportunity to meet the famous American author, who was a guest in Dorothy \u0130z’s world literature class. They had read Baldwin’s book, Go Tell It on the Mountain, in class, and the author was right in front of them. At that time, Mine and Cevat \u00c7apan were living in their house in Bebek and finishing Another Country. Then he lived in the Prens Fuat Tugay apartment building in Bebek. In the following years, as he earned a very good income from his books, he rented different houses in Bebek. While living in the Nazl\u0131 Apartment in Arifi Pa\u015fa Grove, he frequently visited the Yalter Bookstore and met with Robert College’s legendary professors John Freely and Hillary Sumner Boyd. David Leeming, who taught English literature at the same school, became his secretary and would write Baldwin’s biography in later years. His student, Sedat Pakay, was photographing Baldwin’s Istanbul years. The photographs accompanying the article were also among the frames from the biographical documentary shot by Pakay. Baldwin, who described the historic building known as the Ahmet Vefik Pasha Library on the hill of Bebek as the place where he found the peace he was looking for and the most beautiful view in the world, also enjoyed renting a boat and throwing himself into the sea.<\/p>\n
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Magdalena J. Zaborowska, author of James Baldwin’s Turkish Decade, also includes Baldwin’s statement, “T\u00fcrkiye saved my career.”The local hospitality, the love of his hosts, them taking him under their wing and the surprising inner peace he found in the middle of the bustling Istanbul enabled the author to create new wonders. The most important reason why Baldwin felt so good was that he had never encountered even a trace of racism.<\/p>\n
Istanbul being Baldwin’s second address also meant that he did some work there. When the G\u00fclriz Sururi Engin Cezzar Theatre staged John Herbert’s play Fortune and Men’s Eyes in the 1969-1970 season, its director was James Baldwin. The play, which was censored and caused controversy in every country where it was performed, depicted the abuse of child prisoners in a reformatory. The music was made by Don Cherry, who came to Istanbul to play with Okay Temiz and whom they met on the street by chance.<\/p>\n
In 1971, anti-war sentiments were blowing all over the world. The most striking critique of the Vietnam War was made with the musical Hair. Cezzar, who saw the musical in London, approached Baldwin when he was looking for a choreographer to stage it in Istanbul. Baldwin convinced his childhood friend Bernard to embark on this adventure, saying, “We’re partners in this.”<\/p>\n
When news of Baldwin’s death arrived in 1987, almost all of his Istanbul acquaintances were at the premiere of the Gulriz Sururi Engin Cezzar Theatre’s masterpiece, The Epic of Ke\u015fanl\u0131 Ali (Ke\u015fanl\u0131 Ali Destani). The news spread like wildfire and ended with tears shed in memory of the “Saga of Jimmy from Harlem.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":3929,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3721","sirenas-whisper","type-sirenas-whisper","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sirenaselection.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sirenas-whisper\/3721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sirenaselection.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sirenas-whisper"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sirenaselection.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/sirenas-whisper"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sirenaselection.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sirenas-whisper\/3721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4037,"href":"https:\/\/sirenaselection.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sirenas-whisper\/3721\/revisions\/4037"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sirenaselection.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sirenaselection.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}