Barbara Loden

Who was Barbara Loden?

Barbara Loden was an American film and stage actress and film director.

At the time of her death from breast cancer at the age of 48, she was married to the director Elia Kazan, by whom she had one child. A life member of The Actors Studio, Loden was perhaps best known for her role in Kazan's film, Splendor in the Grass, in which she played Warren Beatty's sister, as well as for portraying a fictionalized version of Marilyn Monroe in Kazan's stage production of After the Fall, written by Monroe's former husband, playwright Arthur Miller.

In 1970, Loden wrote, produced, directed, and starred in the independent film, Wanda. Innovative in its cinéma vérité style, it was one of the very few American films directed by a woman to be theatrically released at that time. Film critic David Thomson has written: "Wanda is full of unexpected moments and raw atmosphere, never settling for cliché in situation or character." The film won the International Critics' Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1970 and was presented at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival.