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Marlon Brando American actor
Legendary screen presence Marlon Brando performed for more than 50 years and is famous for such films as 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and 'The Godfather.'
Who Was Marlon Brando? After early promise in the 1940s and '50s, including a legendary performance in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire, Marlon Brando's film career had more downs than up until his starring role in The Godfather. Later, he received huge salaries for small parts. He became known for selfindulgence but was always respected for his finest work.
Early Life Brando was born on April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska. Brando grew up in Illinois, and after expulsion from a military academy, he dug ditches until his father offered to finance his education. Brando moved to New York to study with acting coach Stella Adler and at Lee Strasberg's Actors' Studio. Adler has often been credited as the principal inspiration in Brando's early career, and with opening the actor to great works of literature, music and theater. While at the Actors' Studio, Brando adopted the "method approach," which emphasizes characters' motivations for actions. He made his Broadway debut in John Van Druten's sentimental I Remember Mama (1944). New York theater critics voted him Broadway's Most Promising Actor for his performance in Truckline Caf (1946). In 1947, he played his greatest stage role, Stanley Kowalski -- the brute who rapes his sister-in-law, the fragile Blanche du Bois in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire.
Hollywood Bad Boy Hollywood beckoned to Brando, and he made his motion picture debut as a paraplegic World War II veteran in The Men (1950). Although he did not cooperate with the Hollywood publicity machine, he went on to play Kowalski in the 1951 film version of A Streetcar Named Desire, a popular and critical success that earned four Academy Awards. Brando's next movie, Viva Zapata! (1952), with a script by John Steinbeck, traces Emiliano Zapata's rise from peasant to revolutionary. Brando followed that with Julius Caesar and then The Wild One (1954), in which he played a motorcycle-gang leader in all his leather-jacketed glory. Next came his Academy Award-winning role as a longshoreman fighting the system in On the Waterfront, a hard-hitting look at New York City labor unions. During the rest of the decade, Brando's screen roles ranged from Napoleon Bonaparte in Désirée (1954), to Sky Masterson in 1955's Guys and Dolls, in which he sang and danced, to a Nazi soldier in The Young Lions (1958). From 1955 to 1958, movie exhibitors voted him one of the top 10 box-office draws in the nation.
During the 1960s, however, his career had more downs than ups, especially after the MGM studio's disastrous 1962 remake of Mutiny on the Bounty, which failed to recoup even half of its enormous budget. Brando portrayed Fletcher Christian, Clark Gable's role in the 1935 original. Brando's excessive self-indulgence reached a pinnacle during the filming of this movie. He was criticized for his on-set tantrums and for trying to alter the script. Off the set, he had numerous affairs, ate too much, and distanced himself from the cast and crew. His contract for making the movie included $5,000 for every day the film went over its original schedule. He made $1.25 million when all was said and done.
'The Godfather' Brando's career was reborn in 1972 with his depiction of Mafia chieftain Don Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, a role for which he received the Academy Award for Best Actor. He turned down the Oscar, however, in protest of Hollywood's treatment of Native Americans. Brando himself did not appear at the awards show. Instead, he sent a Native American Apache named Sacheen Littlefeather (who was later determined to be an actress portraying a Native American) to decline the award on his behalf.
Later Roles Brando proceeded the following year to the highly controversial yet highly acclaimed Last Tango in Paris, which was rated X. Since then, Brando has received huge salaries for playing small parts in such movies as Superman (1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979). Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for A Dry White Season in 1989, Brando also appeared in the comedy The Freshman with Matthew BroderIn 1995, Brando costarred in Don Juan DeMarco with Johnny Depp. In early 1996, Brando costarred in the poorly received The Island of Dr. Moreau. Entertainment Weekly reported that the actor was using an earpiece to remember his lines. His costar in the film, David Thewlis, told the magazine that Brando nonetheless impressed him. "When he walks into a room," Thewlis noted, "you know he's around."
Personal Life It has been observed that Brando has perhaps loved food and womanizing too much. His best acting performances are roles that required him to show a constrained and displayed rage and suffering. His own rage may have come from parents who did not care about him. Time magazine reported, "Brando had a stern, cold father and a dreamdisheveled mother- both alcoholics, both sexually promiscuous-and he encompassed both their natures without resolving the conflict." Brando himself wrote in his autobiography, "If my father were alive today, I don't know what I would do. After he died, I used to think, 'God, just give him to me alive for eight seconds because I want to break his jaw.'"
Although Brando avoids speaking in detail about his marriages, even in his autobiography, it is known that he has been married three times to three ex -actresses. He has at least 11 children. Five of the children are with his three wives, three are with his Guatemalan housekeeper, and the other three children are from affairs. One of Brando's sons, Christian Brando, told People magazine, "The family kept changing shape. I'd sit down at the breakfast table and say, 'Who are you?'" In 1991, Christian was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the death of his sister's fiancee, Dag Drollet, and received a 10-year sentence. He claimed Drollet was physically abusing his pregnant sister, Cheyenne. Christian said he struggled with Drollet and accidentally shot him in the face. Brando, in the house at the time, gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Drollet and called 911. At Christian's trial, People reported one of Brando's comments on the witness stand, "I tried to be a good father. I did the best I could."
Brando's daughter, Cheyenne, was a troubled young woman. In and out of drug rehabilitation centers and mental hospitals for much of her life, she lived in Tahiti with her mother Tarita (one of Brando's wives, whom he met on the set of Mutiny on the Bounty). People reported in 1990 that Cheyenne said of Brando, "I have come to despise my father for the way he ignored me as a child." After Drollet's death, Cheyenne became even more reclusive and depressed. A judge ruled that she was too depressed to raise her child and gave custody of the boy to her mother, Tarita. Cheyenne took a leave from a mental hospital on Easter Sunday in 1995 to visit her family. At her mother's home that day, Cheyenne, who had attempted suicide before, hanged herself.
Death and Legacy
Brando's years of self-indulgence are visible, as he weighed well over 300 pounds in the mid-1990s. The actor died of pulmonary fibrosis in a Los Angeles hospital in 2004 at the age of 80. But to judge Brando by his appearance and dismiss his work because of his later, less significant acting jobs, however, would be a mistake. His performance in A Streetcar Named Desire brought audiences to their knees, and his range of roles is a testament to his capability to explore many aspects of the human psyche.
16 Fascinating Facts About Marlon Brando Marlon Brando, Jr. was one of the most famous and influential actors of the second half of the 20th century. The student-turned-face of Method acting, as taught to him by Stella Adler, first gained attention for his performance as Stanley Kowalski in the Broadway run of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1947. Ever since, the seemingly tall tales of Brando clashing with actors, writers, and directors have only multiplied over the years. In honor of the legendary actor’s birthday, here are 16 stories about his just-as-legendary antics.
1. HE WAS EXPELLED FROM TWO SCHOOLS.
Brando was expelled from high school, allegedly for riding a motorcycle down the hallway, which forced his father to send him to Shattuck Military Academy in Faribault, Minnesota. Once there, Brando wrote that one night he climbed the bell tower, removed the 150-pound clapper, then carried the clapper 200 yards and buried it. In a stroke of genius, Brando then organized a committee to find out who was responsible. He was never caught, but got himself expelled anyway for other infractions. After that, in the spring of 1943, he moved to New York to live with his sister in Greenwich Village.
2. HE WORKED AS AN ELEVATOR OPERATOR.
In New York, Brando worked as an elevator operator at Best & Co., a department store. In Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me, he wrote that he followed that gig with brief stints as a waiter, a short-order cook, and a sandwich man. Brando was also a night watchman in a factory.
3. HE WOULD SPEND HOURS WATCHING AN AGENT MAKE DEALS.
Agent Irving Paul "Swifty" Lazar helped Brando get a $10 raise, from $65 to $75 a week, for his Broadway debut in I Remember Mama. Lazar recalled how in 1945, Brando and his then-girlfriend, Blossom Plumb, would sit silently for hours at a time listening to Lazar make deals over the phone.
4. HE FIXED TENNESSEE WILLIAMS' HOUSE BEFORE AUDITIONING FOR A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE.
The playwright was living in Provincetown, Massachusetts when his plumbing flooded. The light fuse was also broken. A few days after he was scheduled to arrive for his audition, Brando showed up at Williams' house, asked him why the lights were out, and then proceeded to fix the fuses and unclog the overflowing toilet bowl. Then he gave his audition. Williams wrote that it was "the most magnificent reading" he had ever witnessed.
5. HE BROKE HIS NOSE DURING A PERFORMANCE OF STREETCAR WHEN HE WAS BOXING WITH SOMEONE BACKSTAGE.
To alleviate the boredom of playing Kowalski on stage for, at that time, over one year, Brando started to fight with one of the stagehands, who was an amateur boxer. The stagehand took it easy on Brando until the actor insisted he fight for real. The stagehand then popped him in the nose, and blackened his eyes. Having just been punched in the face, and with his nose bleeding, Brando stepped back on to the stage. His co-star, Jessica Tandy, hid her surprise at his appearance by ad-libbing the line "You bloody fool" and playing it off as if Stanley had just been in a street fight. After the performance, Brando walked to the nearest hospital to get himself fixed up. Irene Selznick, the show's producer, told Brando to get his nose reset. She was glad he did not to listen to her. "I honestly think that broken nose made his fortune," she said. "It gave him sex appeal. He was too beautiful before."
6. HE SCREEN TESTED FOR REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE.
, when the film project was just a planned screen adaptation of Rebel Without a Cause: The Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath, a 1944 book by Robert M. Lindner, about an inmate who admitted under hypnosis that he witnessed his parents having sex when he was just a baby and had been rebelling ever since. Brando turned down a $3000 per week offer from Warner Bros. and continued to work the stage. When the movie was finally made in 1955, The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote that James Dean was “imitating Marlon Brando in varying degrees." 7. BRANDO INITIALLY TURNED DOWN ON THE WATERFRONT, AND DIDN'T CARE FOR HIS PERFORMANCE IN IT.
After Brando returned the unread script—twice—Frank Sinatra was cast as Terry Malloy. While costumes were being fitted for the crooner to star, Brando changed his mind after producer Sam Spiegel convinced the actor to put his politics aside and re-team with his A Streetcar Named Desire director Elia Kazan, who had testified as a witness before the House Committee on Un American Activities in 1952. When Brando first saw the movie, he was "so depressed" by his performance that he left the screening room without saying a word. Brando won his first (of two) Best Actor Oscars for the role. 8. SOMEONE STOLE HIS ON THE WATERFRONT OSCAR. Brando wrote that he honestly did not know what happened to his Oscar. He did not notice its disappearance until 1994, when his lawyer informed him a London auction house was planning on selling it.
9. BRANDO AND SINATRA FEUDED DURING GUYS AND DOLLS.
Still upset over having the role of Terry Malloy taken away from him, Sinatra held a grudge, and repeatedly referred to Brando as "Mumbles." Sinatra also declared that he didn't go for Brando and "that Method crap." The two ended up starring in Guys and Dolls (1955) together, with Sinatra as Nathan Detroit and Brando as Sky Masterson. To get back at Sinatra for his adamant dislike of rehearsing, Brando purposely screwed up at the end of scenes to necessitate a retake. In one scene, Brando reportedly messed up nine times in a row because Sinatra had to eat a piece of cheesecake every time. After the ninth mistake, Sinatra threw his plate to the ground, jammed his fork on the table, and screamed at the director, "These f**king New York actors! How much cheesecake do you think I can eat?"
10. HE BOUGHT HIS OWN ISLAND. While filming Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), Brando first saw Tetiaroa, a 2.3square-mile atoll located about 30 miles north of Tahiti's main island. Six years after falling in love with it, he bought it. Today, it operates as a resort: The Brando.
11. HE WAS NOT A FAN OF BURT REYNOLDS.
When Brando learned that Burt Reynolds was being considered for the role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather (1972), he said that he would drop out of playing Vito if Reynolds was cast. Brando said Reynolds was "the epitome of something that makes me want to throw up."
12. HE CAME UP SHORT WHILE SHOOTING LAST TANGO IN PARIS.
While filming Bernardo Bertolucci's controversial, X-rated movie, Brando became embarrassed one very cold day when, according to him, his member shrank to the "size of a peanut." Unfortunately for Brando, it was on a day when several nude scenes were set to be filmed.
13. BRANDO THOUGHT HIS SUPERMAN CHARACTER WOULD WORK BETTER AS A GREEN BAGEL.
After being cast as Jor-El, Superman's father in Richard Donner's 1978 superhero flick, Brando suggested that it might be better if he simply provided the voice of the character. "He suggested—strongly—that Jor-El could be a suitcase or a green bagel that spoke with Brando's voice," producer Ilya Salkind recalled. "I was really young and I was sweating it out. I said 'My God, this is finished, the movie will not happen ... The man will destroy everything. This is impossible. Jor-El will be a bagel.'" Fortunately, Donner stepped in: "Marlon, I think that people want to see Marlon Brando playing Jor -El. They don't want to see a green bagel."
14. BRANDO READ HIS SUPERMAN LINES OFF OF SUPERMAN'S DIAPER. TIMEinitially reported
that Brando made $2.25 million for 12 days work on Superman, but over the years his salary has gone up to $3.7 million for his 10 minutes of screen time. In a scene where Brando—as Jor-El, Superman's father—put his infant son into an escape pod, Brando read his lines off the baby's diaper. (Similarly, he had asked Bertolucci if he could read his lines off of co-star Maria Schneider's backside in Last Tango in Paris. In that case, he was turned down.) 15. HE WORKED FOR ONE DAY ON SCARY MOVIE 2.
Brando was paid $2 million to cameo as a priest in Scary Movie 2, but had to drop out when he was hospitalized with pneumonia. "He wanted to go for it," co-writer and star Shawn Wayans said. "He had an oxygen mask and we were like, 'Yo, we gotta let him go. This guy is not healthy." For that one day, Brando had an assistant in the next room read his lines into an ear piece .
16. HE GOT MAD AT YODA.
Brando starred in The Score (2001), directed by Frank Oz, a noted puppeteer who operated and voiced Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Cookie Monster, Grover, and Yoda. The trouble began when Brando played his homosexual character "way over the top" on the first day of shooting, according to Oz—who also admitted to being "too tough" on Brando when he told him to tone it down. In response, Brando began referring to Oz as "Miss Piggy." Co-star Robert DeNiro ended up serving as a sort of mediator, and would deliver Oz's directions to Brando. For one scene, shot over two days, Brando was so upset that he refused to act with Oz in the room, so the director had to watch outside with a monitor.