Marlon Brando (NY Times obit)
Joe Gillis
Marlon Brando, Oscar-Winning Actor, Is Dead at 80
By RICK LYMAN
Published: July 2, 2004
Marlon Brando, the rebellious prodigy who electrified a generation and forever
transformed the art of screen acting, yet whose erratic career, obstinate
eccentricities and recurring tragedies prevented him from fully realizing the
promise of his early genius, is dead. He was 80.
His lawyer, David J. Seeley, said Mr. Brando died on Thursday at a Los Angeles
hospital that Mr. Seeley did not identify, The Associated Press reported. The
cause of death was being also withheld, Mr. Seeley said.
Young audiences who knew Mr. Brando as a tabloid curiosity with his own private
island off Tahiti, or simply an overweight target for late-night comics, might
be surprised to learn that at one time, he was a truly revolutionary presence
who strode through American popular culture like lightning on legs.
Certainly among the handful of enduringly great American film actors — some
say the greatest — he has also been, without question, the most widely
imitated. Virtually all of the finest male stars who have emerged in the last
half-century, from Paul Newman to Warren Beatty to Robert De Niro to Leonardo
DiCaprio, contain some echo of Mr. Brando's world-shaking paradigm.
Simply put: In film acting, there is before Brando, and there is after Brando.
And they are like different planets.
Yet like Orson Welles, another famous prodigy who battled Hollywood only to see
himself balloon into a cartoon version of his early brilliance, Mr. Brando's
legacy is built on a surprisingly small number of roles.
There is his epochal Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams's "Streetcar Named
Desire," a role he created on Broadway in 1947, at age 23, and then played on
film in 1951. And there is his performance as the fatally noble Mexican bandit
in "Viva Zapata!" in 1952. Two crucial roles followed in 1954, as the first in
a long line of leather-clad, mixed-up teenagers in "The Wild One" and in his
Oscar-winning turn as Terry Malloy, the boxer who could have been a contender,
in "On the Waterfront," which many consider his finest performance.
After that explosion of creative fire, there follows a huge gap of years filled
with intermittently compelling but largely unmemorable roles — and more than
a few outright disasters — before a stunning return to form with "The
Godfather" in 1972 and "Last Tango in Paris" in 1973.
Through it all, Mr. Brando was an often combative and moody iconoclast, a
polarizing and enigmatic figure who generally stayed out of the public eye.
When he did speak, about acting, about politics, about genetic engineering,
about any of the passions that worked on his rambling mind, he revealed a
strange mixture of self-abnegation and egomania.
A startling number of the increasingly rare interviews he gave were simply
jousting matches between him and the interviewer, all about how much he hated
doing it or how he wanted to expose the whole process as a phony, commercial
exercise. On the few occasions when he seemed to let loose and speak what was
really on his fertile mind, such as in a crushing profile by Truman Capote in
the New Yorker in 1957 or in a pair of truly odd appearances on "Larry King
Live" in the mid-1990's, he got himself into trouble.
And more often than not, he would express contempt for the craft of acting.
"Acting is the least mysterious of all crafts," Mr. Brando once said. "Whenever
we want something from somebody or when we want to hide something or pretend,
we're acting. Most people do it all day long."
He described himself as a lazy man, always looking for ways to make more money
for less work. Notoriously lax about learning his lines, he would sometimes
have them written on cards just out of camera view. Supporters said this added
spontaneity to his performances.
"If a studio offered to pay me as much to sweep the floor as it did to act, I'd
sweep the floor," he said. "There isn't anything that pays you as well as
acting while you decide what the hell you're going to do with yourself. Who
cares about the applause? Do I need applause to feel good about myself?"
Yet, he could be as meticulous and penetrating as anyone when discussing a
particular role. And no one was better at finding brilliant touches that
brought a character to life. Many have pointed to a scene in "On the
Waterfront" during which he delicately put on the dainty lace glove of the
young woman he was awkwardly trying to court, a seemingly unconscious gesture
that fills the moment with heart-breaking vulnerability.
In preparing for his first film role, as a wounded veteran in "The Men" (1950),
he spent weeks living among real soldiers at a veterans' hospital, to the point
that many of the film's first audiences came away perplexed, thinking that he
was an actual war casualty who had been hired to be in the movie.
And for a man who supposedly disdained acting, he could be extraordinarily
eloquent on the subject.
The close-up says everything," Mr. Brando once said. "It's then that an actor's
learned, rehearsed behavior becomes most obvious to an audience and chips away,
unconsciously, at its experience of reality. In a close-up, the audience is
only inches away, and your face becomes the stage."
He was not the first actor to bring to the screen the style known as the
Method, an internalized acting technique promulgated in Russia by Konstantin
Stanislavski in the 1920's and then popularized in New York in the 40's by its
evangelists like Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner and Stella Adler, Mr. Brando's
beloved teacher. But Mr. Brando was the first to make clear how truly powerful
and culture-shaking the Method could be, in the right hands.
"His brutish explosions of anger, his displays of vanity on stage were seen by
pretentious and unpretentious reviewers alike as having an immediacy new to the
theater," Harold Brodkey wrote in The New Yorker in 1994.
What made Mr. Brando different from previous Method actors like Montgomery
Clift, Mr. Brodkey wrote, was the way he taunted and unsettled the audience.
("You could write a whole chapter on the ways he could make people feel
uncomfortable," said an early acting colleague quoted by the Brando biographer
Peter Manso.)
To American audiences who first saw him in the late 40's, what was most
apparent about Mr. Brando was that compared with other actors of the period, he
was brooding, muscular and intense. Detractors called him a slob. He appeared
in tight blue jeans and torn T-shirts, grimy with sweat, alternately slack
jawed with stupidity and alive with feral cunning. And he was more openly
sexual — in an animal way — than the actors who immediately preceded him.
Often, Mr. Brando was accused of mumbling his lines, but audiences watching
those early performances today would notice none of that, so completely has the
Brando school of antiglamour taken root in American acting.
"Brando represented a reaction against the postwar mania for security," Pauline
Kael wrote in The Atlantic Monthly in 1966. "As a protagonist, the Brando of
the early 50's had no code, only his instincts. He was a development from the
gangster and the outlaw."
This anti-authoritarian streak was like catnip to the generation that came of
age right after World War II. In "The Wild One," Mr. Brando's reluctantly
sensitive biker is asked by a small-town matron what it is that he's rebelling
against. "What've you got?" he responds. That line, that attitude, galvanized
the emerging postwar youth culture.
In "A Method to Their Madness," a 1984 history of the Actors Studio, Foster
Hirsch tried to explain what it was about the young Mr. Brando and his fellow
student, James Dean, that set them apart from earlier actors like Gary Cooper
or Spencer Tracy, who had also cultivated a realistic screen persona.
"They appeared to be more fully and interestingly alive on screen than any
generation of actors before them," he wrote. "Their realism was deeper, more
layered and more complex than that of a Tracy or a Cooper. Brando and Dean were
fascinating neurotics, exuding a primeval sexuality. Emotionally, they were
knottier and more vulnerable than actors had seemed before, daringly
androgynous, even feral. Reaching into their own psyches, they were intuitive
and spontaneous."
The impression given by many of the finest Method actors was that they needed
to act, to purge their inner demons. Mr. Brando echoed this, saying that a
childhood with remote and alcoholic parents had driven him to pretending.
"When you are a child who is unwanted or unwelcome, and the essence of what you
are seems to be unacceptable, you look for an identity that will be
acceptable," he said.
Mr. Brando was born in 1924 in Omaha. In his 1994 autobiography, "Songs My
Mother Taught Me," he described a painful childhood. His father, Marlon Brando
Sr., was an abusive alcoholic, he said, who never seemed to find anything good
to say about his only son. His mother, Dorothy Pennebaker Brando, was also an
alcoholic, he said, more interested in drinking than in caring for her family.
"I suppose the story of my life is a search for love," Mr. Brando said. "But
more than that, I have been looking for a way to repair myself from the damages
I suffered early on and to define my obligation, if I had any, to myself and my
species."
The young boy's suppressed anger against his father was seen by Mr. Brando and
many critics as the wellspring for many of his performances. After his father
died, Mr. Brando told an interviewer that he wished he could spend just a few
more minutes with him.
"I wanted to rip his ears off and eat them in front of him," Mr. Brando said.
"I wanted to separate his larynx from his body and shove it into his stomach.
But with time, I began to realize that as long as I felt this way, I would
never be free until I eradicated these feelings in myself."
In 1935, his parents separated and Mr. Brando and his two older sisters,
Florence and Jocelyn, moved with their mother to Orange County, Calif. Two
years later, his parents reconciled, and the family moved to the northern
Chicago suburbs, first to Evanston and then to Libertyville, where the teenaged
Mr. Brando came of age.
He was an indifferent student, given to pranks. His father sent him to the
Shattuck Military Academy in Minnesota, from which he was expelled in his
senior year for smoking and insubordination.
There was another battle taking place in the Brando household, between the
values of his father, a middle-class businessman, and his mother, a
disappointed actress. By the time the young Mr. Brando was kicked out of
military school, both of his sisters had moved to New York to forge acting
careers. Mr. Brando stayed in Libertyville for a while, then followed his
sisters to New York in 1943.
He enrolled in the Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research. Mr.
Brando seemed to understand the Method instinctively, how to use his own
reservoir of memories and internalized emotions to find moments of truth.
Indeed, some of his fellow students said that teaching him the technique was
redundant.
"Marlon's going to school to learn the Method was like sending a tiger to
jungle school," Elaine Stritch said.
In a 1997 article in The New York Times on the 50th anniversary of the Actors
Studio, Ann Douglas described an early acting exercise: "During one class,
Stella Adler, Mr. Brando's teacher, told her students to pretend to be chickens
on which an atomic bomb was about to fall. The rest of the students ran around
clucking loudly and looking frantically at the sky, but Mr. Brando just sat
there calmly — he was a hen, busy laying her eggs. What would a hen know or
care about a bomb?"
Mr. Brando made his stage debut at the New School, playing Jesus in a 1944
production of Gerhart Hauptmann's "Hannele." Later that year, he joined the
Broadway cast of "I Remember Mama," and stayed there for two years.
In 1946, Mr. Brando appeared in several Plays — "Truckline Cafe" by Maxwell
Anderson, "Candida" by George Bernard Shaw, "A Flag is Born" by Ben Hecht —
before a brilliant young director named Elia Kazan recommended him for the role
of Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire."
In 1947, in that role, he exploded onto the stage. Although the play was
written and presented largely as the story of Blanche DuBois, the
quintessentially neurotic Southern belle, played by the brilliant Jessica
Tandy, Mr. Brando was all anyone could talk about.
The inspiration for Mr. Brando's costume — torn T-shirt, extremely tight
jeans — came from watching construction workers at a site adjacent to the
theater, said Lucinda Ballard, the play's costume designer. Mr. Brando
painstakingly bulked up his muscles and then had a fitting for the specially
made jeans, insisting that he wear no underwear for the fitting.
"His silences, even more than his speeches, are completely arresting," the
critic Harold Clurman wrote in 1948. "Through his own intense concentration on
what he is thinking or doing at each moment he is on the stage, all our
attention focuses on him. Brando's quality is one of acute sensitivity."
For three years, he parried offers from Hollywood until finally he accepted the
lead role in "The Men," drawn by the character of the wounded war veteran.
The Hollywood establishment did not quite know what to make of Mr. Brando. It
never did.
In the early 50's, movie stars were expected to be models of glamour when they
appeared in public. Mr. Brando went around in T-shirts and blue jeans. He was
often spotted driving down Sunset Boulevard in a convertible wearing a fake
arrow that seemed to penetrate his head.
"Nobody, nothing, no amount of money can make him behave," said a profile in
The Times Magazine in 1954. "He's got to be his own master, even though he may
not yet have mastered himself."
Mr. Brando did not seem to care what Hollywood thought of him. "The only reason
I'm here is that I don't yet have the moral courage to turn down the money," he
said.
The Men" was followed in 1951 with the film version of "A Streetcar Named
Desire," in which Mr. Brando had the same effect on movie audiences that he had
had on Broadway. Hollywood, however, kept its distance. Though the film won
Oscars for Vivien Leigh's Blanche, as well as for supporting performers Kim
Hunter and Karl Malden, Mr. Brando was passed over.
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In 1952, Mr. Brando starred again for Mr. Kazan in "Viva Zapata!" — a
political paean to revolutionaries, with a John Steinbeck script. Again, a
supporting performer, Anthony Quinn, took home the Oscar and Mr. Brando was
overlooked.
In 1953, trying to prove he was more than a mumbling, one-note performer, Mr.
Brando played Marc Antony in a film of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar." Again, he
was nominated for an Oscar. Again, he lost.
Hollywood's snubbing of Mr. Brando was getting to be a little embarrassing.
Although he was widely proclaimed by critics as the greatest actor of his
generation, and embraced at the box-office in film after film, his disdain for
the establishment was returned in kind.
Finally, in 1954, in "On the Waterfront," he received an Oscar. The role of
Terry Malloy, more than any other, is emblematic of the power and reach of the
style of acting that Mr. Brando brought to the screen.
"If there is a better performance by a man in the history of film, I don't know
what it is," said Mr. Kazan, his director again.
Hollywood had finally embraced Mr. Brando. At the Academy Award ceremonies, he
even joked with the M.C., Bob Hope, wrestling over the Oscar he had just won.
It seemed to presage greater glories but proved to be the end of the most
fertile period in his professional life.
To avoid a lawsuit, for walking off a big-budget extravaganza called "The
Egyptian," Mr. Brando agreed to play Napoleon in another lavish romance called
"Desiree" and essentially walked through the role. He admitted as much. Time
put him on its cover. "Too big for his blue jeans?" the cover headline asked.
In 1955, he was miscast again, this time as a singing gangster in "Guys and
Dolls." And then, in 1956, he dressed up as an Okinawan villager for "The
Teahouse of the August Moon."
More and more, he seemed to be receding behind his makeup. And he developed a
growing reputation for being difficult.
It was while filming "Sayonara" (1957) that Mr. Brando agreed to an interview
with Truman Capote for The New Yorker. The resulting article, "The Duke in His
Own Domain," was a patronizing portrait of a somewhat dim prima donna. "People
around me never say anything," Mr. Brando said. "They just seem to want to hear
what I have to say. That's why I do all the talking." Mr. Capote expressed
astonishment that Mr. Brando objected to the piece.
"The unwary Brando was made to look public ass No. 1," Ms. Kael said. "It was
now open season on Brando."
Certainly, the tide had turned. To some, the brilliant prodigy had become the
spoiled, aging adolescent. He fought back, with performances that showed
flashes of his earlier brilliance in "The Young Lions" (1958) and "The Fugitive
Kind" (1959). In 1961, he turned to directing for the first and only time,
starring himself in a quirky, almost sadistic anti-Western called "One-Eyed
Jacks."
His fortunes were supposed to be revived by an expensive remake of "Mutiny on
the Bounty." Instead, it became the most celebrated movie disaster of its day.
In a 1962 Saturday Evening Post piece on the debacle, the director Billy
Wilder, who had worked on the script, recounted that when he was introduced to
John F. Kennedy, the president leaned over and asked, "When in the world are
they going to finish `Mutiny on the Bounty?' "
At the time, the film had been in production for 11 months, after 13 months of
preparations, and it was still months from completion. The budget had soared to
nearly $20 million, a huge sum in those days. And its star, Mr. Brando, had
likewise ballooned, from 170 to 210 pounds, the first occurrence of a problem
that would plague him for the rest of his life.
Nearly everyone blamed Mr. Brando for the film's problems.
"They deserve what they get when they give a ham actor, a petulant child,
complete control of an expensive picture," said the director, Lewis Milestone.
Mr. Brando's co-stars concurred. "The man is unprofessional and absolutely
ridiculous," Trevor Howard said.
The film, which opened in 1962, was a box-office disaster. It would be a long
time before a Hollywood studio would again star Mr. Brando in an expensive
production.
The rest of the 1960's were a string of uneven films of steadily decreasing
impact, beginning with "The Ugly American" in 1963 and including such oddities
as Charles Chaplin's "A Countess from Hong Kong" in 1967 and Gilo Pontecorvos
"Burn!" in 1969.
Mr. Brando seemed bored with acting and increasingly remote. He had fallen in
love with Tahiti while making "Bounty," as well as with his co-star, Tarita
Teriipia. So in 1966 he simply bought his own island, Tetiaroa, a sickle of
palm and sand surrounding a green lagoon about 30 miles north of Tahiti.
For the rest of his life, he split his time between his South Pacific island
and his estate on Mulholland Drive, above Beverly Hills.
His first marriage, to Anna Kashfi, had dissolved in 1958 after a little more
than a year. A subsequent child custody battle put Mr. Brando on the tabloid
covers when his ex-wife publicly slapped him after a Santa Monica court
hearing.
A second wife, Movita Castenada, also an actress, married him in 1960 and that,
too, was over by 1962.
"Is Brando Necessary?" asked a Film Comment headline in 1969.
Hollywood did not think so. By the time Francis Ford Coppola was casting about
for an actor to play the role of Vito Corleone in his 1972 adaptation of Mario
Puzo's "The Godfather," Mr. Brando's was nowhere on the studio's radar.
Paramount Pictures was considering Burt Lancaster, Orson Welles, George C.
Scott, even Edward G. Robinson. When Mr. Coppola told them he wanted Mr.
Brando, studio officials refused. Mr. Brando was trouble, they said, and
box-office poison.
So Mr. Coppola asked Mr. Brando to submit to a screen test and, to his
astonishment, the actor agreed. Mr. Coppola described how he took his film crew
to Mr. Brando's Mulholland Drive home and quietly set up one morning. The
actor, Mr. Coppola said, at first ignored them and then sat down and began to
transform himself into Don Corleone. He put Kleenex in his cheeks, slicked back
his hair, affected a raspy voice.
When Mr. Coppola showed studio executives the astonishing transformation, they
agreed to sign Mr. Brando for the part — but only at a salary of $250,000, a
fraction of what he had been earning a decade earlier.
The movie was a major critical and box-office success, acclaimed as a classic
almost from the moment it was released. It also reminded critics and audiences
of Mr. Brando's powerful screen presence. So no one was surprised when he was
nominated for a best actor Oscar, despite a role that was significantly smaller
than that of co-star Al Pacino.
"Marlon Brando has finally connected with a character and a film that need not
embarrass America's most complex, most idiosyncratic film actor," Vincent Canby
wrote in The Times.
Mr. Brando had frequently expressed disdain for awards in those years. Would he
attend the Oscars? Mr. Brando refused to say until the last minute, when he
told academy officials he would send an American Indian actress, Sacheen
Littlefeather, in his place.
When Ms. Littlefeather arrived, she told the show's producer, Howard W. Koch,
that Mr. Brando had given her a 15-page statement to read if he won the award.
"I'll give you 45 seconds to make your statement," Mr. Koch said, according to
"Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards," by Mason Wiley
and Damien Bona. "If you go one second over, I'll have you bodily removed from
the stage. I promise you I'm not afraid to do that."
There were gasps, therefore, when Mr. Brando's name was announced as the
winner. When actor Roger Moore attempted to hand the Oscar statuette to Ms.
Littlefeather, she brushed it aside and said that Mr. Brando "very regretfully
cannot accept this very generous award" because of the way American Indians had
been treated by Hollywood.
Passionate commitment to social causes was nothing new to Mr. Brando. As early
as 1946, while appearing in a play about the founding of Israel, he became
committed to raising money for the new state. Later, he was a champion for
civil rights, the Black Panther Party and the plight of Soviet Jews. But his
most vociferous public protests were on behalf of American Indian rights.
He followed up his "Godfather" triumph with one of his greatest performances,
in Mr. Bertolucci's controversial and erotic "Last Tango in Paris," an X-rated
sensation in its day. Many of his monologues, particular one about being
abandoned and humiliated, were drawn from his own childhood experiences.
In The Times, Mr. Canby wrote: "I use the word courageous carefully. For
Brando, like Bertolucci, had pulled out all the stops without fear of looking
absurd."
Mr. Brando was nominated again for an Oscar, but this time the academy did not
give it to him.
He was no longer eager to suffer the psychic damage that good acting required,
Mr. Brando told friends. " `Last Tango' required a lot of emotional
arm-wrestling," he wrote in his autobiography. "And when it was finished, I
decided that I wasn't ever again going to destroy myself emotionally to make a
movie."
So, suddenly back on top, Mr. Brando set about cashing in. He bragged about how
he earned so much money for so little work, most memorably when he was given $4
million for three weeks work as the father of "Superman," in 1978.
He began to make noticeably quirky character choices, which some critics saw as
thumbing his nose at the audience. In "The Missouri Breaks," in 1976, he played
a frontier bounty hunter, inexplicably appearing in one scene dressed as a
middle-aged pioneer woman. In "The Formula," he was almost unrecognizable as a
greedy oil executive.
All the while, Mr. Brando continued to recede into his private world. He
reached a kind of oddball apogee in Mr. Coppola's "Apocalypse Now," playing a
renegade colonel in a surreal version of Vietnam. In the documentary "Hearts of
Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse," Mr. Coppola said he was stunned when Mr.
Brando first appeared on the set, grossly overweight and shaved bald.
Mr. Brando played a small, but entertainingly eccentric role as an
anti-apartheid lawyer in "A Dry White Season" (1989), then followed it up with
a critically acclaimed comic turn as a quasigangster in "The Freshman," a kind
of send-up of his "Godfather" persona.
In 1990, Mr. Brando found himself back on the tabloid front pages when his son,
Christian, was accused of shooting and killing Dag Drollet, 26, the son of a
prominent Tahitian banker and politician who had been accused of abusing
Cheyenne Brando, 20, his girlfriend. Suddenly, Mr. Brando's dysfunctional
family became fodder for the gossip pages.
In 1995 People Magazine said that Mr. Brando had at least 11 children — five
by his three wives, three by his Guatemalan housekeeper, Christina Ruiz, and
three from other affairs. Other reports hinted at other children from other
affairs. Mr. Brando refused to talk about it.
"The family kept changing shape," Christian Brando told a reporter. "I'd sit
down at the breakfast table and say, `Who are you?' "
And Mr. Brando, who had frequently spoken of his own sense of abandonment as a
child, was accused by Cheyenne of doing the same to her. "I have come to
despise my father for the way he ignored me when I was a child," she said.
Mr. Brando testified on his son's behalf. "I tried to be a good father," he
said, tearfully. "I did the best I could."
Christian Brando pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and served nearly
five years in state prison.
Five years later, Cheyenne Brando hanged herself in the bedroom of her mother's
home in Tahiti. It was her third suicide attempt. Family members said she had
been in and out of drug rehabilitation and mental hospitals and had been
severely depressed since Mr. Drollet's killing.
Gradually, Mr. Brando seemed to emerge from the disaster.
In 1995, he had another brief triumph as a lovelorn psychiatrist in "Don Juan
DeMarco," opposite Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway.
"Mr. Brando doesn't so much play his role as play along, in scenes that have
been pasted together from suspiciously short takes," Janet Maslin wrote in The
Times. "He never succeeds in being as subversive as he looked on live
television last year, when he scared the daylights out of a CNN camera crew and
Larry King."
The two interviews with Mr. King were, indeed, odd affairs. In the first, Mr.
Brando wore red suspenders and heavy makeup, saying he was trying to look like
Mr. King. He propped his bare feet in camera view and was typically combative
and rambling. At the end, he kissed Mr. King on the lips.
In the second interview, Mr. Brando got into trouble by complaining that
Hollywood was controlled by Jews who showed too little social conscience.
Jewish leaders were outraged. Mr. Brando apologized and had a three-hour
meeting with Los Angeles rabbis during which he wept and spoke some Yiddish.
Mr. Brando had one final, flaming disaster with "The Island of Dr. Moreau" in
1996, which ran way over schedule and budget and spawned reports of terrifying
clashes on the set. The film drew scathing reviews and bombed.
By this point, Mr. Brando had largely fallen from the public stage. Those who
saw him said he was still struggling with a weight problem. And there were
several film projects that either did not come to fruition or, for one reason
or another, were not released.
"Food has always been my friend," he said. "When I wanted to feel better or had
a crisis in my life, I opened the icebox."
In April 2001, he was hospitalized for pneumonia just days before he was to
begin shooting a small role in the sequel, "Scary Movie II."
The actor told Mr. King's television audience why he loved the South Pacific so
much and, in the process, explained something about himself.
"When I lie on the beach there naked, which I do sometimes, and I feel the wind
coming over me and I see the stars up above," he said. "And I am looking into
this very deep, indescribable night, it is something that escapes my vocabulary
to describe. Then I think, God, I have no importance, whatever I do or don't
do, or what anybody does, is not more important than the grains of sand that I
am lying on, or the coconut that I am using for my pillow. So I really don't
think in the long sense."
=================================================
"I don't mind lying, but I HATE inaccuracy." -- Samuel Butler
George Peatty
>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/02/movies/02CND-BRANDO.html
>
>Marlon Brando, Oscar-Winning Actor, Is Dead at 80
[mucho snippo]
A thoughtful obituary on a complex man. I can't say that I ever cared for Marlon Brando
as an actor. I don't feel this *power* everyone seems to think he has. My favorite
Brando role is Jor-el in Superman I, where he presents as anything but method*ical. He's
polished and poised, and it's obvious he gave a great deal of thought to how he would say
his lines. Listen to the inflections, and they present as both original and endearing.
But, he's hardly the best actor of the last half of the 20th century as the obituary said.
He gave half a dozen performances that are unsurpassed, then sabotaged his own legend by
idiosyncratic choices and problematic behavior on set. Personally, I think his appeal is
more for some of his characters, especially the rebellious delinquent in The Wild Ones,
than it is for the man or his talent. And, that helps explain for me why others see a
power and appeal to him that I don't.
Sad, too, to read that he had clay feet like the rest of us. Maybe the less said here the
better. Most adult children of alcoholics don't need any explanation of the demons that
plagued Marlon Brando, for we all share those in common. He apparently never got the help
that many of us get to cope with those demons. In that regard, his fame may have been a
curse, or at least, a hindrance. And, that, if so, may be the greatest sadness at his
passing. His life might have been .. less unhappy.
dobe...@dropsocal.rr.com
>[mucho snippo]
>
>A thoughtful obituary on a complex man. I can't say that I ever cared for Marlon Brando
>as an actor. I don't feel this *power* everyone seems to think he has.
His best performances (Terry, Stanley, Antony, &c.) are some of the
most powerful emotional moments I've ever experienced watching movies.
>My favorite Brando role is Jor-el in Superman I
Ohhhhhhh-kay.
--
Not only was there never a second Mrs. Watson;
there was not even a first Mrs. Watson. Furthermore,
there was no Doctor Watson.
Please keep your chairs.
-- Rex Stout, "Watson Was a Woman"
Nimrod``
<pttyg4...@copper.net> wrote:
>On 02 Jul 2004 19:14:32 GMT, cinema...@aol.comedy (Joe Gillis) wrote:
>
>>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/02/movies/02CND-BRANDO.html
>>
>>Marlon Brando, Oscar-Winning Actor, Is Dead at 80
>
>But, he's hardly the best actor of the last half of the 20th century as the obituary said.
You'd be hard pressed to tell me a better one who turned in more
varied and classic performances in more classic films.
N``
Nimrod``
>George Peatty <pttyg4...@copper.net> wrote:
>
>>[mucho snippo]
>>
>>A thoughtful obituary on a complex man. I can't say that I ever cared for Marlon Brando
>>as an actor. I don't feel this *power* everyone seems to think he has.
>
>His best performances (Terry, Stanley, Antony, &c.) are some of the
>most powerful emotional moments I've ever experienced watching movies.
>
>>My favorite Brando role is Jor-el in Superman I
>
>Ohhhhhhh-kay.
Yeah, I thought the same thing. That alone speaks volumes. It's like
saying your favorite Olivier turn was in INCHON or CLASH OF THE
TITANS-----and you never really felt De Niro's power except in ROCKY
AND BULLWINKLE.
N``
James Neibaur
wrote on 7/2/04 8:36 PM:
>> But, he's hardly the best actor of the last half of the 20th century as the
>> obituary said.
>
> You'd be hard pressed to tell me a better one who turned in more
> varied and classic performances in more classic films.
Actually I always felt Brando was outstanding in a handful of films, mostly
during the fifties (Godfather is a pretty obvious exception). Much of his
later work is unfortunate self-parody. But he made such a tremendous
impact, and pretty much redefined how we perceive screen acting. He was a
true giant, and he leaves behind a fine legacy.
JN
madkevin
"Nimrod``" <nim...@wwin.com> wrote in message
news:Ww3mQGAPP3KbLx...@4ax.com...
More importantly, Brando blazed a trail for those who followed. It's not
hyperbole - or, rather, *much* hyperbole - to say that Brando redefined screen
acting. When I think of the performances that have really astonished me in the
past decades - DeNiro in "Raging Bull", or David Thewlis in "Naked", or Emily
Watson in "Breaking The Waves", for example - they all owe a clear debt to the
enormous risk-taking of Brando in "On The Waterfront" or (my fave) "Last Tango
In Paris".
He was a titan, and he will be missed.
Kevin "Luck Be A Lady Tonight" Cogliano
Nimrod``
wrote:
I understand what you say, Jim...but to me what is notable about that
"handful" of films is the unique marriage of Brando's outstanding and
unique work to a series of films that were simply giant in stature;
certifiable classics.
I see so many very skilled and inspired actors who have consistently
turned in excellent performances in years since----but the
performances are in films that just don't reach that zenith. In the
Fifties, Brando made a run of films back to back that were simply
blinding in their impact and significance and the acting/film world
has never been the same since. I've never really seen that again with
any good or great actor. Instead I see some very good people do
consistently good work in fitfully good pictures that never really
reach that stature of cinema.
N``
James Neibaur
wrote on 7/2/04 9:55 PM:
> I understand what you say, Jim...but to me what is notable about that
> "handful" of films is the unique marriage of Brando's outstanding and
> unique work to a series of films that were simply giant in stature;
> certifiable classics.
Can't argue with that.
> I see so many very skilled and inspired actors who have consistently
> turned in excellent performances in years since----but the
> performances are in films that just don't reach that zenith. In the
> Fifties, Brando made a run of films back to back that were simply
> blinding in their impact and significance and the acting/film world
> has never been the same since. I've never really seen that again with
> any good or great actor. Instead I see some very good people do
> consistently good work in fitfully good pictures that never really
> reach that stature of cinema.
Pardon the clumsy analogy, but it is similar to when Elvis died. His best
work was long behind him (although there was patches of greatness right up
to the end), but his legendary status remains.
This is an incredible loss.
JN
BKLATTY
>Brando role is Jor-el in Superman I, where he presents as anything but
>method*ical.
Moron. That has to be one of the more stupid statements one could ever hope to
find on a newgroup on film. Astonishingly vapid.
BKLATTY
>work was long behind him (although there was patches of greatness right up
>to the end), but his legendary status remains.
Elvis was relatively young (in his 40's, I believe) and hadn't done anything
worthwhile in about 10 years. Brando was 80. In the last 20 years, he did a
lot of roles for the big payday. But there were a few very good perfomances
sprinkled in there (The Score, The Freshman, etc.)
James Neibaur
bkl...@aol.com wrote on 7/3/04 12:03 AM:
> Elvis was relatively young (in his 40's, I believe) and hadn't done anything
> worthwhile in about 10 years. Brando was 80. In the last 20 years, he did a
> lot of roles for the big payday. But there were a few very good perfomances
> sprinkled in there (The Score, The Freshman, etc.)
I agree with what you say about Brando, but think of Elvis the same way. He
did some very good work in the 1970s (Especially his Elvis Country album,
subtitled "I'm 10,000 Years Old"), but it was very spotty. Same with Brando
and the post-Godfather years.
JN
dancertm
wrote:
>in article 20040703010342...@mb-m16.aol.com, BKLATTY at
His influence is greatly felt though. I think far too much was made of
his "method" background, but he was one of the first actors from this
school of acting. Now days the "method" is merely one of the
techniques one can use. I think this label was always attached to him.
Basically, he had a good instinct for acting choices, that is pure
talent, IMHO, can't teach this.
James Cahn (sp) told a great story years ago about him. During The
Godfather Brando used cue cards in scenes. Cahn and other actors, as a
joke, would sometimes, while rolling, black his view of his lines, and
he would try to be subtle and look around them to see what he was to
say next..then he would just start mumbling.
George Peatty
>>But, he's hardly the best actor of the last half of the 20th century as the obituary said.
>
>You'd be hard pressed to tell me a better one who turned in more
>varied and classic performances in more classic films.
Point taken, but I will answer. I think Olivier must be given some consideration, even
though, I believe, his reputation outgains the quality of his output. I think Spencer
Tracy showed as much range, though his performances weren't as stirring as Brando's. One
of the most overlooked actors of the twentieth century, belonging more to the first half
than the second, is three-time Oscar winner Walter Brennan. The man was simply awesome
onscreen, but we never pay him much mind, because he didn't play leads.
George Peatty
>Yeah, I thought the same thing. That alone speaks volumes. It's like
>saying your favorite Olivier turn was in INCHON or CLASH OF THE
>TITANS-----and you never really felt De Niro's power except in ROCKY
>AND BULLWINKLE.
I never felt Brando's power at all. It's like Letterman said of Sean Penn: "all I see is
acting .. "
And, my favorite Olivier performance is as narrator in The World at War miniseries .. Yes,
I have, shall we say, idiosyncratic tastes, and have never been a conformist.
George Peatty
>Moron. That has to be one of the more stupid statements one could ever hope to
>find on a newgroup on film. Astonishingly vapid.
Aww, gee, I'm crushed. You obviously don't know the expression, there is no arguing
taste. That you even try, brands you the moron here. If the performances I like were not
good performances I could see some basis in your derision. But they are, and that I like
them better than others you think are better means only that we disagree. I can defend my
choices, and with a lot more credence than the hollow "everyone else likes .. "
dobe...@dropsocal.rr.com
>>>But, he's hardly the best actor of the last half of the 20th century as the obituary said.
>>
>>You'd be hard pressed to tell me a better one who turned in more
>>varied and classic performances in more classic films.
>
>Point taken, but I will answer. I think Olivier must be given some consideration, even
>though, I believe, his reputation outgains the quality of his output.
Movies captured only a small part of Olivier's range &
experimentation; his cinematic high points as an actor are high indeed
("Hamlet," "Henry V," "Richard III," "Othello," his brief scenes in
"The Invaders," "The Demi-Paradise," "The Beggar's Opera," "Carrie,"
"Spartacus," "The Entertainer") but it's the decades of monumental
stage work on which his reputation largely rests: his two
Coriolanuses, his Macbeth, his Antony, his titanic Titus, his Oedipus,
the Button Moulder in "Peer Gynt," Justice Shallow in "Henry IV Part
2" & all those incomparable comic roles he, by all accounts, surpassed
perfection in -- Sergius (Shaw's "Arms & the Man"), Sir Peter
(Sheridan's "School for Scandal"), Malvolio ("Twelfth Night"), Caesar
in Shaw's "Caesar & Cleopatra," Astrov in "Uncle Vanya," Tattle in
Congreve's "Love for Love," "The Critic" (Mr. Puff), Mr. Antrobus in
"The Skin of Our Teeth" & so on.
Restoration comedies, Shavian comedies, Greek tragedies, Shakespeare
tragedies, Shakespeare comedies, Shakespeare histories, contemporary
work (Giradoux, Fry, Osborne, Rattigan, Wilder, O'Neill), Ibsen,
Strindberg, Feydeaux farces, Chekhov. . . . Olivier's range was
enormous -- he excelled at seemingly everything -- but not much of it
wound up in movies. It's difficult to imagine anyone thinking his
stage reputation is exaggerated, so I assume you're referring to his
film work alone.
Tom Cervo
>tragedies, Shakespeare comedies, Shakespeare histories, contemporary
>work (Giradoux, Fry, Osborne, Rattigan, Wilder, O'Neill), Ibsen,
>Strindberg, Feydeaux farces, Chekhov. . . . Olivier's range was
>enormous -- he excelled at seemingly everything -- but not much of it
>wound up in movies. It's difficult to imagine anyone thinking his
>stage reputation is exaggerated, so I assume you're referring to his
>film work alone.
Well, I can only go by what I saw in films. I know that when he and Ralph
Richardson are on screen together, Olivier disappears. Gielgud has the same
effect on him.
And it was a triumph of art when he could not appear in the lead of "The Life
and Death of Colonle Blimp" and the role went to Roger Livesey. Olivier demands
admiration, but not love. He's not a lovable actor, and the range of roles you
cite prove it: all those comic roles, but never Falstaff.
George Peatty
>It's difficult to imagine anyone thinking his
>stage reputation is exaggerated, so I assume you're referring to his
>film work alone.
Yes, never having seen him onstage. However, I do have some sense of the esteem in which
he was held. I remember reading about some sycophant who supposedly told him, "Larry, you
*are* England .. " I have a hard time believing even someone as good as Olivier deserves
that accolade ..
madkevin
"George Peatty" <pttyg4...@copper.net> wrote in message
news:6iude0t072kl8ml7e...@4ax.com...
Why does everybody think that, just because they pick some obscurely bizzare
thing to proclaim as their "favourite", it immediately allows them to brand
themselves a "non-conformist"? That's like calling yourself an anarchist because
you shortchanged the government a hundred dollars on your tax return.
More on-topic to the discussion: Have you seen "Last Tango In Paris"? Because
lemme tell you, it pretty much kicks "Superman"'s ass.
Kevin "Lemmy" Cogliano
dobe...@dropsocal.rr.com
>Well, I can only go by what I saw in films. I know that when he and Ralph
>Richardson are on screen together, Olivier disappears. Gielgud has the same
>effect on him.
Must be your old astigmatism acting up again, Tom. Do you genuinely
believe that Olivier's Gloucester fades into the background opposite
Gielgud's Clarence, or are you just trying to épater le bourgeois?
>And it was a triumph of art when he could not appear in the lead of "The Life
>and Death of Colonle Blimp" and the role went to Roger Livesey. Olivier demands
>admiration, but not love. He's not a lovable actor, and the range of roles you
>cite prove it: all those comic roles, but never Falstaff.
Well, somebody loves Olivier. During the Old Vic '46 U.S. tour,
Olivier & the troupe played to recordbreaking numbers on Broadway.
Something like 30,000 people were turned away that season.
Funny you mention Falstaff. Olivier played opposite Richardson's
Falstaff in '45 & '46. Apparently, Ralph got a little peeved at
Olivier -- for stealing scenes.
I actually don't mean to harangue you over your opinion of Olivier, so
I hope you take my opinion in the proper spirit.
dobe...@dropsocal.rr.com
>Yes, never having seen him onstage. However, I do have some sense of the esteem in which
>he was held. I remember reading about some sycophant who supposedly told him, "Larry, you
>*are* England .. " I have a hard time believing even someone as good as Olivier deserves
>that accolade ..
I believe that was either Charles Laughton or Orson Welles.
I'll tell ya . . . those damn sycophants!
Tom Cervo
>>Richardson are on screen together, Olivier disappears. Gielgud has the same
>>effect on him.
>
>Must be your old astigmatism acting up again, Tom. Do you genuinely
>believe that Olivier's Gloucester fades into the background opposite
>Gielgud's Clarence, or are you just trying to épater le bourgeois?
Gielgud is never less than a fully alive human being, while Olivier looks like
a bundle of rep tricks and rubber noses.
>Funny you mention Falstaff. Olivier played opposite Richardson's
>Falstaff in '45 & '46. Apparently, Ralph got a little peeved at
>Olivier -- for stealing scenes.
See above. Stealing scenes is no great trick--you can do it by picking your
nose. I was thinking specifically of Richardson's Falstaff--Robertson Davies
called him a Generalissimo of drollery in the part. Humanity as well. Look up
X-Planes (1939) some time. Richardson was as good then as he was later, fully
alive on screen; Olivier is just a good-looking young man.
Olivier is like Ted Williams: wholly admirable technique, and no admires it
more than he.
Tom Cervo
>>*are* England .. " I have a hard time believing even someone as good as
>Olivier deserves
>>that accolade ..
>
>I believe that was either Charles Laughton or Orson Welles.
>I'll tell ya . . . those damn sycophants!
If it was Laughton, Olivier must have cringed at the sarcasm.
Nimrod``
wrote:
Don't waste your breath, Kevin.
As I'm sure you are aware, Brando in SUPERMAN is a superfluous little
whimsy.....a lucrative joke on Brando's part; the kind of thing he
could lend weight to with his eyes closed while having the last laugh;
like Orson Welles going on the Tonight Show and reading from The Bible
or Laurence Olivier narrating The World At War....oops.
Anyway, that alone tells you what you're dealing with here. It's not
an iconoclast or some truly free thinker; it's about a limitation of
scope and vision.....the security of the predictable, where "polish
and poise" fossilizes into something the viewer feels safe with. As
most lovers of great film know, "polish and poise" are like varnish in
the arts: easy on the eye, but something you can pick up at any
hardware store.
N``
Nimrod``
<pttyg4...@copper.net> wrote:
> One
>of the most overlooked actors of the twentieth century, belonging more to the first half
>than the second, is three-time Oscar winner Walter Brennan. The man was simply awesome
>onscreen, but we never pay him much mind, because he didn't play leads.
Awesome? Hardly.
Look......I like Walter Brennan, and he most definitely showed more
range than a lot of folks realize these days. But even at his best in
films like MY DARLING CLEMENTINE or THE WESTERNER he never displayed
skills beyond that of a highly capable, journeyman actor; and never
the dangerous inspiration or mercurial qualities of a truly great
actor. Again, you seem to take comfort in the securities of those who
are well trained but do not challenge the form.
In fact, your observation about Brennan here speaks volumes. You do
not filter down as the free soaring thinker you think yourself to be
(and, oh, how the succession of such proclamations gets tedious---the
real ones never bother to proclaim it), but more like yet another
bunny in his burrow.
N``
madkevin
"Nimrod``" <nim...@nimrod.cod> wrote in message
news:MZLnQK8N64HFl+...@4ax.com...
> Don't waste your breath, Kevin.
>
> As I'm sure you are aware, Brando in SUPERMAN is a superfluous little
> whimsy.....a lucrative joke on Brando's part; the kind of thing he
> could lend weight to with his eyes closed while having the last laugh;
> like Orson Welles going on the Tonight Show and reading from The Bible
> or Laurence Olivier narrating The World At War....oops.
Goddamn, Nimrod, it's good to have you back.
Kevin "New Standard Edition" Cogliano
Nimrod``
wrote:
Why, thank you.
By the way, I agree with you wholeheartedly about LAST TANGO IN PARIS.
In the wake of the backlash against the initial critical high praise
of the film and Brando's performance (notably, of course, Pauline
Kael's), many have never actually seen it or revisited it or come to
realize that his is truly a powerful, masterly performance----and a
farewell to the anguish and humor Brando could pull from within
himself in his finest hours. And, as someone said before me, he would
never be so beautiful again.
In APOCALYPSE NOW, Brando achieved a stillness and purity still
underappreciated by many (though he claimed to have felt it contained
his best acting).....but LAST TANGO IN PARIS contains the last
performance rent from his soul.
When I think of Brando, who delivered an album's worth of great
performances in some of the most classic films of our time----I think
of a country-folk singer with whom some of you may be familiar, named
Willis Alan Ramsey. He did one album which to this day is widely
acclaimed for a collection of songs loved and held dear by so many
familiar with it. He's never done another album...just as most of
Einstein's seminal work was in his younger years. Ramsey still plays
gigs regularly in the Hill Country of central Texas, still writes his
music, and lives his life. Yet, naturally, some bemoaning fans still
ask him, "Why haven't you done another album?"....to which he's been
heard to reply, "Wasn't that one good enough?"
Artistic gifts and artistic works are to be treasured for what they
are, on their own terms-----not as a promissory note on future
deliveries which no man or woman owes us.
N``
Jim Beaver
One
> of the most overlooked actors of the twentieth century, belonging more to
the first half
> than the second, is three-time Oscar winner Walter Brennan. The man was
simply awesome
> onscreen, but we never pay him much mind, because he didn't play leads.
How is a three-time Oscar winner "overlooked?"
Jim Beaver
Tom Cervo
>whimsy.....a lucrative joke on Brando's part; the kind of thing he
>could lend weight to with his eyes closed while having the last laugh;
>like Orson Welles going on the Tonight Show and reading from The Bible
>or Laurence Olivier narrating The World At War....oops.
>
Laurence Olivier in "Inchon". They were both doing it for a paycheck. Mitchum
used to pick projects by the location where he'd shooting, which how we get
"The Angry Hills" and "Anzio"
Nimrod``
A great question. One that another actor striving in this industry
would be quickest to readily grasp.
N``
George Peatty
>How is a three-time Oscar winner "overlooked?"
It was Richard Crenna, Brennan's co-star for six years on the Real McCoys, who was the
first I heard make the claim. His statement was even stronger: that the Academy *ignores*
Walter Brennan and his body of work. Whenever there is public discussion of great actors
going back to the beginnings of movies, Brennan's name never comes up. His achievements
deserve being celebrated today. Yes, the Academy gave Brennan his three Oscars,.. then
forgot him.
Jim Beaver
"Tom Cervo" <tomc...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20040704084700...@mb-m02.aol.com...
I seem to recall Jack Lemmon once being asked what he looked for in a
script. "Days off," he's said to have replied. However, that sounds a lot
more like Mitchum than Lemmon. Anyone recall for certain who said it?
Jim Beaver
Nimrod``
Oh, puh-leeeease. Richard Crenna or no Richard Crenna.
Most working actors who ever stepped before a camera would feel beyond
rewarded to have been presented with THREE--FRIGGING--OSCARS.
And his "achievements" get about as much celebration as they deserve.
Brennan showed a solid, journeyman-like up until mid-career, yet
nothing groundbreaking or world-shaking, and those performances get
mentioned regularly in write-ups of the films in which he did
above-average work. Then he settled into that comfortable "Walter
Brennan" character which carried him through until his death.
N``
Matthew Patton
the ones he's remembered for now--Brando was perfectly capable of
giving performances that combined power and discipline--he was a
wonderful Marc Antony in the film version of JULIUS CEASAR, because he
channelled and disciplined his raw energy, which he also did in GUY
AND DOLLS, THE UGLY AMERICAN, even in TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON,
where he turned what might have been a racial caricature into a very
deft comic performance. His best later performances, in THE FRESHMAN
and A DRY WHITE COUNTRY are marked by that same discipline. I suspect
it was his personal demons that finally messed up both his private and
professional lives.
George Peatty <pttyg4...@copper.net> wrote in message news:<oesbe0lq36kag40dc...@4ax.com>...
> On 02 Jul 2004 19:14:32 GMT, cinema...@aol.comedy (Joe Gillis) wrote:
>
> >http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/02/movies/02CND-BRANDO.html
> >
> >Marlon Brando, Oscar-Winning Actor, Is Dead at 80
>
> [mucho snippo]
>
> A thoughtful obituary on a complex man. I can't say that I ever cared for Marlon Brando
> as an actor. I don't feel this *power* everyone seems to think he has. My favorite
> Brando role is Jor-el in Superman I, where he presents as anything but method*ical. He's
> polished and poised, and it's obvious he gave a great deal of thought to how he would say
> his lines. Listen to the inflections, and they present as both original and endearing.
>
> But, he's hardly the best actor of the last half of the 20th century as the obituary said.
> He gave half a dozen performances that are unsurpassed, then sabotaged his own legend by
> idiosyncratic choices and problematic behavior on set. Personally, I think his appeal is
> more for some of his characters, especially the rebellious delinquent in The Wild Ones,
> than it is for the man or his talent. And, that helps explain for me why others see a
> power and appeal to him that I don't.
>
> Sad, too, to read that he had clay feet like the rest of us. Maybe the less said here the
> better. Most adult children of alcoholics don't need any explanation of the demons that
> plagued Marlon Brando, for we all share those in common. He apparently never got the help
> that many of us get to cope with those demons. In that regard, his fame may have been a
> curse, or at least, a hindrance. And, that, if so, may be the greatest sadness at his
> passing. His life might have been .. less unhappy.
dobe...@dropsocal.rr.com
>in TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON,
>where he turned what might have been a racial
>caricature into a very deft comic performance.
He did, indeed. He also turned what might have been a standard-fare
studio hack job with no redeeming qualities into a little charmer. He
_is_ that movie, & no one's ever done a better job of saving one.
Stephen Cooke
On Fri, 2 Jul 2004, Nimrod`` wrote:
> Yeah, I thought the same thing. That alone speaks volumes. It's like
> saying your favorite Olivier turn was in INCHON or CLASH OF THE
> TITANS-----and you never really felt De Niro's power except in ROCKY
> AND BULLWINKLE.
Which reminds me, I loved Marlon Branflake in A Trolley Named Tallulah.
swac