Marlon Brando stood as a bridge between old-world stars such as Cary Grant or Gary Cooper and anti-heroes of the younger generation such as Robert De Niro or Dustin Hoffman. He fascinates with his charisma, rough nature and extraordinary ability to embody himself in his characters. The winner of two Oscars has portrayed a number of different characters in more than fifty years and has become famous for the types of heroes who can rebel against conventions for the sake of truth. He was born on April 3, 1924, died in July 2004, he planned his own funeral in detail.
“Fame was and is the curse of my life and I could have done without it,” declared the actor, who was equal parts famous and controversial, and whose true self is not well known. He was born on April 3, 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska as the third child in a family of alcoholics.
His father sent him to a military academy in Minnesota, from which he was soon expelled. He later followed his two sisters to New York, where he studied acting with Stella Adler in the 1940s. She discovered in him the ability to get rid of the shell of the then classic acting, consisting mainly in the most polished delivery of prescribed dialogues, and to start drawing the emotions of his characters from his own soul. In 1944, he made his debut on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre. And then there was a steep rise to fame.
The premiere of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway, directed by Elia Kazan, caused a sensation in early December 1947. Brando, in the role of the egotistical cruncher Stanley Kowalski, struck like a bolt of lightning and shattered the existing tradition of noble declaimers. He brought mood swings, explosive anger, but also vulnerability to the stage. He played a total of 855 performances and never returned to the stage after that.
Marlon Brando made his film debut in 1950 in the role of a wartime paraplegic in Fred Zinneman’s Men. The following film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) earned him an Oscar nomination. No actor has ever exuded so much aggressive masculinity on screen. And his leather-jacketed biker gang boss Johnny in the 1953 film Savage was the embodiment of the post-war generational revolt: -“What are you rebelling against?” -“What do you want against,” reads the film’s key dialogue.
A swell directorial debut
However, the actor had to wait for the Oscar after other nominations for the title role of the Mexican revolutionary in the film Viva Zapata! (1952) and Mark Antony in Julius Caesar (1953). Academicians praised his outstanding performance in the film In the harbor (1954) directed by Elia Kazan. Brando’s ex-boxer Terry Malloy, a mafia henchman and crackpot, also personified here the thwarted illusions of the American dream.
And as the years passed, Brando’s acting repertoire was filled with other roles: Napoleon in Désirée (1954), a singing gangster in the musical Dudes and Soot (1955), a Japanese interpreter in the Teahouse By the August Moon (1956), an American pilot in love with a Japanese woman in the melodrama Sayonara (1957, another Oscar nomination), a German lieutenant in Young Lions (1958) or a wandering woodcutter in another adaptation of Williams’ drama The Descent of Orpheus (1959).
In 1961, Marlon Brando tried his hand at film direction for the first and last time. When filming the anti-western, Křivák significantly exceeded the set budget, and the producers then had to cut the original five-hour version. This was followed by the blockbuster Mutiny on the Bounty and Chaplin’s The Countess of Hong Kong. Brando’s legendary revolt seemed to be in tatters. He bought the small atoll of Tetiaroa (Bird Island) in French Polynesia, near Tahiti, where he researched solar energy, built windmills, rescued turtles and rare birds, and apparently liked a full fridge.
I have no talent for anything more valuable
But more triumphs came in the early 1970s. In Copple’s The Godfather (1972) he transformed in a fascinating way into the head of the mafia family Don Vito Corleone, and it was his second Oscar. His role as the desperate widower Paul obsessed with sex with a young French woman in Bertolucci’s scandalous and censored Last Tango in Paris (1972) earned him his fifth Oscar nomination. In Coppola’s crushing parable of the Vietnam conflict, Apocalypse (1979), Brando again shone in the role of the mad Colonel Kurtz.
However, one of the most charismatic actors of all time lost interest in acting over time, referring to it as a “boring, stupid and childish job” that he does for money and because he has not discovered a talent for anything more worthwhile. Already in the 1960s, Brando radicalized his political views, participated in peaceful demonstrations, publicly defended the rights of Jews and blacks, signed a petition for gay rights and against the death penalty. He also spoke out in defense of American Indians, which he demonstrated by, among other things, rejecting an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his performance in The Godfather.
The idol retreated into seclusion
In his personal life, Marlon Brando suffered a tragedy that he never came to terms with. His daughter Cheyenne hanged herself a few years after her half-brother Christian shot and killed her pregnant fiance after suffering from prolonged depression. Brando loved these two of his children the most. In total, the idol of female hearts had twelve children, he officially recognized only nine of them. He was married three times. Among his numerous partners were the actresses Anne Kashfiová and Maria (Movita) Castenadaová, the Tahitian Tarita Teripiaová and the Mexican Marie Christina Ruizová.
Until his last days, the actor divided his life between seclusion on his island in French Polynesia and the company of friends in Los Angeles. Towards the end of his life, he suffered from a serious heart condition, diabetes caused his eyesight to deteriorate, he had lung problems, he was dependent on an oxygen machine and used a wheelchair.
Before his death, Brando confided to his acquaintances what his last journey should look like. His favorite Jack Nicholson should say a few words over his casket, and the ashes should be scattered on the aforementioned Pacific atoll of Tetiaroa (Bird Island), which he fell in love with while filming Mutiny on the Bounty
