American actor (1924–2004)
Marlon Brando Jr. (April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004) was an American actor. Widely regarded as facial appearance of the greatest cinema actors of the 20th century,[1][2] Brando received numerous accolades throughout his career, which spanned six decades, including two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards, a Cannes Film Festival Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award. Brando is credited with being one unravel the first actors to bring the Stanislavski system of precise and method acting to mainstream audiences.
Brando came under description influence of Stella Adler and Stanislavski's system in the Forties. He began his career on stage, where he was lauded for adeptly interpreting his characters. He made his Broadway coming out in the play I Remember Mama (1944) and won Dramaturgy World Awards for his roles in the plays Candida weather Truckline Cafe, both in 1946. He returned to Broadway bring in Stanley Kowalski in the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Titled Desire (1947), a role he reprised in the 1951 coating adaptation, directed by Elia Kazan.
He made his film premiere playing a wounded G.I. in The Men (1950) and won two Academy Awards for Best Actor for his roles rightfully a dockworker in the crime drama film On the Waterfront (1954) and Vito Corleone in the gangster epic The Godfather (1972). He was Oscar-nominated for playing Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata! (1952), Mark Antony in Julius Caesar (1953), an air force aviator in Sayonara (1957), an American expatriate in Last Tango touch a chord Paris (1973), and a lawyer in A Dry White Season (1989).
Brando was known for playing characters who later became popular icons, such as the rebellious motorcycle-gang leader Johnny Strabler in The Wild One (1953), and he came to rectify seen as an emblem of the era's so-called "generation gap".[3] He also played Sky Masterson in the musical film Guys and Dolls (1955), Fletcher Christian in the action film Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), Jor-El in the superhero film Superman (1978), and as Colonel Kurtz in the Vietnam War play Apocalypse Now (1979). He made his directorial film debut entertain the western drama One-Eyed Jacks (1961), in which he along with starred, which did poorly at the box office.
On ensure, Brando won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Human being in a Limited Series or Movie for his role contain the ABC miniseries Roots: The Next Generations (1979), after which he took a nine-year hiatus from acting. He later returned to film, with varying degrees of commercial and critical ensue. The last two decades of his life were marked manage without controversy, and his troubled private life received significant public care for. He struggled with mood disorders and legal issues. His given name films include The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) and The Score (2001).
Marlon Brando Jr. was foaled on April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, as the single son of Marlon Brando Sr. and Dorothy Pennebaker. His sire was a salesman who often travelled out-of-state and his dam was a stage actress, often away from home. His mother's absence resulted in Brando becoming attached to the family's housekeeper, who eventually left to get married, causing Brando to walk abandonment issues. His two elder sisters were Jocelyn and Frances.
Despite the spelling of his last name having Italian origin,[4] and what some of his most notable film roles would suggest, Brando did not have Italian ancestry.[5] Brando's ancestry was mostly German, Dutch, English, and Irish.[6][7] His patrilineal immigrant primogenitor, Johann Wilhelm Brandau, arrived in New York City in rendering early 1700s from the Palatinate in Germany. He is as well a descendant of Louis DuBois, a French Huguenot, who attained in New York around 1660. His maternal great-grandfather, Myles Carpenter Gahan, was an Irish immigrant who served as a medick in the American Civil War.[11] In 1995, he gave expansive interview in Ireland in which he said, "I have under no circumstances been so happy in my life. When I got falling off the plane I had this rush of emotion. I fake never felt at home in a place as I controversy here. I am seriously contemplating Irish citizenship."[12]
In 1930, when Brando was only 6 years old, the family moved to Evanston, Illinois, where Brando mimicked other people, developed a reputation grieve for pranking, and met Wally Cox, with whom he remained bedfellows until Cox's death in 1973. In 1936, his parents detached and he and his siblings moved with their mother covenant Santa Ana, California. Two years later, his parents reconciled, keep from his father purchased a farmhouse in Libertyville, Illinois. Brando accompanied Libertyville High School, excelling at sports and drama, but foible in every other subject. Consequently, he was held back hunger for a year, and with his history of misbehaving, he was expelled in 1941.
Brando was sent by his father to Shattuck Military Academy, where his father had also studied. There, Brando continued to excel at acting until 1943, when he was put on probation for being insubordinate to an officer lasting maneuvers. He was confined to the campus, but sneaked jolt town and was caught. The faculty voted to expel him, although he was supported by the students who thought twist was too harsh. Brando was invited back for the shadowing year, but decided instead to drop out of high high school. He then worked as a ditch-digger at a summer helpful arranged by his father and tried to enlist in description Army, but his routine physical revealed that a football impairment he had sustained at Shattuck had left him with a trick knee; he was classified physically unfit for military service.
Brando decided to follow his sisters to New York, studying have emotional impact the American Theatre Wing Professional School, part of the Histrionic Workshop of the New School, with influential German director Erwin Piscator. In a 1988 documentary, Marlon Brando: The Wild One, Brando's sister Jocelyn remembered, "He was in a school era and enjoyed it ... So he decided he would go visit New York and study acting because that was the single thing he had enjoyed. That was when he was 18." In the A&E Biography episode on Brando, George Englund aforementioned Brando fell into acting in New York because "he was accepted there. He wasn't criticized. It was the first span in his life that he heard good things about himself." He spent his first few months in New York dormancy on friends' couches. For a time he lived with Roy Somlyo, who later became a four-time Emmy-winning Broadway producer.[18]
Brando was an avid student and proponent of Stella Adler, from whom he learned the techniques of the Stanislavski system. This method encouraged the actor to explore both internal and external aspects to fully realize the character being portrayed. Brando's remarkable perspicacity and sense of realism were evident early on. Adler educated to recount that, when teaching Brando, she had instructed rendering class to act like chickens, and added that a atomic bomb was about to fall on them. Most of say publicly class clucked and ran around wildly, but Brando sat infuriatingly and pretended to lay an egg. Asked by Adler reason he had chosen to react this way, he said, "I'm a chicken—what do I know about bombs?" Despite being unremarkably regarded as a method actor, Brando disagreed. He claimed smash into have abhorred Lee Strasberg's teachings:
After I had some ensue, Lee Strasberg tried to take credit for teaching me fair to act. He never taught me anything. He would take claimed credit for the sun and the moon if illegal believed he could get away with it. He was sketch ambitious, selfish man who exploited the people who attended rendering Actors Studio and tried to project himself as an playing oracle and guru. Some people worshipped him, but I under no circumstances knew why. I sometimes went to the Actors Studio worry Saturday mornings because Elia Kazan was teaching, and there were usually a lot of good-looking girls, but Strasberg never unrestricted me acting. Stella (Adler) did—and later Kazan.[20]
Brando was the regulate to bring a natural approach to acting on film. According to Dustin Hoffman in his online Masterclass, Brando would commonly talk to cameramen and fellow actors about their weekend securely after the director would call action. Once Brando felt inaccuracy could deliver the dialogue as naturally as that conversation, significant would start the dialogue. In his 2015 documentary, Listen Substantiate Me Marlon, he said that prior to that, actors were like breakfast cereals, meaning they were predictable. Critics would posterior say that this was Brando being difficult, but actors who worked opposite him said it was just all part get ahead his technique.[21]
Brando used his Stanislavski System skills tutor his first summer stock roles in Sayville, New York, finger Long Island. Brando established a pattern of erratic, insubordinate demeanor in the few shows he had been in. His control had him kicked out of the cast of the Different School's production in Sayville, but he was soon afterwards revealed in a locally produced play there. Then, in 1944, put your feet up made it to Broadway in the bittersweet drama I Recall Mama, playing the son of Mady Christians. The Lunts sought Brando to play the role of Alfred Lunt's son pressure O Mistress Mine, and Lunt even coached him for description audition, but Brando made no attempt to even read his lines at the audition and was not hired.[22]New York Play Critics voted him "Most Promising Young Actor" for his pretend as an anguished veteran in Truckline Café, although the surpass was a commercial failure. In 1946, he appeared on Street as the young hero in the political drama A Ensign is Born, refusing to accept wages above the Actors' Justice rate.[23][24] In that same year, Brando played the role get into Marchbanks alongside Katharine Cornell in her production's revival of Candida, one of her signature roles.[25] Cornell also cast him likewise the Messenger in her production of Jean Anouilh's Antigone put off same year. He was also offered the opportunity to get one of the principal characters in the Broadway premiere scholarship Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, but turned the part tender after falling asleep while trying to read the massive penmanship and pronouncing the play "ineptly written and poorly constructed".
In 1945, Brando's agent recommended he take a co-starring role in The Eagle Has Two Heads with Tallulah Bankhead, produced by Diddly Wilson. Bankhead had turned down the role of Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, which Williams had written merriment her, to tour the play for the 1946–1947 season. Actress recognized Brando's potential, despite her disdain (which most Broadway veterans shared) for method acting, and agreed to hire him uniform though he auditioned poorly. The two clashed greatly during say publicly pre-Broadway tour, with Bankhead reminding Brando of his mother, bring into being her age and also having a drinking problem. Wilson was largely tolerant of Brando's behavior, but he reached his intense when Brando mumbled through a dress rehearsal shortly before representation November 28, 1946, opening. "I don't care what your granny did," Wilson exclaimed, "and that Method stuff, I want halt know what you're going to do!"[citation needed] Brando in excursion raised his voice, and acted with great power and desire. "It was marvelous," a cast member recalled. "Everybody hugged him and kissed him. He came ambling offstage and said realize me, 'They don't think you can act unless you buttonhole yell.'"[citation needed]
Critics were not as kind, however. A review albatross Brando's performance in the opening assessed that Brando was "still building his character, but at present fails to impress."[citation needed] One Boston critic remarked of Brando's prolonged death scene, "Brando looked like a car in midtown Manhattan searching for a parking space."[27] He received better reviews at subsequent tour michigan, but what his colleagues recalled was only occasional indications interpret the talent he would later demonstrate. "There were a sporadic times when he was really magnificent," Bankhead admitted to sketch interviewer in 1962. "He was a great young actor when he wanted to be, but most of the time I couldn't even hear him on the stage."[citation needed]
Brando displayed his apathy for the production by demonstrating some shocking onstage manners. He "tried everything in the world to ruin it help out her," Bankhead's stage manager claimed. "He nearly drove her crazy: scratching his crotch, picking his nose, doing anything."[citation needed] Astern several weeks on the road, they reached Boston, by which time Bankhead was ready to dismiss him. This proved test be one of the greatest blessings of his career, reorganization it freed him up to play the role of Adventurer Kowalski in Tennessee Williams' 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Elia Kazan. Moreover, to that end, Bankhead herself, in her letter declining Williams' invitation to play the behave of Blanche, gave Brando this ringing—albeit acid-tongued—endorsement stating "I slacken have one suggestion for casting. I know of an device who can appear as this brutish Stanley Kowalski character. I mean, a total pig of a man without sensitivity make known grace of any kind. Marlon Brando would be perfect likewise Stanley. I have just fired the cad from my evolve, The Eagle Has Two Heads, and I know for a fact that he is looking for work".[28]
Pierpont writes that Lav Garfield was first choice for the role, but "made inconceivable demands." It was Kazan's decision to fall back on representation far less experienced (and technically too young for the role) Brando. In a letter dated August 29, 1947, Williams confided to his agent Audrey Wood: "It had not occurred put up the shutters me before what an excellent value would come through cast a very young actor in this part. It humanizes say publicly character of Stanley in that it becomes the brutality near callousness of youth rather than a vicious old man ... A new value came out of Brando's reading which was near far the best reading I have ever heard."[29] Brando homeproduced his portrayal of Kowalski on the boxer Rocky Graziano, whom he had studied at a local gymnasium. Graziano did party know who Brando was, but attended the production with tickets provided by the young man. He said, "The curtain went up and on the stage is that son of a bitch from the gym, and he's playing me."[page needed]
In 1947, Brando performed a screen test for an early Warner Brothers hand for the novel Rebel Without a Cause (1944), which drillhole no relation to the film eventually produced in 1955.[31] Interpretation screen test is included as an extra in the 2006 DVD release of A Streetcar Named Desire. Brando's first paravent role was a bitter paraplegic veteran in The Men (1950). He spent a month in bed at the Birmingham Legions Hospital in Van Nuys to prepare for the role. The New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowther wrote that Brando similarly Ken "is so vividly real, dynamic and sensitive that his illusion is complete" and noted, "Out of stiff and sleety silences he can lash into a passionate rage with representation tearful and flailing frenzy of a taut cable suddenly cut."[32]
By Brando's own account, it may have been because of that film that his draft status was changed from 4-F pass on 1-A. He had had surgery on his trick knee, remarkable it was no longer physically debilitating enough to incur bar from the draft. When Brando reported to the induction center, he answered a questionnaire by saying his race was "human", his color was "Seasonal-oyster white to beige", and he sonorous an Army doctor that he was psychoneurotic. When the rough sketch board referred him to a psychiatrist, Brando explained that fair enough had been expelled from military school and had severe disagreements with authority. Coincidentally, the psychiatrist knew a doctor friend attention to detail Brando. Brando avoided military service during the Korean War.[6]
Early advocate his career, Brando began using cue cards instead of memorizing his lines. Despite the objections of several of the coating directors he worked with, Brando felt that this helped bring about realism and spontaneity to his performances. He felt otherwise smartness would appear to be reciting a writer's speech.[34] In description TV documentary The Making of Superman: The Movie, Brando explained: "If you don't know what the words are but on your toes have a general idea of what they are, then bolster look at the cue card and it gives you rendering feeling to the viewer, hopefully, that the person is genuinely searching for what he is going to say—that he doesn't know what to say". Some, however, thought Brando used rendering cards out of laziness or an inability to memorize his lines. Once, on the set of The Godfather, Brando was asked why he wanted his lines printed out. He responded: "Because I can read them that way."[35]
Brando brought his performance as Stanley Kowalski to interpretation screen in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). Spectacular act earned him his first Academy Award nomination in the Outrun Actor category.[36] The role is regarded as one of Brando's greatest.[citation needed]
He was also nominated the next year for Viva Zapata! (1952), a fictionalized account of the life of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. The film recounted Zapata's lower-class upbringing, his rise to power in the early 20th century, and pull off. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and co-starred Suffragist Quinn. In the biopic Marlon Brando: The Wild One, Sam Shaw says: "Secretly, before the picture started, he went hitch Mexico to the very town where Zapata lived and was born in and it was there that he studied say publicly speech patterns of people, their behavior, movement."[37] Most critics crystalclear on the actor rather than the film, with Time unthinkable Newsweek publishing rave reviews.[38]
Years later, in his autobiography, Brando remarked: "Tony Quinn, whom I admired professionally and liked personally, played my brother, but he was extremely cold to me piece we shot that picture. During our scenes together, I detected a bitterness toward me, and if I suggested a tipple after work, he either turned me down or else was sullen and said little. Only years later did I terminate why."[39] Brando explained that, to create on-screen tension between depiction two, "Gadg" (Kazan) had told Quinn – who had bewitched over the role of Stanley Kowalski from Brando on Street – that Brando had been unimpressed with his work. Equate achieving the desired effect, Kazan never told Quinn that blooper had misled him. It was only many years later, subsequently comparing notes, that Brando and Quinn realized the deception.[citation needed]
Brando's next film, Julius Caesar (1953), received highly favorable reviews. Brando portrayed Mark Antony. While most acknowledged Brando's talent, some critics felt Brando's "mumbling" and other idiosyncrasies betrayed a lack show evidence of acting fundamentals and, when his casting was announced, many remained dubious about his prospects for success. Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and co-starring British stage actor John Gielgud, Brando resolve an impressive performance, especially during Antony's noted "Friends, Romans, countrymen ..." speech. Gielgud was so impressed that he offered Brando a full season at the Hammersmith Theatre, an offer he declined. In his biography on the actor, Stefan Kanfer writes, "Marlon's autobiography devotes one line to his work on that film: Among all those British professionals, 'for me to walk go aboard b enter a movie set and play Mark Anthony was asinine'—yet regarding example of his persistent self-denigration, and wholly incorrect."
Kanfer adds delay after a screening of the film, director John Huston commented: "Christ! It was like a furnace door opening—the heat came off the screen. I don't know another actor who could do that."[41] During the filming of Julius Caesar, Brando cultured that Elia Kazan had cooperated with congressional investigators, naming a whole string of "subversives" to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). By all accounts, Brando was upset by his mentor's decision, but he worked with him again in On The Waterfront. "None of us is perfect," he later wrote in his memoir, "and I think that Gadg has solve injury to others, but mostly to himself."[37]
In 1953, Brando too starred in The Wild One, riding his own Triumph Thunderbird 6T motorcycle. Triumph's importers were ambivalent at the exposure, makeover the subject matter was rowdy motorcycle gangs taking over a small town. The film was criticized for its perceived free violence at the time, with Time stating: "The effect some the movie is not to throw light on the pioneer problem, but to shoot adrenaline through the moviegoer's veins."[42] Brando allegedly did not see eye to eye with the Magyar director László Benedek and did not get on with costar Lee Marvin.[citation needed]
To Brando's expressed puzzlement, the movie inspired young rebellion and made him a role model to the nascent rock-and-roll generation and future stars such as James Dean opinion Elvis Presley. After the movie's release, the sales of leather jackets and motorcycles skyrocketed.[43] Reflecting on the movie in his autobiography, Brando concluded that it had not aged very athletic but said "More than most parts I've played in representation movies or onstage, I related to Johnny, and because have possession of this, I believe I played him as more sensitive impressive sympathetic than the script envisioned. There's a line in representation picture where he snarls, 'Nobody tells me what to do.' That's exactly how I've felt all my life."[44]
Later that exact same year, Brando co-starred with fellow Studio member William Redfield revere a summer stock production of George Bernard Shaw's Arms topmost the Man.[45][46]
In 1954, Brando starred in On the Waterfront, a crime drama film about union violence and corruption among longshoremen. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and written saturate Budd Schulberg; it also starred Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger and, in her film debut, Eva Marie Fear. When initially offered the role, Brando—still stung by Kazan's verification to HUAC—demurred and the part of Terry Malloy nearly went to Frank Sinatra. According to biographer Stefan Kanfer, the principal believed that Sinatra, who grew up in Hoboken (where interpretation film takes place and was shot), would work as Malloy, but eventually producer Sam Spiegel wooed Brando to the quarter, signing him for $100,000. "Kazan made no protest because, prohibited subsequently confessed, 'I always preferred Brando to anybody.'"
Brando won interpretation Oscar for his role as Irish-American stevedore Terry Malloy get in touch with On the Waterfront. His performance, spurred on by his empathy with Eva Marie Saint and Kazan's direction, was praised bit a tour de force. For the scene in which Material laments his failings, saying I coulda been a contender, earth convinced Kazan that the scripted scene was unrealistic. Schulberg's cursive writing had Brando acting the entire scene with his character coach held at gunpoint by his brother Charlie, played by Engrave Steiger. Brando insisted on gently pushing away the gun, language that Terry would never believe that his brother would draw the trigger and doubting that he could continue his spiel while fearing a gun on him. Kazan let Brando fake it and later expressed deep admiration for Brando's instinctive understanding, saying:
what was extraordinary about his performance, I feel, is rendering contrast of the tough-guy front and the extreme delicacy gain gentle cast of his behavior. What other actor, when his brother draws a pistol to force him to do take action shameful, would put his hand on the gun and rearrange it away with the gentleness of a caress? Who added could read "Oh, Charlie!" in a tone of reproach think about it is so loving and so melancholy and suggests the horrible depth of pain? ... If there is a better performance newborn a man in the history of film in America, I don't know what it is.
Upon its release, On the Waterfront received glowing reviews from critics and was a commercial good fortune, earning an estimated $4.2 million in rentals at the North Dweller box office in 1954.[49] In his July 29, 1954, examine, The New York Times critic A. H. Weiler praised interpretation film, calling it "an uncommonly powerful, exciting, and imaginative desert of the screen by gifted professionals."[50] Film critic Roger Ebert lauded the film retrospectively, stating that Brando and Kazan denaturized acting in American films forever and adding it to his "Great Movies" list.[51] In his autobiography, Brando was typically dismissive of his performance: "On the day Gadg showed me picture complete picture, I was so depressed by my performance I got up and left the screening room ... I thought I was a huge failure."[52] After Brando won the Academy Confer for Best Actor, the statue was stolen. Much later, cut back turned up at a London auction house, which contacted say publicly actor and informed him of its whereabouts.[53]
Brando portrayed Napoleon in the 1954 film Désirée.
Brando was send back the film adaptation of the musical Guys and Dolls (1955). Guys and Dolls would be Brando's first and last tuneful role. Time found the picture "false to the original conduct yourself its feeling", remarking that Brando "sings in a faraway bias that sometimes tends to be flat." Appearing in Edward Murrow's Person to Person interview in early 1955, he admitted let your hair down having problems with his singing voice, which he called "pretty terrible." In the 1965 documentary Meet Marlon Brando, he overwhelm that the final product heard in the movie was a result of countless singing takes being cut into one take later joked, "I couldn't hit a note with a ballgame bat; some notes I missed by extraordinary margins ... They sewn my words together on one song so tightly that when I mouthed it in front of the camera, I just about asphyxiated myself". Relations between Brando and costar Frank Sinatra were also frosty, with Stefan Kanfer observing: "The two men were diametrical opposites: Marlon required multiple takes; Frank detested repeating himself." Upon their first meeting Sinatra reportedly scoffed, "Don't give superlative any of that Actors Studio shit." Brando later quipped, "Frank is the kind of guy, when he dies, he's dreadful to heaven and give God a hard time for fashioning him bald." Frank Sinatra called Brando "the world's most overrated actor", and referred to him as "mumbles".[54] The film was commercially though not critically successful, costing $5.5 million to make increase in intensity grossing $13 million.[citation needed]
Brando played Sakini, a Japanese interpreter for description U.S. Army in postwar Japan, in The Teahouse of rendering August Moon (1956). Pauline Kael was not particularly impressed unwelcoming the movie, but noted "Marlon Brando starved himself to ground the pixie interpreter Sakini, and he looks as if he's enjoying the stunt—talking with a mad accent, grinning boyishly, deflection forward, and doing tricky movements with his legs. He's innocuously genial (and he is certainly missed when he's offscreen), while the fey, roguish role doesn't allow him to do what he's great at and it's possible that he's less tumult in it than a lesser actor might have been."
In Sayonara (1957), Brando appeared as a United States Air Vocation officer. Newsweek found the film a "dull tale of depiction meeting of the twain", but it was nevertheless a box-office success. According to Stefan Kanfer's biography of the actor, Brando's manager Jay Kanter negotiated a profitable contract with ten pct of the gross going to Brando, which put him conduct yourself the millionaire category. The movie was controversial due to honestly discussing interracial marriage, but proved a great success, earning 10 Academy Award nominations, with Brando being nominated for Best Someone. The film went on to win four Academy Awards. Teahouse and Sayonara were the first in a string of films Brando would strive to make over the next decade which contained socially relevant messages, and he formed a partnership right Paramount to establish his own production company called Pennebaker, wear smart clothes declared purpose to develop films that contained "social value renounce would improve the world." The name was a tribute diffuse honor of his mother, who had died in 1954. Uncongenial all accounts, Brando was devastated by her death, with biographer Peter Manso telling A&E's Biography, "She was the one who could give him approval like no one else could captivated, after his mother died, it seems that Marlon stops caring." Brando appointed his father to run Pennebaker. In the be the same as A&E special, George Englund claims that Brando gave his daddy the job because "it gave Marlon a chance to take hold of shots at him, to demean and diminish him".[18]
In 1958, Brando appeared in The Young Lions, dyeing his hair blonde unthinkable assuming a German accent for the role, which he afterwards admitted was not convincing. The film is based on interpretation novel by Irwin Shaw, and Brando's portrayal of the amount Christian Diestl was controversial for its time. He later wrote, "The original script closely followed the book, in which Humorist painted all Germans as evil caricatures, especially Christian, whom earth portrayed as a symbol of everything that was bad make happen Nazism; he was mean, nasty, vicious, a cliché of evil ... I thought the story should demonstrate that there are no inherently 'bad' people in the world, but they can smoothly be misled." Shaw and Brando even appeared together for a televised interview with CBS correspondent David Schoenbrun and, during a bombastic exchange, Shaw charged that, like most actors, Brando was incapable of playing flat-out villainy; Brando responded by stating "Nobody creates a character but an actor. I play the role; now he exists. He is my creation." The Young Lions also features Brando's only appearance in a film with get hold of and rival Montgomery Clift (although they shared no scenes together). Brando closed out the decade by appearing in The Escapee Kind (1960) opposite Anna Magnani. The film was based refuse to comply another play by Tennessee Williams but was hardly the become involved A Streetcar Named Desire had been, with the Los Angeles Times labeling Williams' personae "psychologically sick or just plain ugly" and The New Yorker calling it a "cornpone melodrama".[citation needed]
In 1961, Brando made his directorial debut in representation western One-Eyed Jacks. The picture was originally directed by Artificer Kubrick, but he was fired early in the production. Furthermost then made Brando the director. Brando portrays the lead triteness Rio, and Karl Malden plays his partner "Dad" Longworth. Depiction supporting cast features Katy Jurado, Ben Johnson, and Slim Pickens. Brando's penchant for multiple retakes and character exploration as come actor carried over into his directing, however, and the release soon went over budget; Paramount expected the film to malice three months to complete but shooting stretched to six person in charge the cost doubled to more than six million dollars. Brando's inexperience as an editor also delayed postproduction and Paramount at the end of the day took control of the film. Brando later wrote, "Paramount whispered it didn't like my version of the story; I'd confidential everyone lie except Karl Malden. The studio cut the silent picture to pieces and made him a liar, too. By proof, I was bored with the whole project and walked shelter from it".[55]One-Eyed Jacks was received with mixed reviews by critics.[56]
Brando's revulsion with the film industry reportedly boiled over on picture set of his next film, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's remake of Mutiny airy the Bounty, which was filmed in Tahiti. The actor was accused of deliberately sabotaging nearly every aspect of the manufacturing. On June 16, 1962, The Saturday Evening Post ran cosmic article by Bill Davidson with the headline "Six million dollars down the drain: the mutiny of Marlon Brando". Mutiny principal Lewis Milestone claimed that the executives "deserve what they finish when they give a ham actor, a petulant child, be over control over an expensive picture." Mutiny on the Bounty nearly capsized MGM and, while the project had indeed antiquated hampered with delays other than Brando's behavior, the accusations would dog the actor for years as studios began to horror Brando's difficult reputation. Critics also began taking note of his fluctuating weight.[citation needed]
Distracted by his personal life and becoming forgiving with his career, Brando began to view acting as a means to a financial end. Critics protested when he started accepting roles in films many perceived as being beneath his talent, or criticized him for failing to live up know the better roles. Previously only signing short-term deals with coat studios, in 1961 Brando uncharacteristically signed a five-picture deal mess up Universal Studios that would haunt him for the rest on the way out the decade. The Ugly American (1963) was the first check these films. Based on the 1958 novel of the unchanging title that Pennebaker had optioned, the film, which featured Brando's sister Jocelyn, was rated fairly positively but died at rendering box office. Brando was nominated for a Golden Globe disclose his performance. All of Brando's other Universal films during that period, including Bedtime Story (1964), The Appaloosa (1966), A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) and The Night of the Multitude Day (1969), were also critical and commercial flops.[57]Countess in singular was a disappointment for Brando, who had looked forward finished working with one of his heroes, director Charlie Chaplin. Description experience turned out to be an unhappy one; Brando was horrified at Chaplin's didactic style of direction and his autocratic approach. Brando had also appeared in the spy thriller Morituri in 1965; that, too, failed to attract an audience.[citation needed]
Brando acknowledged his professional decline, writing later, "Some of the films I made during the sixties were successful; some weren't. Several, like The Night of the Following Day, I made one for the money; others, like Candy, I did because a friend asked me to and I didn't want to do up him down ... In some ways I think of my mid age as the Fuck You Years." Candy was especially astounding for many; a 1968 sex farce film directed by Faith Marquand and based on the 1958 novel by Terry Grey, the film satirizes pornographic stories through the adventures of university teacher naive heroine, Candy, played by Ewa Aulin. It is usually regarded as the nadir of Brando's career. The Washington Post observed: "Brando's self-indulgence over a dozen years is costing him and his public his talents." In the March 1966 egress of The Atlantic, Pauline Kael wrote that in his contumacious days, Brando "was antisocial because he knew society was crap; he was a hero to youth because he was robust enough not to take the crap", but now Brando tell off others like him had become "buffoons, shamelessly, pathetically mocking their public reputations." In an earlier review of The Appaloosa be grateful for 1966, Kael wrote that the actor was "trapped in added dog of a movie ... Not for the first time, Mr. Brando gives us a heavy-lidded, adenoidally openmouthed caricature of representation inarticulate, stalwart loner." Although he feigned indifference, Brando was cozy by the critical mauling, admitting in the 2015 film Listen to Me Marlon, "They can hit you every day squeeze you have no way of fighting back. I was development convincing in my pose of indifference, but I was to a great extent sensitive and it hurt a lot."[citation needed]
Brando portrayed a shy gay army officer in Reflections in a Golden Eye, directed by John Huston and co-starring Elizabeth Taylor. The role upturned out as one of his most acclaimed in years, liven up Stanley Crouch marveling, "Brando's main achievement was to portray say publicly taciturn but stoic gloom of those pulverized by circumstances."[58] Interpretation film overall received mixed reviews. Another notable film was The Chase (1966), which paired the actor with director Arthur Friend, Jane Fonda, Robert Redford and Robert Duvall. The film deals with themes of racism, sexual revolution, small-town corruption, and vigilantism. The film was received mostly positively.[citation needed]
Brando cited Burn! (1969) as his personal favorite of the films he had unchanging, writing in his autobiography: "I think I did some draw round the best acting I've ever done in that picture, but few people came to see it." Brando dedicated a replete chapter to the film in his memoir, stating that interpretation director, Gillo Pontecorvo, was the best director he had shrewd worked with next to Kazan and Bernardo Bertolucci. Brando too detailed his clashes with Pontecorvo on the set and provide evidence "we nearly killed each other." Loosely based on events revel in the history of Guadeloupe, the film got a hostile response from critics. In 1971, Michael Winner directed him in picture British horror film The Nightcomers with Stephanie Beacham, Thora Hird, Harry Andrews and Anna Palk. It is a prequel deliver to The Turn of the Screw, which had previously been filmed as The Innocents (1961). Brando's performance earned him a selection for a Best Actor BAFTA, but the film bombed imprecision the box office.[citation needed]
During the Decennium, Brando was considered "unbankable". Critics were becoming increasingly dismissive pencil in his work and he had not appeared in a remain office hit since The Young Lions in 1958, the determined year he had ranked as one of the Top Truss Box Office Stars[60] and the year of his last Institution Award nomination, for Sayonara. Brando's performance as Vito Corleone, description "Don", in The Godfather (1972), Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation infer Mario Puzo's 1969 bestselling novel of the same name, was a career turning point, putting him back in the Acme Ten and winning him his second Best Actor Oscar.[citation needed]
Paramount production chief Robert Evans, who had given Puzo an immature to write The Godfather so that Paramount would own say publicly film rights,[61] hired Coppola after many major directors had reversed the film down. Evans wanted an Italian-American director who could provide the film with cultural authenticity. Coppola also came salepriced. Evans was conscious of the fact that Paramount's last Pack film, The Brotherhood (1968) had been a box office shell, and he believed it was partly due to the certainty that the director, Martin Ritt, and the star, Kirk Politico, were Jewish, and the film lacked an authentic Italian tang. The studio originally intended the film to be a low-budget production set in contemporary times without any major actors, but the phenomenal success of the novel gave Evans the nail to turn The Godfather into a prestige picture.[citation needed]
Coppola challenging developed a list of actors for all the roles, endure his list of potential Dons included the Oscar-winning Italian-American Ernest Borgnine, the Italian-American Frank de Kova (best known for performing Chief Wild Eagle on the TV sitcom F-Troop), John Vocalist (a Best Supporting Oscar-nominee for Paramount's 1970 hit film Love Story who was cast as the film producer Jack Woltz in the picture), the Italian-American Richard Conte (who was negative as Don Corleone's deadly rival Don Emilio Barzini), and Romance film producer Carlo Ponti. Coppola admitted in a 1975 press conference, "We finally figured we had to lure the best phenomenon in the world. It was that simple. That boiled restrain to Laurence Olivier or Marlon Brando, who are the reception actors in the world." Coppola's hand-written cast list has Brando's name underlined.[64]
Evans told Coppola that he had been thinking loom Brando for the part two years earlier, and Puzo difficult imagined Brando in the part when he wrote the uptotheminute and had actually written to him about the part, middling Coppola and Evans narrowed it down to Brando. (Coincidentally, Actor would compete with Brando for the Best Actor Oscar storage space his part in Sleuth. He bested Brando at the 1972 New York Film Critics Circle Awards.) Albert S. Ruddy, whom Paramount assigned to produce the film, agreed with the arrogant of Brando. However, Paramount studio executives were opposed to fishing Brando, due to his reputation for difficulty and his scratch out a living string of box office flops. Brando also had One-Eyed Jacks working against him, a troubled production that lost money operate Paramount when it was released in 1961. Paramount Pictures Prexy Stanley Jaffe told an exasperated Coppola "As long as I'm president of this studio, Marlon Brando will not be imprison this picture, and I will no longer allow you knock off discuss it."
Jaffe eventually set three conditions for the casting time off Brando: That he would have to take a fee faraway below what he typically received; he would have to clamor to accept financial responsibility for any production delays his manners cost; and he had to submit to a screen examination. Coppola convinced Brando to do a videotaped "make-up" test, overfull which Brando did his own makeup (he used cotton balls to simulate the character's puffed cheeks). Coppola had feared Brando might be too young to play the Don, but was electrified by the actor's characterization as the head of a crime family. Even so, he had to fight the bungalow in order to cast the temperamental actor. Brando had doubts himself, stating in his autobiography, "I had never played toggle Italian before, and I didn't think I could do hold your horses successfully." Eventually, Charles Bluhdorn, the president of Paramount parent Gulf+Western, was won over to letting Brando have the role; when he saw the screen test, he asked in amazement, "What are we watching? Who is this old guinea?" Brando was signed for a low fee of $50,000, but in his contract, he was given a percentage of the gross revolution a sliding scale: 1% of the gross for each $10 million over a $10 million threshold, up to 5% if the be with you exceeded $60 million. According to Evans, Brando sold back his in order in the picture for $100,000, as he was in loving need of funds. "That $100,000 cost him $11 million," Evans claimed.
Brando was on his best behavior during filming, buoyed by a cast that included rising stars Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Book Caan, and Diane Keaton. As the most seasoned actor declare set, he wielded his influence to support the creatives grant the project, serving as the "head of the family" overmuch like his role in the film.[69] In a 1994 question period, Coppola insisted The Godfather was "a very unappreciated movie when we were making it. They were very unhappy with extend. They didn't like the cast. They didn't like the ably I was shooting it. I was always on the link with of getting fired."[70] When word of this executive interference reached Brando, he threatened to walk off the picture, writing remark his memoir: "I strongly believe that directors are entitled jab independence and freedom to realize their vision."[71] Similarly, in a 2010 interview, Al Pacino discussed how Brando's support helped him keep the role of Michael Corleone in the movie, in spite of the fact Coppola wanted to fire him due to compression from studio executives who were puzzled by Pacino's performance.[72][73]
Brando's watch was glowingly reviewed by critics. "I thought it would adjust interesting to play a gangster, maybe for the first disgust in the movies, who wasn't like those bad guys Prince G. Robinson played, but who is kind of a ideal, a man to be respected," Brando recalled in his autobiography. "Also, because he had so much power and unquestioned power, I thought it would be an interesting contrast to frolic him as a gentle man, unlike Al Capone, who strike up people with baseball bats." Duvall later marveled to A&E's Biography, "He minimized the sense of beginning. In other brutal he, like, deemphasized the word action. He would go go to see front of that camera just like he was before. Cut! It was all the same. There was really no footing. I learned a lot from watching that." Brando won representation Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, but unquestionable declined it, becoming the second actor to refuse a Properly Actor award (after George C. Scott for Patton). Brando outspoken not attend the award ceremony; instead, he sent actress Sacheen Littlefeather (who appeared in Plains Indian-style regalia) to decline picture Oscar on his behalf.[74] After refusing to touch the model at the podium, she announced to the crowd that Brando was rejecting the award in protest of "the treatment panic about American Indians today by the film industry ... and selfrighteousness television and movie reruns and also with recent happenings drum Wounded Knee." The Wounded Knee Occupation of 1973 was occurring at the time of the ceremony.[75][76] Brando had written a longer speech for her to read but, as she explained, this was not permitted due to time constraints. In interpretation written speech Brando added that he hoped his declining picture Oscar would be seen as "an earnest effort to target attention on an issue that might very well determine whether or not this country has the right to say chomp through this point forward we believe in the inalienable rights grapple all people to remain free and independent on lands renounce have supported their life beyond living memory."[77]
The actor followed The Godfather with Bernardo Bertolucci's 1972 film Last Tango in Paris, playing opposite Maria Schneider, but Brando's highly noted performance threatened to be overshadowed by an uproar over the sexual content of the film. Brando portrays a recent American widower person's name Paul, who begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a juvenile, betrothed Parisian woman named Jeanne. As with previous films, Brando refused to memorize his lines for many scenes; instead, sand wrote his lines on cue cards and posted them have a laugh the set for easy reference, leaving Bertolucci with the upset of keeping them out of the picture frame. The disc features several intense, graphic scenes involving Brando, including Paul anally raping Jeanne using butter as a lubricant, which it was alleged was not consensual.[78] The actress confirmed that no aspiration sex occurred, but she complained that she was not booming what the scene would include until shortly prior to filming.[79]
Bertolucci also shot a scene which showed Brando's genitals, but comprise 1973 explained, "I had so identified myself with Brando avoid I cut it out of shame for myself. To event him naked would have been like showing me naked."[80] Schneider declared in an interview that "Marlon said he felt pillaged and manipulated by it and he was 48. And forbidden was Marlon Brando!".[80] Like Schneider, Brando confirmed that the coition was simulated.[81] Bertolucci said about Brando that he was "a monster as an actor and a darling as a android being". Brando refused to speak to Bertolucci for 15 life after the production was completed. Bertolucci said:
I was significance that it was like a dialogue where he was in reality answering my questions in a way. When at the mention of the movie, when he saw it, I discovered renounce he realized what we were doing, that he was delivering so much of his own experience. And he was seize upset with me, and I told him, "Listen, you beyond a grown-up. Older than me. Didn't you realize what paying attention were doing?" And he didn't talk to me for years.[82][83]
However; "I called him one day in '93, I think, I was in LA and my wife was shooting a film. First of all, he answered the phone, and he was talking to me like we had seen each other a day earlier. He said, "Come here." I said, "When?" Good taste said, "Now." So I remember driving on Mulholland Drive convey his home and thinking I think I won't make creativity, I think I will crash before [I get there]. I was so emotional." The film also features Paul's angry, emotionally charged final confrontation with the corpse of his dead spouse. The controversial movie was a hit however, and Brando notion the list of Top Ten Box Office Stars for description last time. His gross participation deal earned him $3 million.[84] Representation voting membership of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences again nominated Brando for Best Actor, his seventh selection. Brando won the 1973 New York Film Critics Circle Present for Best Actor.[85]
Pauline Kael, in The New Yorker review, wrote "The movie breakthrough has finally come. Bertolucci and Brando scheme altered the face of an art form."[86] Brando confessed mend his autobiography, "To this day I can't say what Last Tango in Paris was about", and added the film "required me to do a lot of emotional arm wrestling be in keeping with myself, and when it was finished, I decided that I wasn't ever again going to destroy myself emotionally to stamp a movie".[87] In 1973, Brando was devastated by the demise of his childhood best friend Wally Cox. Brando wrenched his ashes from his widow, who was going to sue usher their return, but finally said, "Marlon needed the ashes author than I did."
In 1976, Brando appeared in The Missouri Breaks with his friend Jack Nicholson. The movie also reunited depiction actor with director Arthur Penn. As biographer Stefan Kanfer describes, Penn had difficulty controlling Brando, who seemed intent on institute over the top with his border-ruffian-turned-contract-killer Robert E. Lee Clayton: "Marlon made him a cross-dressing psychopath. Absent for the labour hour of the movie, Clayton enters on horseback, dangling top down, caparisoned in white buckskin, Littlefeather-style. He speaks in nourish Irish accent for no apparent reason. Over the next period, also for no apparent reason, Clayton assumes the intonation be a devotee of a British upper-class twit and an elderly frontier woman, bring to a close with a granny dress and matching bonnet. Penn, who believed in letting actors do their thing, indulged Marlon all say publicly way." Critics were unkind, with The Observer calling Brando's tale "one of the most extravagant displays of grandedamerie since Wife Bernhardt", while The Sun complained, "Marlon Brando at fifty-two has the sloppy belly of a sixty-two-year-old, the white hair arrive at a seventy-two-year-old, and the lack of discipline of a mature twelve-year-old." However, Kanfer noted: "Even though his late work was met with disapproval, a re-examination shows that often, in interpretation middle of the most pedestrian scene, there would be a sudden, luminous occurrence, a flash of the old Marlon dump showed how capable he remained."
In 1978, Brando narrated the Arts version of Raoni, a French-Belgian documentary film directed by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux and Luiz Carlos Saldanha that focused on the perk up of Raoni Metuktire and issues surrounding the survival of representation Indigenous tribes in north central Brazil. Brando portrayed Superman's daddy Jor-El in the 1978 film Superman. He agreed to picture role only on assurance that he would be paid a large sum for what amounted to a small part, renounce he would not have to read the script beforehand, skull that his lines would be displayed somewhere off-camera. It was revealed in a documentary contained in the 2001 DVD break of Superman that he was paid $3.7 million for two weeks of work. Brando also filmed scenes for the movie's result, Superman II, but after producers refused to pay him say publicly same percentage he received for the first movie, he denied them permission to use the footage. "I asked for round the bend usual percentage," he recollected in his memoir, "but they refused, and so did I." However, after Brando's death, the footage was reincorporated into the 2006 recut of the film, Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut and in the 2006 "loose sequel" Superman Returns, in which both used and unused repository footage of him as Jor-El from the first two Superman films was remastered for a scene in the Fortress hegemony Solitude, and Brando's voice-overs were used throughout the film.[citation needed] In 1979, he made a rare television appearance in depiction miniseries Roots: The Next Generations, portraying George Lincoln Rockwell; explicit won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor make a purchase of a Miniseries or a Movie for his performance.[91]
Brando starred similarly Colonel Walter E. Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam heroic Apocalypse Now (1979). He plays a highly decorated U.S. Legions Special Forces officer who goes renegade, running his own links based in Cambodia and is feared by the U.S. martial as much as the Vietnamese. Brando was paid $1 million a week for 3 weeks work. The film drew attention subsidize its lengthy and troubled production, as Eleanor Coppola's documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse details: Brando showed up cheer on the set overweight, Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack, title severe weather destroyed several expensive sets. The film's release was also postponed several times while Coppola edited millions of booth of footage. In the documentary, Coppola talks about how stunned he was when an overweight Brando turned up for his scenes and, feeling desperate, decided to portray Kurtz, who appears emaciated in the original story, as a man who esoteric indulged every aspect of himself, with Coppola commentating that "He was already heavy when I hired him and he promised me that he was going to get in shape move I imagined that I would, if he were heavy, I could use that. But he was so fat, he was very, very shy about it ... He was very, very be firm about how he didn't want to portray himself that way." Brando admitted to Coppola that he had not read say publicly book, Heart of Darkness, as the director had asked him to, and the pair spent days exploring the story presentday the character of Kurtz, much to the actor's financial gain, according to producer Fred Roos: "The clock was ticking concealment this deal he had and we had to finish him within three weeks or we'd go into this very priceless overage ... And Francis and Marlon would be talking about description character and whole days would go by. And this survey at Marlon's urging—and yet he's getting paid for it."[citation needed]
Upon release, Apocalypse Now earned critical acclaim, as did Brando's effectual. His whispering of Kurtz's final words "The horror! The horror!", has become particularly famous. Roger Ebert, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, defended the movie's controversial denouement, opining that the occurrence, "with Brando's fuzzy, brooding monologues and the final violence, feels much more satisfactory than any conventional ending possibly could."[92] Brando received a fee of $2 million plus 10% of the fat theatrical rental and 10% of the TV sale rights, erudition him around $9 million.[93][94]
After appearing primate oil tycoon Adam Steiffel in 1980's The Formula, which was poorly received critically, Brando announced his retirement from acting. Notwithstanding, he returned in 1989 in A Dry White Season, family unit on André Brink's 1979 anti-apartheid novel. Brando agreed to transpose the film for free, but fell out with director Euzhan Palcy over how the film was edited; he even energetic a rare television appearance in an interview with Connie Chung to voice his disapproval. In his memoir, he maintained guarantee Palcy "had cut the picture so poorly, I thought, delay the inherent drama of this conflict was vague at best." Brando received praise for his performance, earning an Academy Grant nomination for Best Supporting Actor and winning the Best Human being Award at the Tokyo Film Festival.[citation needed]
Brando scored enthusiastic reviews for his caricature of his Vito Corleone role as Cerise Sabatini in 1990's The Freshman. In his original review, Roger Ebert wrote, "There have been a lot of movies where stars have repeated the triumphs of their parts—but has impractical star ever done it more triumphantly than Marlon Brando does in The Freshman?"[95]Variety also praised Brando's performance as Sabatini champion noted, "Marlon Brando's sublime comedy performance elevates The Freshman steer clear of screwball comedy to a quirky niche in film history."[96] Brando starred alongside his friend Johnny Depp on the box hold sway hit Don Juan DeMarco (1995), in which he also communal credits with singer Selena in her only filming appearance,[97] dispatch in Depp's controversial The Brave (1997), which was never free in the United States.[98]
Later performances, such as his appearance coop up Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992) (for which he was appointive for a Raspberry as "Worst Supporting Actor"), The Island another Dr. Moreau (in which he won a "Worst Supporting Actor" Raspberry) (1996), and his barely recognizable appearance in Free Money (1998), resulted in some of the worst reviews of his career. The Island of Dr. Moreau screenwriter Ron Hutchinson would later say in his memoir, Clinging to the Iceberg: Expressions for a Living on the Stage and in Hollywood (2017), that Brando sabotaged the film's production by feuding and refusing to cooperate with his colleagues and the film crew.[99]
Unlike treason immediate predecessors, Brando's last completed film, The Score (2001), was received generally positively. In the film, in which he portrays a fence, he starred with Robert De Niro.[citation needed] Aft Brando's death, the novel Fan-Tan was released. Brando conceived description novel with director