June Butler digs into Aubrey Malone’s biography of Marlon Brando that shines a spotlight on Brando’s humour. 

Aubrey Malone has once again proved himself an adept chronicler in the genre of film and film stars with his latest work Brando – The Fun Side. There have been numerous books written about Marlon Brando, but Malone’s attention to detail and in-depth research makes this biography the leader of the pack by a long shot. 

Born in 1924, Omaha, Nebraska, Marlon Brando was the youngest of three. He had two older sisters, Jocelyn (1919-2005), and Frances (1922- 1994). Brando’s father, Marlon senior, sold chemical foodstuffs and insecticides. His mother Dorothy (Dodie) was considered to be a ‘free spirit’ – it is perhaps where Marlon junior acquired his sense of the ridiculous and chaotic, almost manic humour. Both Dodie and Marlon senior were alcoholics leading Brando to joke that he came “from a bunch of Irish drunks”, and the neighbours to quip that Dodie was a glass half-full kind of person, given that she’d drunk the other half.

Marlon senior was a serial womaniser and when travelling often used to book into a hotel and pay the bellboy to get him alcohol and a hooker. Marlon senior and Dodie separated on multiple occasions when Dodie’s drinking spiralled out of control. As Brando’s star ascended,  disappointment in his father’s business skills became manifest – A Streetcar Named Desire earned Brando the salary of $550 per week (an enormous sum at that time), of which Brando sent $400 to his father. Marlon senior duly made some questionable purchases, buying a non-existent goldmine, swampland in Florida and a herd of cattle that were the product of a scammer’s imagination. Brando junior once ruefully commented that if someone tried to sell his father the Brooklyn Bridge, his father would buy it once he was spending his son’s money.  

A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire

Many of Brando’s biographers either ignore or sideline Marlon’s extremely quirky sense of humour, preferring instead to portray Brando as a composite of brooding masculinity while also focusing on his complex romantic relationships and many children. Brando liked to ‘send-up’ the circumstances of his birth stating that he was born in Bangkok, Siam, and spent  his formative years in Calcutta, Indochina, the Mongolian Desert, and Ceylon. At other times, Brando claimed he was the son of a leader in the Chinese Revolution. The assertions were so ridiculous as to be patently untrue, a trope Brando was to employ and reuse over and over – often to the exasperation of friends, romantic interests, actors and directors. Yet, despite this, Brando made few enemies and when he did have differences of opinion, most people came to accept that Brando was unique and underneath the glib buffoonery, possessed an inner wisdom no other person truly grasped – except perhaps his children before they became adults and lost their core sense of wonder and exploration. Brando used to say that his children brought him up and not he them. Karl Malden, an actor and frequent co-star of Brando, maintained it was Brando’s influence that taught him how to work with child actors, because, as Malden put it, he had worked with “the biggest child of all, Marlon Brando”. Malden later claimed that he meant this sobriquet in the kindest of ways. 

If Brando disliked someone, that loathing was made evident and it usually went one-way, from Brando to the other director, or actor, or whoever happened to be in Brando’s sights at the time. Brando’s modus operandi was to pester and tease until that person either gave up or entered the fray and once they did that, the rules of the game were Brando’s and his alone. Frank Sinatra was producer Sam Spiegal ‘s first choice for the role of Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront. Sinatra had grown up in Hoboken, where the film was set. His public profile was on the rise after winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the film From Here to Eternity. Spiegal had assured Sinatra the part was his yet despite this, director Elia Kazan decided to lobby the producer in favour of Brando requesting that Spiegal drop Sinatra and replace him with Brando. When Sinatra found out he was no longer in the running and Brando had been hired, he was incandescent with rage. Sinatra threatened to still show up to set for the duration of filming and hinted that he would sue Spiegal if he was asked to leave. Sinatra never forgave Brando and his dislike intensified over time, gradually becoming a petty game of one-upmanship with each volleying heavy criticism of the other’s style of acting in the most public of ways. 

As Brando aged, decent acting roles began to dry up. Brando put a brave face on it but behind the façade, he knew the clock was ticking – the moniker of method actor to the extreme, began to be replaced by the rather grimmer reputation of being difficult to work with. As well as this, Brando had a penchant for comfort eating – when he was younger and constantly on the move, keeping his weight low was effortless but as he grew older, it became an issue. While shooting One-Eyed Jacks (1961), a movie Brando directed and starred in, he split eighteen pairs of pants in the course of it being filmed. In desperation, a sign was erected stating “Don’t Feed the Director”.  By the time the movie  Morituri (1965) was shot, Brando felt he was “a balding, middle-aged failure”.   

One-Eyed Jacks
One-Eyed Jacks

Brando is possibly better known for the drama of his later years and the tragedies surrounding his children. His eldest son Christian went to prison for killing his half-sister’s boyfriend, Dag Drollet. Cheyenne, Brando’s daughter, who was several months pregnant with Drollet’s son at the time of his death, gave birth six weeks later. Shortly afterwards, Cheyenne attempted suicide. In the ensuing years, Cheyenne was repeatedly admitted to rehabilitation facilities and psychiatric hospitals. She lost custody of her son to her mother, Tarita Tariipaia. In 1995, Cheyenne Brando committed suicide. 

Marlon Brando was a misjudged genius – his approach to life was like no other. Sometimes Brando got it right, sometimes he failed. Yet his stand on human rights, his thoughtful introspection and inner dialogue has often been erroneously assigned to history as the traits   of an attention seeker when he was anything but. It was astounding that Brando managed to come from such a troubled background and not descend into mental illness – perhaps the endless madcap adventures were an effort to keep those childhood demons at bay. From his difficult early years and into old age, as his star waned, Brando was the original troubadour, the acme of method acting, and a flawed philosopher with the most searing of intellects.  

Aubrey Malone has done more than compile anecdotes about Marlon Brando, of which there are many – he has given flesh to Brando’s memory and imaged the great man into the real and present. Far from narrating the stories that everyone already knew, the true sense of who Brando really was takes form and leaps from the pages under Aubrey Malone’s tutelage.  

Brando – The Fun Side is published by Bear Manor Media and available to buy.

 

Book Review: Sidney Lumet – The Actor’s Director

 

Book Review: Censoring Hollywood: Sex and Violence in Film and on the Cutting Room Floor

Book Review: Alex Cox’s Introduction to Film – A Director’s Perspective

 

Author

Write A Comment