It was Stanley Kowalski; Terry Malloy, the former boxer from Rat's Nest; Emiliano Zapata; Mark Antony; Napoleon; Don Corleone; Colonel Kurtz; Superman's father; Torquemada, and Dr. Moreau. And at the same time, he never stopped being Marlon Brando.
He dazzled in his early days as a theater actor, the best exponent of the Method. He then became a movie star, the biggest for a quarter of a century. Unreachable, incomprehensible, with an excessive talent and unbridled conduct. It is impossible to summarize his career, to pretend to know him in a few words. It's like Joshua Logan, the director of the movie Sayonara, once said about him: "Marlon is the most exciting person I've met since Greta Garbo. A genius. But I don't know what he's like. I don't know anything about him. I don't think anyone You know nothing about him."
Brando gave acting a new plasticity. A depth that he did not know until that moment. His appearance meant a change of era. He set a style. His attitudes, his ways, and his transgressions also signified a change of era. An overflowing genius that in his beginnings exuded violence, and danger. His talent was so immense that for decades it seemed that no film did him justice, that all the achievements in which he participated were below his possibilities. He was always more intense, bigger.
Five moments in his life to try to get to know him
1. "The first time I saw him was while he was doing the casting for the production of A Streetcar Named Desire. At that time I didn't have a penny and lived in a small house full of people, with broken pipes and only one or two little light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Someone told me about a boy named Brando and said he looked good. He came in wearing faded jeans, looked at the mess in the house, and went to work. He fixed the kitchen pipes, and two light fixtures and uncovered a vent. Within an hour everything was working. Then he took the text and began to read it aloud while acting it out. It was the most extraordinary reading I've ever witnessed. Something from another world. He got the part of Stanley Kowalski at that very moment," Tennessee Williams wrote many years later about how the actor landed the stage role that would change his life.
2. In 1955, he won his first Oscar. With Rathole (On the Waterfront) he showed that he had come to revolutionize acting. Serious, committed. The tight jeans, the muscular ones, the black leather jacket. A new fashion was winning the world at the hands of the wayward hero, a non-conformist who took acting to other levels. A new age. Interpretation as an art. He won after his fourth consecutive nomination. Since his debut in 1951, he had been nominated for every installment. A Streetcar Named Desire; Long live Zapata and Julio César. Those were the days when the ceremony was invariably conducted by Bob Hope. The award was given by Bette Davis, another diva. The 30-year-old comes running onto the stage and leaps up the stairs. He carries a striking beauty. Still, gravity, solemnity, and excesses did not devour him. He looks happy and authentic. He forgets what he had planned to say, it is natural, and there is no premeditation. And with his charm and magnetism he makes the audience laugh. That young Brando made it to the top. It seems destined to eat the world if the world does not devour him first.
3. In 1962 he was at the top of his profession, which he had reinvented. He accumulated a rare unanimity. The public, colleagues, and critics agreed on his superiority. At that point, consecrated, he began to show his eccentricity. That strange world in which he lived, of privilege, flattery, and lack of reality, is relentlessly described by Truman Capote in his article "The Duke in His Dominion". He received dozens of proposals and scripts per month. But in 1961 he was torn between the two. Lawrence of Arabia, by David Lean, or The Bounty Mutiny. Both would be blockbusters that were willing to invest much of their budget in having Brando as the lead actor. The tussle was won by The Bounty Mutiny, much to the relief of Peter O'Toole, who inherited the role from Lawrence. Brando's decision was not governed by artistic criteria. He preferred to spend his time on the coast, near the water, and not nearly two years in the middle of the desert. That movie was the beginning of the end for him. An unexpected descent. The Mutiny on the Bounty was the biggest budget movie of its time and a huge flop. Added to the Cleopatra disaster the following year (Liz Taylor will appear again in this story), this pair of failed blockbusters put the star system and the hegemony of the big studios in crisis.
4. One of the reasons for the failure of The Mutiny on the Bounty and the fact that the film went well over budget was Brando's conduct. Around those years it began to be unmanageable. On the set they called him "Never on Monday", because having a day off on Sundays, his condition the next day was so unfortunate that all the scenes in which he participated had to be lifted. Trevor Howard, one of the co-stars, was a gentleman and known for never swearing or talking down to his peers. But Brando managed to get on his nerves: "I've never worked with anyone so unprofessional and ridiculous," he told a reporter immediately before launching an insult on the air.
5. Charles Bluhdorn, the director of the study, was adamant. "Marlon Brando is never going to act in a Paramount movie." And he accepted no further discussion. The sentence was accompanied by a slap on the table. He insisted that the role should be played by Lawrence Olivier. The director and the screenwriter got up without further insistence. As they walked through the door, they heard one more yell: "And I don't want to hear about it again." Matter closed. But Francis Ford Coppola, the director, went to the star's house. It was already past noon. The front door was open. He had to wait for the actor to come down. He just woke up. In a silk kimono, he drank coffee trying to wake up. Coppola lied to him. He told her that he needed to do a makeup test and took out a camera. Brando, who was blond at the time, used shoe polish for his hair, disposable handkerchiefs to plump up his cheeks, and brought out that deep, raspy voice that will forever identify Don Corleone. When he finished, Coppola ran back to see the head of the studio. He put the tape on her. The man from Paramount blushed with fury when he saw that it was Brando who appeared. In three seconds he thought of several ways to fire the director. But as the video progressed, he was left speechless. He knew right away that no one could be (do) a better Don Corleone.
