A new biography tells what the actor thought of his most famous lovers and why he turned down Sophia Loren and Liz Taylor
In addition to being a colossal artist, Marlon Brando was for many years the biggest male symbol in the United States. Born in 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska, since he starred in A Streetcar Named Desire in 1951, he became the country's biggest actor for the next 20 years.
He died at age 80 on July 1, 2004. A decade after his passing, Brando's Smile, a new biography written by Susan L. Mizruchi, will be released.
In a preview that she offered to the press, the Boston University professor recounted some unknown details of the artist's hectic S- life.
Brando had relationships with some of the most coveted women in the world. From actresses like Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, and Grace Kelly, to former first lady Jackie Kennedy, widow of John F. Kennedy.
But what is most striking is not with whom he slept, but with whom he rejected. According to the magazine, when he had the chance to spend a night with the coveted Italian actress Sophia Loren, she discarded it because "her breath was worse than a dinosaur's."
He may as well have been with Elizabeth Taylor, one of Hollywood's biggest symbols. But she didn't want to, because "her butt was too small."
What Brando didn't miss out on was the chance to sleep with other men. As he confessed in 1976, he had "several homoS- experiences." And in that area, he also showed his predilection for colleagues. Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, James Dean, and Laurence Olivier are some of those who have passed through his bed.
It's not that he was gay, but that he had an uncontrolled S- appetite, which led him to try all kinds of experiences. Being with four or five women at the same time had become commonplace at a certain point in his life.
As he recounted in his autobiography, this debauchery arose as a consequence of his first great disappointment in love. When he was four years old, he was deeply in love with his babysitter. They slept together, both N-, and he secretly desired her.
But one day she got married and left home. "From that moment, I became a stranger to the rest of the world. I spent most of my life trying to find her," he confessed. "It took up so much of her time. He desperately wanted to please women, to arouse passion in him."
He only married three, and none of them were famous. Anna Kashfi, Movita Castaneda and Tarita Teriipaia were his wives. But none lasted long.
"He wanted to be loved and desired by women. But he ended up breaking their hearts because he couldn't be faithful," he adds.
It was another addiction that made it difficult for her to continue satisfying his inexhaustible S- appetite: food. As he grew older, he gained weight surprisingly easily.
At first, his body allowed him to eat wildly when he wasn't working, and to lose up to 20 kilos with extreme diets before starting the shooting of a new movie. But when he passed 40 years of age, this was unsustainable and he could no longer lose the weight he was gaining.
"There was no diet that I did not try," he recounted in his autobiography. He got to try hypnosis. But there was no case.
At his worst moment, he weighed 117 kilos. Although when he noticed that his obesity made his S- life difficult, he managed to muster the strength to lose a little weight.
