|
Marlon Brando, Jr. (April 3,
1924 – July 1, 2004) was a
two-time Academy Award-winning
iconic actor whose body of work
spanned over half a century.
Brando is best known for his
roles in A Streetcar Named
Desire and On the Waterfront,
both directed by Elia Kazan in
the early 1950s, and his
Academy-Award winning
performance as Vito Corleone in
The Godfather and as Colonel
Walter E. Kurtz in Apocalypse
Now, the latter two directed by
Francis Ford Coppola in the
1970s. His acting style,
combined with his public
persona as an outsider
uninterested in the Hollywood
of the early 1950s, had a
profound effect on a generation
of actors including Jack
Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Paul
Newman, Al Pacino, Robert
Duvall, James Dean, Dustin
Hoffman, Russell Crowe, Sean
Penn, Adrien Brody, Edward
Norton, Leonardo DiCaprio and
Johnny Depp. Brando was also an
activist, lending his presence
to many issues, including the
American Indian Movement. He
was named the fourth Greatest
Male Star of All Time by the
American Film Institute.
Brando used his Stanislavski
System skills for his first
summer-stock roles in Sayville,
New York on Long Island. His
behavior got him kicked out of
the cast of the New School's
production in Sayville, but he
was discovered in a locally
produced play there and then
made it to Broadway in the
bittersweet drama I Remember
Mama in 1944. Critics voted him
"Broadway's Most Promising
Actor" for his role as an
anguished veteran in Truckline
Café, although the play was a
commercial failure. He achieved
real stardom, however, as
Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee
Williams' play A Streetcar
Named Desire in 1947, directed
by Elia Kazan. Brando sought
out that role, driving out to
Provincetown, Massachusetts,
where Williams was spending the
summer, to audition for the
part. Williams recalled that he
opened the screen door and
knew, instantly, that he had
his Stanley Kowalski. Brando's
performance revolutionized
acting technique and set the
model for the American form of
method acting. This type or
role was never seen before and
all similar roles mirror
Brando's.
Afterward, Brando was asked to
do a screen test for Warner
Bros. studio.[2] The screen
test appears as an extra in the
2006 DVD release of A Streetcar
Named Desire.
Brando's first screen role was
as the bitter paraplegic
veteran in The Men in 1950.
True to his method, Brando
spent a month in bed at a
veterans' hospital to prepare
for the role.
He made a much stronger
impression the following year
when he brought his performance
as Stanley Kowalski to the
screen in Kazan's adaptation of
Streetcar in 1951. He was
nominated for an Academy Award
for Best Actor for that role,
and again in each of the next
three years for his roles in
Viva Zapata! in 1952, Julius
Caesar in 1953 as Marc Antony,
and On the Waterfront in 1954.
These first five films of
Brando's career featured
performances of monumental
proportions and essentially set
a new standard not just for all
other actors but also for
Brando himself.
In 1953, he also starred in Lee
Falk's play Arms and the Man.
Falk was proud to tell people
that Marlon Brando turned down
an offer of $10,000 per week to
act on Broadway, in favor of
working on Falk's play in
Boston. His Boston contract was
less than $500 per week. It
would be the last time he ever
acted in a stage play.
Brando became a hero for the
younger generation by playing
motorcycle rebel Johnny
Strabler in the movie The Wild
One. He created the rebel image
for the rock-and-roll era. Many
rock-and-rollers like Elvis
Presley imitated Brando's look
and character. Elvis took it to
another level by bringing the
rebel image to the
rock-and-roll fans. Elvis also
copied Brando's role as Johnny
while playing Vince in his 1957
movie Jailhouse Rock. Brando's
explosive screen presence
exuded a raw sexuality that
drew repeat ticket purchases
among female theater goers of
all ages. Theater managers
related accounts of sold out
weekday matiness where small
children ran up and down the
aisle making motorcycle noises
while their mothers sat
transfixed.
Marlon Brando was known to be a
hero for James Dean, who was
said to have idolized him and
copied his acting and
persona.
However, this has been proved
to be untrue by people who knew
the two actors.
William Bast, a famous screen
writer at that time, compared
Marlon's acting style to be
"heavy as lead" while James was
more "mercurial and light".
Director Nick Ray even took the
gang image from the movie The
Wild One and brought it to his
movie, "Rebel Without A Cause",
and thus emphasized Brando's
effect on the youth.
All the rebel culture that
included motorcycle, leather
jackets, jeans and the whole
rebel image, that inspired
generations of rebels, came
thanks to the movie The Wild
One and Brando's own unique
image and character. The sales
of motorcycle related
paraphernalia, leather jackets,
jeans, boots and Tee shirts
skyrocketed throughout the
country. The film had a similar
effect on overseas audiences
and local authorities and
religious figures lamented the
effect it was having on the
youth of their respective
countries.
Brando as Terry Malloy in On
the WaterfrontUnder Kazan's
direction, and with a talented
ensemble around him, Brando
finally won the Oscar for his
role of Terry Malloy in On the
Waterfront. Brando claimed that
he had improvised much of his
dialogue with Rod Steiger in
the famous, much-quoted scene
with him in the back of a
taxicab ("I could have been a
contender"). Kazan disputed
this.
Brando followed that triumph by
a variety of roles in the 1950s
that defied expectations: as
Sky Masterson in Guys and
Dolls, where he managed to
carry off a singing role; as
Sakini, a Japanese interpreter
for the U.S. Army in postwar
Japan in The Teahouse of the
August Moon; as an Air Force
officer in Sayonara; and a Nazi
officer in The Young Lions.
While he won an Oscar
nomination for his acting in
Sayonara, his acting had lost
much of its energy and
direction by the end of the
1950s.
In the 1960s Brando starred in
films such as Mutiny on the
Bounty (1962); One-Eyed Jacks
(1961), a western that would be
the only film Brando would ever
direct; Reflections in a Golden
Eye (1967), portraying a
repressed gay army officer; and
Burn! (1969), which Brando
would later claim as his
personal favorite, although it
was a commercial failure.
Nonetheless, his career had
gone into almost complete
eclipse by the end of the
decade thanks to his reputation
as a difficult star and his
record in overbudget or
marginal movies.
His performance as Vito
Corleone in The Godfather in
1972 was a mid- career turning
point. Director Francis Ford
Coppola convinced Brando to
submit to a "make-up" test, in
which Brando did his own makeup
(he used cotton balls to
simulate the puffed-cheek
look). Coppola was electrified
by Brando's characterization as
the head of a crime family, but
had to fight the studio in
order to cast the temperamental
Brando whose reputation for
difficult behavior and demands
was stuff of backlot legend.
Incredibly, the studio suits
wanted to give the role to
Danny Thomas in the hope that
Thomas would have his own
production company throw in its
lot with Paramount. Thomas had
the good sense to decline the
role and actually urged the
studio to cast Brando at the
behest of Coppola and others
who had witnessed the screen
test. Brando was nothing less
than sensational in the role
with the "sit down" scene
between rival mobsters
generally described as one of
the greatest moments in film
history. Brando won the Academy
Award for Best Actor for his
performance; once again, he
improvised important details
that lent more humanity to what
could otherwise have been a
clichéd role. Brando turned
down the Academy Award, the
second actor to refuse a Best
Actor Oscar (the first being
George C. Scott for Patton).
Brando boycotted the award
ceremony, sending little-known
actress Sacheen Littlefeather
to state his reasons, which
were based on his objections to
the depiction of Native
Americans by Hollywood and
television.
The actor followed with one of
his greatest performances in
Bernardo Bertolucci's Last
Tango in Paris, but the
performance was overshadowed by
an uproar over the erotic
nature of the film. Despite the
controversies which attended
both the film and the man, the
Academy once again nominated
Brando for the Best Actor.
His career afterwards was
uneven. He was paid one million
dollars a week to play Colonel
Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. He was
supposed to show up slim, fit,
and to have read the book Heart
of Darkness. He showed up
weighing around 220 pounds and
hadn't read Heart of Darkness.
This is why his character was
shot mostly in the shadows and
most of his dialogue was
improvised. After his week was
over Director Francis Ford
Coppola asked him to stay an
extra hour to so he could shoot
a close up of him saying, "The
horror, the horror." Brando
agreed for an extra $75,000.
After this film his weight
began to limit the roles he
could play.
Brando also played Jor-El,
Superman's father, in the first
Superman movie — a role he
agreed to only on assurance
that he was paid an enormous
sum for what amounted to a
small part, that he did not
have to read the script
beforehand and his lines would
be displayed somewhere
off-camera.
Brando also filmed scenes for
the movie's sequel, Superman
II, but the producers refused
to pay him the enormous
percentage he was paid for the
first movie, so he denied them
permission to use the footage.
However, after Brando's death
the footage was re-incorporated
into the 2006 re-cut of the
film, Superman II: The Richard
Donner Cut.
Two years after his death, he
"reprised" the role of Jor-El
in the 2006 "loose sequel"
Superman Returns, in which both
used and unused archive footage
of Brando as Jor-El from the
first two Superman films was
remastered for a scene in the
Fortress of Solitude, as well
as Brando's voice-overs being
used throughout the film.
Other later performances, such
as The Island of Dr Moreau,
earned him some of the most
uncomplimentary reviews of his
career. Despite announcing his
retirement from acting in 1980,
he subsequently gave
interesting supporting
performances in movies such as
A Dry White Season (for which
he was again nominated for an
Oscar in 1989), The Freshman in
1990 and Don Juan DeMarco in
1995. He also met and
befriended his co-star in that
movie, Johnny Depp during
filming of it. In 1992 Tim
Burton offered Marlon Brando
the role of the Penguin in
Batman Returns. Brando accepted
but Warner Bros. didn't
approve. In his last film, The
Score (2001), he starred with
fellow method actor Robert De
Niro.
Brando conceived the idea of a
novel called Fan-Tan with
director Donald Cammell in
1979, which was not released
until 2005. Interestingly,
Cammell dated and eventually
married the daughter of one of
Brando's girlfriends, Anita Loo
aka Anita Kong; the daughter
being China Kong.
Source : Some
of the information on this page
came from a Wikipedia
article and is
licensed under the GNU
Documentation License.
©2008
www.geneticmatrix.com.
|
General
Details
Marlon
Brando - Generator
- Biography