Film and stage actor, born in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. A product of the New York Actors' Studio, he made his debut in 1943, and appeared in several plays before achieving fame in A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). His many films include The Wild One (1953), Julius Caesar (1953), One-Eyed Jacks (which he also directed, 1961), Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), and Last Tango in Paris (1972). An Oscar winner for On the Waterfront (1954) and The Godfather (1972), he refused the latter honour in protest at the film industry's treatment of American Indians, and was a prominent campaigner for the Civil Rights movement. He ended a period of absence from the screen with the anti-apartheid drama A Dry White Season (1988), the comedy The Freshman (1990), Don Juan de Marco (1995), The Brave (1997), Free Money (1998), Autumn of the Patriarch (1999), and The Score (2001). An autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me, appeared in 1994. Increasingly reclusive towards the end of his life, reports that he was almost destitute proved untrue upon the publication of his will.
| Marlon Brando | |
|
Marlon Brando at the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. |
|
| Birth name | Marlon Brando Jr. |
| Born |
April 3, 1924 Omaha, Nebraska, USA |
| Died |
July 1, 2004 Los Angeles, California, USA |
| Height | 5 ft 9 in / 1.75 m |
|
Academy Awards |
Nominated: Academy Award for Best Actor (1952) for A Streetcar Named Desire Academy Award for Best Actor (1953) for Viva Zapata! Academy Award for Best Actor (1954) for Julius Caesar Academy Award for Best Actor (1958) for Sayonara Academy Award for Best Actor (1974) for Last Tango in Paris Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (1990) for A Dry White Season Won: Academy Award for Best Actor (1955) for On the Waterfront Academy Award for Best Actor (1973) for The Godfather |
Marlon Brando, Jr. (April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004) was an Oscar-winning American actor who is widely regarded as one of the greatest film actors of the 20th century.
Brando was also an activist, lending his presence to many issues, including the American Indian Movement.
Early life
Brando was born to Marlon Brando Sr. Although Brando claimed his grandfather was a Frenchman, Eugene Brandeaux (and this was repeated by some biographers), this was in fact incorrect , his grandparents being in fact Eugene Brando and Marie Holloway, who abandoned her husband and child when Brando's father was five years old. Brando's mother was a kind and talented woman, although she suffered from alcoholism and was frequently absent in Brando's childhood. She was involved in local theater and helped a young Henry Fonda to begin his own acting career, and fueled Brando's interest in stage acting.
Brando had a tumultuous childhood, in which he was expelled from several schools. After discussing plans with his mother to join his sister already in New York and to try to become an actor, Brando would have six months of support from his father, after which he would return home to work for him as a salesman. Brando left Illinois for New York City, where he studied at the American Theatre Wing Professional School, New School Dramatic Workshop, and the Actors' Studio.
Brando had two older sisters: Jocelyn Brando (1919–2005) and Frances Brando (b.
Career
Brando used his Stanislavski System skills for his first summer-stock roles in Sayville, New York.
According to an article in the Times, Brando auditioned and was accepted immediately for the lead role in Rebel Without a Cause in 1947.
Brando's first screen role was the bitter crippled veteran in The Men in 1950. These first six 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. Falk was proud to tell 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.
Brando became a hero for the younger generation by playing motorcycle rebel Johnny Strabler in the movie The Wild One. Elvis also copied Brando's role as Johnny while playing Vince in his 1957 movie Jailhouse Rock. Marlon Brando was a hero for James Dean, who idolized him and copied his acting and persona. (Marlon Brando's name is even mentioned in the movie.) Director Nick Ray even took the gang image from the movie The Wild One and brought it to this movie 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.
Brando finally won the Oscar for his role of Terry Malloy in On The Waterfront.
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;
Brando's star sank even further in the 1960s as he turned in increasingly uninspired performances in Mutiny on the Bounty and several other forgettable films. Even at this professional low point, though, Brando still managed to produce a few exceptional films, such as One-Eyed Jacks (1961), a western that would be the only film Brando would ever direct; Director Francis Ford Coppola convinced Brando to submit to a "make-up" test, in which Brando did his own makeup. Brando won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance; Brando turned down the Academy Award, the second actor to refuse an Oscar (the first being George C. 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. Despite the controversies which attended both the film and the man, the Academy once again nominated Brando for the Best Actor.
His career afterward was uneven: in addition to his iconic performance as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, Brando also played Jor-El, Superman's father, in the first Superman movie — a role he agreed to only on condition that he did not have to read the script beforehand and his lines would be displayed somewhere offscreen.
Superman
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.
Two years after his death in 2004, 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.
Personal life
Brando became known as much for his crusades for civil rights, Native American rights and other political causes as he was for his acting.
In his autobiography Songs My Mother Taught Me, Brando claimed he showed up one night at Marilyn Monroe's apartment and they started an affair that lasted many years.
In his 1976 biography The Only Contender by Gary Carey, Brando was quoted as saying, "Like a large number of men, I, too, have had homosexual experiences, and I am not ashamed." Photographs circulate on the Internet that appear to confirm this. Brando is quoted as saying: "If Wally had been a woman, I would have married him and we would have lived happily ever after." After Cox died, Brando kept his ashes for 30 years, and they were eventually scattered with his own. Cox's third wife only discovered he possessed them after reading an interview in Time where Brando is quoted as saying: "I have Wally's ashes in my house.
In 1960, Brando married Movita Castaneda, a Mexican actress seven years his senior who had appeared in the first Mutiny on the Bounty film in 1935, some 27 years before Brando's own version was released.
The Bounty experience affected Brando's life in a profound way: He fell in love with Tahiti and its people. Tahitian beauty Tarita Teriipia, who played Fletcher Christian's love interest, became Brando's third wife.
Children
All three of Brando's wives were pregnant when he married them. they were (ages as given in 2004):
by his marriage to actress Anna Kashfi: Christian Brando (46) by his marriage to actress Movita Castaneda: Miko Brando (43) Rebecca Brando Kotlinzky (38) by his marriage to Tarita Teriipia: Simon Teihotu Brando (43) - the only inhabitant of Tetiaroa Cheyenne (committed suicide in 1995 at the age of 25) by adoption: Petra Brando-Corval (32), daughter of Brando's assistant Caroline Barrett Maimiti Brando (28) Raiatua Brando (23)Brando married his maid Christina Maria Ruiz and had the following children with her:
Ninna Priscilla Brando (born: 1989) Myles Brando (born: 1992 as Myles Jonathan Brando) Timothy Brando (born: 1994 as Timothy Gahan Brando)In May 1990, Christian shot and killed Dag Drollet, the Tahitian lover of Christian's half-sister Cheyenne, at the family's hilltop home above Beverly Hills. Afterward, Drollet's father said he thought Brando was acting and his son was "getting away with murder." Only months after Marlon Brando's death, Brando's ex-wife Tarita Teriipia wrote her memoires entitled Marlon, My Love and My Torment in which she says that Brando had sexually abused their daughter Cheyenne .
Final years and death
Brando's notoriety, his family's troubled lives, his self-exile from Hollywood, and his obesity attracted more attention than his late acting career.
On July 1, 2004, at 6:30 p.m. local time, Brando died at the age of 80.
Brando was cremated and his ashes were scattered in two places.
Controversy
After the publication of an interview in Playboy magazine in January 1979, Brando was accused of anti-Semitism in regard to his opinion on double-standards set by Jews in Hollywood with respect to racial and cultural stereotyping: "You've seen every single race besmirched, but you never saw an unfavorable image of the Kike because the Jews were ever so watchful for that.
Brando again attracted controversy by making similar allegations on Larry King Live in April 1996, saying "Hollywood is run by Jews; King replied, "When you say — when you say something like that you are playing right in, though, to anti-Semitic people who say the Jews are —" at which point Brando interrupted, "No, no, because I will be the first one who will appraise the Jews honestly and say 'Thank God for the Jews.'"
Abraham Foxman, head of the ADL, issued the following statement in response to Brando's comments, saying:
"It was shocking to hear Marlon Brando, the acclaimed actor and champion of civil rights, invoke the anti-Semitic canard that 'Hollywood is run by Jews, it is owned by Jews...' and blame Jews for exploiting stereotypes of minorities, 'but we never saw the kike because they know perfectly well that's where you draw the wagons around.'"
Mr. Brando should know that what he said is utterly false, extremely offensive and plays into the hands of anti-Semites and bigots. Those Jews who enter the movie industry have done so as individuals, not as representatives of their religious group or with an aim to act in some coordinated conspiratorial manner.
Mr. Brando owes an apology to the Jewish men and women who work in Hollywood for vilifying them and to all Jews for his stereotyping and use of an anti-Semitic epithet".
Humorous Name
Marlon is a rather humorous name
Main Filmography
Complete Filmography
The Men (1950) A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) Viva Zapata! (1952) Julius Caesar (1953) The Wild One (1953) On the Waterfront (1954) Désirée (1954) Guys and Dolls (1955) Operation Teahouse (1956) (short subject) The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956) Sayonara (1957) The Young Lions (1958) The Fugitive Kind (1959) One-Eyed Jacks (1961) (also director) Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) The Ugly American (1963) Bedtime Story (1964) Morituri (1965) The Chase (1966) The Appaloosa (1966) Meet Marlon Brando (1966) (short subject) A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) Candy (1968) The Night of the Following Day (1968) Burn! (1969) King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis (1970) (documentary) The Nightcomers (1972) The Godfather (1972) Last Tango in Paris (1972) The Missouri Breaks (1976) Raoni (1978) (documentary) (narrator) Superman (1978) Apocalypse Now (1979) The Formula (1980) A Dry White Season (1989) The Freshman (1990) Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991) (documentary) Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992) Don Juan DeMarco (1995) The Island of Dr Moreau (1996) The Brave (1997) Free Money (1998) The Score (2001) Superman Returns (2006) - Posthumous appearance, appears in archive footage as Jor-El Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (2006)Upcoming:
Big Bug Man (2008) (voice)|
Preceded by: William Holden for Stalag 17 |
Academy Award for Best Actor 1954 for On the Waterfront |
Succeeded by: Ernest Borgnine for Marty |
|
Preceded by: Gene Hackman for The French Connection |
Academy Award for Best Actor 1972 for The Godfather |
Succeeded by: Jack Lemmon for Save the Tiger |
Obituaries
Obituary from the Washington Post Obituary at Slate MSNBC: Marlon Brando dies in Los Angeles hospital Long article on auction of Brando's possessions at The Observer (UK)| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brando, Marlon |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Brando, Marlon, Jr. (full name) |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Actor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 3, 1924 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Omaha, Nebraska, USA |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 1, 2004 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Los Angeles, California, USA |
User Comments Add a comment…