Brando, Songs My Mother Taught Me

by Marlon Brando

  Before Edie sent me to up to Tallulah’s home in Westchester County for an audition, a friend told me that she was gay, but I quickly discovered otherwise. Tallulah was an example of a performer who wasn’t much of an actress but who became a star because of a distinctive and unusual personality. She had an engaging deep voice, smelled of Russian Leather perfume and smoked English cigarettes, which she pulled out of a red box, pressed into a long silver holder, and lit slowly and deliberately, as if she were doing it onstage. She had a sharp nose and chin and a slash mouth—perfect casting for the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz. With her low, alcohol-fouled voice, Tallulah could be very entertaining. She was intelligent and witty and told funny stories. She informed me she’d recently been involved with a man with a huge nose that was covered with warts; he was truly a monument to ugliness, she said, and after she spent a weekend with him, she told a friend she had performed fellatio on him.

  Her friend, who knew how ugly the man was, said she was astonished. “How could you possibly have done that?”

  “Darling,” Tallulah said, “anything to get away from that face.”

  As soon as I finished the reading, Tallulah asked me to be in the play, but I think she was more interested in me for sex than for the part of Stanislas. After rehearsals started I discovered that she usually got sloshed early in the day and spent the remaining hours getting drunker. She began inventing reasons for me to visit her at the Elysee Hotel, supposedly to go over the script, and I dreaded it, but she was the star of the show and I needed the money. She would spend the early part of these evenings with her eyes at half-mast, her lips lurking around the fracture of a smile, and then begin the arabesque of seduction. She was forty-three, I was twenty-two, and apparently she liked young men. I have more compassion for her now than I did then. I’ve since met other actresses whose beauty and attractiveness was the core of their sense of self-esteem and have had difficulty accepting the loss of it as they grew older; like Tallulah, some of them have turned to younger men to restore what they think they’ve lost. Tallulah was like that, although I didn’t understand it then.

  I wrote Frannie about Tallulah after my first encounter with her: “My mind feels like ten octopi in a space the size of a matchbox, each trying to manicure just its own toenails.” Frannie also saved a letter to my father:

  Dear Pop:

  I’ve been rehearsing day and night for about a week now.… Bankhead is O.K. to work with but she’s quite despicable on social terms. I absolutely detest decadence, self-indulgence and her uncomplimentary familiarity with people. Her political views are gnarled and distorted. It’s going to be a tough tour trying tactfully to avoid having her make altogether too many personal demands.

  I’m going to act the part of a fresh young puritan and inspire her conscience to revise her mode of living …

  Gee, I enjoyed having Mom here. She looks so wonderful.… I do hope she will have the time soon to do a little sitting on ass and doing what comes naturally. If she writes a play, I’ll get it produced. She said wonderful things about you, Pop, which made me very happy and content. Do you think there is much chance of your coming to the opening, which will be sometime in Feb? I am enclosing a schedule of our run which will let you know where I am. And Pop, I want to thank you very much for sending me the money plan and the income tax dope. The reason I didn’t want to take you up on the contract was because I felt very strongly that I must learn to handle money myself or suffer the consequences.… I’m having my salary made out in deposit-check form which will be mailed to my own bank on 57th Street each week. I’m opening a savings and checking account and am really and earnestly going to make my money work for me. My gratitude is much, Pop. You’re damn swell to always offer your dummy son help when he thinks he does or doesn’t need it … write soon.

  My love to you, Pop

  Bud

  The play opened in New England with me playing Tallulah’s young lover. I don’t think I was very good. Among other things, I didn’t have the accent right; I hadn’t studied accents yet. Worse, whenever I was onstage with her and the moment approached when I was supposed to kiss her, I couldn’t bear it. For some reason, she had a cool mouth and her tongue was especially cold. Onstage, she was forever plunging it into my mouth without so much as a how-do-you-do. It was like an eel trying to slide backward into a hole. At first I was as casual as I could be under the circumstances and tried to avoid her tongue without offending her, thinking, How am I going to keep the part? Her tongue would explore every cranny in my mouth before forcing itself down my throat. I tried to back away coyly, pretending my character was bashful, then I began kissing her on the neck, trying to look appropriately romantic as the male ingenue. But she didn’t like neck kisses and lowered her head and pursued my mouth with her lips. I tried eating a lot of garlic, but that didn’t stop her, so I asked a stagehand to buy me a bottle of mouthwash, and after each time I had to kiss her I went offstage and took a swig, but that didn’t work either, so I bought a very strong astringent lotion and began gargling with it in the wings after every kiss.

  Tallulah had experienced a lot of suffering and unhappiness in her life and liked to talk about it. I couldn’t help feeling sympathy for her; she’d had it tough. I’ve always thought that if she hadn’t been so banged up emotionally, she could have been a great actress and an extraordinarily attractive person, but I think she really cared more about fucking and alcohol than about performing. Unfortunately, a spy informed her that I was gargling after kissing her, and she was offended by this along with my refusal to visit her room anymore. She told the producers I wasn’t right for the part, and after about six weeks of out-of-town tryouts I was fired, my virtue still intact. I would rather have been dragged over broken pottery than make love to Tallulah.

  I was through with acting, I decided. After being fired, I wrote this letter to my parents from New Haven:

  Dear Folks:

  I leave ‘Eagle Rampant’ with this prayer: the next time T. Bankhead goes swimming I hope that whales shit on her. God preserve the lizards and let Tallulah die! It is almost over and so is my life. Horrors of horror … I’m going to school when I get back and take a course in piano and harmony and Katherine Dunham dance. I’m looking forward to it very much. I bought a flute and I am great on it. I’m soon going to have an upper lip not unlike a camel’s or Pop’s.

  I met a little man on the train whose wife is fast becoming a drunk. I told him about A.A. and told him I would send him a book on A.A. What else should I do? When he talks to her about drinking, she gets mad and belligerent. What to do?

  Love

  Bud

  The day I was fired, I had a bad cold and remember feeling vaguely depressed and relieved at the same time. On the train ride from Boston to New York that night, I fell asleep and somebody stole my wallet and about eight hundred dollars, all the money I had earned on the play. I arrived in New York with no money, holes in my socks and holes in my mind, not sure what I’d do next, but knowing I needed a job.

  Then once again good luck came my way. A few weeks later I told my father about it:

  Dear Pop:

  Well, I’m all set. I start rehearsals Oct. 4th for a “Streetcar Named Desire.” I’m getting $550 [a week] and second billing. Elia Kazan is directing. The female lead—Jessica Tandy. Karl Maiden plays supporting role. It’s a strong, violent, sincere play—emotional rather than intellectual impact. Mom will write and tell you of my part.

  Pop, I want the money I make to help in a large part to take the load you’ve been handling. I’m not counting my eggs, but I want it known that I would like to have my money be of use. We’ll talk more of it when you come.

  Bud

  17

  A COUPLE OF WEEKS before I sent that letter, Edie Van Cleve had informed me that Elia Kazan was planning to direct a new play by Tennessee Williams. Originally called The Poker Night, it had been renamed A Streetcar Named Desire. Jessica Tandy had already been chosen for the female le
ad of Blanche DuBois, but they were having trouble casting an actor to play the male lead, Stanley Kowalski.

  John Garfield was originally set for it, but he wasn’t able to come to terms with the producer, Irene Selznick, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM, and the wife (though separated) of movie producer David O. Selznick. Next they offered it to Burt Lancaster, but he couldn’t get out of a studio contract in Hollywood. Harold Clurman suggested me for the part to Kazan, but Gadg (Kazan’s nickname) and Irene both said I was probably too young, and she was especially unenthusiastic about me. In the end they decided to leave it up to Tennessee Williams. Gadg suggested that I visit him on Cape Cod, where he had a vacation house, and loaned me $20 to buy a train ticket. But I was broke and spent most of it before leaving New York, so I had to hitchhike to Provincetown. It took longer than I expected and I was a day or two late for the reading. When I found Tennessee’s house, he apologized because the toilet was overflowing, so I volunteered to fix it. I read for the part, we talked for an hour or so and then he called Gadg and said he wanted me to have the role.

  Years later the executor of Tennessee’s estate, Lady Maria St. Just, gave me a copy of the letter he sent his agent, Audrey Wood, after the reading, which reveals much of his vision of the play. She gave me permission to reprint the letter:

  August 29, 1947

  Dear Audrey:

  … I can’t tell you what a relief it is that we have found such a God-sent Stanley in the person of Brando. It had not occurred to me before what an excellent value would come through casting a very young actor in this part. It humanizes the character of Stanley in that it becomes the brutality or callousness of youth rather than a vicious older man. I don’t want to focus guilt or blame particularly on any one character but to have it a tragedy of misunderstanding and insensitivity to others. A new value came out of Brando’s reading which was by far the best reading I have ever heard. He seemed to have already created a dimensional character, of the sort that the war has produced among young veterans. This is a value beyond any that Garfield could have contributed, and in addition to his gifts as an actor he has great physical appeal and sensuality, at least as much as Burt Lancaster. When Brando is signed I think we will have a really remarkable 4-star cast, as exciting as any that could possibly be assembled and worth all the trouble that we have gone through. Having him instead of a Hollywood star will create a highly favorable impression, as it will remove the Hollywood stigma that seemed to be attached to the production. Please use all your influence to oppose any move on the part of Irene’s office to reconsider or delay signing the boy, in case she doesn’t take to him. I hope he will be signed before she shows in New York.

  We have a full house this week, Joanna, Margo [Jones, a producer] and Marlon in addition to Pancho [Tennessee’s companion] and I. Things were so badly arranged that Margo and Brando had to sleep in the same room—on twin cots. I believe they behaved themselves—the fools! We had fixed a double-decker bunk for Margo and Joanna to occupy but when Margo climbed into her upper bunk several of the slats refused to support her. Also the plumbing went bad, so we had to go out in the bushes.

  I had a violent quarrel with the plumber over the phone so he would not come out. Also the electric wiring broke down and “plunged us into everlasting darkness” like the Wingfields at supper. All this at once! Oh, and the kitchen was flooded! Marlon arrived in the middle of this domestic cataclysm and set everything straight. That, however, is not what determined me to give him the part. It was all too much for Pancho. He packed up and said he was going back to Eagle Pass. However, he changed his mind, as usual. I am hoping that he will go home, at least to New Orleans, while the play is in rehearsal, until December. He is not a calm person. In spite of his temperamental difficulties, he is very lovable and I have grown to depend on his affection and companionship, but he is too capricious and excitable for New York, especially when I have a play in rehearsal. I hope it can be worked out to keep him in the South for that period or at least occupied with a job. That would make things easier for me …

  With love,

  Tennessee

  After his success with Streetcar, Tennessee wrote other plays, but this play was the pinnacle of his career, and afterward he sort of wrote in circles, as if he didn’t know where to go. He was locked in somehow. But at the height of his powers, he was an extraordinary writer as well as a lovely man, extremely modest and soft-spoken. Kazan accurately described him as a man with no skin: he was skinless, defenseless, vulnerable to everything and everybody, cruelly honest, a poet with a pristine soul who suffered from a deep-seated neurosis, a sensitive, gentle man destined to destroy himself. He never lied, never said anything nasty about anybody, and was always witty, but he led a wounded life. If we had a culture that gave adequate support and assistance to a man of Tennessee’s delicacy, perhaps he could have survived. He was a homosexual, but not effeminate or outwardly aggressive about it, and he never made a pass at the actors in his plays. You wouldn’t have known he was gay if he didn’t tell you. But there was something eating at his insides that ultimately propelled him to his death.

  A Streetcar Named Desire opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York on December 3, 1947, after tryouts in New Haven, Boston and Philadelphia. My sister still has the telegram I sent to my father from Boston: NEED MONEY BY TONIGHT SHOW SPLENDID LETTER TO FOLLOW MARLON. After the opening night in New York, we went to the Russian Tea Room and read the reviews, starting with The New York Times. Before long, all the reviews were in and everyone relaxed; we had a hit.

  A few writers have suggested that in portraying the insensitive, brutish Stanley Kowalski, I was really playing myself; in other words, the performance succeeded because I was Stanley Kowalski. I’ve run into a few Stanley Kowalskis in my life—muscled, inarticulate, aggressive animals who go through life responding to nothing but their urges and never doubting themselves, men brawny in body and manner of speech who act only on instinct, with little awareness of themselves. But they weren’t me. I was the antithesis of Stanley Kowalski. I was sensitive by nature and he was coarse, a man with unerring animal instincts and intuition. Later in my acting career, I did a lot of research before playing a part, but I didn’t do any on him. He was a compendium of my imagination, based on the lines of the play. I created him from Tennessee’s words.

  A lot of roles, I’ve since learned, have to be made up by the actor, especially in the movies. If you don’t have a well-written story, the performer has to invent the character to make him believable. But when an actor has as good a play under him as Streetcar, he doesn’t have to do much. His job is to get out of the way and let the part play itself. Improvisation doesn’t work in a play by Tennessee Williams, just as it doesn’t work in a play by Shakespeare. They give actors such good lines that the words carry them along.

  Admittedly it is impossible for anyone to judge themselves objectively, but I have never believed that I played the part of Stanley successfully. I think the best review of the play was written by a critic who said I was miscast. Kim Hunter was terrific and well cast as Stella, and so was Karl Maiden—a fine actor who, despite enormous success, has always remained one of the most decent men I’ve ever known. But I think Jessica and I were both miscast, and between us we threw the play out of balance. Jessica is a very good actress, but I never thought she was believable as Blanche. I didn’t think she had the finesse or cultivated femininity that the part required, nor the fragility that Tennessee envisioned. In his view, there was something pure about Blanche DuBois; she was a shattered butterfly, soft and delicate, while Stanley represented the dark side of the human condition. When Blanche says to Stella, “Don’t hang back with the beasts,” she was talking about the animalistic side of human beings. It’s true that Blanche was a liar and a hypocrite, but she was lying for her life—lying to keep her illusions alive. When she said, “I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be true” and “I didn’t lie in my heart,” Tennessee meant those wo
rds. He told Kazan he wanted the audience to feel pity for Blanche. “Blanche,” he said, “must finally have the understanding and compassion of the audience … without creating a black-dyed villain in Stanley.”

  I think Jessica could have made Blanche a truly pathetic person, but she was too shrill to elicit the sympathy and pity that the woman deserved. This threw the play out of balance because the audience was not able to realize the potential of her character, and as a result my character got a more sympathetic reaction than Tennessee intended. Because it was out of balance, people laughed at me at several points in the play, turning Blanche into a foolish character, which was never Tennessee’s intention. I didn’t try to make Stanley funny. People simply laughed, and Jessica was furious because of this, so angry that she asked Gadg to fix it somehow, which he never did. I saw a flash of resentment in her every time the audience laughed at me. She really disliked me for it, although I’ve always suspected that in her heart she must have known it wasn’t my fault. I was simply doing what the script called on me to do; the laughter surprised me, too.

  But we had a wonderful play under us and it was a big success. An actor can never act his way out of a bad play; no matter how well he performs, if he doesn’t have real drama beneath him he can act his best all day and it won’t work. He could have the twelve disciples in the cast and Jesus Christ playing the lead and still get bad reviews if the play is poorly written. An actor can help a play, but he can’t make it a success. In A Streetcar Named Desire, we had under us one of the best-written plays ever produced, and we couldn’t miss.

  18

  THE INTERVALS of anxiety and depression that began when my mother left New York City continued off and on through the run of A Streetcar Named Desire and for long afterward. It would take years for me to escape my acceptance of what I had been taught as a child—that I was worthless. Of course, I had no idea then that I even had such feelings about myself. Something was chewing on me and I didn’t know what it was, but I had to hide my emotions and appear strong. It has been this way most of my life; I have always had to pretend that I was strong when I wasn’t. Nonetheless, sometime after the play opened I realized I needed help, and Gadg referred me to his psychiatrist, a well-known Freudian analyst in New York named Bela Mittelman, the coldest man I’ve ever known. I saw him for several years, seeking empathy, insight and guidance, but all I got was ice. He had absolutely no warmth. Even the furnishings in his office were frigid; I almost shivered every time I walked into it. Maybe he was following the rules of his particular school of psychiatry, but to me he had no insight into human behavior and never gave me any help. I was still on my own, trying to deal alone with emotions I didn’t yet understand. Why these feelings surfaced when they did, I don’t know, although I suppose they had something to do with my mother going away. In New York I’d had another chance to offer her my love, which I did, but it hadn’t been enough for her.