Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries
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CAUSE: Morbidly obese, Brando died in a hospital in Los Angeles, aged 80. The cause of death was given as lung failure. Brando had suffered from pneumonia, an illness that left him wheelchair-bound and breathing through an oxygen mask. Brando did nothing to help his battles with his weight: he had been spotted raiding the ice-cream freezer at a supermarket after his nurses chained his refrigerator door shut. Jocelyn Brando said, “There will be no service of any kind. If someone wants to do something that’s their business. But Marlon would have hated it.” She told Fox News that she was shocked by the suddenness of her brother’s death. “He’d been on oxygen for about a year. He had pulmonary thrombosis. He went in [to hospital] to get a couple of things looked at and he just took off.” Brando left behind an estate worth $21.6 million according to his will. True to his secretive life, he cut at least two heirs out of his will and revealed the names of two previously unknown children among his 10 surviving offspring, including three by his maid, Christina Ruiz. Details in his will show that Brando had an income of $500,000 a year. The core of his financial assets consisted of a hilltop estate on Los Angeles' Mulholland Drive, reportedly worth up to $10 million, and his Tahitian atoll, Teti’aroa, his private retreat. Brando ordered his assets, including around $8.6 million in real estate and $3 million in other property, said to include paintings, sketches and rare scripts, to be transferred to what the will refers to as a “living trust”. The will did not state who would inherit.
FURTHER READING: Bud: The Brando I Knew – Carlo Fiore (New York: Dell, 1975); Brando: Portrait Of The Rebel As An Artist – Bob Thomas (London: Star Books, 1975); Marlon Brando – René Jordan (London: Star Books, 1976); Brando: The Unauthorised Biography – Charles Higham (New York: Signet, 1988); Brando – Peter Manso (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994).
Walter Brennan
Born July 25, 1894
Died September 21, 1974
Lovable old man. Walter Andrew Brennan, born in Swampscott, Massachusetts, was a precocious child. He left home at 11 and by the age of 15 he had a degree in engineering. However, instead of putting his knowledge to practical use he joined a vaudeville troupe before serving in France with the 101st Field Artillery. Demobbed, he worked variously digging ditches, in a bank and as an estate agent before landing his first film job as an extra in 1923. He became firm friends with another extra, Frank Cooper, who later changed his first name to Gary. Brennan worked as stuntman, having his teeth knocked out in the process, which stood him in good stead for the rest of his career, playing lovable old codgers in almost 200 films. He once confessed: “I never wanted anything out of this business except a good living. Never wanted to be a star – just wanted to be good at what I was doing.” He succeeded, probably beyond his wildest dreams. He was the first actor to get a hat trick of Best Supporting Actor Oscars. The first was for Come And Get It (1936) in which he played Swedish lumberjack Swan Bostrom. Next was Kentucky (1938), playing Peter Goodwin and he gained his third playing Judge Roy Bean in The Westerner (1940). He was nominated a fourth time for Sergeant York (1941) but lost out to Donald Crisp for How Green Was My Valley (1941). His other films included The Mystery Of Edwin Drood (1935), Seven Keys To Baldpate (1935), Banjo On My Knee (1936) as Newt Holley, When Love Is Young (1937) as Uncle Hugo, Mother Carey’s Chickens (1938) as Mr Popham, The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer (1938) as Muff Potter, Stanley And Livingstone (1939) as Jeff Slocum, They Shall Have Music (1939) as Professor Lawson, Northwest Passage (1940) as Hunk Marriner, The Pride Of The Yankees (1942) as Sam Blake and To Have And Have Not (1944) as Eddie. The wealthy owner of two ranches, a hotel and a cinema, Brennan married childhood sweetheart Ruth Welles in 1920 and they were still together at his death.