Brando's Smile: His Life, Thought, and Work

by Susan L. Mizruchi

  There was no greater sign of Brando’s enduring interest in his vocation than the classes on acting (mentioned in chapter 6) that he conducted in 2001 and called “Lying for a Living.”13 The idea was to assemble people, eminent and ordinary, from all walks of life, along with professional actors, to participate in a series of lessons on acting fundamentals. Brando had global ambitions for these classes, which he planned to film and distribute worldwide. Among the people he invited was former President Bill Clinton. In a letter to Clinton on December 1, 2001, Brando noted that he would be speaking “French, German, Spanish, and Chinese” in the effort to reach perhaps “a billion people,” and he suggested possible roles for Clinton: “Sax player, actor, erudite scholar, experienced political counselor, man-about-town.” Clinton was reportedly intrigued until he heard Brando’s name for the enterprise.14 Brando was not only aiming at international audiences but also drawing on a range of cultures for his techniques. His notes, “Research for Acting Lessons Project,” from August 28, 2001, for example, begin: “Get Books on Masks,” asking, “What is psychological, cultural and social function?” and cites various examples: “The No Theater in Japan. The Chinese Opera. . . . Africa, Wooden masks. . . . New Guinea Polynesia the function of tattooing, Decorating the face for war or fun, American Indians.” From these traditional forms he goes on to describe “the masks we wear without masks: Japanese subway mask . . . mask we wear when being criticized by boss.”15

  In “Random Notes on Acting,” Brando listed topics and exercises for the classes: “The History of acting—beginning with apes”; “Russian director, Serge Isenstein, who made the experiments with a camera; the ‘reality experiences’”; “Acting is not intellectual. It’s emotional. The enemy of the actor is the mind.” “Make them recite Shakespeare. Bring in costumes and makeup. Do makeup at home.” “Jacob P. Adler. Stella Adler’s influence on the world; everyone is copying American acting style.” “Who acts? Who doesn’t? Children act less, one reason why we love children so much.”16

  Under “Students,” Brando stipulated: “Some pay—most free. . . . Not for actors only.” Participants ranged from Jon Voight, Michael Jackson, Sean Penn, Thomas Jane, and Whoopi Goldberg to Brando’s lawyer, a used-car salesman, and a fellow named Jim Anderson, whom Brando dubbed “the recycler” after discovering him rifling through the trash and inviting him to join the classes. There were daylong meetings with twenty to thirty students each time, which were planned extensively during the summer of 2001 and then filmed beginning in November.17 Brando was a sensitive teacher, couching criticism of student improvisations in general principles, alert while lecturing. Noticing a woman daydreaming, he asked what she was thinking. Her spontaneous reply—“about the texture of the floor”—prompted a modest reaction: “You know what that tells me? I’ve lost the audience. You’ve got to know when you’ve lost your audience.” But he usually kept things lively, sometimes correcting student grammar, rattling off (a notably esoteric selection of) Yiddish curses, praising Paul Muni, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Meryl Streep as major talents who take risks. For an exercise, he reprised an idea discussed with Quincy Jones for their parts in Jericho, instructing the white students to behave black and the black students to behave white.18 Develop your “inner critic,” by suppressing your ego, he recommended, and fill out your characters with details.

  One participant, high-wire artist Philippe Petit, was motivated by Brando’s classes to begin writing his autobiography, Man on Wire (2008). “During the filming of his workshop ‘Lying for a Living’—between takes, I was furiously scribbling my first draft in red ink. This terribly talented master of deceit taught me golden rules I had forgotten I knew, which applied as much to the page as to the stage. By practicing the discipline of self-imposed intellectual immobility—akin to the respect of stillness Marlon calls for—I was able to apprehend the essence of each chapter before I drafted it. My pen learned to perceive what lurked on the other side of the action it was busy describing until, like him, I could declare, I can see a smile in the dark.”19 Perhaps it took another tightrope walker to appreciate Brando’s approach: the recourse to instinct, the privileging of controlled emotion, expressive stillness.

  Brando was always honing his craft, even more so in life, according to friends and family, than on stage and screen. In the 1950s, his sister Fran commented, “Buddy is really acting all the time. When he came back from France recently, he spoke French all day, and after making that Mexican movie, Zapata, it was Spanish.”20 Those who knew him maintained that his best performances never made it into his movies. Brando said, “You can’t act, unless you are what you are and who you are.” But he seems to have made a point of keeping others guessing, dissembling, impersonating, fabricating scenes, as if constantly testing his own powers of make-believe.21 His genius was to be in touch with something more provisional than himself: what he had the potential to be, or felt like being at the moment. This is supported by some of the vignettes Brando solicited (from sisters, longtime friends, former lovers) for his autobiography, memories that he used to jog his own recollections of the past. One of these, from a woman with whom he had a two-year affair, is especially revealing of the dramatic energy he expended in courtship. The woman was Pakistani, a college student of nineteen when they met; her long, detailed account of their romance shows how Brando specialized in reading what women wanted and delivering it in role-playing of the highest order. The woman is traditional, beautiful, naïve, and narcissistic. Brando seems to have transformed himself into what she expected and needed in a lover, and he convinced her that this was his truest self. At the same time, he apparently enjoyed the opportunity his talents afforded of being the man she desired, perhaps even becoming attached to the character he played for her.

  So what is this lover’s Brando like? He is “at 39 excessively trim and exceptionally handsome,” his “splendor and beauty” set off by Toto, the “monstrous” St. Bernard that sometimes accompanied him. He was “born charming . . . a born romantic and a dreamer.” This Brando is relatively solemn; “laughing has never been either your or my nature,” his lover notes confidently. They are “both teetotalers” and she adopts his tastes—coffee with cinnamon stick, steak medium-rare, with salad. He gives her gifts of his favorite music: William Kapell playing piano concertos, Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain. Once he knocks on her door costumed as a Western Union man with packages. He has a “microscopic memory” and is “a prude . . . never . . . vulgar in manner, behavior, or speech.” She is convinced of their “soul kinship,” that theirs is a “marriage of minds.” Through the first four months of 1964, they are “inseparable,” he “cannot let go,” and she “is like the fruit tree, I bend with every wish of yours.” It is clear from this that Brando had shown this lover only a part of his personality, had dramatized a version of his persona to meet her specifications.22 As the relationship wound down to its inevitable end, he becomes cold, critical, finally withdrawing permanently. But all this is done in character; he never stops playing his designated role.

  A male friend from Libertyville, who also sent memories for the autobiography, recalled Brando’s teenaged advice on “how to treat women”: “Be commanding; do something nice for them; don’t let them come around.” This studied role—learned from his father or another successful ladies’ man—was precocious for a high-schooler; he perfected it over time. He could be callous and cruel, but there was no question that he loved and needed women, and his performances on screen and off ensured that they would love and need him back.23 On the drama of eroticism, Brando commented, “I always thought that if I wrote something about my sexual knowledge, I’d have something like Krafft-Ebing [a psychiatrist known for his clinical studies of female sexuality] on the peculiarities of women. . . . There are many roads leading to Rome but they’re filled with a lot of strange adventures.”24

  One title Brando considered for his autobiography was The Actor’s Duty; another that would have been appropriate was The Actor’s Mask.2
5 Brando contributed a body of performances on stage and screen that transformed acting permanently, performances that will inspire global audiences as long as people watch films. That legacy was inseparable from the roles Brando played in the progressive movements of the era, civil rights, justice for the American Indians, the United Nations, UNICEF, and environmentalism. In all of these endeavors, he lent his energies because he believed in the causes and felt obligated to help. Yet it was Brando’s fate, on film and in life, to be ahead of his time. Some of the changes he supported—including his global outlook, shown by his insistence that Sayonara (1957) end with an interracial marriage (the first in Hollywood film), his challenges to traditional gender roles, his promotion of sustainable ecosystems—are only now, years after his death, becoming more accepted. Some planetary outrages, he realized, would never be redressed. This was clear in his last public appearance at Michael Jackson’s 30th Anniversary Concert in Madison Square Garden on September 10, 2001. Brando’s participation put him in New York on September 11, making him a witness to yet another major event. His assistant remembers how quiet he was at the hotel, following the news and researching details on his computer, before it became possible a few days later to slip off to the airport. The appearance hadn’t gone well either. During his speech, he had spoken about the issue of worldwide hunger among children and was booed by the raucous and youthful crowd.26

  Brando consistently put forward his beliefs no matter how they were received. That tenacity is illuminated by an anecdote he told about an encounter a decade earlier. He had wandered into an electronics store in midtown Manhattan looking for a part for his camera. The part couldn’t have been worth more than two dollars, but Brando recalled that the Hasidic clerk turned the store upside down to find it. It was not because he was star struck; to him, Brando was just an “ordinary fat guy” making a minor purchase. The man’s time was far more valuable than the pennies he probably earned on the sale, but he felt a responsibility to his customer. And more than this, Brando said, was the larger principle to which he was committed: the ethic of “leaving the world better than you found it.” This was a goal that Brando could understand.27

  One of Brando’s very last projects was doing voice-overs, reciting his favorite poems and Shakespeare soliloquies.28 Of those he managed to record before his death, there was none he loved more than Elinor Morton Wylie’s “Now Let No Charitable Hope,” which ends:

  In masks outrageous and austere

  The years go by in single file;

  But none has merited my fear,

  And none has quite escaped my smile.

  Brando as Brando, 1997. Photograph by Jan Thijs, who recalls (in an e-mail communication) that Brando especially liked this photograph and ordered hundreds of copies. He set up a table in the frigid Canadian air of the Free Money set and patiently inscribed a photo for each member of the cast and crew.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book has depended on the kindness of strangers. Ellen Adler and Tom Oppenheim barely knew me when they shared their memories of Brando and helped me reach out to his other personal friends. Mike Medavoy, executor of the Brando Estate trusted me and gave freely of his wisdom at every stage. Avra Douglas, another executor, shared her wealth of understanding as someone who knew Brando, from years of being his friend, probably better than anyone. David Seeley provided help and advice from the start of the process when he agreed to take a call from a biographer, to the end, when he facilitated my search for permissions. Jeffrey Abrams was the ideal estate lawyer with his expertise and sense of fair play. Austin Wilkin provided audio, high resolution photographs, and everything it seemed I needed just when I needed it. Christian Reed used his research skills to scour the archives when I couldn’t get to them myself. Rebecca Brando conveyed her love for her father and guided me to sources I would never have reached without her. Quincy Jones took time from his formidable schedule of global good works to talk to me by phone and in person about his friend “Leroy.”

  Curators of the Christie’s Sale—Helen Hall, Cathy Elkies, and Laura Armstrong, to whom I am especially indebted—protected the privacy of their clients while facilitating my research. Those who bought research materials at the Brando Estate Sale and shared them with me, made my book possible. They include: Cosmo DeNicola; Johnny Depp; Tony Freiburg; Marilyn Gauthier; Bernie Gould; Connie Kaufmann; Alexander Khochinskiy; Melinda Leeka; Charles Mady and Diana Mady Kelly; Richard Marrone; Henry McNeil; Alan Thurston; Noah Wyle; and John Zorn.

  My gratitude as well to Brando family and friends who shared their memories with me: Miko Brando; Martin Asinof; Joseph Brutsman; Jay Kanter; Patt Morrison; Shane Brando; Prudence Brando; Karen Brando; Carmelita Pope Wood; Nina Green Rosenfeld; Harry Dean Stanton; and Alice Marchak. I am grateful too to those who shared their memories of working with Brando on films: Salvo Basile; Bob Bendetson; Stanley Brooks; Angie Dickinson, Paul Doherty; David Page; Peter Shin; Stewart Stern; Jan Thijs; and Marice Tobias.

  The process of turning my research into a book was assisted by John Tessitore, who connected me with Joe Tessitore, who provided invaluable counsel as my agent; Anna Mageras; Gene Jarrett, Anne Austin, Francis Antonelli; Kathleen Brandes; Stephen Smith; Devik Weiner; Kevin Murphy; Stephen Deuters; Shaun Lee; Debb Foreman; Radha Ramachandran, Cecile Gaspar, and Yosihiko Sinoto. Fay Torresyap, who helped me with permissions was a true detective. My friend Sylvia Fuks trained her years of editorial experience on my work during walks and through her careful reading. Above all I am grateful to Amy Cherry, vice president and senior editor at Norton, who was the kind of editor writers dream about: tough-minded, thorough, always full of brilliant advice.

  I was also fortunate to have family and friends with a seemingly inexhaustible curiosity about Brando. My parents, Ruth and Ephraim Mizruchi, nurtured my teenage obsession, buying me Brando biographies and driving me to Brando film festivals. My mother’s open-mindedness was critical. She discouraged my seeing Last Tango in Paris at age fourteen, not because she considered the film obscene, but because she worried it would ruin my passion. I am grateful as well to my brothers and sisters-in-law, Mark and Gail Mizruchi; Dave and Anastasia Mizruchi; Sylvia Ary, and my nephew and niece, Josh and Mikayla Mizruchi. My thanks also to: Adrienne Sirken; Chaim Feingold; Chana Feingold; Paul Davidovits; Judith Taplitz; Patricia Herzog; Norman Janis; Dan Aaron; Barry Korobkin; Laura Korobkin; Stephanie Byttebier, Nick Forster, and Mike Vignola, and to the Boston University Humanities Foundation for help with the costs of permissions.

  There is no group from which I draw more strength and pleasure than my pack. My stepson, Eytan Bercovitch, supported me with his intelligence and insight, and made certain that my computer was completely backed up. My son, Sascha Bercovitch was a constant source of inspiration. With his extraordinary knowledge of Latin America and other cultures, and his experience as a journalist, he prodded me to clarify my aims and neutralize my portrait in ways that improved it immeasurably. No one contributed more to this project from start to finish than my husband Sacvan Bercovitch. He is my soul mate and role model, the person I trust more than anyone in the world and rely on for the best things. I dedicate this book to him with deep gratitude.

  APPENDIX: BRANDO’S PLAYS AND FILMS

  PLAYS

  I Remember Mama (1944–46)

  Truckline Café (1946)

  A Flag Is Born (1946)

  Candida (1946)

  Antigone (1946)

  A Streetcar Named Desire (1947–49)

  FILMS

  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)

  The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956)

  Sayonara (1957)

  The Young Lions (1958)

  The Fugitive Kind (1960)

  One-Eyed Jacks (1961)


  Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)

  The Ugly American (1963)

  Bedtime Story (1964)

  Morituri (1965)

  The Chase (1966)

  The Appaloosa (1966)

  A Countess from Hong Kong (1967)

  Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967)

  Candy (1968)

  The Night of the Following Day (1968)

  Burn! (1969)

  The Nightcomers (1972)

  The Godfather (1972)

  Last Tango in Paris (1972)

  The Missouri Breaks (1976)

  Roots: The Next Generations (1977)

  Superman (1978)

  Apocalypse Now (1979)

  The Formula (1980)

  A Dry White Season (1989)

  The Freshman (1990)

  Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992)

  Don Juan DeMarco (1995)

  The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)

  The Brave (1997)

  Free Money (1998)

  The Score (2001)

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  1Marlon Brando, with Robert Lindsey, Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me (New York: Random House, 1994), p. 84. Brando had in his library Max Picard’s The Human Face, a meditation that begins, “He who looks upon a human face is moved to the very core of his being,” and he turned down a page with a passage describing “the cinema-face.” “The cinema-face has no sound. It is dumb. The air about the cinema-face is dumb. There is altogether no space surrounding it. Only an emptiness into which some other cinema-face must at once cast itself. . . .” (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1930), pp. 3, 131.