Brando's Smile: His Life, Thought, and Work
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2Marlon Brando, quoted in Helen Dudar, with Peter J. McElroy and Joseph Kahn, “Marlon Brando: Hollywood’s Bad Boy?” New York Post, 1955, p. 48. According to Dudar, Brando’s comment dates from “when he was making his fourth film,” Julius Caesar, in 1953. Article in Brando Estate Archives.
3Martin Asinof, interview with the author, June 5, 2013, with follow-ups July and August 2013.
4Recounted by Ellen Adler, interview with the author, February 15, April 22, May 7, December 17, 2010.
5Brando’s remarkable library confirms a comment made in a documentary interview by his son Teihotu, who lives in Tahiti: “If he hadn’t been an actor, he might have been a professor . . . of something.” Imagine . . . Brando, Stella Adler’s Studio, December 2, 2008.
6Merkin’s New York Times Magazine obituary of Brando, December 26, 2004, whose title, “Wild One,” says it all, reinstates the usual clichés despite the qualifications (“of course,” “in some ways,” “quite”). “Brando was more than a male pinup, of course, but in some ways his complex emotional articulation—his eloquently tongue-tied mixture of truculence and sensitivity—was icing on the beefcake.” He was, she concludes, “a man who never quite escaped his own raw presence.” The same is true of Camille Paglia’s “Sullen Hero,” New York Times Book Review, July 21, 1991, p. 10.
7Peter Manso, Brando: The Biography (New York: Hyperion, 1994), p. 308.
8Arendt explained in a letter to Gershom Scholem about the Eichmann controversy: “What confuses you is that my arguments and my approach are different from what you are used to; in other words, the trouble is that I am independent. By this I mean, on the one hand, that I do not belong to any organisation and always speak only for myself, and on the other hand, that I have great confidence in Lessing’s selbstdenken, for which, I think, no ideology, no public opinion, and no ‘convictions’ can ever be a substitute.” Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings, edited by Jerome Kohn and Ron H. Feldman (New York: Schocken, 2007), p. xlv.
9This has been attributed to Reb Nahman, but an exact reference is not available. See Arthur Green, Tormented Master: A Life of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1979).
10Brando in Songs, p. 146.
11Recalled by Tom Oppenheim, interview with the author, May 7, 2010.
12Ellen Adler, interviews with the author.
13Quoted in Manso, p. 505.
14Truman Capote, “The Duke in His Domain,” The New Yorker, November 9, 1957, p. 79.
15The Maysles film on the Beatles tour of the United States was called What’s Happening: The Beatles in the U.S.A.; Ellen Adler, interviews with the author.
16Albert and David Maysles, Meet Marlon Brando, 1966.
17This was how Brando signed himself or was addressed in letters, respectively, from Johnny Depp, May 5, 1997; and to Sean Penn, August 24, 1986; and to President Bill Clinton, December 1, 2001, in the 1990s and later. Letters in Brando Estate Archives and in a private collection.
18The playbills from I Remember Mama (1944), Candida (1946), and A Flag Is Born (1946) are reproduced in the Christie’s catalogue, The Personal Property of Marlon Brando: Thursday 30 June 2005, p. 193. The parody interviews, featuring some of Brando’s famous characters, including Don Corleone, are in the Brando Estate Archives. They are discussed in chapter 6.
19Jocelyn Brando, July 5, 2004.
20Brando, quoted in Manso, p. 685.
21Quincy Jones recalled going to jazz clubs with Brando in Manhattan and LA, as well as Brando’s favorite phrase, interviews with the author, July 23, 2012, and June 17, 2013.
22The note, dated July 6, 1965, was not signed but was in his materials under “Annotated Scripts from The Chase,” in a private collection.
23This list of composers for Brando theater and film scores includes Kurt Weill, Leonard Bernstein, Alex North, Hugo Friedhofer, Dave Grusin, Nino Rota, and Gato Barbieri. Brando regularly gave Sketches of Spain as a gift to girlfriends and had many copies. Ellen Adler interviews, and the sixty-page “memoir” by the Pakistani college student Brando dated for two years, written at his request for his autobiography, Brando Estate Archives. There are also logs in the archives of Brando’s music collection. Many friends recall his love for Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain, including Quincy Jones. Quincy Jones, interviews with the author.
24D’Arcy McNickle, The Indian Tribes of the United States: Ethnic and Cultural Survival (New York: Oxford University Press, under the auspices of the Institute of Race Relations, London, 1962), p. 5. Brando’s annotated copy of McNickle’s book is in a private collection. Other Brando marginalia, his annotations on Marilyn Ferguson’s discussions of uniquely powerful minds and perceptual states in her The Brain Revolution (notes on chapter 20, “The Anatomy of Creativity”), and the “self-tests” he took in selected psychology books (Khochinskiy Brando Library [hereafter, KBL], Boxes 32 and 22), suggest a healthy regard for his own abilities, despite messages (from others) and testimonies (on his part) to the contrary. Ferguson books, private collection. Additional psychology books are in KBL, Boxes 22 and 32.
25Ellen Adler recalled a small dinner at Brando’s Fifty-Seventh Street apartment in New York, where she, her mother Stella, and Margaret Mead were the guests, Ellen Adler, interviews with the author.
26October 14, 1996, interview on the set of The Brave (1997), conducted in French and translated into English. The French and English versions of the interview, apparently never published, are in a private collection.
27According to Christie’s curators, these were organized according to Brando’s films. Helen Hall, interview with the author, June 16, 2011. His materials from Apocalypse Now, for example, included the books and articles Brando was reading for the film, photographs from the set, film stills, additional reading materials, telegrams and letters about the film and received during filming, etc. For instance, a telegram of September 23, 1976, from Brando’s assistant informs him that “LA animal health services” had come to the house that day because his dog “Rufus . . . bit a jogger on Mulholland.” There was also a detailed letter of September 24, 1976, to Brando about fish-farming equipment, presumably for his Tahiti island development. These materials are in a private collection.
28Curators and auctioneers at the Christie’s sale on June 30, 2005, remarked that they had never seen a sale of an actor’s property that was attended by so many fellow actors. Helen Hall, interview with the author; Cathy Elkies, interview with the author, May 17, 2011.
29“Obama: Godfather, McCain: Viva Zapata,” “For all that divides them, it seems, Brando unites them,” according to the Chicago Tribune, September 23, 2008, in an article citing the favorite actors and films of the 2008 presidential candidates.
30These quoted lines are spoken, respectively, by Brando characters Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls (1955) and Sheriff Calder in The Chase (1966).
31According to Jay Kanter, who was Brando’s agent for most of his career, the actor was drawn to characters with English accents, and he especially loved to play lawyers. Jay Kanter, interview with the author, April 21, 2011.
32See Wallace’s wonderful riff on Brando in Infinite Jest (New York: Little, Brown, 1996), pp. 157–58.
33Murphy quoted in Manso, p. 341.
34From Stella Adler, The Art of Acting (New York: Applause, 2000), pp. 78, 79.
35See interviews with Robert Duvall and Arthur Penn in Brando, TCM Documentary, 2007.
36Robert Duvall interview in Brando, TCM Documentary, 2007.
37Constantin Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (New York: Routledge, 1948), pp. 149–50.
38Gitta Parker, a journalist who wrote “A thousand talents, A thousand faces, A thousand moods . . . This is Brando,” noticed Stanislavski’s My Life in Art and The Collected Works of William Faulkner in Brando’s dressing room during filming of Désirée, summer 1954.
39Capote, “Duke in His Domain,” p. 60. It’s also worth noting that Brando himself liked to
confuse people, sometimes listing his eyes as “hazel” on licenses. Mostly, however, he confirmed their blue-gray color, as did friends and family.
40The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898–1918, translation authorized by Felix Klee (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), p. 173.
41Notes, “Research for Acting Lessons Project, August 28, 2001,” for the acting classes Brando called “Lying for a Living,” Brando Estate Archives (hereafter, “Lying for a Living” Transcripts). The classes are discussed in the Epilogue.
42Brando: in Songs, p. 212; in Lindsey Interviews; and in “Lying for a Living” Transcripts, Brando Estate Archives. (Robert Lindsey’s interviews with Brando for Songs My Mother Taught Me are in the Brando Estate Archives and listed hereafter as Lindsey Interviews.)
43Christie’s curators Cathy Elkies and Helen Hall, who prepared Brando’s papers and scripts for public sale, recounted in interviews with the author how carefully they were organized. Brando’s assistants noted his passion for ordering his books and papers. This was confirmed by his assistant, Avra Douglas, who is now a Brando Estate executor, in interviews with the author, February 29–March 4, June 18 and 19, 2012, and June 23 and 24, 2013.
44Shane Brando, interview with the author, March 6, 2012.
45The Letters of Emily Dickinson, vols. I–III, edited by Thomas H. Johnson and Theodora Ward (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), p. 899.
46Brando in Songs, pp. 144, 145.
47Ibid., p. 145.
48See, for example, Manso, Brando; Richard Schickel, Brando: A Life in Our Times (London: Pavilion, 1991); and Stefan Kanfer, Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando (New York: Knopf, 2008).
49It was fortunate, too, that the Brando Estate chose Christie’s for its estate sale, for the auction house keeps records worthy of a research archive. When I told curators about my project in the spring of 2010, they allowed me to draft individual letters to anonymous buyers of lots with valuable research material, which curators forwarded on my behalf. Fifty-three out of fifty-seven of these buyers responded and provided access to their materials.
50His book buying began in New York, if not sooner. A fellow acting student from this time recalls his purchases of Modern Library editions of Freud, Krafft-Ebing, and Dostoevsky (Manso, Brando, p. 113).
51Cathy Elkies was the first to enter the house, and Helen Hall worked extensively on the collection. Related in interviews with the author.
52The List of Books around Marlon’s Bed included thirty-five books, Brando Estate Archives.
53Harold Clurman, who directed Brando in Truckline Café, was hardly an unqualified fan of the actor’s. But he noted in his memoir that “Brando is not only acutely perceptive, but articulate as well. He has a good ear, a feeling for language. . . . Abroad he quickly picks up foreign tongues and intonations. He ‘assimilates’ people with his whole body. His verbal reactions to people are brief, cryptic, and astonishingly perspicacious.” Clurman, All People Are Famous: Instead of an Autobiography (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1974), pp. 259–60.
54James Kritzeck, Anthology of Islamic Literature: From the Rise of Islam to Modern Times (New York: Mentor Books, 1966), KBL, Box 85.
55Brando told Lawrence Grobel in their interview how much he enjoyed Thomas’s Lives of a Cell. Grobel Interview Transcripts, Brando Estate Archives (hereafter, Grobel Interviews). Thomas’s books are in KBL, Boxes 49, 24, and 71.
56Jay Kanter recalled that Brando was the first person he knew in Hollywood with a personal computer, that he owned two or three of the unwieldy machines and updated constantly as the quality of computers progressed. Jay Kanter, interview with the author.
57KBL, Boxes 36, 47, and 48. The collection looks like that of a college professor, though identifying the academic specialization would be challenging. Typical of his holdings is the Columbia University Press anthropology catalog, 1982–1983, addressed to “Marlon Brando, 12900 Mulholland Dr. . . .”
58KBL, Box 88. The atoll was a veritable coconut plantation, and Brando was keen to make use of this bountiful resource. Brando heavily annotated a book about coconut wood, including details on the best types of chain saws for cutting it (“tungsten carbide tipped circular saws”), the products made from it (from boards to chess sets), and the types of insects and animals to which it was vulnerable.
59KBL, Box 25.
60Brando’s scripts for One-Eyed Jacks, Herrick Library, Beverly Hills, and in a private collection.
61Manso, for example, reports that Brando was reading and visiting libraries by the age of six, and that he would cut high school and spend the day reading classics (Eliot, Shakespeare, books on religion) in his mother’s library. At Shattuck Military Academy, which he entered at sixteen, Brando was reading Schopenhauer, Kant, and Freud, among others. Acquaintances in Paris from 1949 recall the young Brando as “a voracious reader,” Manso, Brando, pp. 19, 40, 74–75, 273. But Manso loses interest in Brando’s reading after 1949 and does not connect the habit to the performances.
62Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, vol. 1: Thinking (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1978).
63Notes for MB Autobiography, Brando Estate Archives. Brando wrote his own notes for his autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me, but he also solicited notes from close friends and family. These materials are in the Brando Estate Archives. (They are cited hereafter as [author’s name], Notes for MB Autobiography.)
CHAPTER ONE. LESSONS OF THE MIDWEST
1Brando recalls his paternal grandfather once in Songs, p. 8. Details on Marlon Brando Sr.’s family are from a Census quoted in a private genealogy done for Brando in 1995 by Marsha S. Dennis, a self-described “fan” of the actor’s and professional genealogist at the Genealogical and General Research Records Office in New York City. Letter of July 12, 1995, and Genealogy in Brando Estate Archives.
2Brando’s two youngest sons, born in 1992 and 1994, respectively, were named Myles Jonathan Brando and Timothy Gahan Brando.
3Brando taped an interview with his great-aunt June Beechly in 1957 when she visited him in Japan during filming of Sayonara. All subsequent quotations from Beechly in the paragraphs that follow are from this interview, audiotape in Brando Estate Archives.
4Frances Brando Loving refers to “our mother’s handsome amateur actor father, Will Pennebaker, [who] died of tuberculosis when she was two. We have some wonderful pictures of him looking very like Bud as a young man.” Notes for MB Autobiography, Brando Estate Archives.
5This history is recounted in the interview Brando taped with his great-aunt June Beechly in Japan. It is detailed as well by Brando’s sisters Jocelyn (RG1755: AM Nebraskans in Film Project, Series 4 Interviews, Folder 1, Jocelyn Brando, May 4, 1981) and Frances (RG1755: AM Nebraskans in Film Project, Series 4 Interviews, Folder 2, Frances Brando Loving, May 4, 1981), and in the 1995 Genealogy by Marsha Dennis. Additional details in a History of Nebraska entry on Myles Gahan, Brando Estate Archives, as well as Manso, Brando, pp. 1–5.
6Frances Brando Loving refers to this conviction, which she shared with her sister Jocelyn, Notes for MB Autobiography, Brando Estate Archives.
7This is Brando’s characterization, Songs, p. 21.
8Details on Brando’s tactile sense were recounted in Ellen Adler, interviews with the author, February 15, April 22, May 7, and December 17, 2010; and Carmelita Pope, interview with the author, February 3, 2012. For books on religion, see especially KBL, Boxes 78, 10, and 17.
9He marks, for instance, a paragraph in Barbara Brown’s Stress and the Art of Biofeedback, challenging the medical orthodoxy that “the body’s vital functions” are “beyond the control of mind” (New York: Bantam, 1977), p. 5 (KBL, Box 10), and in Elmer and Alyce Green’s Beyond Biofeedback, a dictum familiar to Christian Science: “Our bodies tend to do what they are told if we know how to tell them” (New York: Delacorte Press, 1977), p. 2 (KBL, Box 17). Brando read deeply on these issues of autogenic training, biofeedback, and mental telepathy.
10Fran
ces Brando Loving, Notes for MB Autobiography, Brando Estate Archives.
11Jocelyn Brando, Frances Brando Loving, Notes for MB Autobiography, Brando Estate Archives.
12Brando recalled this incident with Pat in Lindsey Interviews, Brando Estate Archives. Martin Asinof related the story about Toto and the roast in interview with the author, June 5, 2013, with follow-ups in July and August 2013.
13Jocelyn Brando, Nebraskans in Film Project.
14Jocelyn Brando, Notes for MB Autobiography.
15See reviews in Omaha World-Herald, October 26, 1926, and May 11, 1927. These carefully preserved materials from Dodie Brando’s acting career are in the Brando Estate Archives. Jocelyn Brando, quoted in RG1755: AM Nebraskans in Film Project Series 4 Interviews, Folder 1, Jocelyn Brando, May 4, 1981.
16“Brandos Put Life in the Old Block,” Frances Brando Loving, North Shore, July 1979. Ellen Adler recalled Donat as a favorite of Brando’s from the start of his time in Manhattan, interviews with the author.
17The walking sticks were sold as part of the Christie’s sale in 2005 and pictured in the Christie’s catalogue, The Personal Property of Marlon Brando: Thursday 30 June 2005, pp. 24–25.
18Mildred Milar recalled being “Brando’s 4th grade teacher at Lincoln School,” in “Evanston trivia: Did you know that Marlon Brando once lived on Judson Avenue?” by Bob Seidenberg, Evanston Review (March/April 1979).
19See Songs, pp. 5–12, 19, for these details on childhood. Frances’s inscription was on Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching, KBL, Box 93.
20The record of Dodie’s participation at the Yale Summer School is in the Marty Mann Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library, Syracuse, NY.
21These details on Evanston are from two pieces from local papers: “Evanston Trivia,” by Bob Seidenberg, and Frances Brando Loving, “Brandos Put Life in the Old Block.”
22Frances Brando Loving, Notes for MB Autobiography, Brando Estate Archives.