CHAPTER SEVEN. VILLAINS AND SUPERMEN
1Tom Oppenheim recalled the balloon image, interview with the author, May 7, 2010. In a radio interview, for instance, on The Tex and Jinx Show, December 12, 1955, with Marilyn Monroe, Brando quipped in response to the question “Can you define method acting?” “That’s something a million actors would like to know,” and then went on to eschew the label referring to himself as “an instinctive actor.” See the Epilogue for more on Brando and theories about acting.
2Arthur Penn Interviews, pp. 158–59.
3Ibid., pp. 104–5, 143.
4Brando mentions this in many places: his autobiography; his classes in “Lying for a Living”; and in his recorded conversation about acting in August 1983 with Michael Jackson, Brando Estate Archives.
5The full title of this last book is A Field Guide to the Birds: Giving Field Marks of All Species Found East of the Rockies, by Roger Tory Peterson. These books and others on birds, including Birds, Beasts, Blossoms and Bugs: The Nature of Japan, are in the KBL, Boxes 28, 43, 77, 78, 84, 90, 94. Brando also bookmarked a section on Vanishing Species—Cuckoos, Woodpeckers, and Whooping Cranes, with a handwritten note (writer not evident) on Bird Calls in Roger Tory Peterson’s How to Know the Birds (New York: Signet, 1957), pp. 96–97, KBL, Box 77.
6See Thomas McGuane, The Missouri Breaks: An Original Screenplay (New York: Ballantine, 1976), for pre-Brando version of Robert E. Lee Clayton and his dialogue.
7All of these quoted lines, as well as the details of character such as cross-dressing and multiple disguises, are Brando’s additions. According to Arthur Penn, Brando did most of the work developing his character during filming, when McGuane was barely present. See Arthur Penn Interviews, pp. 105, 117, 143.
8Chris Hodenfield, “Brando: The Method of His Madness,” Rolling Stone, May 20, 1976, pp. 34–39, 75, and Bruce Cook, “Candid Conversations with the Leading Man,” Crawdaddy, December 1975. Cook’s article was reproduced in the 1976 Ballantine Books edition of Thomas McGuane’s script, The Missouri Breaks: An Original Screenplay, pp. vii–xv.
9Hodenfield, “Brando,” pp. 38, 39.
10The young actor Frederic Forrest: “the guy’s incredible . . . he builds character from everything”; and makeup man Robert Dawn: Brando is “doing his own stunts: I saw him take a twenty-five foot jump out of a tree,” are both quoted by Cook in The Missouri Breaks, pp. viii–ix, xii, xiii, xxi.
11Judith Crist, “A Duel of Giants,” Saturday Review, June 12, 1976. Vincent Canby, “‘Missouri Breaks,’ Offbeat Western,” New York Times, May 20, 1976. Penelope Gilliatt, The New Yorker, May 31, 1976, pp. 100–101, noted: “Brando’s performance has a lot to do with his opulently witty sense of restoration comedy which has never been more evident than in this film,” while blaming the director for misuse of “the great Brando and the unfairly overshadowed Nicholson.” And a review in TV Guide found “a perverse joy” in the film’s strangeness, concluding that “the erratic and exotic behavior of the stars is infectious” May 22–28, 1976. For DVD reviews: David Nusair, Reel Film Reviews, November 12, 2005, noted that Brando, “sporting an Irish accent and a series of increasingly bizarre hats, delivers a hypnotically broad performance that often feels as though it’d be more at home in a completely different movie—yet there’s no denying that Brando’s off-kilter presence keeps The Missouri Breaks afloat during some of the more dull sequences.” Tom Dawson of the BBC characterized the film as an “appealingly eccentric revisionist western [that] highlights the critical importance of violence in establishing ‘civilized’ society in the American wilderness,” May 14, 2003. And Derek Adams of Time Out called it “one of the truly major Westerns of the ’70’s,” June 24, 2006.
12Brando quoted by Cook in The Missouri Breaks, p. xxv.
13All the quotations in this discussion of Superman are from Brando’s role as Jor-El and included in his personal copy of the Superman Script, in a private collection. Brando’s comments about his desire to be a scientist are familiar to many who knew him. They were recalled by Ellen Adler and Avra Douglas in interviews with the author and were repeated by Brando in his interviews with Robert Lindsey for Songs, Brando Estate Archives.
14Reeve wrote Brando on March 27, 1977, thanking him for a gift Brando sent to encourage him on his first day of filming. Letter reproduced in Christie’s catalogue, The Personal Property of Marlon Brando: Thursday 30 June 2005, p. 116.
15Betsey Sharkey, “TMI: ‘Man of Steel’ Needs Less Talk from Jor-El,” Los Angeles Times, June 24, 2013. Brando’s Superman scripts, in a private collection, display his usual revisions, the most consistent of which are cuts.
16The poem was marked in a book in Brando’s poetry collection, One Hundred and One Famous Poems: With a Prose Supplement (1958), compiled by Roy J. Cook, p. 39, in a private collection.
17“Lying for a Living” Transcripts.
18Brando’s purchase of Tetiaroa in Brando Estate Archives.
19Brando’s heavily annotated copy of Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time is in KBL, Box 45. This passage, with annotation, is on p. 112.
20Brando’s materials from the making of Apocalypse Now are full of articles and books about Vietnam that Brando read and annotated in preparing for the film, as well as his notes for Kurtz’s dialogue and ideas about the characterization, in a private collection. For Coppola on Brando in the film’s aftermath, see the Life magazine interview Coppola gave in June 1979, “The Private Apocalypse of Francis Ford Coppola.”
21Brando’s letter to Coppola, written sometime in the fall of 1978, Brando Estate Archives.
22This letter from Coppola to Brando, written during the summer before Brando’s arrival for filming in the Philippines, was in Brando’s collection of materials from the making of Apocalypse Now, in a private collection.
23Cowie, Coppola (New York: Capo, 1994), pp. 124–25.
24Ibid., p. 142.
25Brando’s copy of Soldier, by Anthony B. Herbert, Lt. Col. Ret., with James B. Wooten (New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1973), together with contemporary articles on Vietnam, and various letters from the research department, production people, are in a private collection. Included in Brando’s materials from Apocalypse Now was a letter from the film’s publicist, Debbie Fine, March 24, 1976, suggesting that Brando get in touch with Herbert, since Brando was reading the book.
26Herbert, Soldier, pp. 279, 285, 339. Brando marked all of the phrases cited.
27Ibid., pp. 240, 334. See also pp. 320, 330, which Brando marked heavily.
28He writes, for instance, above a survey of various atrocities: “odd juxtaposition of narrative details,” p. 361; and above another on civilian casualties, “WWII no flack about civil. Dresden Tokyo etc.,” p. 374. The quotations in this paragraph are from Soldier, pp. 322, 328.
29Soldier, p. 396.
30Ibid., p. 378.
31Ibid., pp. 215–16.
32“In fact, the whole damned U.S. Army in Vietnam was crazy,” writes Herbert in a passage Brando starred and marked. “The major leadership problem in Vietnam was the generals, and the rest of the senior officers’ corps,” Soldier, p. 240. Apocalypse Now, second revision of the second draft, dated June 25, 1979, collection of Mike Medavoy.
33Willard on Kurtz—“West Point, top of his class . . . being groomed for one of the top slots in the corporation”—is from the second revision of the second draft of the Apocalypse Now script, June 22, 1979, Medavoy collection. The parallel description of Herbert—“proficiency in every possible military skill . . . most decorated enlisted man of the Korean War”—is from Soldier, book jacket.
34Brando seems also to have drawn on previous films for his lines in Apocalypse. There are echoes, for instance, of a confrontation at a concentration camp from The Young Lions (1958); a denunciation of reality from Last Tango in Paris (1972); and a strategy session on outwitting guerrillas from Burn! (1969).
35Brando’s books on religion, anthropology, and spirituality are for the most part in KBL. Hi
s many copies of Eliot’s poetry are in another private collection. Brando’s other Bibles and more of his books on religion are in two additional private collections.
36The subtitle of this book by John Lash is “The Complete Guide to Spiritual Pathfinding,” 1990. Brando referred to Hoffer’s True Believer, a book he owned in multiples, in recordings of his houseboat conversations with Coppola, Brando Estate Archives.
37Brando in Lindsey Interviews. See also Songs, pp. 428–31.
38He mentioned it, for instance, to Lawrence Grobel. See Conversations with Brando, p. 100.
39Brando quotes Conrad in Songs, p. 430.
40Apocalypse Now script, second revision of second draft, June 22, 1979, Medavoy collection.
41Brando: Lindsey interviews, where he also talked at length about his dismay over Coppola’s public statements about his work on the film.
42Brando marked passages in his two separate copies of Arendt’s On Violence—one of them excerpted as a section of her Crises of the Republic. He marked the passage on guerrilla warfare in On Violence (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970), p. 10. The other quotations in this paragraph are from passages Brando marked in his copy of Crises of the Republic (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1972), pp. 15, 2.
43Tapes of Brando’s speeches for Kurtz, which were not included in the film, are in Brando Estate Archives. These tapes of Brando’s rich monologues for Kurtz amount to about two hours.
44Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York: Viking, 1975), p. 127.
45Unless otherwise stipulated, all quotes from Apocalypse Now are from the 1979 film version of Kurtz’s scenes.
46Frank Rich, “Cinema: The Making of a Quagmire,” Time, August 27, 1979; Vincent Canby, New York Times, August 15, 1979; Champlin is quoted in Cowie, Coppola, p. 131; Dale Pollock, Variety, May 12, 1979; Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, June 1, 1979.
47Chicago Sun-Times, December 23, 1980; New York Times, December 19, 1980.
48Brando’s August 5, 1987, letter to Mario Kassar of Carolco Pictures, turning down the role of “Soviet Colonel Zaysen” and spelling out his hopes that “raproachment” is forthcoming, as well as his disdain for the Soviet Union’s “oppressive policies,” is in the Brando Estate Archives.
49Miko Brando, interviews with the author, September 21 and 23, 2012, and June 16, 2013.
50Files on Brando’s financial support of Christian, as well as letters he wrote to his son over the years, Brando Estate Archives.
51Dodie enrolled in Yale University’s summer school at the Center for Alcohol Studies, which was run by Marty Mann, during the summer of 1947. See the Marty Mann Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library. Some of these details are from June Beechly interview with Brando, Tokyo, Japan, when she visited him during on-location filming of Sayonara in the spring of 1957, audiotape, Brando Estate Archives.
52G. L. Harrington is credited by William Glasser as his “mentor” and quoted in Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom (New York: Harper Perennial, 1999), p. 5.
53Brando told Robert Lindsey (Lindsey Interviews, Brando Estate Archives): “I had a lot of affairs, far too many affairs to describe me as a perfectly normal, reasonable, intelligent person.”
54Avra Douglas, interviews with the author; Miko Brando, interviews with the author. This image of Brando as “never in a hurry” is repeated by a Pakistani girlfriend in her Notes for MB Autobiography, which is discussed in the Epilogue. She writes: “Marlon you have a beautiful habit which is that you are never in a hurry. When we meet or when you telephone you have all the time in the world and it seems that you want it to continue forever,” in Brando Estate Archives.
55Brando’s views of how Harrington helped him are articulated throughout the Lindsey interviews. He made similar points in an interview on Saturday Night with Connie Chung, October 7, 1989. He also took personality tests, one in particular at the end of Carol Pearson’s The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By (1989), where Brando’s selections classified him as the “Wanderer” and the “Magician” types and reflected his high self-regard and sense of purpose.
56Brando owned dozens of books about homebuilding and home repair and was especially attached to the Time-Life series, with specific books on advanced wiring, cabins and cottages, advanced wood-working, etc. Among his many philosophical books on being at home in the universe, he had Roderic Gorney’s The Human Agenda: How to Be at Home in the Universe without Magic (1979), which he annotated.
57Lindsey Interviews.
58Ibid.
59Michael Jackson conversation, Brando Estate Archives. All the quotations and points in the paragraph above are drawn from it.
60David Thomson, who edited the book (published in 2005) and wrote an afterword for it, thought Brando’s contributions were limited, but he didn’t have access to the Brando Estate Archives with the considerable evidence of Brando’s extensive work on the project, nor did he have access to Brando’s library and reading material.
61Brando’s heavily annotated copy of Snowblind, KBL, Box 24.
62Tape of Brando discussing Jericho, in possession of Quincy Jones. Quincy Jones, interviews with the author, July 23, 2012, and June 17, 2013.
63Fax to Brando regarding “location summary” for Jericho, December 3, 1987, Brando Estate Archives. People close to the production suspect that Brando himself pulled the plug.
64Multiple versions of all of these scripts, with Brando’s transcribed ideas and notes, and handwritten revisions, are in Brando Estate Archives.
65The 1993 Fan-Tan screenplay, labeled “Rough Draft” with Brando’s annotations throughout, was dated September 30, 1993. Brando, apparently dissatisfied with this version, took up the prospect again in 1998 with the help of the professional screenwriter with whom he had enjoyed working on The Nightcomers. Letter from Michael Hastings to Brando, August 19, 1998, with eight pages of notes on a possible adaptation.
66Glenn Collins, “A Black Director Views Apartheid,” New York Times, September 25, 1989. Director Euzhan Palcy says in this interview that she worried about working with Brando due to reports that he could be difficult with directors, but she found him easy to work with.
67See reviews by Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, September 22, 1989; Rita Kempley, Washington Post, September 22, 1989; Peter Travers, Rolling Stone, September 20, 1989. Brando’s three-page letter to the producers of A Dry White Season is in Brando Estate Archives. Brando also describes the episode in Lindsey Interviews and in Songs, pp. 435–39. He was nominated for an Academy Award, BAFTA, New York Film Critics Award, Golden Globe, Political Film Society, and Tokyo International Film Festival Award, all for Best Supporting Actor, and won an award in Tokyo.
68See, for example, the interview Brando gave the Philadelphia Daily News on July 1, 1962, p. 32, “Brando Sharpening Up for a Comedy Role,” by Joseph Finnigan. “Marlon Brando, a man not often given to smiling in pictures unless they are tinged with tragedy, is sharpening his wit for a movie comedy debut.” Referring to Teahouse of the August Moon, Brando commented that it “was supposed to be a comedy but it turned out to be ‘Anthony Adverse.’” He concluded, “I’m not a funny man and can’t do gags. . . . But there is some kind of comedy I could do as long as it’s not mugging. That’s comedy where the situation contains the humor. It’s farce, something a little larger than life.”
69Brando describes his experiences watching Howard’s routines in New York in Lindsey Interviews and Grobel, Conversations with Brando, pp. 82–83. Howard’s last Broadway show was Sallie (1948), about the comedic trials of refugee Russian nobles working as restaurant help. Of those who never received their due because they died before the television era, he laid “claim to be the king of Broadway’s comedians.” Frank Cullen, Vaudeville, Old and New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America, vol. 1 (New York: Psychology Press, 2007), pp. 535–38.
70May Britt describes the incident with Brando at dinner in Brando, TCM Documentary, 2007.
71Frances B
rando Loving, Notes for MB Autobiography, Brando Estate Archives.
72David Niven’s letter of September 20, 1963, Brando Estate Archives.
73Publicity materials for The Freshman, November 7, 1989, Brando Estate Archives.
74Lindsey Interviews and Songs, pp. 420–22.
75The tapes of Brando’s extended critique of Lillian Hellman’s script for The Chase (1966), discussed at length in chapter 5, are in the Brando Estate Archives.
76Ellen Adler even sent a postcard to one of Brando’s white cats, addressed to “a fortunate resident of sunny California, from a snowbound white cat in Manhattan.”
77This is confirmed by letters in Brando Estate Archives.
78Brando recounted his struggles with the Salkinds in Lindsey Interviews and in Songs, pp. 440–42. Brando’s materials on the film, in a private collection, also include many articles on Torquemada and the Inquisition, as well as notes to the producers with his ideas for script changes.
79Avra Douglas, interviews with the author, February 29–March 4, June 18 and 19, 2012, and June 23 and 24, 2013. She recalled as well how much time Brando spent with Ilya Salkind, reconceptualizing and rewriting the script to accord with the history he knew.
80The letter is in a private collection. Brando gave an interview to Variety, April 21, 1992, just before the release of Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, reiterating his outrage about the inaccurate portrayal of Columbus and the indigenous inhabitants.
81Peter Rainer, Los Angeles Times, August 24, 1992.
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