Five years have passed since the world lost one of its premier actors of screen and stage. Marlon Brando died at the age of 80 on July 1, 2004, bringing to a close one of the most interesting lives and motion picture resumes ever assembled. To put it bluntly, I adored Marlon Brando and was without a doubt among his biggest fans.
I can still vividly recall my brother Cody and I laying on the floor in the living room of my parents' best friends, Louis and Maxine Wilson, in the mid-1960s, our eyes glued to their TV set watching "One Eyed Jacks." At that time we owned only one black-and-white TV and I can't remember if my infatuation with this old movie was due to Marlon Brando's acting and directing skills, or more the simple fact that the Wilsons owned a big color TV set. But I can pinpoint my love of Marlon Brando movies to that one particular night while my mom and dad were playing dominoes with Louis and Maxine Wilson.
I recall watching "The Young Lions" in glorious black-and-white at The Capitol Theater in West Columbia, Texas, when Brando portrayed a Nazi officer with his hair dyed blonde and Dean Martin and Montgomery Clift costarred as American soldiers in a World War II epic based on the popular novel by one of my favorite writers, Irwin Shaw. The Capitol was also the venue where I paid my quarter or 50 cents to watch other great Brando movies like "The Appaloosa," "Reflections In A Golden Eye" and "The Ugly American." The bulk of the Brando movie catalog would not be viewed by my eyes until the VCR came along in my young adulthood. Then I found myself renting more and more old Brando films to devour with my hungry eyes. My appetite for his movies was insatiable yet I must admit my hero put out more than his share of stinkers. "A Countess From Hong Kong," costarring Sophia Loren and directed by Charlie Chaplin, and "Candy," which costarred other great actors like Richard Burton and James Coburn, are among the worst movies ever made, in my opinion.
But for every bad film he appeared in there were many more excellent movies. Marlon Brando, who would be celebrating his 85th birthday today and mourning the recent death of his close friend Michael Jackson if Brando were still alive, was the lead actor in a number of movies that are considered by film critics of yesterday and today to be among the best ever made. Nearly every film critic ranks Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" (as well as its sequel which Brando did not appear in) in their Top 10 of all-time great movies. And not too far behind would be listed Coppola's "Apocalypse Now," "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "On The Waterfront."
Brando won his second best actor Oscar for his outstanding portrayal of Don Vito Corleone in "The Godfather," then climbed to the top of Hollywood's shit list by refusing to accept the Academy Award based primarily on the film industry's portrayal and treatment of native Americans. I personally rank "The Godfather" and "The Godfather, Part II" high in my Top 10 list, but I thought Brando topped himself the following year with his memorable starring role in "Last Tango In Paris." He was nominated for best actor again the year after winning the Oscar for "The Godfather" but did not win, partially because of the controversial nature of "Tango" and perhaps more because of his refusal to accept the Oscar the year before. Many film historians believe Brando's refusal of his "Godfather" trophy would have been more widely accepted if he himself had taken the stage at the Academy Awards ceremony and stated his reasons for turning down that year's Oscar. Instead he stayed home and sent a woman in Indian garb and headdress to read a brief statement to the stunned Oscars' crowd and mammoth TV audience. It turned out that the woman speaking for Brando wasn't even an Indian, but rather Hispanic.
Following "Last Tango In Paris," which allowed Brando to ad lib many of his lines and appeared to be therapeutic in a way for him (not to mention giving him the opportunity to grope a beautiful young French girl and get paid for it), he worked much less often. "The Missouri Breaks" came out about five years after "Tango" and proved to be the last film that he was on screen for a considerable amount of time. He doesn't show up in "Apocalypse Now" until the tail end of the film, yet he still received top billing over Martin Sheen and Robert Duvall. "Superman" proved to be very profitable for him but his on screen time as Christopher Reeve's father was minimal. "The Formula," which Brando costarred in with George C. Scott, was yet another film where the multiple Oscar winner was actually on screen a small amount of time, but the movie could boast both best actor Oscar winners who had turned down the award in above-the-title advertising.
He spent his later years primarily in seclusion in his Los Angeles mansion, where he was the neighbor of Jack Nicholson on Mulholland Drive. Bit parts in movies with Matthew Broderick, Johnny Depp, Robert DeNiro, Edward Norton and Val Kilmer accounted for the majority of his film work in his seventies. But this ultimate fan was always there with money in hand to buy tickets to these films when they would show in Lake Jackson movie theaters. Some of them I liked, others I loathed. But what could you do? It was all that was out there, besides TV interviews with Larry King and small parts in Michael Jackson music videos, to catch a glimpse of my aging, ever expanding (in girth, anyways) movie idol.
And then, when news eventually came on July 1, 2004, that Marlon Brando had died, I was crushed. His death at 80 had taken yet another of my Hollywood heroes away from me. But his memory shall never die!
Paul Newman probably came closest to equaling Marlon's "outlaw" status in Hollywood during the same era. They were practically the same age, their film careers paralleled each other in time frame, and both were able to be considered "men's men" by the public while still possessing a physical beauty that women adored. Newman's recent death was difficult to accept for me, as a huge fan of Paul's movies for the majority of my life. And while Brando and Newman never made a film together, there is an old movie available called "The Fugitive Kind" from the early 1960s that costarred Marlon and Joanne Woodward, the wife of Paul Newman. "The Fugitive Kind" was based on a Tennessee Williams' play entitled "Orpheus Descending." The movie is one of many Marlon Brando films that I own in my videotape and DVD collections, and I found it very entertaining. But "The Fugitive Kind" did not wow the film critics of the day in the same manner that Brando's prior Tennessee Williams-penned film, "A Streetcar Named Desire" did a decade earlier.
Viewing "A Streetcar Named Desire" today, I simply scratch my head in amazement that Marlon failed to win the Oscar for his stunning performance in that film. He did finally win an Oscar in 1955 for another film directed by Elia Kazan, "On The Waterfront," despite this longtime film fan being of the opinion that his better performance was in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Kazan also directed Brando in the fine film "Viva Zapata," which cast Brando as the Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata and Anthony Quinn as his brother. Poring over the many biographies I own about Marlon Brando's life and film career, the stories about the making of "Viva Zapata" were among the most entertaining. Anthony Quinn and Marlon Brando are electric on screen in the finished product of the movie, but the behind the scenes relationship between the two enigmatic young movie stars of the 1950s was totally another story. Kazan tells the story in his own autobiography of how extremely competitive Brando and Quinn were. Kazan writes that at one point during a lull in filming, Quinn excused himself to urinate on some bushes and Brando even accepted that challenge from his costar. Kazan said it was all he could do to keep from laughing out loud while watching Brando and Quinn comparing schlongs and seeing who could piss the farthest.
I think I would have to say that my favorite Marlon Brando movies are two that probably no one else would select as their top two. Sure, I loved Marlon in "The Godfather," "A Streetcar Named Desire," "On The Waterfront" and "Apocalypse Now," but my choices of favorite films starring Marlon Brando are "The Chase" and "One Eyed Jacks." Marlon is pictured in a still photograph above taken while he was filming "One Eyed Jacks," the only movie he ever directed. I love a good western movie and put John Wayne and Clint Eastwood above all others when it comes to actors who made the best westerns. But "One Eyed Jacks" is by far this unpaid film critic's choice as my favorite western.
I could write pages and pages and pages on my impressions of Marlon's directing skills in this particular film, which was made in 1959 and 1960 but did not reach movie theaters until around 1962 due to constant delays and bickering between the director/star and the film's producers on just how the finished product should look. Stick a DVD or videotape version of "One Eyed Jacks" into your VCR or DVD player some time and see if you don't agree. Brando and Karl Malden are a couple of bank robbers in the old west days who go their separate ways when Mexican rurales trap them on a mountain ledge. And boy do they ever go their separate ways. Malden escapes to attempt to find them fresh mounts while Brando stays behind to keep the rurales off of his buddy's attempt to flee. Malden eventually abandons Brando and escapes with all of the money from the bank robbery. When Brando eventually breaks out of a Sonora prison where he served five years "puking his guts out," he goes looking for Dad Longworth (Malden) to get his revenge. But when he finds him Brando is shocked to discover that his old bank robbing buddy is now the sheriff of a little town along the California coast and the stepfather of a beautiful Mexican girl. So, of course, Brando falls in love with Malden's stepdaughter and decides to let the sheriff live if Malden's stepdaughter will run away with him. But those plans fall apart when the lowlifes Brando had been keeping company with ride into town and attempt to rob the bank while Brando prepares to meet up with his Mexican beauty and leave Dad Longworth and his dreams of revenge behind. The bank robbery fails, a little girl is shot and killed by mistake, and all of the bad guys are gunned down in the street outside the bank (including Oscar winning character actor Ben Johnson in an excellent performance). Malden and his deputies capture Brando and accuse him of being in on the bank robbery, with intentions of hanging him for the murder of the little girl. Excellent movie. Watch it if you have the opportunity.
But I liked Brando in "The Chase" just as much as "One Eyed Jacks." This film was directed by Arthur Penn, who directed another favorite movie of mine, "The Legend of Bonnie and Clyde," and also directed Brando and Jack Nicholson in the western "The Missouri Breaks." "The Chase" was a novel written by Wharton, Texas, author Horton Foote, who would later win an Oscar for writing the screenplay to the Gregory Peck film "To Kill A Mockingbird." The film Marlon Brando starred in with Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, E.G. Marshall and Robert Duvall was very different from Foote's novel, but in this rare case I liked the film better than the novel. It is not very often that you will hear me saying that about a favorite novel of mine that gets the Hollywood treatment.
Marlon plays Sheriff Calder in "The Chase" and Angie Dickinson portrays his wife. They live in an unnamed Texas town where E.G. Marshall is the rich oil man who also owns the town bank and pretty much runs the show in his town. Jane Fonda is the wife of Robert Redford, who has been sent away to prison while his wife carries on with Marshall's rich playboy son, who was Redford's best friend when they were kids. Redford and a fellow convict escape from prison (much like Brando and one of his fellow inmates did in "One Eyed Jacks") and when news of the escape reaches the small Texas town where Brando attempts to keep the peace while defending himself from false allegations from the populace that he is "bought and paid for" by Marshall's character everyone awaits with great anticipation the return of Bubber Reeves to reclaim his wife and do evil things to Marshall's son Jake.
What makes Brando's performance so appealing to me in "The Chase" is the manner in which he mumbles his way through three-fourths of the movie so low-keyed and monotone, then unleashes his pentup anger with more volume and physical displays than movie viewers would have thought his character capable of. This is acting, my friends, of the highest caliber. And well worth the price of a movie rental to witness it.
I have many other favorite actors and actresses working in films today, as well as so many who have joined Marlon Brando in hollywood heaven. I mourn the losses of each of these former acting idols, like Paul Newman and John Wayne and so many others who entertained me at the area movie theaters throughout my half-century of living. Among my favorites today are several who had the luxury of working with Brando in very memorable films, like Al Pacino, James Caan and Robert Duvall in "The Godfather," Robert DeNiro and Edward Norton, Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, Jack Nicholson and Donald Sutherland, Val Kilmer and Johnny Depp.
Brando's absence from my life the past five years has been sobering and leaves me with a great sense of loss. On top of having to deal with the deaths of so many of my beloved family members in the past decade or so, I have also had to bid farewell to a multitude of celebrities who meant so much to me during my life. And among them have been a few who have been almost like family due to the hero worship I have sent their way. Everybody of my generation can probably tell you today, 46 years after it happened, exactly where they were when they learned of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I can do that too, and can also tell you exactly where I was and what I was doing when I learned of the deaths of Elvis Presley, Bruce Lee, Jim Croce, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Maurice Gibb of The Bee Gees, Bobby Hatfield of The Righteous Brothers, John Lennon and George Harrison of The Beatles, and just this past week, when we lost the King of Pop, Michael Jackson.
The death of Marlon Brando five years ago today punctuated the closing of a fan's adoration for his movie star idol as a living, breathing human being walking the same planet as me. But my adoration for his work on the silver screen, as well as all of the many wonderful humanitarian gestures he made during the Civil Rights era and standing up for native Americans, continues today. My library of Marlon Brando films on videotape and DVD is one of my prides and joy, and I often view them just to remind myself of what a truly outstanding actor Marlon was.
He could have been a contender, he cried in "On The Waterfront"; when asked what he was rebelling against in "The Wild One," Marlon asked "whaddayagot?"; and he uttered the classic lines in "The Godfather": "We'll make him an offer he can't refuse!" Memorable lines uttered by Marlon Brando in films for six decades are among the best in movie history, and just one more reason why Brando remains an entertainment icon even today . . . five years after his death.
