Hollywood actors discuss Marlon Brando: “A total pig of a man”
For generations of film actors, Marlon Brando has been revered as a master of their craft, a hero in whose footsteps they hope to follow. He’s also been notorious for difficult on-set behaviour and what Superman star Christopher Reeve called “lousy publicity”.
Reeve himself, incidentally, said Brando “didn’t live up” to such bad press when he met him. He recalled how The Godfather actor came over to his chair on the set of the film they worked on together. Brando shook Reeve’s hand, said he’d heard great things, left gifts for him in his dressing room, and even took him out to dinner.
He gave Reeve two pieces of advice, one of which was never to do his own stunts. Brando recounted a story about falling from a horse while shooting one of his early movies to make his point. By tragic coincidence, Reeve would later be left paralysed for life by a fall from a horse during an equestrian event.
His sympathetic view of Brando was echoed by screen legend Marilyn Monroe, who claimed: “He’s very sweet and tender. Not at all the Stanley Kowalski rapist people think he is.” The two are also alleged to have had a brief romantic fling.
Other female actors, however, don’t have such positive recollections of Brando. His longtime lover Rita Moreno says her attempted suicide “all had to do with” her “relationship with Marlon Brando”. Moreover, she recently described how he hit her back so hard during a fight scene they were acting out for a film after their breakup that she “saw stars”. Enraged, she then let out “all the stuff” she felt towards him in the ensuing scene, which included the pain of a botched abortion he’d forced her to have.
Moreno’s story tallies with the physical harassment Sophia Loren says she experienced from Brando on a film set, too. “Don’t you ever dare do that again! Never again!” she told him, making him, in her words, “small, defenceless, almost a victim of his own notoriety.” While he didn’t touch Loren inappropriately again, she adds, “It was very difficult working with him after that.”
Multi-Oscar-winning actor Bette Davis was more magnanimous in her view of Brando’s behaviour. Although not wholly complimentary, she claimed, “He and I had much in common.” This was because, like her, Brando “had made many enemies,” in addition to being “a perfectionist” at work.
Tallulah Bankhead, who co-starred with Brando in his first stage performance back in 1947, also clashed with the actor before firing him. She recommended him for the part of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire on the basis that he was “a total pig of a man without sensitivity or grace of any kind”. Even she had to admit, though, that Brando had talent. “There were a few times when he was really magnificent,” Bankhead said. “He was a great young actor when he wanted to be.”
Among actors from younger generations who didn’t work with Brando, Viggo Mortensen has said he admired the “feminine side that came out in most of his roles”. It’s this layer to the actor, juxtaposed with a surface-level machismo, that sets him apart from Mortensen.
Sean Penn, meanwhile, has recounted the “fun trip” he took with Brando to Mexico. Brando shared acting stories and entertained both Penn and John Travolta, who had crossed the border just to meet his hero late into the evening. This backs up James Caan’s recollections of making The Godfather with Brando, who he says was “a riot” to work with.
Caan’s fellow cast member Al Pacino describes how he was “just locked” the first time he saw Marlon Brando on screen as a teenager watching On the Waterfront. “It was a revelation, a breakthrough. His acting was different from anything we’ve ever seen.”
The great Laurence Olivier concurred with this view, saying about Brando, “He’s got an astonishing gift.” Kirk Douglas, meanwhile, described how Brando suddenly “electrified the audience” during a performance in the play Truckline Cafe.
Meanwhile, Dennis Hopper, who briefly worked with Brando on Apocalypse Now, called him the greatest film actor he’d ever seen, from his teenage years up to his death. Hopper had particular praise for Brando’s technique and “magnetism” on screen.
We can leave the final word to another acting great, Jack Nicholson, who was famously intimidated by Brando’s talent while working with him. Nicholson once joked, “When Marlon dies, everyone moves up one.”
He also summarised neatly the ubiquitous reach of Brando’s influence throughout the world of film acting, in one short sentence: “We are all Brando’s children.” He was speaking for many an acting great, from Pacino to Hopper, Christopher Reeve, Viggo Mortensen, and too many others to mention.
