How James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Robert De Niro became three very different kinds of icon
There’s no set of rules in place that an actor can follow in order to become an icon, but having worked with plenty of talents who did, Elia Kazan knew better than most what it took to evolve from a star of one generation into an enduring legend who inspired the ones to come.
One of the greatest directors in Hollywood history, Kazan was equally renowned for his own technical abilities and for bringing out the best in his performers. During a career stacked sky-high with classics, he always displayed a knack for polishing rough diamonds into excellence.
He helmed features starring Gregory Peck, Jack Palance, Karl Malden, Eli Wallach, Walter Matthau, Montgomery Clift, Natalie Wood, Kirk Douglas, Faye Dunaway, Tony Curtis, Jack Nicholson, and Robert Mitchum among others, so he was keenly aware of what it took to succeed in cinema.
Having won multiple Academy Awards, Golden Globes, and Tonys, Kazan was uniquely positioned to investigate the intangibles that made actors A-listers on both stage and screen. Three of his previous collaborators went on to become towering figures in celluloid for very different reasons.
Kazan helmed James Dean’s East of Eden, took the reins on Marlon Brando’s A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and Viva Zapata!, before casting Robert De Niro in the lead of The Last Tycoon. Incredible performers one and all, but distinctly different as both people and professionals.
Dean’s career was tragically cut short at the age of only 24, but if anything, that only cemented his place in Tinseltown folklore. His three major feature film roles were united by equally strong performances, with his brief contributions to the artform more than enough to leave behind a lasting legacy.
Brando, meanwhile, was a force of nature who treated acting like nobody else before him, writing down a playbook that’s still being recited to this day. De Niro may have looked towards Brand for inspiration and influence, but he became his own man after ushering in the next step in the method evolution; completely transforming both body and mind in service of a character.
No list of the most important on-camera names the business has ever seen would feel complete without them, even if they were cut from opposing clothes. With his first-hand experience of all three, Kazan offered his insights on what not only set them apart but helped them shine as formidable presences in very different times.
“Dean represented the release of anger against parents; resentment at parents to understand,” he explained to Vanity Fair. “Jimmy was sulky. Unpleasant, actually. I didn’t like him very much.” He may not have cared for him as a person in the slightest, but he was fully aware that a massive part of the inbuilt appeal he carried was because he embodied the mood of disaffected American youth at the time he made it big.
As for Brando, he was “a rebel and a free spirit” who emerged at a time when everyone – not just him – felt inclined towards “rebelling against the bourgeois spirit of the 1940s and ’50s.” Again, much like Dean, he was the right man at the right time, epitomising an era-defining shift in social sentiments through boundary-breaking screen work.
Fittingly for someone who doesn’t even consider themselves an acting legend, Kazan pointed towards De Niro’s humility as a defining trait. “De Niro is a number of things all at once. He’s a street person and yet he’s a highly sensitive man,” the filmmaker offered. “There are a lot of people in him. He finds release and fulfilment in becoming other people. That is his pleasure, his joy. He’s found his solution for living in work.”
De Niro may not be a larger-than-life personality or a zeitgeist-seizing superstar like Dean or Brando, but that didn’t prevent him from joining them in the legendary pantheon. Kazan had gotten up close and personal with all three, but from the sound of things, he leaned much closer to Bobby being the most well-rounded than he did Jimmy or Marlon.
