The human scalp necklace: Marlon Brando’s territorial affection
They say there’s a fine line between genius and madness, something that definitely applies to Marlon Brando, based on his highly distinct combination of on-screen greatness and off-screen weirdness.
If you ask 100 people to compile a list of the greatest actors to ever grace the silver screen, then 99 of them are going to feature Brando. That’s probably going to be rounded up to an even hundred if Hollywood’s most famous thespians were quizzed, such is the impact he’s made on several generations.
A two-time Academy Award winner and eight-time nominee, Brando completely reinvented the art of cinema acting by helping to popularise the method approach. There’s a distinct line that can be drawn between the overly-performative, showy nature of American movie performances before his arrival on the scene, and the more naturalistic approach that defined the profession once he’d made his name.
On the other side of the coin, he was an extremely strange guy. Refusing to learn his lines was just one of his quirks; he earned top dollar for minimal screen time in Superman and even proposed that his character Jor-El be portrayed as a sentient bagel with his voice. He and his neighbor Jack Nicholson were notorious for pulling pranks on each other, and he occasionally allowed his dog to speak in interviews. One other memorable instance was when he treated Johnny Depp gifting him a fart machine as a spiritual experience.
The longer he spent in the spotlight, the more these types of stories became an established part of Brando’s mythology, but even by his standards, wearing a necklace crafted from human remains and then gifting it to a lover in order to establish dominance stands out as one of the strangest by far.
According to Patricia Quinn – star of The Rocky Horror Picture Show on both stage and screen as Magenta – she was the subject of the legendary star’s bespoke affections. They were romantically involved for a spell, and she took a trip to visit Brando on the set of 1966’s western The Appaloosa, where she claims to have received the unique present.
“The first thing Marlon did was take this thing from around his neck and put it around mine,” she offered. “I looked down and it was a scalp, a real human scalp.” Most people would have been freaked out by such a questionable display of feeling, but Quinn maintained that because “possession is nine-tenths of the law, he was claiming me.”
There are many ways for one person to outline their feelings for another, but a scalp necklace is hardly the first that comes to mind. Quinn didn’t seem surprised, shocked, or perturbed by the situation, either, which may indicate that it wasn’t the first time she’d experienced something so outlandish coming directly from Brando. Perhaps he was trying to mark his territory, but for whatever reason, Quinn understood exactly what it was supposed to mean, whereas most folks would probably just freak out.
