The iconic Marlon Brando role almost played by his arch-nemesis: “I had to change it”
When he could be arsed, Marlon Brando was untouchable. Sadly, the longer his career wore on, the less he could be arsed. On the plus side, his legacy was already secured long before then, with the actor cemented as an all-time great by the end of the 1950s.
All it really took was two performances, which is even more impressive. Anyone who needs a crash course in who Brando was, what he brought to cinema, or the reasons why he’s become an inspiration for generations of aspiring stars hoping to follow in his footsteps only really needs to watch A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront to get the picture.
Those two performances are among the most transformative ever committed to film and captured Brando’s essence. He was unlike anything Hollywood had seen before, arriving like a breath of fresh air into an industry where the biggest names tended to be more broad and showy in their performances.
It’s impossible to contemplate anyone else playing Terry Malloy in Eliza Kazan’s masterpiece because it literally shifted the paradigm of an entire profession. And yet, not only did Brando initially turn it down, but the man who became his arch-nemesis was brought in as his replacement.
“When I first showed my screenplay for On the Waterfront to Kazan, his first thought was, ‘Perfect for Brando,’ and he told me to send it to him,” Budd Schulberg told Vanity Fair. “A week later, it came back rejected. Having been in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and trained in its school for undercover agents, I used some standard anti-surveillance tricks to judge whether Marlon had actually read the script.”
After mounting his investigation, Schulberg reached the conclusion that he had not. With the writer and filmmaker’s first choice declining the offer, they moved on to their next candidate: Frank Sinatra. “Kazan figured Frank had the chops to do it,” the scribe explained, necessitating some rewrites to tailor the role away from Brando and more in line with ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’.
Ironically, the feud between Brando and Sinatra would explode into life the year after On the Waterfront was released when they co-starred in Guys and Dolls and butted heads at every turn. The latter was all set to inherit the part that helped turn the former into a superstar until one plucky producer refused to take no for an answer.
According to Schulberg, Sam Spiegel was “fixated on the idea of wooing Brando back.” After giving him the hard sell, he relented and agreed to play Molloy, which led to an awkward conversation with Sinatra. “When Marlon said yes, Spiegel had the sulfuric Sinatra to deal with,” he said. “But Sam somehow weaselled out of it, and we got ready for Marlon.”
It was a performance that reshaped the complexion of acting, and it’s not an exaggeration to say the course of Hollywood history would be unrecognisable today had Sinatra headlined On the Waterfront at Brando’s expense.
