Last Tango in Faversham: Marlon Brando’s late-stage love affair with Kent
It’s always the most unsuspecting places that we find ourselves attached to, and even massive movie stars have soft spots for places far removed from those more glamorous, like the Hollywood Hills or the French Riviera. Sometimes, it’s Kent.
You wouldn’t think that the Academy Award-winning icon of the silver screen, Marlon Brando, would come to adore the British county, but during the later years of his life, he came to really appreciate the area, spending much of his time there. Located in the south east of England and playing host to the likes of Canterbury and Dover, it was actually the area of Faversham which was frequented by the Godfather himself.
Used to the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, despite being born in Nebraska, Brando enjoyed the complete change of scenery to be found in a small British village, which couldn’t be more different from the streets of Los Angeles or the perpetual awakeness of somewhere like New York or even London. He was a complicated figure, and by the final few decades of his career, he’d become unrecognisable compared to the man that audiences came to admire in the 1950s and 1960s.
He was once a symbol, his image as a biker in The Wild One, as seen in Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising, standing as testament to his iconic status, even back then, appearing in many classic works of cinema. Then there’s his turn as Stanley Kowalski in Elia Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire, so vicious and domineering yet so unforgettable, the image of him in a tight white t-shirt represented a new era for cinema, more daring and seductive. Alongside were also On the Waterfront, Viva Zapata!, and Sayonara, all of which show how he owned the ‘50s, a bright lightning flash of acting brilliance descending upon unknowing audiences.
But in the decades that followed, Brando’s career fluctuated, and he moved between impressive turns in the likes of The Godfather, Last Tango in Paris, and Apocalypse Now and some genuinely dire excuses for cinema, like Candy, Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, and whatever The Island of Dr Moreau was. He gained a lot of weight and suffered many health problems as he got older, and he became notoriously hard to work with, refusing to learn his lines by heart, mooning people on set, and just being an all-around unprofessional. Yet, he found solace in Kent, strangely enough, with his longtime assistant, Caroline Barrett, with whom he was in a relationship for several years, revealing his affinity for the village of Selling.
“We came to Selling intending to stay for a weekend, but Mr Brando loved it so much we stayed for nearly six months,” she said (via BBC), “He fell in love with your beautiful countryside and, in particular, Owens Court and the little lane serving it. We walked regularly down this lane, enjoying the landscapes and admiring your stunning beamed Tudor houses and farm buildings.”
Clearly, he liked how far-removed Selling was from the business of Hollywood, enjoying the quaint countryside views. In an interview with KentOnline, his friend Belinda Friouz revealed, “He had come to London around 1996, but he craved the countryside, longing to escape his problems, which included the recent suicide of his daughter, Cheyenne, who’d killed herself several years after her half-brother, Christian Brando, had shot and killed her boyfriend.
“He was having personal family problems, and people would keep asking him about it. I had, and still have, a flat on the Lees Court Estate, just outside Faversham, so I said I’d take him there. I told him how quiet it was, how nobody would bother him, and he could just sit in the garden and be at peace. So he came down with a couple of his children, and he absolutely fell in love with the area. He treasured its natural beauty and peacefulness,” she explained.
So, there you have it, and not long before Brando died in 2004, he spent much of his time in Kent, which is probably one of the last places you’d expect to find the Hollywood icon.
