The one movie Marlon Brando happily made for free: “Do you think I’m doing it for the money?”
Throughout his life and career, Marlon Brando was an activist as much as an actor. His starring roles in Hollywood thrilled millions worldwide and paid him handsomely, but right from the beginning, he was determined to give himself and his money to the social and political causes he felt were worthy. As a 23-year-old, he joined the American League for a Free Palestine, and as his fame grew, he became one of the most prominent famous voices in the Civil Rights movement and the fight for Native American rights. Brando also campaigned against apartheid – and this led to him happily making one of his movies for free.
In 1983, Martinique-born filmmaker Euzhan Palcy released Sugar Cane Alley, a searing film about the plight of the rural Black people who worked the sugar cane fields in her homeland in the 1930s. The film was based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Joseph Zobel that Palcy read when she was only 12. Even at that young age, she knew she wanted to turn the book into a film, despite the fact there were no female filmmakers in her native land at the time. Against all the odds, though, Palcy managed to realise her dream before she turned 25 – and it got the attention of Hollywood.
In 2024, she told BFI, “Robert Redford asked me to be the filmmaker representing France at the Screenwriters Lab of the Sundance Film Festival in 1983. That changed my life. They screened Sugar Cane Alley ten times. A lot of people came. Paul Newman, Karl Malden and Mike Nichols were all there.” In truth, the fact that Palcy’s movie was chosen as the French entry was ironic, as she struggled to get funding in France for the film due to its subject matter of colonialism, slavery, and racism.
Suddenly, Palcy saw a way into the Hollywood system, and she knew what film she wanted to make with Tinseltown’s resources. She secured the option to André Brink’s novel A Dry White Season, an anti-apartheid story set in South Africa in 1976. It transpired that Brink, who taught English at Cape Town University, had screened Sugar Cane Alley for his students and had even rejected several offers from American producers for his novel because he had his heart set on Palcy adapting it.
Amazingly, Palcy went undercover in South Africa to research the abhorrent treatment Black people were subjected to in the Soweto township. As a light-skinned Black woman, she was able to pose as a singer, and was given a pass for a Whites-only hotel. She explained, “Brink couldn’t describe the torture of Black people in the book because he never went to Soweto. I wanted to know exactly what they did so I could show it on screen. It was tough but necessary.”
When A Dry White Season went into production, Palcy became the first Black female director to helm a film at a major Hollywood studio. She assembled a powerhouse cast that included North American actors like Donald Sutherland and Susan Sarandon. Still, her biggest coup was undoubtedly getting Brando to make his first film in nine years.
The young director always envisioned Brando as the anti-apartheid lawyer Ian McKenzie because of his real-life commitment to the cause and pursued him despite his reputation for difficult behaviour. Palcy revealed, “He was an activist. I knew that he was a monster as an actor and as a human being, and he would drive his directors crazy. But I didn’t care.”
After approaching Brando’s agent, Palcy was on a phone call with the Godfather icon a few weeks later. She told him she wanted to organise a private screening of Sugar Cane Alley for him because that would tell him everything he needed to know about her. She said, “He watched the film and was moved to tears.” Three days after he read the screenplay for A Dry White Season, he called Palcy and told her he wanted to do the movie. In fact, he specifically said, “I want to leave my footprint in the South African soil”
Palcy was excited to have the legendary actor on board, but there was an elephant in the room. She sheepishly told him that the movie had a comparatively small budget because Hollywood feared making such an overtly political film. Therefore, his salary would have to be adjusted accordingly. To her delight, Brando exclaimed, “Do you think I’m doing it for the money? You must be kidding. I’ll do it for free.”
Brando was a man of his word and took no salary for the film. Instead, he insisted that any fee he would have been paid should instead go to five anti-apartheid associations in South Africa. His passion for the material shone through in the film, too, as his performance landed him an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Supporting Actor’.
As for Palcy, the film still brings her to tears when she watches it. She admitted, “Every time I see it, I take a step back and say I can’t believe I was able to make that movie. I put all my life and everything into it. I was ready to die for it.”
