The one role Marlon Brando admitted he was “hopelessly miscast” in
Part actor, part movie star, all legend, Marlon Brando gave the world so many iconic characters, from orange-loving mob bosses to down-and-out dock workers to insane Vietnam soldiers, embodying much of what makes the cinema great.
Ask any film actor today about Brando, and they’re guaranteed to have something to say about him, and while it might not always be positive, they will definitely have an opinion.
Prior to his Hollywood career really taking off, the actor made a name for himself on the stage, his big break on Broadway coming through a production of I Remember Mama, but it wasn’t until his starring role in Truckline Cage in 1946 that people really started to take notice. Having beaten out the likes of Kirk Douglas to land the part of a damaged World War II veteran, the young icon scored rave reviews for his powerful, unique style of acting, and the play also marked the first collaboration between Brando and Elia Kazan, who would later direct him to an Oscar in On the Waterfront.
It didn’t take long for the rising star’s next job opportunity to come along. Brando was quickly offered a part in a revival of George Bernard Shaw’s Candida, where he would be playing Eugene Marchbanks, a young poet who vies for the affections of the title character, who is married to a cleric. As he wrote in his 1994 autobiography Songs My Mother Taught Me, the future legend had a mixed opinion of this period of his career.
“I enjoyed the play, which opened on my 22nd birthday,” he wrote, “Sir Cedric Hardwicke was in the cast, along with Wesley Addy and Mildred Natwick, whom I adored. Hardwicke was a Johnny One Note actor who had a single expression throughout the play and his career. He never blinked or inched.
“Once he stood onstage watching me act, muttering and shaking his head in disapproval, and one of my friends heard him say, ‘Must be sex appeal’. He was probably right because I was hopelessly miscast in the role.”
If you couldn’t tell by his wonderfully Victorian name, Cedric Hardwicke was as old school as they came. Best known for his appearances in The Ten Commandments and a couple of Hitchcock movies, the British actor was almost the complete antithesis of everything Brando represented. Given that he was literally from a different age than the renowned acting innovator, it’s hardly surprising that he had no idea what to make of his young co-star.
Brando doesn’t go into any further detail as to why he felt he was miscast. Marchbanks is supposed to be a teenage artist with a soft disposition, practically worshipping the ground Candida walks upon and displaying very little backbone when standing up to her much older husband. Perhaps Brando thought he wasn’t suited to such a meek role, as it’s unlike any of the parts that would eventually make him famous.
Call it knowing one’s own value or just plain arrogance, but Brando just didn’t think Candida was good for him, and luckily, his career-defining turn in A Streetcar Named Desire was just one year away.
