The actor who hated every second of working with the “absolutely ridiculous” Marlon Brando
A rule of thumb for good colleague relations is not to talk shit about them in the press. However, after working with Marlon Brando on one infamous movie, his co-star couldn’t keep the rage in.
By 1962, Brando was just about as famous as you can get. It wasn’t just that he’d caught attention on Broadway or wowed in early roles like Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront, but by this point, Brando’s entire presence in culture felt era-defining. He was the true star of a new era in cinema, and alongside people like James Dean, he was redefining what a leading man looked like.
Brando was also redefining how a leading man behaved both on and off screen. He was afraid of taking on challenging roles guided by heightened emotions. He was already walking a very different path from the men of the era before, where characters were more easily archetyped into good guys, bad guys and funny guys. Instead, Brando was interested in nuanced characters where cruelty had a more emotional motivation to it, and he truly studied and got into the heart of his roles to understand how and why they’d act the way they did, informing the way the actor would perform it.
By 1962, that had made his name – and he knew it. Arguably, that was his downfall as a classic case of ego seemed to hit the performer. At 36 years old and as one of the biggest names in Hollywood, most would simply allow Brando some bad or diva-ish behaviour. However, his co-star for Mutiny on the Bounty was well-known for not letting people get away with that.
“The man is unprofessional and absolutely ridiculous,” Trevor Howard declared to a British reporter. Having played Captain William Bligh, opposite Brando’s 1st Lt Fletcher Christian, the pair had just worked incredibly close together on the movie. But as the film was dogged by issues caused by Brando, Howard made it clear that the experience hadn’t been a good one.
The process of making the movie was a long one. Before even the cast had signed on, the team had been trying to get it off the ground, then even when things seemed ready to go ahead, it was slow and messy.
There really only needs to be one fact told to exemplify the kind of chaos going on during the making of this movie. Through the duration of its filming, Brando married not one, but two of his co-stars. First, he caused havoc by marrying Movita Castaneda and causing her to be cut, and then later recast after Brando got her pregnant, she had their child, and then he demanded she be brought back onto set.
Then, to play Maimiti, his love interest, Brando himself personally went to Tahiti, found a local girl he fancied, and cast her. In 1962, the year the movie came out, they married. In 1972, they divorced. So it seems like to Brando, who even turned down the leading role in Lawrence of Arabia for this, simply because he wanted to go to Tahiti, this was all just a jolly holiday with a side of romantic drama..
For Howard, though, this was work. Meanwhile, Brando was causing even more issues as he gained a huge amount of weight, meaning that all his costumes needed to be redone, adding even more delays to the process. By the end, Howard couldn’t even bring himself to try and speak kindly about his co-star, instead calling him a “total slob”, saying, “The only flair he had was the one in his nose”.
