The classic movie that almost starred Marlon Brando
There are few names quite as huge in Hollywood as Marlon Brando. The actor has been almost mythologised as one of the most influential entertainers in history, coming to represent a distinct era in movie history and a distinct type of leading man.
Brando’s career is a classic tale of rise and fall. After playing Stanley Kowalski in A Street Car Named Desire on Broadway to critical acclaim, he was snapped up by Hollywood to reprise the role on screen in the 1951 adaptation. It earned him an Oscar nomination and almost instant fame, quickly becoming the time’s premier heartthrob.
Throughout the early 1950s, Brando was on a winning streak. Playing roles like Mark Anthony in Julius Caesar or Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls alongside Frank Sinatra, he climbed to the top of the Hollywood food chain. Just as America was starting to open up to rock and roll, with the breakout success of Elvis and the start of countercultures popping up, Brando’s bad-boy good looks cemented him as a figure of teen rebellion alongside James Dean.
But the sad truth of fame is that it doesn’t stay. By the early 1960s, Brando was disillusioned with his career and taking bad jobs simply to make money, having lost his passion. The star power that once shone bright had dimmed.
That’s exactly the tale Sunset Boulevard tells: a story of Norma, a has-been silent film star desperate to reignite her career while younger and newer faces take her place. Made in 1950, the director Billy Wilder almost seemed to predict Brando’s trajectory when he desperately tried to cast him.
“For a long time, I wanted to do a comedy about Hollywood,” Wilder said of the original script. “God forgive me, I wanted to have Mae West and Marlon Brando. Look what became of that idea!”
But quickly, in the writing process, the tone took a darker turn in a story that was sadly more realistic. “Instead, it became a tragedy of a silent-picture actress, still rich, but fallen down into the abyss after talkies.”
While Brando would have played Joe Gillis, a struggling screenplay writer who uses the former star, played in the film by Gloria Swanson, there would no doubt have been moments of relation between the actor and the leading lady, Norma.
At its heart, Sunset Boulevard is a film about how fickle Hollywood and fame is, and how talented artists are thrown out with each passing trend. “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small,” Norma says at one point, perfectly encapsulating the regular letdown of great actors when the times moved on. During the 1960s and early ‘70s, before he was brought back up to notable fame by Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, Brando probably would have related to the tale.
