“It was nuts”: when Marlon Brando saved a screenwriter from a stabbing
It was Winston Churchill who coined the phrase describing something particularly perplexing as being “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” which took on a life of its own and infiltrated the lexicon. When it comes to cinema, there are few who have ever suited it better than Marlon Brando.
Arguably the single most influential actor in history and unquestionably America’s most innovative and transformative thespian, Brando almost single-handedly changed the face of Hollywood. He didn’t originate the method, nor was he the first to implement it, but he did it better and popularised it more than anybody before or since.
He’s been celebrated, lauded, and praised for inspiring multiple generations who sought to emulate even a fraction of his effortless naturalism and immersive charisma, but he was also a nightmare to work with. Being tagged as difficult has had a detrimental effect on countless careers, but because he was Brando, he’d always get a pass on the off-chance he could pull something magical out of the bag.
Sometimes he did, but a lot of times, he didn’t. Infamous for his lateness, unprofessionalism, apathy, and staunch refusal to learn his lines, Brando fell out of love with acting and didn’t even try to hide it. Like everybody else, though, he loved to get paid, but not even the lure of a significant paycheque was enough to coax him out of his self-induced performative slumber.
Take Richard Donner’s Superman, for instance. Brando earned millions of dollars upfront and a percentage of the profits but tried his hardest to convince the filmmaker that Jor-El would be better off as a suitcase or a bagel than a physical being. That obviously wasn’t the case, but his disinterest in trying on set was counterbalanced by the way he sprang into action away from it.
As the director recalled to The Hollywood Reporter, he was enjoying dinner with Brando and screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz when disaster almost struck. “There was this woman in our party, and all of a sudden, she started yelling at Tom that he didn’t know what he was doing,” Donner explained. “She grabbed a knife from the plate and goes to stab Tom.”
1970s-era Brando was hardly famed for his lightning-quick reactions, but that didn’t stop him from making a rapid intervention. “Marlon reached over and grabbed the knife and calmed her down,” Donner continued. “It was a steak knife, and god forbid it could have very easily been a tragedy. It was nuts.”
It would have put a dampener on the whole evening for Mankiewicz to sit down for a delicious steak and end up making a trip to the emergency room or worse, but fortunately, Brando was on hand to diffuse the situation. He was happy to phone it in onscreen, but when he needed to be a hero in real life, the two-time Academy Award winner was ready to answer the call.
