My Favorite Brando Story

Here’s how it goes:

Throughout their careers as actors, Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando were neck and neck. Montgomery Clift hit his stride a couple of years before Brando did – and Brando looked up to him. He wanted to act like Montgomery Clift, he wanted his acting to seem as real as Clift’s did. Clift, of course, was a completely different personality than Brando – so the roles that came to them were almost polar opposites.

Montgomery Clift – with his almost unearthly beauty (at least before his car accident) … The roles he got reflected the response he got for that beauty. People were deeply attracted to it and deeply alienated by it. It was like a Death in Venice kind of beauty. His part in Place in the Sun – the kind of very very secretly unscrupulous person, who fools everyone because of his beauty … He made a career out of playing parts like that.

Brando was all brash masculinity. He was good-looking, but it was more about hot erotic sex appeal, than beauty.

But the two of them were linked together in the public’s minds – as examples of this new kind of acting.

Montgomery Clift was very competitive. So was Brando. They didn’t feel competitive with many other actors, but they felt competitive with one another. Clift came out in Place in the Sun – and Brando came out in Streetcar – and they sized up one another’s performances warily, checking out the competition – but also – they never lost their admiration for what the other could do.

They were worthy foes, let’s put it that way.

They weren’t friends. They ran in completely different circles, but there was a mutual admiration/competition society between them.

All of that changed when Montgomery Clift got into his terrible car accident which smashed his face, changing his career forever. He was never the same again. His face lost the easy beauty, half of it was paralyzed, reconstructive surgery had done all it could do. After all of the surgery, etc., Montgomery Clift went into a deep depression. He could not climb out of it. He stayed locked up in his house, drew black curtains across the windows, and wouldn’t let anyone come to see him. He was devastated by the change in his looks. Something in his heart and his soul had been crushed as well. He drank heavily. By himself. He became addicted to pain pills. He had his food delivered. He lived with an assistant, who took care of him, and answered the phone for him, and answered his mail, and kept everyone away. This went on for well over a year. He could not climb out of it. He could not go back to work. He did not how to be an actor without having a beautiful face. He didn’t want to learn, either. Something precious had been taken from him.

One day – a car pulled up in front of the house. And Marlon Brando got out.

He was shooting a film, and he had an hour’s break, so he drove over.

He walked up to the front door, and the assistant answered it – told him Clift didn’t want to see him, or anybody.

But Clift called out from an inner room, “No, it’s okay. Show him in.”

Brando walked into that inner room, and shut the door. The two of them were in there alone for about 20 minutes. And then Brando walked out, left the house, got into his car, and drove away.

Montgomery Clift’s assistant walked in to see if Clift was okay. What was going on? Brando wasn’t a regular visitor, he wasn’t Clift’s friend, what had he said?

Clift was sitting on the couch, in tears. He said that Brando had put it to him straight. Brando stalked straight into the room and said something along the lines of this:

“Look. I am only where I am today because I have had you to compete with. If I’m good, it’s because you’ve always been better. When I saw Places in the Sun, I thought – Damn. He’ll get an Oscar for that. I need to be better. I need to work harder. Because if I’m good, you will always be better. And I need you. I need you. I need to know you’re out there, beating me at my own game. So I want you to cut all this shit out. You have to stop drinking and taking pills, you have to get back to work again. Because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing if you’re not out there doing it, too. You get what I mean?”

Clift barely said a word in the exchange. Marlon talked on like that for about 15, 20 minutes. Basically opened up a can of whup-ass. And then, without another word, turned, walked out, and drove away.

Clift said to his assistant, “I had no idea. I had no idea he felt that way. I always felt the same way about him.”

And although Clift (with the shining exception of The Misfits) never again found the ease in acting that he did before his accident – it was that conversation with Brando that was the catalyst. For that moment, anyway.

Clift went back to work again.

I love Marlon Brando for that. He wasn’t generous to many other actors. He had a tendency to bulldoze right over them. But he needed competition. Without it, he got bored and apathetic. His motives for going to Clift’s house that day were selfish, yes, indeed. He needed Clift to keep working so that his acting would continue to flourish. But isn’t that true of any competitive sport? Playing against someone who is AS good as you are is a true test of your talent, your gift. It’s no fun to play with amateurs. So his words that day also came from a spirit of generosity and acknowledgement of Clift’s gift, with or without that damn pretty face, which catapulted Clift back into action.

Montgomery Clift never forgot Brando’s surprising kindness on that day. And the two of them NEVER spoke of it again, even when they met in person. It was like it had never happened.