Marlon Brando: 1924 – 2004

I’ve always wanted to be an actor. Since I was a little kid. Many members of my family are in this profession – and have been – so it always seemed like a valid way to make a living, as opposed to some wacked-out Bohemian dream. In a certain respect, the people who have the “normal” jobs in my family are the black sheep.

When I was little, I was the same way that I am now- the same person who throws herself into her passions with such abandon that all else fades away. My passions become PROJECTS. “Oh. Humphrey Bogart it is now? Fine, then. Let’s go.” I check things off the list, I must see this, this, and this. I must learn about him. I must envelop myself in him.

When I was 11 years old, maybe 12, I was babysitting. And I saw Dog Day Afternoon – clearly a movie which I should NOT have seen at that age. But that’s irrelevant. Because sometimes it is the things that happen to us TOO SOON that have the greatest impact. For when are we ever truly ready for it? That movie, and Al Pacino’s performance in general, changed my life.

He seemed different than anybody else I had ever seen before. He seemed to not be playing a character. He seemed to be on the EDGE of reality, as opposed to just mirroring reality. His performance moved me, a little girl, to such a degree that I remember wondering, idly, as the father of the child I babysat for drove my home later that evening, “I wonder if Sonny is still alive in prison somewhere … I’d like to write to him.” “Sonny” – the gay bankrobber Al Pacino portrayed – had made such an impression, and had filled my heart with such compassion – that I wanted to write to the real guy, and tell him how I felt about him. The whole sex-change operation plot of the film had gone right over my head – but that was all right. What I really got was a new and vibrant view of not only acting, but of human potential. Al Pacino seemed to me a miracle.

I saw that movie again recently, feeling like my little 11 year old self was sitting there right next to me, and I was in awe all over again.

And so the passion took over. In a very Sheila way, which will now be very familiar to all of you who read me. I was 12. I had never seen anything like Al Pacino’s acting. It burned itself into my psyche as something new, something fabulous, something so exciting that I couldn’t even BEAR it. All I wanted to do was know HOW he had learned how to DO that.

My research began. This is pre-Internet days. I don’t remember the steps I took, perhaps micro-film was involved (my dad, after all, is a librarian) – but I do know that during this research-period was the first time I heard the words “Actors Studio”. Al Pacino had come out of something called “The Actors Studio” – and so then I knew what my next steps would be. I needed to learn about the Actors Studio. What is it? What was it??

This discovery led me to Marlon Brando. His name was everywhere. He seemed synonymous with something. He and James Dean. They were it. They were “the ones”.

This was also pre-VCR days (at least in my family) – and so began a weekly scanning of TV Guide, to see if any of “their” movies were on. I was relentless, and focused. For a couple of years.

And so that’s how I saw Rebel without a Cause, East of Eden, Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront. I watched these two men, I watched them hungrily, and also – with a bit of despair. Their acting made me feel lonely. Far away. How would I ever get to be like them? Would it be possible?

I started to read biographies of the people involved in the Actors Studio. No one was too peripheral. I read the autobiography of Carroll Baker, for example. I took every tangent. I discovered Marilyn Monroe, I discovered Natalie Wood, I discovered Nicholas Ray, Sal Mineo …

Streetcar Named Desire seemed to me, at the time, to be something so exciting, so barely comprehensible, that I couldn’t even get close to it. It contained a mystery. There was something in it that could not be pinned down. It held a secret, perhaps the secret. Marlon Brando’s acting was not acting, frankly. It was life, yes. It looked like life. But it was BIGGER than real life. Which was the genius of the 3-way collaboration of Elia Kazan, Tennessee Williams, and Marlon Brando.

Here’s how I see it.

Tennessee Williams: a fragile openly-gay man, a raucous party-hound, and on the run from his memories. He would have been institutionalized if he hadn’t been a writer. His sister was lobotomized. He never got over it, and ran away, and never looked back. (The last moment of Glass Menagerie – with Tom’s monologue about Laura – is Tennessee’s expression of grief about it.) His plays are delicate, they are “memory plays” – he wrote them with the sensibility of one who needs to hang gauze over the lamps, of one who needs to fill his apartment with pretty delicate things … He writes plays of facades, covering up the animal side.

But here’s what I think: without the robust and theatrical and animal direction of Elia Kazan – his plays may have remained little frilly fey things. Now the words were on the page, the plays were fantastic – as is. But I have seen many of them ruined by too-precious direction, by directors who go for the gauze over the lamp effect – as opposed to delving into the churning lava below. Kazan took Tennessee’s memory plays and cut straight to the jugular. He understood Tennessee – he understood the man’s conflicts – and he set about to make them visible.

And without Marlon – in that groundbreaking role of Stanley – none of it would have happened at all. Marlon took the role of Stanley and so completely owned it that nobody knew what happened to them. Kazan just sat back and let it happen, and Tennessee (who, by all accounts sounds like a lovely man) would sit in the audience, just giggling with glee, watching Marlon tear up the room. Tennessee realized that his play was revealing something, and that only through the instrument of Marlon Brando could it fully come out.

It would be like a bad pianist playing a brilliant concerto.

Only a brilliant and gifted musician can truly “interpret” the great composers. The music itself is not enough.

Marlon Brando and Elia Kazan were the greatest interpreters to date of Tennessee Williams’ very specific personality.

Brando, however, would never have spoken about it in that way. He was inarticulate, he was all instinct. He immersed himself in that part. He boxed. He slept in the theatre. He stopped bathing. He was completely emotionally exhausted by the part.

The funny thing is is that Brando was nothing like Stanley Kowalski, although there were some similarities.

Kowalski is a pig. He proclaims his pig-ness loudly. He eats with his mouth open. He drools. He guzzles stuff down his throat. He could fuck all night long. He has no shame. He is a man of voracious appetites, and a complete slob.

Brando was actually a rather delicate person (at least in his youth). Sensitive, and always trying to hide it. His girlfriends were either ballerinas, or ugly ducklings who hadn’t yet blossomed. He was always seen with gawky little women wearing thick glasses and flat shoes. He loved girls like that. He loved to dance. He loved to play bongo drums. He loved art. He had done terribly in school, but he was obviously highly intelligent. Once he got to New York, he realized how goofing off in school had left him at a disadvantage, so he set about to educate himself. He read non-fiction, primarily – history books. He was playing catch-up. He went to museums every week.

All of this is just to point out that what Brando did with Stanley Kowalski is nothing less than miraculous.

People who saw the performance had a tendency to scoff it off, thinking he was just “playing himself”. (Also, the fact that they would say that shows their ignorance. One of the hardest things to do is play yourself.) But he created a character. He saw things in the role that Tennessee Williams himself did not see. He was a revelation to all.

To me as well.

I learned all of this in my intense research-period in my early teens. I would read about crazy moments in Streetcar rehearsals – and then the next time I saw the movie – I would look for that moment like a detective.

I never lost my surprise in his ability.

One of the moments in that film that stands out for me (and Roger Ebert has pointed it out too):

— A lesser actor would make all kinds of intellectual decisions about Kowalski. What Stanely would or would not do. “Oh, Stanley wouldn’t do that …” “Stanley would never do that …” Marlon never put restrictions on his impulses in that way, he never made any decisions about what Kowalski would or wouldn’t do. Which is why that performance startles me even today.

He allows Stanley Kowalski to have moments of deep tenderness … of vulnerability … of humor … The way he presses his face into Kim Hunter’s abdomen after she finally comes down the stairs, answering his “STELLA” call. It’s completely erotic, how he does that. It’s also … there’s something infantile about it too. The little boy pressing against the womb. It’s sexy, it’s tragic, it’s desperate … and it is completely unexpected. NOW we can’t see that moment played any other way, but it’s only because he realized that moment so perfectly.

The other moment which I remember being so struck by when I was a kid … He’s talking with Stella about Blanche, and he’s all brash and manly and tough … I can’t remember the scene … but he’s slouching around the room, he’s touching things randomly … it might be the “Napoleonic Code” scene. And then there’s a moment where he faces off with Stella … they have some back and forth lines … In the middle of it, Kowalski/Brando notices that she has a little piece of fluff on her sweater. He reaches out, with the most delicacy in the world, like he’s a pastry chef or something, and plucks it off her sweater.

It’s one of those moments which could never be planned. It’s also one of those moments which a more conventional actor would never allow himself to do while playing Stanley. “Stanley would never do that! He’s a pig! He’s a slob!”

Marlon Brando never concerned himself with those judgments. They seemed completely uninteresting to him.

The piece-of-fluff moment, to me, as a kid – was another “a-ha” moment. Akin to the Dog Day Afternoon moment. It brought tears to my eyes when I saw it for the first time. It seemed to me, then, that acting was one of the special-est and most important things that one can do. Because if it’s good, it helps the audience … It helps people see things about themselves.

He made acting seem like a grand and chaotic adventure. Filled with surprise, and revelation. He never did what was expected of him. I still can’t see that “STELLA” scene without feeling my throat clench up. I still see that scene and think: “Okay. That’s as far as he’s gonna go. The scene will end now…” and yet – it doesn’t. It keeps going. He keeps going further with it.

He shows to me, time and time again, my own failure of imagination.

He has helped me to ask the right questions, in my own work. To not concern myself with certain things that are unimportant, to try to find my OWN way into the part … because, after all, I was the one who was cast. And so it needs to be MINE.

He never seems to play things right on the nose. He goes at things sideways. Perhaps that is because he was kind of a passive-aggressive personality in real life. Who knows why. But that very ambivalence and oblique-ness is what makes his acting still so exciting today.

I always think of the scene in the beginning of The Godfather, where he sits in the office, stroking that teeny kitten. The juxtoposition of that … the huge shadowy Don, the obsequiousness of the people visiting him (letting the audience know how powerful and feared he is), his gruff weird voice, the way he is lit so that his eyes are always in shadow … and yet … almost as though the gesture is this man’s subconscious-made-visible … he strokes that teeny kitten with the utmost gentleness.

Stella Adler, the great acting teacher who had Marlon Brando in her class, and who was one of the first ones to stop trying to put reins on this wild talent, said, in regards to “talent” and what is talent: “Talent is in the choice.”

I have thought about this quite a bit.

The talent is in the choice.

Untalented actors make uninteresting or obvious choices. You can probably think of a million examples. But if an actor has talent, it will be obvious – because of his choices.

To me – the fluff on the sweater moment, and the kitten moment – are just two examples of how Marlon Brando’s talent was in his choice. These may not have even been conscious choices. That’s irrelevant.

His talent guided him to make these choices and no other … and those images were burned on my brain forever.

Years later – 15, 16 years later – I applied to grad school. I applied to the Actors Studio grad school at the New School. I got in.

Our first day of orientation was held in a circular room beneath Tisch Auditorium. This was the room where, years and years ago, Stella Adler had held her acting classes, which Marlon Brando attended. I sat in that circular room, now a grown woman, and literally felt the hairs rise up on my arms. The room was full of ghosts. Ghosts of people I had met years ago, in my research mania following Dog Day Afternoon. Maureen Stapleton, Walter Matthau, Eli Wallach, Ben Gazzara, Elaine Stritch … all of them had been in Stella Adler’s class, in this very room.

I had, quite consciously, throughout my life, followed in the footsteps of those who had held up the brightest torches. Elia Kazan – Eli Wallach – Montgomery Clift – Marilyn Monroe – Lee Strasberg – Stella Adler – John Garfield … and Marlon Brando. These were the “Method” giants. The ones who turned a style of acting into something so mainstream that you can’t even really talk about “Method actors” anymore.

I was there. I was joining them. There, in that circular room.

The dream of the 11 year old had been realized.

Marlon Brando: thank you for holding up that torch. Thank you for your mystery. You hated acting, to some degree. You never ever wanted to be caught taking it seriously. Which I love. Taking acting too seriously is one of the most boring things an actor can ever do.

I learned that from Marlon Brando – and a lot of other things besides.

And if and when you see Streetcar again – do me a favor. Look for the little plucking-the-fluff-off-the-sweater moment, won’t you? It will make you smile.

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10 Responses to Marlon Brando: 1924 – 2004

  1. Noggie says:

    To grasp the full significance of life is the actor’s duty, to interpret it is his problem and to express it his dedication.

    Marlon Brando

  2. myatch says:

    Wow.

    Just wow.

  3. red says:

    Bless, both of you.

  4. Dan says:

    Thou rockest. Nice post.

  5. Big Dan says:

    This is why I don’t comment when things like this happen. It’s easier to just wait and see it done better here.

  6. Sheila,

    This is incredible. I had so many moments of recognition in reading this. I had that same voracious appetite at a young age. I too lapped up information hungrily and became surprisingly resourceful in unearthing every last detail when I saw a performance that moved me. I love moments of connection in film, theater and books where I find myself nodding my head in agreement or either laughing or crying when something strikes me as familiar and real. Your post provided that moment of connection several times over. Thank you for sharing this.

  7. red says:

    Oh by the way: I watched Streetcar last night – and the “fluff moment” happens between him and Stella – it is in the scene that ends with him taking her to the hospital to have her baby. Right before the scene where he comes home and rapes Blanche. Stella is leaning against a door, with her back to the camera – he’s leaning into her, talking … and he plucks off the fluff. It’s an unconscious gesture. He’s talking as he does it. I saw it – and just filled up with tears.

    He’s it, man. He’s just IT.

  8. cityislandmichael says:

    Another great essay. Man, can you write. Someday The Sewanee Review is going to list among its accomplishments that it was the first publisher of Sheila O’Malley. I’m not kidding.

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