The Los Angeles Times weighed in this week-- as did the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, in its La Lectura cultural magazine. Journalist Dario Prieto spoke to the author and featured the book this weekend.
The article is shown below, and a rough translation follows.
A rough translation:
LA LECTURA The cultural magazine of EL MUNDO Friday, March 29, 2024
100 YEARS OF MARLON BRANDO:
"TODAY HE WOULD BE CANCELLED...
AND HE WOULDN'T CARE."
intimidator of women,
openly bisexual, activist
in favor of the creation of
State of Israel, as well as
for native rights
of the US and African Americans,
the actor made his life a
representation greater than its
own myth. “It was limited to
live your life, no matter what
that no one would think,” says the
author of a new biography
by Dario Prieto
The first issue of Punk magazine, which popularized the term to refer to that youthful revolution, chose Marlon Brando (1924-2004) as "the original punk." The leather jackets worn by the Ramones were the same Perfecto that he wore in Savaje (1953), just as the rebelliousness and rebellious spirit of those young people was a reflection of what the actor had put into practice on and off the screen.
This Wednesday marks the centenary of his birth and, coinciding with the anniversary, Marlon Brando: Hollywood Rebel (Applause), a biography by Burt Kearns that delves into the living legacy of the interpreter of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), The Law of Silence (1954), The Godfather (1972) and Apocalypse Now (1979).
"Brando was a giant of cinema and popular culture," says Kearns in a conversation with La Lectura in which he explains his approach: "I'm a journalist and an expert in culture, not a cinephile. And when it was suggested that I write a book about him, I thought: What else can you write? There are 800-page books about his life, Brando himself wrote a book, his achievements and his mistakes have been dwelt on many times... So I approached it from a different angle and it's how this man, through the choices he made in his life and on screen, continues to shape Western popular culture in every way: from Lily Gladstone being the first Native American to be nominated for the Oscar for Best Actress to what's happening in Israel."
THE HOLLYWOOD GAME. The first thing that stands out, the author points out, is that, "even though he had an incredible talent for acting - which meant nothing to him; it was just a song and dance - activism was more important to him than anything he did in film. If he was in a film, it had to be one that helped people, that made a difference". Based on Savaje and its influence on the advent of rock and roll and pop (it profoundly influenced both Elvis and the Beatles), Kearns draws parallels between Brando's image and his social commitment: "When Brando came to Hollywood, you had to do certain things when you set foot there: sign with a studio, talk to the press and deal with the gossip columnists who ran the city's media. Brando never did it, so he was greeted with suspicion: he was a weird guy and couldn't be trusted because he lied and made up stories about his past, in a similar way that Bob Dylan would later do. He wasn't someone the industry could trust, but his talent won out and he ended up playing the Hollywood game.”
"He led the way," he says. "In the old days of Hollywood, the '40s, if a star wanted to get into political activism he would come out and say you had to support the guys in the military and buy war bonds. But when he became a great figure, he began to appear in the vicinity of a prison where a man was to be executed, to protest against the death penalty. And the reaction was one of hostility: Who cares what that guy thinks? He's just an actor. But he did it because he was concerned about human rights, so he got involved in issues such as the inequalities of the caste system in India or the treatment of natives in the United States. The stars didn't do that and he was willing to be humiliated for it." And he paid a heavy price. "The gossip press was very conservative then – it still is – and it was waiting until you had a divorce or a problem on a set to say, 'Look at Marlon Brando; he's trying to change the world, but pay attention to what's happened in the courts today,'" Kearns said.
"He was a very troublesome person from a young age," he adds. "I don't want to fall into cliché, but as a teenager he was a rebel looking for a cause." And he puts the spotlight on a well-known moment: "When he received the Oscar for Best Actor for The Godfather, he sent Native American rights activist Sacheen Littlefeather to turn him down. No one had ever done anything like this before: George C. Scott had relinquished the statuette he won for Patton a few years earlier, but on the grounds that the actors shouldn't compete with each other. But Brando did so as a protest at the way the country treated its native people. That divided the public and the country itself: on the one hand, people like John Wayne, who said how can anyone dare to do something like that; on the other, those who went their way. For example, he raised his voice that films did not include black people and that if no one included them, he would start making films in which there were." It is, he points out, a case similar to that of John Lennon, who was in a hotel bed for a week playing the guitar for peace: "He was laughed at, but he started a movement that is still going on. The parallels don't end there: in his personal life, Lennon was sarcastic and violent towards women. Brando had his own problems with women, sometimes with cases of abuse. But again, he tried to turn it around.”
Asked how we view his myth today, Kearns replies, "Marlon Brando would be canceled today, but I don't think he would care." For him, "in a way, he was cancelled at the time because he was a weird guy, someone who could be caricatured. In fact, at the end of his life his best friends were Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor."
ESPIDO FREIRE:
"CHARACTERS LIKE
KOWALSKI FORM A LINE
OF IRRESISTIBLE DESTRUCTIVES
THAT IS IN GOOD HEALTH TODAY”
And would it be possible for a Marlon Brando to emerge today? The writer Espido Freire, who collaborates in the collective volume The Universe of Marlon Brando (Notorious), responds in the affirmative, where she analyzes "the animal and primary part" of Kowalski's character in A Streetcar Named Desire, "which does not contradict the attraction he emanates, and which makes it even more complicated to differentiate what is evil in him and what is vulnerable." For her, "cancellation is rather a superficial movement, like a lip service, which from time to time rests its gaze on one work or another: the history of literature, like that of art, is nourished by horror, by the dark side of the human being as much as by the light." Although the revision of certain prestiges or facts "is necessary and fair", the author adds, "there is a need to address and look at the horror that will prevail, because to do otherwise would be to reduce oneself to the banal". Thus, Kowalski "belongs to a long tradition of destructive and irresistible men who populate literature (think, for example, of the sentimental novel today) and not only has not disappeared but enjoys good health and presence." Kearns, for his part, refers to what happened with Johnny Depp, whom he sees as a transcript of today's Brando.
ASEXUATED SEX. Similarly, his idea of sexuality remains uncomfortable. "He said that sex was asexual," says the author of his biography. "He didn't think much of having sex with women or men since his days at the military academy, when he had an affair with a male cadet while sleeping with the girls who worked at the base. Similarly, when he made Julius Caesar (1953), John Gielgud gave him some Shakespearean lessons and slept with him as a way of thanking him, as I was told by those who are still alive from that shoot. 'They appreciate it, so I'm happy to do it,' he said.
"Whether Cary Grant was gay or not, his characters never were. But Brando made a spectacular breakthrough in this regard. No major player had ever been involved in something like this before," he adds.
More controversial is his participation in Last Tango in Paris (1972), especially as a result of the accusations of his co-star Maria Schneider (1952-2011) of how the director, Bernardo Bertolucci, had created an environment in which the boundaries between interpretation and acting were blurred. "Ingmar Bergman said that the film is not about a man and a woman, but about two homosexuals," Kearns recalls. "People who highlight the scene in which Brando sodomizes Maria Schneider overlook another in which he teaches her how to cut her nails so that she can insert her fingers into his anus. There he is, again Brando, changing the rules of masculinity in society. I'm not saying that he made the world a safe place for that kind of exploration, but that he did it for himself. He just lived his life, followed his inspiration, and, no matter what anyone thought, revolutionized sexuality." He adds: "What happened was cruel. Even more so when you consider how young she was. But I found an article in the New York Times in which she said that when she met him, he told her, 'We need to get to know each other and be friends. After all, you're going to have to shove your fingers up my ass.’"
Signed copies of Marlon Brando: Hollywood Rebel are available exclusively at LarryEdmunds.com
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