The contender

When James Dean, star of Rebel Without A Cause, died at high speed in his Porsche sports car in 1955, he could not have known just how big a star he would be in death. In the decades since, Dean has become the icon of glamorised American youth - cool, sexy and misunderstood. Dead at just 24, he symbolises the Rock ‘n Roll generation’s romanticised ideal: “Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse.”

Marlon Brando did not fit the ideal, having lived to the age of 80. And at over 21 stones in weight, ‘good-looking’ would not be the way to describe his corpse. With the pathological narcissism of Hollywood, this was Brando’s greatest sin: to have let himself go physically - and some would add - professionally and emotionally.

But without Brando, there would have been no James Dean. For all his enduring appeal, Dean’s persona was fashioned on his desire to emulate his idol, Brando. In a group photograph from the fifties, Dean the insecure kid is seen looking at the older, more experienced star as one looks upon a god. Brando had also turned down the role made famous by the younger man in East of Eden. All the things that make James Dean unforgettable to movie fans are but an imitation of the phenomenon that was Marlon Brando.

Brando was the original ‘angry young man’ of cinema, the true ‘rebel without a cause.’ Playing the leather-clad teenage rebel in The Wild One (1954), his character is asked: “What are you rebelling against?” The inquisitor is invited to bring a list: “What have you got?” His iconic portrayal helped inspire the look of Rock ’n Roll and teenage culture, a look adopted by Elvis Presley.

A beautiful man

Described as having “an angel’s mouth”, Brando had the kind of lips that Hollywood leading ladies now pay a fortune in painful collagen injections to achieve. Beyond handsome, he had a rhapsodic beauty that captivated men as well as women, with its hint of sexual ambiguity. His portrayal of the virile but brutal hunk Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) heralded a new type of onscreen maleness. From then on, a leading man could be beautiful rather than just handsome. Coupled with the searing physical presence was the dynamism of method acting. Thus, Brando could display sweaty underarm patches on his T-shirt and still be a sex symbol.

As in all his best film roles, A Streetcar Named Desire is unforgettable for the way he seems to transcend the notion of performance. So immersed is he in the character that he becomes an organism onscreen. His co-star in the film, Vivien Leigh, was one of the top British actresses of the day. She had become a legend long before, starring opposite Clark Gable in Gone With The Wind - frequently voted the greatest film ever made. For the up-coming actor Marlon Brando then was, Leigh was a formidable presence to appear with onscreen. But astonishingly, it is Brando that most people remember from the film. So compelling is he in the role that Vivien Leigh is reduced to the part she plays, that of a fading beauty.

Unforgiven

The film was based on Tennessee Williams’ play of the same name, and Brando had first brought the character of Stanley to life on the Broadway stage, to great acclaim. But once he went into films, he turned his back on the stage. His co-star in Julius Caesar, the English theatrical knight John Gielgud, begged him to come to England for a season of plays they would do together. Brando paid no heed and is despised in some quarters for denying his audience the great roles of the stage. He never put his own mark on Hamlet, King Lear, Anton Chekhov or Eugene O’Neill.

Similarly, there were too many film roles that were not worth taking, partly because the actor became contemptuous of the trappings of stardom and Hollywood’s studio system. So he took lousy parts in films that sank without trace because producers were willing to pay him huge amounts of money to appear, if just for a few moments. He would not wish to be remembered for such roles. Also best forgotten is Michael Jackson’s video of You Rock My World, in which Brando and cult actor Michael Madsen show their faces instead of the singer’s own unshowable one - for a few millions in the bank.

And so because of the great stage and film roles that never came to pass, many speak of the wasted talent of the unique Brando, touted as the greatest film actor of the twentieth century. The man himself never explained and never apologised, believing it was nobody’s place to dictate how his talent should have been channelled. “Who cares about the applause?”, said he. “Do I need applause to feel good about myself?”

A dysfunctional family

In his definitive role in Francis Ford Coppolla’s The Godfather, Brando says: “Any man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.” The actor sired nine children and married three times. Audiences have long grown accustomed to dysfunctional Hollywood families, but the Brando clan went beyond all that, and what unfolded is best captured in the actor’s famous line in Coppolla’s Apocalypse Now: “The horror.”

Brando’s son Christian served a five year jail term for shooting dead his sister Cheyenne’s fiancé, Dag Drollet. Cheyenne later gave birth to Drollet’s child and in 1995, killed herself. As a child, Christian had been the subject of a custody battle between the actor and former wife Anna Kashfi. She kidnapped the boy at one point and spirited him away to Mexico. When she was captured, the actor gained full custody of the child. Outside the courtroom and in full view of the world’s press, the embittered Kashfi delivered a stinging slap on the movie idol’s face.

The turbulent early life did not bode well for Christian and when tragedy struck later, observers said the Brando chickens had come home to roost. With one child in jail and another on the way to suicide, the trauma ruined Marlon Brando emotionally and financially. To pay the legal bills, he took more roles that were plainly beneath him.

Thankfully, his genius was sealed long before. He won a best actor oscar for On The Waterfront in 1954, after being nominated five years in a row. Following a lull in the sixties, he reached a new career high in the next decade with the sinister charm of his iconic Don Corleone in The Godfather.

For all his dreamy looks, Brando was not burdened by vanity, which partly explains his nonchalance about weight gain later in life. This is obvious in the pot belly he flaunts in the sexually explicit Last Tango In Paris. Beyond the notorious scene with Maria Schneider that sparked a controversy about onscreen sex, the film is another showpiece for the realness of Brando’s method acting.

A social conscience

For decades, the actor used his fame and wealth to support liberal causes. His entire fee for The Freshman (1990) - some 10 to 14 million dollars - was donated to the Anti-Apartheid Movement. He rejected his second oscar, for The Godfather, sending actress Sacheen Littlefeather to read a speech protesting Hollywood’s treatment of Native Americans. He was accused of having an overblown sense of his own importance, a charge that has resurfaced since his death. Those who criticise Brando’s oscar rejection either lose sight of the actor’s courage in making such stance, or are simply malicious.

It was not until Kevin Costner’s oscar-laden Dances With Wolves (1990), with its reverence for the language and ways of the American Indian, that the true owners of America assumed their rightful place on film. Before then, hundreds of Western ‘Cowboys and injuns’ films portrayed the Native American as the lowest of savages, to be shot at for fun. Brando made his stand on the issue nearly two decades before, when it was not fashionable to do so; and it was easier for Hollywood to demonise him than to admit the great wrong done to a race of people.

Towering genius

For those who can look beyond The Godfather, Marlon Brando’s greatest role is a toss-up between A Streetcar Named Desire and On The Waterfront. This writer prefers the latter, a black and white film in which the actor’s fierce physical grace electrifies the screen. As washed-up boxer Terry Malloy, he realises that he has allowed himself to be used once too often by his brother Charlie, played by Rod Steiger. Cue one of the most unforgettable lines ever delivered on film, as he wails in anguish to Steiger: “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.”

‘I coulda been a contender.’ The line has come to represent the perfect articulation of unrealised dreams and unfulfilled ambitions in the lives of millions since Brando uttered the words. Some would also argue that there is a lesson in there about the actor’s career itself.

But it is a measure of Brando’s greatness that his towering reputation was built on just a handful of transcendental performances. He influenced more actors than anyone before or since. It is hard to see echoes of Cary Grant, Clark Gable or Gary Cooper in today’s thespians - yet the acting firmament is filled with heirs to Marlon Brando’s legacy. In the generation that came after him, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino are two method actors who have typified the very best in their craft.

Third generation on, there are many contenders. One is the chameleon-like Edward Norton who disappears into every character he plays. Fittingly, Norton and De Niro appeared with Brando in the well-received The Score. Benicio Del Toro is another who combines method acting with something of Brando’s beguiling physicality, even mumbling his lines a la The Godfather.

Then there is Sean Penn, arguably the quintessential actor of his generation. Like Brando, the rebellious Penn is contemptuous of Hollywood and constitutes a thorn in the side of the American establishment. His performance in Mystic River was hailed as the culmination of the tradition begun by Marlon Brando in the famed Actor’s Studio. Brando lived to see - with Penn’s oscar win in February 2004 - the crowning of the new king of ‘the method’. The contender is dead, long live the contender.

Marlon Brando could even go on to become the greatest actor of all time. Not bad for someone who was not even trying to set a standard. It is said that the actor left a baffled audience but if we are baffled, it is because he did everything his own way, and not ours.

On July 1, 2004, he was in the news for having gone bankrupt. His death was announced the following day. But he had the last laugh, as it was later revealed that he left a fortune of over $20m, and that’s not counting all his assets.

It follows therefore that we hardly knew the man. Over half a century in the limelight yet he struck a blow for his own individuality, and remained a mystery.

First published in The Guardian; 17 July, 2004.