Celebrating Marlon Brando on his centennial: Unsung movie gems

Susan King
·6 min read
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Everyone remembers their first time. That is the first time they saw Marlon Brando.

For the late Mike Nichols, seeing Brando on Broadway in 1947 in his seminal turn as Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams‘ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” was the catalyst that lead to his career in the arts which saw him become a rare EGOT winner. The teenage Nichols and his then girlfriend’s mother were given tickets for the second night of the Elia Kazan-directed production. “There had never been anything like it, I know that by now,” Nichols recalled in a 2010 L.A. Times interview.  It was, to this day, the only thing onstage that I had ever seen that was 100% real and 100% poetic. Lucy and I weren’t exactly theater buffs, but we couldn’t get up at the intermission. We were just so stunned. Your heart was pounding. It was a major experience.”

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Susan L. Mizruchi, author of the 2014 biography “Brando’s Smile: “His Life, Thought and Work” was 12 when she saw the influential “Method” actor on TV aa Fletcher Christian in the troubled 1962 epic “Mutiny on the Bounty.” She told me in a 2014 L.A. Times interview that she was “struck by the Brando lightning.” She was so obsessed with Brando that she would sneak out of the house to see the X-rated 1973 “Last Tango in Paris.”

Actress/writer Ileana Douglas recalled her memorable encounter with Brando in 1996 when she was dating Martin Scorsese. The actor arrived in a blue velour jump suit to take a meeting  with the filmmaker. Scorsese had warned her not to talk to him about acting because he hated that. “When the door opened, I literally almost passed out,’ she told me in a 2015 L.A. Times interview. “He had a larger-than-life presence that almost took the oxygen out of the room.”  Douglas decided she had to tell her idol what he meant to her. “I just have to be myself….I started crying, and words began to tumble out.” And Brando became emotional. “My God, you’re a tuning fork,” he told her. “Now I’m crying.”

It’s hard to fathom a world without Brando. He wasn’t the first “Method” actor who brought a naturalistic style of acting to their roles — John Garfield and Montgomery Clift paved the way for Brando — his influence was and still is extraordinary. Many consider Brando the greatest actor of the 20th century.

To celebrate what would have been his 100th birthday on April 4, let’s look at some of his movies. Not the usual suspects such as 1951’s “A Streetcar Named Desire,” 1953’s “The Wild One,” 1954’s “On the Waterfront,” for which he won his first Oscar, and 1972’s “The Godfather,” for which he won and refused his second best actor Academy Award.

But films that need revisiting such as 1950’s “The Men.” Because Brando made such an indelible performance earning his first Oscar nomination for “A Streetcar Named Desire,” his first film “The Men” has been overshadowed. It’s worth the watch. Produced by Stanley Kramer, penned by Carl Foreman, who received an Oscar nomination, and directed by Fred Zinnemann, “The Men” revolves around a young World War II vet (Brando) who became a paraplegic after he was struck by a bullet. Sent to a paraplegic ward, Brando’s Bud is embittered and refuses any rehabilitation. But he begins to break free from his anger thanks to the friendship of his fellow ward members and his fiancé’ (Teresa Wright) love. You can’t keep your eyes off Brando. The actor threw himself into the part. He spent three weeks living with the men on a paraplegic ward becoming involved in all their exercises and treatment. They soon accepted him as one of them.

Karen Sharpe Kramer, the widow of the producer, recalled in a 2005 L.A. Times interview, the time Brando, in a wheelchair, went to a bar with the several of the ward members. A woman came over and said “Boys, you have given so much for us and you know if you would just believe in God and Jesus, you will walk again. She went back to her table and on the count of 10, Marlon began to move his legs and screamed, ‘Oh my God, I can walk.’ He got up and began to do a little dance out the saloon. As the story goes, she fainted.”

Brando tackled Shakespeare in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s superb 1953 “Julius Caesar.” Probably there were some critics — the ones who thought Brando mumbled — who were eager to bury and not praise the young actor. But he proved nay-sayers wrong, Brando received his third Oscar nomination as Marc  Antony in this adaptation which also stars James Mason, John Gielgud, Edmond O’Brien, and Louis Calhern. Brando is particularly electrifying in the famed “Friends, Romans and Countrymen” speech to the citizens of Rome after Caesar is murdered. John Huston described Brando’s performance in the film as “like a hot furnace opening in a dark room.”.

The actor showed off his comedic chops in the riotous 1990 “The Freshman.” Brando has a field day spoofing his Don Corleone turn in “The Godfather” as Carmine Sabatini, a Mafia kingpin who, it is said, was the basis for Corleone. Matthew Broderick a plays film school freshman who is robbed when he comes to New York and ends up getting a most unusual job working for Carmine. Writer/director Andrew Bergman said making the movie was the most fun he ever adding “getting Marlon to do things was sometimes like turning around an aircraft carrier because he had a way he wanted to do it.  But you could get him there, He was terribly respectful and funny. Reviews were strong with Roger Ebert effusing: “There have been a lot of movies where stars have repeated the triumphs of their parts-but has any star ever done it more triumphantly than Marlon Brando does in ‘The Freshman?’”

Brando, who died at the age of 80 on July 1, 2004, was once asked if he was afraid to die. He answered with a Marc Antony quote from “Julius Caesar.” “Of all the wonders that I have yet heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear; that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”

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