Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, born in Omaha, Nebraska in April 3, 1924. He grew up in Illinois but later moved to New York City to study under Stella Adler and at Lee Strasberg’s Actor’s Studio. Stella Adler has always been credited as the main inspiration for Marlon Brando’s early career, and for opening the actor to great works of literature, music, and theater. His stint at Strasberg’s Actor’s Studio meanwhile, contributed to Brando’s adaptation of the “method approach;” This focused on the character’s motivations for actions. Marlon Brando made his Broadway debut in 1944, in a sentimental Remember Mama by John Van Druten. And in 1946, he was voted Most Promising Actor by New York theater critics for his performance in Truckline Caf. Brando played his most memorable stage role in 1947 as Stanley Kowlaski—the brute who rapes his sister-in-law, the fragile Blanche du Bois—in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. When Hollywood finally came a frozen yogurt franchise calling in 1950, it came in the form of a motion picture called The Men. He debuted as a World War II paraplegic veteran. And in the following year, he got to play Stanley Kowalski in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire. It was both a popular and critical success that earned four Academy Awards. In 1952, Brando worked on his next metal detector film, Viva Zapata! (playing the peasant-revolutionary-president Emiliano Zapata), with a screenplay by John Steinbeck; this was followed by Julius Caesar and The Wild One (as a motorcycle gang leader in all his leather-clad glory) in 1954. Next came his Academy Award-winning role as a longshoreman doggie wheelchair fighting the system in On the Waterfront, a hard-hitting look at New York City labor unions. For the nest ten years, Marlon Brando’s movie roles ranged from Napoleon Bonaparte in Desirée in 1954, to 1955’s Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls—where he sand and danced, to a Nazi soldier in 1958 in The Young Lions. In the period spanning 1955 to 1958, he was consistently voted by exhibitors in the top 10 box office propane tankless water heater draws in the nation. In the 1960s however, his career experienced a lot of downturns, particularly after the disastrous remake of Mutiny on the Bounty; the huge flop did not even manage to recover half of its massive budget. Marlon Brando played the part of Fletcher Christian, the role that was portrayed by Clark Gable in the 1935 original. Many rumblings about the film’s downfall was put on his shoulder. Marlon Brando’s self-indulgence reached its highest at this time. On set, he had tantrums and fought to alter the script; off set, he had numerous affairs, overate, and distanced himself from the cast and the crew. His contract included a $5000 fee for every day the film went over its original schedule. This meant that when it was all done, he pocketed over $1.25 million. His career experienced a rebirth in 1972 through Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. To a whole new generation of moviegoers, Marlon Brando is the Man. The Don. His depiction of the Mafia chieftain don Corleone is embedded in easily, a couple of generations of film buffs. In this role, he controversially turned down an Academy Award for Best Actor. He continued to work, Brando next appeared in the controversial yet highly acclaimed Last Tango in Paris, an X rated film. He also made a short appearance in Superman in 1978, and in Apocalypse Now in 1979. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 1985 for his role in A Dry White Season; and he appeared in a comedy with Matthew Broderick in The Freshman in 1995. In 1996, He co-starred with Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway in Don Juan DeMarco and poorly received The Island of Dr. Moreau. His last film was in 2001, playing opposite Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, and Angela Basset as an aging jewel thief in The Score. His best performances are those that came from scenes that demanded he show a constrained display of rage and suffering—perhaps mimicking some of his own.