Brando Mythologized

------------------------------------------------------------------ Not one, but two books about Marlon Brando are on the shelves these days, both of them huge in volume. He wrote "Brando: Songs my Mother Taught Me." We won't speculate here on whether his life is just that interesting or whether the size of these tomes is testament to his ego. What follows, however, is an excerpt, involving Tennessee Williams' play "A Streetcar Named Desire," which launched Brando on his career. He maintains that both he and Jessica Tandy were miscast in the play, and he also talks about the drawbacks of fame. ------------------------------------------------------------------

Elia Kazan was planning to direct a new play by Tennessee Williams. Originally called "The Poker Night," it had been renamed "A Streetcar Named Desire." Jessica Tandy had already been chosen for the female lead of Blanche DuBois, but they were having trouble casting an actor to play the male lead, Stanley Kowalski.

John Garfield was originally set for it, but he wasn't able to come to terms with the producer, Irene Selznick, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM, and the wife (though separated) of movie producer David O. Selznick. Next they offered it to Burt Lancaster, but he couldn't get out of a studio contract in Hollywood.

Harold Clurman suggested me for the part to Kazan, but Gadg (Kazan's nickname) and Irene both said I was probably too young, and she was especially unenthusiastic about me. In the end they decided to leave it up to Tennessee Williams. Gadg suggested that I visit him on Cape Cod, where he had a vacation house, and lent me $20 to buy a train ticket. But I was broke and spent most of it before leaving New York, so I had to hitchhike to Provincetown. It took longer than I expected and I was a day or two late for the reading. When I found Tennessee's house, he apologized because the toilet was overflowing so I volunteered to fix it. I read for the part, we talked for an hour or so and then he called Gadg and said he wanted me to have the role.

A few writers have suggested that in portraying the insensitive, brutish Stanley Kowalski, I was really playing myself; in other words, the performance succeeded because I was Stanley Kowalski. I've run into a few Stanley Kowalskis in my life - muscled, inarticulate, aggressive animals who go through life responding to nothing but their urges and never doubting themselves, men brawny in body and manner of speech who act only on instinct, with little awareness of themselves. But they weren't me. I was the antithesis of Stanley Kowalski. I was sensitive by nature and he was coarse, a man with unerring animal instincts and intuition. Later in my acting career, I did a lot of research before playing a part, but I didn't do any on him. He was a compendium of my imagination, based on the lines of the play. I created him from Tennessee's words.

A lot of roles, I've since learned, have to be made up by the actor, especially in the movies. If you don't have a well-written story, the performer has to invent the character to make him believable. But when an actor has as good a play under him as "Streetcar," he doesn't have to do much. His job is to get out of the way and let the part play itself. Improvisation doesn't work in a play by Tennessee Williams, just as it doesn't work in a play by Shakespeare. They give actors such good lines that the words carry them along.

Admittedly it is impossible for anyone to judge themselves objectively, but I have never believed that I played the part of Stanley successfully. I think the best review of the play was written by a critic who said I was miscast. Kim Hunter was terrific and well cast as Stella, and so was Karl Malden - a fine actor who, despite enormous success, has always remained one of the most decent men I've ever known.

A play out of balance

But I think Jessica and I were both miscast, and between us we threw the play out of balance. Jessica is a very good actress, but I never thought she was believable as Blanche. I didn't think she had the finesse or cultivated femininity that the part required, nor the fragility that Tennessee envisioned. In his view, there was something pure about Blanche DuBois; she was a shattered butterfly, soft and delicate, while Stanley represented the dark side of the human condition. When Blanche says to Stella, "Don't hang back with the beasts," she was talking about the animalistic side of human beings. It's true that Blanche was a liar and a hypocrite, but she was lying for her life - lying to keep her illusions alive. When she said, "I don't tell truth, I tell what ought to be true" and "I didn't lie in my heart," Tennessee meant those words. He told Kazan he wanted the audience to feel pity for Blanche.

"Blanche," he said, "must finally have the understanding and compassion of the audience . . . without creating a black-eyed villain in Stanley."

I think Jessica could have made Blanche a truly pathetic person, but she was too shrill to elicit the sympathy and pity that the woman deserved. This threw the play out of balance because the audience was not able to realize the potential of her character, and as a result my character got a more sympathetic reaction than Tennessee intended. Because it was out of balance, people laughed at me at several points in the play, turning Blanche into a foolish character, which was never Tennessee's intention. I didn't try to make Stanley funny. People simply laughed, and Jessica was furious because of this, so angry that she asked Gadg to fix it somehow, which he never did. I saw a flash of resentment in her every time the audience laughed at me. She really disliked me for it, although I've always suspected that in her heart she must have known it wasn't my fault. I was simply doing what the script called on me to do; the laughter surprised me, too.

`We couldn't miss'

But we had a wonderful play under us and it was a big success. An actor can never act his way out of a bad play; no matter how well he performs, if he doesn't have real drama beneath him he can act his best all day and it won't work. He could have the 12 disciples in the cast and Jesus Christ playing the lead and still get bad reviews if the play is poorly written. An actor can help a play, but he can't make it a success. In "A Streetcar Named Desire," we had under us one of the best-written plays ever produced, and we couldn't miss.

The success of "Streetcar" meant I'd found a way to support myself in a fashion I liked, but it also skewed and shaped my life in ways that saddened me. Fame cuts two ways, I learned: It has at least as many disadvantages as it does advantages. It gives you certain comforts and power, and if you want to do a favor for a friend, your calls are answered. If you want to focus attention on a problem that bothers you, you may be listened to - something, incidentally, that I find ludicrous because why is a movie star's opinion valued more than that of any other citizen? I've had interviewers ask me questions about quantum physics and the sex life of fruit flies as if I knew what I was talking about - and I've answered the questions! It doesn't matter what the question is; people listen to you. A lot of reporters have come to see me after having already written their articles in their heads; they expect Marlon Brando to be eccentric, and so they say to themselves, I'll ask him a silly question and he'll answer it.

A lot of people who don't have it lust after fame and find it impossible to imagine that someone else wouldn't be interested in being famous; they can't envisage anyone turning his back on me and all its appurtenances. But fame has been the bane of my life, and I would have gladly given it up. Once I was famous, I was never able to be Bud Brando of Libertyville, Ill., again. One of my consistent objections to my way of making a living has been that I have been forced to live a false life, and all the people I know, with the exception of a handful, have been affected by my fame. To one degree or another everybody is affected by it, consciously or unconsciously. People don't relate to you as the person you are, but to a myth they believe you are, and the myth is always wrong. You are scorned or loved for mythic reasons that, once given a life, like zombies that stalk you from the grave - or newspaper-morgue files - live forever. Even today I meet people who think of me automatically as a tough, insensitive, coarse guy named Stanley Kowalski. They can't help it, but it is troubling.

I've learned that no matter what I say or do, people mythologize me. The greatest change that success has brought me has nothing to do with my concept of myself or my reaction to fame, but of other people's reactions to it. I haven't changed. I have never forgotten my life in Libertyville when I felt unwanted, and my formative years when I didn't have the advantages I do now. I have always been suspicious of success, its pitfalls and how it can undo you.

All in all, I think it would have been better not to have been famous because my entire adult life experience, my view of life, and the lives and outlook of my friends and family, have been colored and distorted by it. People without fame try to attach themselves to it, making it difficult to trust anyone.

Ever since I became famous, it's been difficult for me to judge if a potential friend was attracted to me or to my fame and to the myths about me. It is the first thing I notice. And even though they may say it doesn't, my fame affects them. I've given jobs to friends, then discovered they were using me, or worse, stealing from me.

Once you are famous, everything and everybody changes. Even my father. After "A Streetcar Named Desire," he started doing something that really annoyed me: He began calling me Marlon. Until then he'd always called me Bud or Buddy like everyone else in the family. Ever since then, it has annoyed me deeply whenever somebody who once called me Bud begins calling me Marlon or somebody who called me Marlon begins calling me Bud.

The worst thing that can happen when someone becomes famous is for him to believe the myths about himself - and that, I have the conceit to say, I have never done. Still, I am stung by the realization that I am covered with the same muck as some of the people I have criticized because fame thrives in the manure of the success of which I allowed myself to become a part. Though I am not directly responsible, I could have chosen a less putrid trail to walk, but without a high school education, and with no sense that becoming famous would put me next to a sewage plant, I was obliged to develop indifference to the consequences.

I never planned or aspired or had any ambition to become a movie star. It just happened. I never felt a passion to act for any other reason than to supply myself with the needs of life. When it happened, I was grateful to find something at which I could make a living. I didn't have anything better to do, acting didn't grate on me, and after a while I could do it without expending a lot of effort. Later, when it became less enjoyable, it was still the best way I knew to make a lot of money in a short time.

A means to an end

To me, acting has always been only a means to an end, a source of money for which I didn't have to work very hard. The hours are short, the pay good, and when you're done, you're as free as a bird. Acting is like playing house. I don't look down on it, but I have always been much more interested in other aspects of life.

Sometimes the themes of plays and movies I have been in have been interesting, but the acting itself doesn't really absorb me. It has advantages over some jobs. I wouldn't have wanted to spend my life as a real estate salesman or lawyer. Any 9-to-5 job I don't think I could bear. I don't do well under circumstances in which I have to be highly disciplined and responsible to other people.

But if a studio offered to pay me as much to sweep the floor as it did to act, I'd sweep the floor. Better yet, I would just as soon someone drove up to my house once a week, handed me some money and said, "Good morning, Marlon, how you doing?"

"Just fine, thank you. See you next week when you bring more money."

(From the book "Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me" by Marlon Brando. Copyright 1994 by Marlon Brando. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Random House Inc. Distributed by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate.)