Marlon Brando was one of the most famous movie stars of all time, famed for his commanding screen presence and artfully slurred manner of delivering lines. Behind his cotton-stuffed cheeks there sat a boy who had grown up with an alcoholic mother, an unconventional woman for her time who smoked, wore pants and drove cars. Dodie had herself once been an actor, and a theatre administrator. Her husband regularly had to go and drag her home from the bars around Chicago. She was often drunk, and flouted the era’s rules of discreet, submissive femininity. She was a woman of substance; a modern woman. Brando’s father was a frustrated, angry man. Young Marlon’s behaviour did not please him. Brando Snr told his son that he was good for nothing, and that he would never amount to anything. It was an inauspicious omen. Perhaps inevitably, his parents separated when Marlon was eleven. Dodie took Marlon and his two sisters to California, where he found his first part-time job as a movie theatre usher.
Marlon, whose childhood nickname was Bud, had a gift for imitation. He developed the ability to absorb and mimic the mannerisms of the other kids he played with. He spent hours observing them, capturing their essence, their deepest emotions and what made them unique, simply through the movements of their bodies and faces. Brando’s first role was imitating the cows and horses on their family ranch in order to distract his mother from alcohol. His sister Jocelyn was the first sibling to pursue a career in acting, going off to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. She appeared on Broadway, then in movies and on T.V. Brando’s other sister, Frances, dropped out of college in California to go and study art in New York. During this time, Bud tested his limits and his freedom; he was expelled from Libertyville High School for riding his motorcycle in the hallways. The thrill of riding it made him feel like a man – his own man.
He was sent to the Shattuck Military Academy in Minnesota, where his father had studied. Brando excelled in the dramatic arts, and got good grades. He had no lack of brains, it turned out, though he continued to act out. During his final year, he was put on probation for insubordination toward a visiting army colonel during manoeuvres. He was confined to his room for a day, but even this light punishment was more than Marlon would readily endure. He snuck out and went into town, drinking in the fresh air, the lights, the cars, the movie theatres and the girls. He was free. But his insouciance would be fleeting; when he returned to school, the faculty voted to expel him. Marlon was irresponsible, but had found the way he wanted to live.
Bud’s father got him a job as a ditch digger. He attempted to join the army, but his entry exam showed that a football injury he’d sustained while at Shattuck had left him with a weak knee. He was deemed physically unsuitable for military service. In the end he decided to go and join his sisters in New York, and studied at the American Theatre Wing Professional School, which was part of the Dramatic Workshop of the New School, under the influential German director Erwin Piscator. Brando’s sister Jocelyn recalled: “He acted in a play at school and he liked it. So he decided to go to New York and study acting, because it was the only thing he’d ever really enjoyed. That was when he was eighteen.” Marlon Brando found his vocation in New York because he was accepted there; he was not criticized, and instead, for the first time in his life, he heard people speak well of him. He spent his first months in New York sleeping on a couch, daydreaming as he looked out the window over the infinite sea of buildings, thinking about the great roles that awaited him.
Alan Alfredo Geday