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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Shana Alexander, magazine journalist
"Submitting to 'navel-picking' and news commentator"
"... I began a marathon Life interview with Marlon Brando, then in Rome shooting 'Reflections in a Golden Eye' for John Huston. A leonine presence with a noble head, small broken nose, eyes like bruises in a Mayan mask ...
"Marlon was a supple, sensual, lazy, charming trickster, and a riveting storyteller, but the Life assignment took me seven years to complete. Though Marlon loved to talk, and could hold forth for many hours on a dazzling variety of subjects -- bioaquanautics, tropical sex practices, Indians, Eskimos, Buddhist philosophy, the ten deadliest animals in the world, Japanese erotica, the social life of apes, the Black Panther Party, poisons of the Amazon -- he loathed talking for publication. He considered submitting to an interview 'navel-picking'..." (1966)
[from "Happy Days: My Mother, My Father, My Sister & Me," by Shana Alexander (Doubleday 1995)]
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Tariq Ali, New Left activist
"Talked Vietnam"
"I arrived at his rented accommodation somewhere in Chelsea and was greeted by the much-amused secretary, a Ms. Sanchez, who introduced me to my host. We sat down and talked about Vietnam. Brando was deeply hostile to the war and it was he who told me that [Henry] Kissinger was not an insipid nonentity, but a man desperate to become a grey eminence to the powerful and the mighty. He asked whether I thought the United States could win the war. I gave him three reasons why they could never win a permanent victory and would be forced to leave sooner or later. He nodded in agreement. Then I asked him whether his position would be the same if he thought that his country could win the battle. I explained that many Americans were despondent because they thought the situation was hopeless and not because they were on principle opposed to the intervention. He grinned and assured me that he did not belong in that category: 'You said on TV that in your opinion US intervention in Vietnam was as immoral as that of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in Spain during the Thirties. Well, I'd go along with that ...'" (London, 1966)
[from "Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties," by Tariq Ali (Citadel Press, 1987)]
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Michael Caine, actor
"Director problem"
"Sidney Furie, who had directed me in 'Ipcress,' was also working at Universal on a picture called 'The Appaloosa,' a western starring Marlon Brando. Sidney came to my dressing room one day almost in tears with horror stories at how badly things were going over on his set. The main problem seemed to be that Brando would not take him seriously.
"I had some free time so I went back with Sidney to the set and met Brando, who was sitting on a horse at the time. We said hello and then Brando asked me what I thought of Sidney as a director. I told him that I thought he was excellent, and Brando said, in front of Sidney, 'I don't think he can direct traffic.'
"Sid just stood there terribly hurt, and I found myself saying, 'It's a western -- there isn't any traffic.' This got a slightly tense laugh after a moment while everybody waited to see if Marlon laughed, which he did and things lightened up a bit." (Hollywood, 1966)
[from "What's It All About?: An Autobiography," by Michael Caine (Turtle Bay Books/Random House, 1992]
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Omar Sharif, actor
"Pleasant plasticity"
"Marlon Brando ... changed not only acting technique but also the behavior and habits of a generation that adopted the T-shirt and jeans ...
"Marlon Brando did what no actor had done before. He imposed his style, his expression, and his wardrobe. He was the forerunner of the budding actor films ...
"Marlon Brando has no equivalent in the seventh art: he is -- all by himself -- a school. He injected a new plasticity into movement, gesture, facial expression. This pleasant plasticity, spectacular in the noble sense of the word, although appearing natural, spontaneous, is the fruit of long inner toil. Marlon Brando did away with unnecessary gestures. Austerity is the keynote of his way of moving and looking.
"...
" I knew Marlon Brando -- No, I didn't really know him. What's more, who can claim to really know him? A few close friends? Not even they! Marlon Brando is being drawn into himself. He doesn't reveal himself. Even approaching him is hard. His inner life -- what he loves, what he knows -- seems to be enough for him." (Hollywood, mid-1960s)
[from The Eternal Male: My Own Story, by Omar Sharif with Marie-Therese Guinchard (Doubelday, 1977)]
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Kenneth Tynan, theatre critic
"Friendship proven"
"...the echt sixties party that we gave in (or around) 1967 ... Our theme was the work of [French artist] Clovis Trouille and we peopled the Mount Street flat with fibre-glass models of girls dressed like the creatures of Trouille's imagination ...
"The guests included Gore Vidal, Richard Harris and Marlon Brando, the latter pair drunk on arrival; Marlon joined me in the bathroom, locked the door, and dared me to kiss him on the lips as proof of our friendship. (I did.)" (London)
[from "The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan," edited by John Lahr (Bloomsbury, 2001)]
