Marlon Brando dies at 80
Oscar winner defined acting for generation of performers
Friday, July 2, 2004 Posted: 2:57 PM EDT (1857 GMT)
Marlon Brando's personal life was tragic at times, but his performances in "A Streetcar Nmed Desire," "On the Waterfront" and "The Godfather" were triumphs. (July 2)
(CNN) -- Marlon Brando, the stage and screen actor whose performances in "A Streetcar Named Desire," "On the Waterfront" and "The Godfather" earned him plaudits as one of the greatest actors of all time, has died, his attorney said. He was 80.
Brando died in Los Angeles. The cause of death was not revealed, but he had suffered from congestive heart failure and was overweight.
The actor was perhaps the most influential of his generation, noted Bob Thomas of The Associated Press.
Brando shot to fame in 1947 with his groundbreaking performance in Tennessee Williams' play "A Streetcar Named Desire" as the brutal, animalistic Stanley Kowalski.
Brando, a devotee of the Method, gave a raw, vital performance under Elia Kazan's direction that had critics swooning. Using the technique, fostered by Russian director Konstantin Stanislavsky and popularized at Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio, actors such as Brando drew on their own psychology and experience in creating roles.
"There had never been such a display of dangerous, brutal male beauty on an American stage -- its influence can still be felt, in fashion photography and sport as well as acting," wrote David Thomson in his New Biographical Dictionary of Film.
The actor was as famous for his off-screen antics as his on-screen performances. He could be intensely private, and yet he earned reams of publicity for his eccentric behavior and sometimes outlandish salary demands.
On "The Score" (2001), he refused to be on the set at the same time as director Frank Oz; he received $4 million for 10 minutes of acting in "Superman" (1978); he sent a woman who called herself Sacheen Littlefeather to decline his Oscar for "The Godfather" (1972).
But Brando was always held in esteem, often sought after -- even for a small part for the opening of "Scary Movie 2," which he turned down for health reasons.
Widely imitated
Marlon Brando was born April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska. His mother was active in the local theater and encouraged two local actors, Henry Fonda and Dorothy McGuire, onto the stage.
The young Marlon, known as Bud to the family, moved a handful of times with his family -- first to Evanston, Illinois, later to Santa Ana, California, and finally back to Illinois. Known as a rambunctious child, he was sent to military school as a teenager to curb his behavior. He was expelled.
Prevented from enlisting in World War II due to his 4-F status, he moved to New York at 19 to live with his sister Frances. Another sister, Jocelyn, was studying acting with legendary coach Stella Adler; Brando soon joined her. Adler was quickly impressed.
"Within a year, Marlon Brando will be the best young actor in the American theater," she said, according to the AP.
 Marlon Brando's performance in "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951), with Vivien Leigh, made him a star. |  |
After a handful of other roles, "Streetcar" -- which hit Broadway in 1947 -- made him a star. Brando, notes the AP, wasn't completely happy with the attention, which focused on his motorcycle riding, bongo playing and role as Stanley.
"Kowalski was always right, and never afraid. He never wondered, he never doubted. His ego was very secure. And he had the kind of brutal aggressiveness that I hate. I'm afraid of it. I detest the character," he told an interviewer.
Brando's first film, "The Men" (1950), earned raves, but it wasn't until the 1951 film version of "Streetcar" -- directed by Kazan -- that he became a major movie star. Three years later, Brando won his first Oscar for his performance as ex-boxer Terry Malloy in "On the Waterfront," also directed by Kazan. One of his lines from the film, "I coulda been a contender," has been widely imitated.
His roles in "Streetcar," "Waterfront" and "The Wild One" (1953) established him as an icon of the 1950s. Over the course of his career, he was nominated for eight Oscars, winning two -- for "Waterfront" and "The Godfather" (1972).
He followed his early success with hits in "Guys and Dolls" (1955), "The Teahouse of the August Moon" (1956) and "Sayonara" (1957), but his career went into decline in the 1960s, particularly after his mannered performance as Fletcher Christian in 1962's big-budget flop "Mutiny on the Bounty."
Legendary status
His career revived, however, with perhaps his most famous role, that of Don Corleone in "The Godfather." Director Francis Ford Coppola had only Brando in mind for the role, a decision not favored by producers, who almost fired the filmmaker over the decision.
Coppola was rewarded when the film became a huge hit -- it was the highest-grossing movie of all time until "Jaws" (1975) came along -- and Brando's quietly regal, brooding performance as a Mafia kingpin was the film's centerpiece.
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The actor followed up his success in "The Godfather" with a different kind of film, Bernardo Bertolucci's "Last Tango in Paris," in which he played a depressed American expatriate who strikes up a charged affair with a young Paris woman (Maria Schneider). Brando and Schneider were nakedly fearless, both physically and emotionally; the film was rated X upon its release in the United States in 1973.
He also played the mad Col. Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now" (1979), a Coppola film racked by dissent and difficulties but hailed by many as a classic about the Vietnam War.
His later films were a mixed bag. He earned a supporting actor Oscar nomination for "A Dry White Season" (1989), parodied his "Godfather" role in "The Freshman" (1990) and played a thoughtful therapist in "Don Juan DeMarco" (1995). But he also rented himself out for performances in "Christopher Columbus: The Discovery" (1992) and the widely panned "The Island of Dr. Moreau" (1996).
Brando was married three times, to Anna Kashfi in 1957, the Mexican actress Movita in 1960 and a Tahitian named Tahita. He had nine children.
In 1990, his son Christian shot and killed Dag Drollet, the lover of Brando's daughter Cheyenne, in Beverly Hills. Christian Brando was eventually found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 10 years.
Cheyenne Brando committed suicide in 1995.
Brando reportedly wound up millions of dollars in debt defending Christian, and the star subsisted during his final years almost entirely on small residuals from his films, Social Security benefits and a pension from the Screen Actors Guild.
Details about funeral plans were not disclosed. David J. Seeley, Brando's attorney, told the AP that arrangements would be private.