The most acclaimed actor of his generation, a proponent of controversial causes, a public figure who shuns the public gaze and, therefore, the subject of innumerable legends and rumors, Marlon Brando has written his autobiography in order to set the record straight.
In "Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me," he provides a detailed historical record of both his life and career, together with comments on some of the people who shaped his art and influenced his personality. Aside from his frequent pronouncements on more abstract subjects, such as psychoanalysis, politics, and philosophy, however, his book reveals a good deal less than a reader might expect or even deserve.
As with Proust, Mr. Brando's olfactory sense triggers his remembrance of things past -- in a lyrical beginning, he recalls the fragrances of his Midwestern childhood, especially the sweet smell of his alcoholic mother's boozy breath, scents that initiate his persistent concern with his difficult youth. He returns often to those painful times when he and his two beloved sisters coped with an erratic, drunken mother and a demanding, unloving, often absent father. One of the persistent themes in the life and the book is the actor's hatred of that father, whom he finally manages to punish and humiliate for all his sins.
Although he must realize that nobody would buy his book if he were simply yet another whiner with an unhappy childhood and memories about his first girlfriend, his love for animals, his expulsion from military school, and so forth, Mr. Brando supplies surprisingly little of what readers really want. The genre itself, that somewhat spurious form known as the Hollywood autobiography, demands the inside scoop on the only matters of interest to most fans -- his sex life and his movies -- but he and his collaborator, Robert Lindsey, stay mostly on the surfaces of both areas. He resolutely excludes any discussion of his wives or children and chivalrously refuses to name any living women among the hundreds he claims to have slept with; on the other hand, he writes rather unkindly of Tallulah Bankhead and Anna Magnani desperately trying to seduce him.
Although notorious for his ego, Mr. Brando generally discusses his artistic life in modest and sometimes even derogatory terms -- he regards his career as an easy way to make a lot of money for doing very little work, which allows him to devote the rest of his time to more important matters, such as recreation, reading, or his favorite causes. He began acting through a series of accidents and lucky breaks, among them the opportunity to take classes in the Stanislavsky Method from the great Stella Adler, for whom he expresses unstinting admiration. He was surprised that Tennessee Williams chose him for his breakthrough performance in "A Streetcar Named Desire," partly because he was a new face and partly because he fixed the plumbing at Williams' summer house.
He writes quite dispassionately of his success in some unforgettable roles -- Stanley Kowalski in both the stage and screen versions of "Streetcar," Johnny in "The Wild One," Terry Malloy in "On the Waterfront," Don Vito Corleone in "The Godfather." He points out that people wrongly identified him with those tough, alienated, brooding loners and that many of his most famous scenes in "On the Waterfront" worked because, as he puts it, they are "actor proof," i.e., anyone could play them. He generously gives credit to some of the fine directors he's worked with, especially Elia Kazan; he also praises numerous talented colleagues -- his friend Karl Malden, Montgomery Clift, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall.
Although he devotes many separate chapters to many different topics, he frequently (though discreetly) touches on many of his numerous love affairs, including a few with unidentified married women that sound like bedroom farces. Of the first night of his relationship with Marilyn Monroe, he says, "every soldier's dream came true." He never mentions his marriages, but asserts his belief that "the concepts of monogamy, fidelity and everlasting love were contrary to man's fundamental nature," which may explain their variety and number.
Above all, Mr. Brando seems eager to explain his views on a number of political and social questions, revealing himself as, above all, a first-class dilettante. He recounts his several public enthusiasms -- for Zionism, civil rights, the Black Panthers, the hungry in India and, of course, the plight of Native Americans, all of which he pursued when they were in fashion; now, for example, he recants his Zionism as an error of his youth when he hadn't been fully aware of the plight of the Arabs and perhaps the political correctness of Third World apologetics. When he deals with these topics, the naive style and tone turn self-conscious and pontifical.
Professionally illustrated with both studio photographs and private snapshots, full of family letters, "Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me" should stand as the definitive record of a distinguished career. At the same time, the book exhibits fewer profound insights into the actor's life or talent than many of the unauthorized, "outsider" books about him. The resolutely simple-minded approach to art, ideas, and even himself, couched in some painfully adolescent prose, finally come to seem embarrassingly unsuitable in a successful artist some 70 years old.
Dr. Grella teaches English at the University of Rochester. He writes frequently about film.
BOOK REVIEW
Title: "Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me"
Author: Marlon Brando, with Robert Lindsey
Publisher: Random House
Length, price: 468 pages, $25