A Eulogy For Our Marlon Brando
By Dave Zirin
Marlon Brando’s death at the age
of 80 will begin a battle over how the “greatest actor of all time”
will be remembered. Some will focus on his latter day isolation, his bizarre
behavior, and the many personal tragedies that befell his family.
Others will focus exclusively on his iconic
status, and when it comes to Brando performances, icons abound. There was the
1950s motorcycle rebel from “The Wild One” (1954), or the brutal
Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951) or Terry
“I Coulda Been a Contender” Malloy in “On the
Waterfront” (1954). or his performance as Vito Corleone in “The
Godfather.”
Then there is
Brando’s influence on acting itself. In a Hollywood built around
“movie stars” Brando was at the vanguard of a new generation of
performers in the aftermath of World War II schooled in Stanislavsky’s
“Method” acting style. Taught by Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg at
the Actor’s Studio in New York, The Method was a rejection of the Spencer
Tracy approach to drama of “Just memorize your lines and don’t bump
into the furniture." Emotional honesty and “becoming” your character
were the hallmarks of this style It was an attempt to use art to break out of
what was seen as a stultifying and frustration gray haze of early 1950s America.
Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Laurence Fishburne, Sean Penn, and countless others
count Brando as their primary
influence.
But the Brando I want to
remember, especially now, is the actor who pulled back in the 1960s to focus on
supporting the Civil Rights Movement and the broader struggles against war and
oppression. In 1959, he was a founding member of the Hollywood chapter of SANE,
an anti-nuclear arms group formed alongside African-American performers Harry
Belafonte and Ossie Davis.
In 1963,
Brando marched arm in arm with James Baldwin at the March on Washington. He,
along with Paul Newman, went down South with the freedom riders to desegregate
inter-State bus lines.
In defiance of
state law, Native Americans protested the denial of treaty rights by fishing the
Puyallup River on March 2, 1964. Inspired by the civil rights movement sit-ins,
Brando, Episcopal clergyman John Yaryan from San Francisco, and Puyallup tribal
leader Bob Satiacum caught salmon in the Puyallup without state permits. The
action was called a fish-in and resulted in Brando's arrest.
When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was
assassinated in 1968, Brando announced that he was bowing out of the lead role
of a major film and would now devote himself to the civil rights movement.
Brando said “If the vacuum formed by Dr. King’s death isn’t
filled with concern and understanding and a measure of love, then I think we all
are really going to be lost.”
He
gave money and spoke out in defense of the Black Panthers and counted Bobby
Seale as a close friend and attended the memorial for slain prison leader George
Jackson. Southern theater chains boycotted his films, and Hollywood created what
became known as the ‘Brando Black List’ that shut him out of many
big time roles.
After making a comeback
in Godfather, Brando won his second Oscar. Instead of accepting what he called
“a door prize,” he sent up Native American activist Sacheen
Littlefeather to refuse befuddled presenter Roger Moore and issue a scathing
speech about the Federal Government's treatment of Native
Americans.
Even in the past several
years, he has lent his name and bank account to those fighting the US war and
occupation in Iraq.
So how do we
remember Brando? He was a celebrity, an artist, an activist, and at the end an
isolated and destroyed old man.
It is
tragic that we live in a world where most people’s talents never get to
see the light of day. It is equally tragic that those like Brando who actually
get the opportunity to spread their creative wings, can be consumed and yanked
apart in process. Yet whether Brando was on the top of Hollywood or alone and
embittered, he never forgot what side he was
on.
Dave Zirin is the Editor
of the Prince George's Post in Prince George's County Maryland. He can be
reached at editor@pgpost.com. His sports writing can be read at
http://www.edgeofsports.com.
Posted: Thu - July 1, 2004 at 07:06 PM