Brando: The Biography [Hardcover]

Peter Manso (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1994

Using information gathered from seven years of research and hundreds of interviews, a respected biographer offers an insightful and revealing look at the troubled and fabled life of Marlon Brando, one of the most acclaimed actors of his generation. 60,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Manso's epic profile of Brando reveals a self-destructive personality combined with bursts of idealism and a stunningly uneven film career.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

A scandal-loving biographer's dream, Marlon Brando has led a tumultuous life, complete with unhappy childhood, an active and varied sex life, troubled children of his own (son Christian is now in prison for killing daughter Cheyenne's lover), and a long history of eccentric behavior on and off the set. Surprisingly, Brando hasn't caught Kitty Kelley's eye, but journalist Manso (Mailer: His Life and Times, LJ 4/15/85) corrects that oversight with this massive tome. Based on seven years' research, Manso's biography is a treasure trove of juicy details that the star might prefer not to have revealed, but readers hoping for real insight into Brando's acting talent and career may be disappointed. The publicity surrounding Brando's own book-Songs My Mother Taught Me (Random, 1994), which the star is rumored to have penned in retaliation for Manso's work-will guarantee demand for this title as well, but Brando also has some value as the most complete, up-to-date biography currently available.
David C. Tucker, DeKalb Cty. P.L., Decatur, Ga.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 1118 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion Books; 1st edition (October 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786860634
• ISBN-13: 978-0786860630
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 2.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,265,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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30 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Major Disappointment.... Don't Waste Your Time, September 11, 2005

By 

Jimmy (Birmingham, Alabama USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brando: The Biography (Paperback)

It is a tribute to something--stamina, perseverance, curiosity, perhaps just to pure stubbornness--that I have struggled through to the end of this dreadful book. This is an 1,100 page compendium of minutiae, tedium, and dirt--all rather inartfully designed to assassinate the life and character of Marlon Brando. Not particularly well-written, generally void of perception and insight, it has very little beyond salaciousness to recommend it. In fact, it is such an abomination that I have, for the first time, broken a personal rule and filed a book review on-line.

Full disclosure: I am a great fan of Mr. Brando--as artist, actor, activist, and man. Still, when I picked up this book, I never expected nor required a whitewash of his life. Brando, like many larger-than-life figures, was a complex amalgam of contradictions. He was certainly no angel--even though the unspeakable dysfunction of his early home life would have given anyone reason to develop the anger, confusion, and despair that marked his later life. Yet, in reading this book, neither did I expect to encounter a ceaseless, unrelenting campaign to lay waste to a man's entire life and art.

In Manso's hands, Brando simply cannot win for losing. He is recognized as the greatest actor of all time, but constantly denigrated for "acting" and playing control games in his personal life. He is damned for walking through sub-par acting roles to finance alimony, child support, and court-custody battles, yet doubly damned for "trouble-making" and insisting on intellectual honesty and authenticity in scripts and film projects. He is taken to task for wasting his talent by not acting enough, or leaving sets for home on weekends (no matter where in the world they were located), yet denounced for being an inattentive father who spent too much time away from home. By all accounts Anna Kashfi, his first wife, was a dangerous and unbalanced lunatic. Yet when Brando takes legal steps to gain custody of his son Christian and to cut Kashfi out from their lives, he is derided as callous, manipulative, and harsh. Manso consistently takes the side of lifelong coattail riders like Walter Seltzer and Philip Rhodes, who, with his wife, functioned as parasites of Brando for decades, subsisting on the crumbs he arranged to fall from his table of power and fame. Yet, once Brando turns on Rhodes for committing the unpardonable sin of disloyalty and revealing personal secrets to the tabloids, Manso implicitly deplores Brando's cruelty and temper, and quotes over-liberally from Rhodes throughout the book any way he can to disparage his subject. Manso criticizes Brando for contributing millions to the liberal movements that were close to his heart, such as the American Indian Movement and civil rights, and mocks him as "Mr. Liberal" for embarking on numberless aquaculture projects on his private island to feed the hungry of the Third World, and for being "used" by Indian groups. Yet when the actor finally distances himself from AIM, Manso casts him as fickle, unreliable, unserious. He even charges Brando with cowardice because he has the good sense to hit the deck while being shot at by federal agents during the siege of an AIM-affiliated group. This despite the fact that Brando repeatedly put himself in a position of actual physical harm during the struggles of the Sixties and Seventies, and even faced possible prison time for aiding the Indian cause.

Manso is so intent on tearing his subject down that at times he even lets this spill over into Brando's acting. After the unprecedented artistic and commercial success of Brando's first six or so movies, Manso dismisses all of his work before and after his comeback in "The Godfather" and "Last Tango"--including performances that many critics agree have much to recommend them: "The Young Lions," "One-Eyed Jacks," "The Fugitive Kind," "Reflections in a Golden Eye," "Burn!" "The Missouri Breaks," "Apocalypse Now," and "A Dry White Season." Yet perhaps the most egregious mistreatment of Brando takes place in the book's final 100 pages or so. Throughout the biography, Manso consistently ascribes the worst of motives to Brando while exonerating anyone who crosses swords with him. He never misses an opportunity to deride his subject, with some good reason, as an inattentive and inadequate parent. Yet when Brando does perform nobly to stand by Christian, his son accused of murder--putting up his Mulholland Drive home as bail, hiring private investigators, and legal talent the likes of William Kunstler and Bob Shapiro--Manso predictably finds fault with Brando for being manipulative, callous, and using his power to shield his son.

On another note, for all of the book's incredible detail, we learn precious little about many interesting people who shared Brando's life. Tony Curtis was a one-time Hollywood roommate, Rita Moreno, Tallulah Bankhead, and Marilyn Monroe were on-again, off-again lovers and confidantes, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Dick Cavett, and Michael Jackson were friends, Martin Sheen, Rod Steiger, Richard Harris, and George C. Scott acted opposite him, Bob Dylan considered Brando a soul-mate--yet we learn next to nothing about these relationships and countless others.

In sum, this book is the definition of unfair--one that does not begin to treat its admittedly complex subject with a modicum of even-handedness. Readers looking for more meaningful information on Brando's acting career and philosophy should consult his autobiography, Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me. For an exceedingly more insightful treatment of his personal life, see George Englund's biography. As for Manso's book, all I can say is, on one of the most influential persons of our time, we deserve better. Brando deserved better.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Mixed Bag, December 27, 2005

By 

Kavin "Kavin" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brando: The Biography (Paperback)

Manso's biography of Marlon Brando is a mixed bag. It is distinguished and praiseworthy for its incredible detail. Manso conducted an enormous number of interviews for this work, and he is able to provide valuable detail on Brando's acting career, personal life, politics, and relationships--detail that is not available elsewhere. This is the strongest attribute of the work. A problem, though, is that it is difficult to know how much of the detail to actually believe. Manso is manifestly hostile toward his subject, giving every other person in his life the benefit of the doubt instead of Brando. Manso also has a rather distasteful eye for the salacious--the more tabloid-like the better. Thus the reader does not know quite what to believe. A good example is Manso's treatment of Brando's alleged bisexuality. He is able to give names, dates, places, addresses, favorite colors, shoe sizes, and any other detail when discussing any of Brando's hundreds of heterosexual partners, but is not able to supply a single name when speaking about allegations and rumors of homosexual conduct. In a way, Manso's prejudiced stance toward his subject, and his own propensity to wallow in the gutter, marred what would otherwise have been a more valuable work.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, researched, but....., July 1, 2010

By 

Joe (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brando: The Biography (Paperback)

I remembered reading Manso's book when it first came out. I was fascinated by the extent of the research and depth of information. However, one thing became evident. It seemed that, as Manso what putting together and actually writing the book from the hundreds of interviews he had done, his tone began to change. The more he began to write about Brando, the more he began to dislike him. By the end of the book, you feel that his feelings are so tainted, he should just end the book way before he did. It colors his interpretations as well. He states that The Freshman was a critical flop, but I vividly remember that Siskel & Ebert--easily the most influential film critics of the nineties--gave the film a positive review and two thumbs up. But you can't discount the breadth of his research and all the information gathered within.