Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Stefan Kanfer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 4, 2008

For everything we know about Brando as a man as well as an actor and artist, he remains a fascination. What are we to make of someone whose life, both personal and professional, hit such dazzling highs and such abysmal lows? Stefan Kanfer answers this question, in the process giving us the final word on one of the most astonishing talents of the twentieth century.

Born in Nebraska in 1924, Marlon grew up unaffected by the Depression but scarred by a brutal father and fatally alcoholic mother. After a turbulent childhood, Brando made his great escape to 1940s New York and fell in love with a city bristling with postwar optimism and vibrancy. Soon New York fell in love with him, too—his stunning Broadway debut as Stanley Kowalski made him an instant star at age twenty-three.

Brando then decamped for Hollywood, and Kanfer illuminates his performances in early movies like The Men, Julius Caesar, and On the Waterfront. Starting in the late fifties and continuing throughout the sixties, though, Brando transformed from bright young star into something more complicated. By looking at such films as The Young Lions, One-Eyed Jacks—the one and only movie he ever directed—and Mutiny on the Bounty, Kanfer gives us a real understanding of Brando's breathtaking talent and sexual power while also giving us a sense of the vulnerable man behind the towering image. Through assessments of his performances in critically panned movies like Reflections in a Golden Eye, Candy, and The Appaloosa, an intricately woven portrait emerges—showing not only Brando’s genius, but also his self-destructiveness, womanizing, constant dissembling, and evolving ambivalence toward his fame and his craft.

With the role of Don Corleone, Brando pulled himself out of his slump for his career’s third and perhaps most interesting act; Kanfer turns his critical eye on The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and Last Tango in Paris, the last arguably Brando’s most intimate and disturbing appearance onscreen. After these, it was once again a downhill slalom for Brando, both professionally (the movies he made in the last fifteen years of his life were hardly worthy of him) and personally, as he lived out his finale in the shadow of horrific family tragedies.

With the surest of hands, Kanfer gives us the first truly comprehensive examination, not only of a life and a career, but of how the two came together to create the icon we know as Brando.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

This compulsively readable biography of the charismatic actor takes readers from Brando’s traumatic childhood through his glory days on Broadway and in Hollywood to his final years, which were marked by his struggle with weight and the travails of his children. Kanfer takes pains to reflect the events of the wider world at each stage of Brando’s life as well as the state of the movie business and Brando’s own ever-fluctuating interests, from conga drums to Tahiti to Native American rights. Where Kanfer excels is in his analysis of Brando’s contribution to the craft of acting; he is especially articulate about the revolutionary nature of Brando’s incendiary Broadway role in 1947 as Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, which created a sensation. Seven years later, Brando did it again in Hollywood, playing longshoreman Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront. Kanfer maintains that although Brando’s talent far outstripped his ambition, it was a bad contract that trapped him in a long string of inferior roles, although he also asserts that Brando’s work in a number of those films has long been undervalued and that his Academy Award–winning work in The Godfather should have come as no surprise. The pandemonium of his personal life—his compulsive womanizing and overeating, deep ambivalence about acting, and general self-destructiveness—is attributed to his treatment at the hands of a belittling, authoritarian father. This excellent biography is more even-handed than Peter Manso’s salacious  Brando: The Biography (1994) and offers a much more full-bodied treatment than Patricia Bosworth’s slim Marlon Brando (2002); Broadway credits and filmography included. --Joanne Wilkinson

Review

History of the legendary actor's life.Kanfer (The Voodoo That They Did So Well: The Wizards Who Invented the New York Stage, 2007, etc.) portrays Brando as a man unconsciously at war with himself. He hated his profession but was unable to do anything else. Compelled by his gluttonous appetite for women, he indulged in numerous sexual conquests but was unable to maintain a long-term relationship. He was so uncomfortable with his physical beauty that he eventually destroyed it with junk food - induced obesity. The actor could be enormously difficult to work with, a moody, spiteful troublemaker, exacting swift vengeance for any perceived slight. Yet despite his hang-ups, Kanfer joins the ranks of biographers and fans who believe that Brando was the greatest actor of the 20th century. He had an irresistible intensity, and the force of his stage and screen presence warped many a script into orbit around his character, most famously with his portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. His influence on younger actors such as James Dean and even Elvis Presley - indeed, on an entire generation of young men eager to emulate his tough, rebellious charm - was unmistakable. Still, after covering the initial years of rapidly rising stardom, this biography becomes a detailed register of Brando's many successive failures: theatrical, financial, emotional and romantic. Kanfer's thesis wavers little; he traces all of Marlon's woes back to his malignant relationship with his father, whose praise Brando sought and never gained, leading to his notorious disrespect for acting in general and his own accomplishments in particular. Swift, witty prose keeps the narrative moving through a chronicle of every production with which Brando was involved. Kanfer skillfully weaves in Broadway and Hollywood history, and his behind-the-scenes analysis of Brando's films will send you running to rent the classics, the reluctantly acknowledged cult favorites and even the bombs.An inspiring, depressing, riveting story. (Kirkus Reviews)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (November 4, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400042895
• ISBN-13: 978-1400042890
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 1.4 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #878,573 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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30 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Actually, several different "somebodies", December 9, 2008

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando (Hardcover)

Marlon Brando (April 3, 1924 - July 1, 2004) is usually ranked among the greatest screen actors because he performed brilliantly in a series of major films that began with A Streetcar Named Desire and continued with Viva Zapata! and On the Waterfront at least until The Godfather and (arguably) Last Tango in Paris. He also made a number of others of much lesser quality but in at least a few of those - The Men, Julius Caesar, The Wild One, One-Eyed Jacks, Superman, and Apocalypse Now -- his performance was memorable. What was he like off-screen? That depends on who is asked. Opinions vary. In this volume, Stefan Kanter quotes dozens of persons who knew Brando at various stages of his life and career. He also offers some opinions of his own. We now know that Brando made several films only because he desperately needed the money. As for Brando the person, he seems to resemble "the little girl with the curl" who, when she was good was very, very good but when she was bad, she was terrible. He had several wives, countless lovers (including men as well as women) and at least ten children and yet was unwilling and/or unable to sustain a relationship with most of them. He developed few close friendships (e.g. Wally Cox, Jack Nicholson, and perhaps Karl Malden) and little (if any) respect for most of his directors and other actors. Over the years, a number of those who worked with Brando or at least were directly associated with him have very specific opinions about him, some of which are quoted in Kanter's book or in other sources to which he refers.

To me, one of the most revealing statements was made by Jack Nicholson: "I think Marlon knew he was the greatest. I don't think he dwelled on it, nor did he ever say as much to me. But, come on, there was a reason people expected so much from him right to the end. That's why people always expected him to be working. And believe me, there were times when he told me he wanted to work but couldn't." Indeed, Brando once admitted that he had spent a lifetime trying to be less lazy" and in that acknowledgment, Kanfer asserts, lies the key to all that came before. "If there was a `Rosebud' in Brando's life it was the mental illness that had dogged him for decades, probably from childhood...In the competition with his great rival Montgomery Clift, he seems to have won the self-destruction contest."

Frequently Brando did indeed express a sense of shame because he earned his living as an actor. He ridiculed most films (including many of his own) as well as those involved with them. "He had stated for the record that acting was a `bum's life in that it leads to perfect indulgence. You get paid for doing nothing, and it all adds up to nothing.'" Another time, he "spilled his guts" to Elia Kazan: "Here I am, a balding, middle-aged failure...I feel a fraud when I act...I've tried everything...fucking, drinking, work. None of them mean anything. Why can't we be just like - like the Tahitians?" Kanfer is among those who believe that Brando hated himself and what his life had become so much that he committed a form of suicide through excessive consumption throughout the last years of his life. When he died, the cause of death was initially withheld at the request of his attorney but later revealed to be respiratory failure brought on by pulmonary fibrosis. He also suffered from congestive heart failure, failing eyesight due to diabetes, and had recently been diagnosed with liver cancer.

Kanfer seems to have poured over all available research resources that include books and articles by and about Brando and interviews of those who were associated with him at various points in his life and career as well as any other relevant historical material that would help to establish a frame-of-reference for dominant influences and major developments in Brando's "reckless life and remarkable career." Kanfer offers a wealth of insights into Brando's most significant and invariably dysfunctional relationships, as with his parents. Marlon senior earned more than enough to maintain his family in solid comfort. Affection, however, was in short supply. "He grew up rude and misogynistic, given to binge drinking and bullying." As for Dorothy ("Dodie") Brando, "the neighbors whispered that [she] was the kind of woman who saw the glass as half full. That was because she had drunk the other half...Too many afternoons [she] disappeared into an alcohol-saturated haze, unreachable by her children" who included two daughters, Frances ("Frannie") and Jocelyn ("Tiddy"). Kanfer helps his reader to understand why, once Brando became a father, he was a dysfunctional parent. Why, while growing up feeling inadequate and unworthy, he could not later accept praise or offer it to others. And why he became convinced that "if you want something from an audience, you give blood to their fantasies. It is the ultimate hustle."

I only wish that Stefan Kanfer had spent less space discussing Brando's inferior films (e.g. Sayonara and The Ugly American) and more space when examining his great films (e.g. A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront). That said, I do not know of another source that offers more and better information about Marlon Brando's life and career than does this one.

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars It could have been a contender..., January 19, 2009

By 

Richard Masloski (New Windsor, New York USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando (Hardcover)

...but it's not. I saw Karl Malden on some interview on TV recently and he mentioned how Marlon called him a few times in the weeks or so before he died telling Karl how he'd been falling down lately and didn't know the reason. I nearly wept when I heard this: the great, powerful Brando, falling down as his body was failing him. But you won't find this tragic bit of information in the pages of SOMEBODY. There is a helluva lot you won't find in the pages of this book. If you want details, stick with the Manso book - even though the author of this one rather dismissively (and perhas a tad jealously) refers to it as a "doorstop of a book" because of its 1,000 plus pages and weighty size. He knocks it in other ways, too.

But for a subject like Brando you need weight (even if he, himself, didn't!) - and more pages. In Kanfer's quick read we get a page or two on certain Brando films, whereas in Manso's tome we get 20 or more pages per film. About the only thing SOMEBODY has going for it is coverage (albeit quick coverage) of the years after Manso's book was published which include Brando's death and some aftermath. But the Devil is in the details, and this book is not rich in detail. It ends up seeming like a boiled down, condensed, quick-read version of the Manso work; even moreso a linear accumulation of press clippings. Not much original homework was done on this one.

So - if you want a casual knowledge of Mr. Brando, this book is for you. If you want those devilish details, Manso's book is the one to read.

One further thought, since the book is entitled SOMEBODY, a better cover photo would have been of Brando as Terry Malloy at the moment he reflects on his failings in the famous cab scene with his brother from "On the Waterfront." A closeup of his anguished face at that historic cinematic moment would have better captured the anguish and self-laceration of the real Marlon Brando, an anguish and self-laceration which is a theme of this work.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tragedy Of An Actor, March 12, 2010

By 

LJL70 ""ComicMonster"" (San Diego) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando (Hardcover)

Have you ever wondered if acting is truly something that is learned, or is it just that, an act? The book "Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando" answers alot of these questions. From his early childhood, till his death, this book does an excellent job of unpeeling the layers of Brando. Kanfer does quite a good job of delving into his psyche, exposing his strengths as well as his inability to connect on an emotional level. Brando had alot to speak about, this country, his causes, and at times his acting. I would highly recommend this book to anyone that wanted to know more about possibly the greatest, and most disturbed actor of our time.