Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando (Vintage) [Paperback]

Stefan Kanfer (Author)

Book Description

Series: Vintage | Publication Date: November 3, 2009

Stefan Kanfer, acclaimed biographer of Lucille Ball and Groucho Marx, now gives us the definitive life of Marlon Brando, seamlessly intertwining the man and the work to give us a stunning and illuminating appraisal. Beginning with Brando’s turbulent childhood, Kanfer follows him to New York where he made his star-making Broadway debut as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire at age twenty-three. Brando then decamped for Hollywood, and Kanfer looks at each of Brando’s films over the years—from The Men in 1950 to The Score in 2001—offering deft and insightful analysis of his sometimes brilliant, sometimes baffling performances. And, finally, Kanfer brings into focus Brando’s self-destructiveness, ambivalence toward his craft, and the tragedies that shadowed his last years.

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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“Well-researched and beautifully written, the book is as fascinating . . . as the subject himself.” —Los Angeles Times

“Miraculous. . . . A landmark in Brando studies.” —David Thomson

“[A] vivid chronicle. . . . The Marlon Brando story is a fascinating and tragic one, and Kanfer gives it the size and understanding necessary to provide an enthralling read.” —Peter Bogdanovich

“Stefan Kanfer strikes an original note by portraying him, albeit with great sensitivity and tact, as a man permanently teetering on the brink of madness–clearly part of his mesmeric screen presence.” —The Sunday Times (London)

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (November 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400078040
• ISBN-13: 978-1400078042
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #915,376 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.