50 Fun Facts About Marlon Brando

In which city was Marlon Brando born in 1924?

Omaha, Nebraska was only his first home: he grew up mostly in Illinois and dug ditches for a summer before his father agreed to pay for acting school in New York.

What happened to the teenage Brando at Shattuck Military Academy in 1943?

He was expelled for insubordination, as he had been from his previous high school; that summer he left for New York, where his sisters lived and acting classes finally held his attention.

What did Brando do when Stella Adler's class had to play chickens awaiting a bomb?

Calmly laid an egg was his answer while classmates ran about in a panic; asked why, he told Adler, 'I'm a chicken—what do I know about bombs?'

Which childhood friend stayed so close to Brando that their ashes were eventually scattered together?

Wally Cox, TV's mild Mr. Peepers, had known him since their Evanston boyhood; after Cox died in 1973, Brando kept the ashes at home, sometimes in a drawer or under his car seat.

Which question to Brando's biker in The Wild One draws the famous reply 'Whaddaya got'?

'What are you rebelling against?' sets up the film's most quoted line; the shrugged 'Whaddaya got?' made Johnny a rebel with no cause at all, a gang leader who has no idea what he really wants.

Brando was fired from which star's touring production of The Eagle Has Two Heads in 1946?

Tallulah Bankhead hired him despite a poor audition, then clashed with him all through the tryout tour; losing the job left him free for the stage role that made him famous a year later.

On which boxer did Brando base his portrayal of Stanley Kowalski?

Rocky Graziano trained at a gym where the unknown actor quietly studied him; given tickets to the play, the middleweight champion found the fellow from the gym up on stage playing him.

How did Brando prepare to play a paralysed soldier in The Men (1950)?

Moved into a veterans' hospital ward: pretending he could not walk, he lived among paralysed patients for weeks to learn first-hand how they moved and what they felt.

Which smooth-talking gambler did Brando play in the 1955 musical Guys and Dolls?

Sky Masterson bets he can take a strait-laced missionary to Havana; Brando, a dramatic actor new to musicals, sang every one of the high roller's numbers in his own voice.

On The Godfather set, how did Brando explain wanting his lines printed on cards?

'Because I can read them that way' was his deadpan reply; challenged by Coppola, he argued the cards kept him spontaneous, since real people don't know what they are going to say next.

Which Mexican revolutionary did Brando play in a 1952 Kazan film, earning his second Oscar nod?

Emiliano Zapata was the title role of Viva Zapata!, played behind heavy makeup and an accent; Brando lost the Oscar, while Anthony Quinn, cast as his brother, won one.

Which Shakespearean role did Brando play opposite John Gielgud in 1953?

Mark Antony looked like a joke to comedians, who mocked the casting in a Kowalski mumble; his 'Friends, Romans, countrymen' answered them and brought a third straight Oscar nomination.

Which motorcycle did Brando ride in The Wild One (1953)?

His own Triumph Thunderbird was the bike on screen; Triumph's American importers objected to seeing it under an outlaw gang leader, yet decades later the firm was selling replicas of his leather jacket.

Which singer nearly played Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront before producer Sam Spiegel won Brando back?

Frank Sinatra, a Hoboken native, had a handshake deal and even a costume fitting for the film shot in his home town; Brando had hesitated because Kazan had named names to HUAC.

In the 'I coulda been a contender' scene, what does Brando's Terry do when his brother pulls a gun?

Gently push it away, with what Kazan called 'the gentleness of a caress'; Brando thought so little of his own work that he walked out of the first screening sure he had failed.

What happened to the Oscar statuette Brando won for On the Waterfront?

It vanished, then surfaced at auction in London, he wrote in his memoir; decades later a Brando Oscar was in the news again when Leonardo DiCaprio, given one as a gift, handed it to US investigators.

How did Brando describe his Guys and Dolls singing?

'I couldn't hit a note with a baseball bat' was his verdict; each song, he admitted, was stitched together from countless takes, though he still sang every number himself rather than be dubbed.

In The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), Brando played Sakini, an interpreter of what nationality?

Japanese villager Sakini, on occupied Okinawa, runs rings round the American officers sent to modernise his village: they arrive to build a school and end up building a teahouse.

For The Young Lions (1958), Brando dyed his hair blond to play a soldier of which nationality?

German officer Christian Diestl is a hardened Nazi in Irwin Shaw's novel; the film makes him a decent man deceived by his rulers, a change Brando championed because he felt the book painted all Germans as evil caricatures.

Which director left One-Eyed Jacks (1961) before filming began, leaving Brando to direct for the only time?

Stanley Kubrick spent six months on the script before the two fell out; Brando then shot so much extra footage that editing dragged on and the western, begun in 1958, reached cinemas only in 1961.

Which actor played the deluded young patient of Brando's psychiatrist in Don Juan DeMarco?

Johnny Depp plays a young man convinced he is the world's greatest lover; Brando's weary psychiatrist, meant to cure him, catches the romance instead and starts wooing his own wife again.

Which line does Brando's dying colonel whisper near the end of Apocalypse Now?

'The horror! The horror!' comes straight from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the novella about a Congo ivory trader that Coppola carried across to the Vietnam War.

Which director of The Battle of Algiers made Burn!, the film Brando said held some of his best acting?

Gillo Pontecorvo cast him as a British agent who stirs up a sugar-island slave revolt and later returns to crush it; Brando ranked him among his finest directors even though, he wrote, 'we nearly killed each other.'

What did Brando use to darken his hair in his home-video screen test for The Godfather?

Shoe polish in his hair and a rolled-back collar turned him into an ageing Don on tape; Paramount's executives, who had been against casting him, gave way once they watched it.

Which English stage legend did Coppola name with Brando as the only two actors he wanted for Don Corleone?

Laurence Olivier was too ill to take the part, his agent said, which left Brando; within a year the two were rivals anyway, both nominated for the same Best Actor Oscar.

Which actor, two years before Brando, became the first to refuse the Best Actor Oscar?

George C. Scott declined it for Patton, calling the Oscars a 'meat parade' he wanted no part of; Brando's refusal was a protest instead, delivered by an activist he sent in his place.

Sacheen Littlefeather's refusal of Brando's Oscar took place while which standoff was ongoing?

Wounded Knee, South Dakota, had been seized by American Indian Movement activists a month earlier and was under siege; Littlefeather named it from the stage as part of his reason for refusing.

Which Last Tango in Paris director did Brando refuse to speak to for years after seeing the finished film?

Bernardo Bertolucci had coaxed him into improvising from his own painful memories; Brando felt exposed when he saw the result, and the silence ended only when the director phoned him years later.

Which character did Brando play for about two weeks' work and a $3.7 million fee in Superman (1978)?

Jor-El, the hero's Kryptonian father, is on screen for only minutes; Brando first proposed playing him as a suitcase or a green bagel with his voice, until the director talked him round.

Which renegade officer, worshipped by his jungle followers, did Brando play in Apocalypse Now?

Colonel Kurtz is a Green Beret gone rogue; Brando arrived overweight and unprepared, one of the troubles that stretched a planned five-month shoot in the Philippines to more than a year.

For which 1979 miniseries did Brando win a Primetime Emmy?

Roots: The Next Generations cast the civil-rights campaigner against type, as American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell, in one episode opposite James Earl Jones as Alex Haley.

Brando came out of retirement to play a human-rights lawyer in which 1989 anti-apartheid film?

A Dry White Season drew him back because he admired director Euzhan Palcy's commitment; his few scenes as the lawyer earned an Oscar nomination, though he later fell out with her over the editing.

In The Freshman (1990), Brando played a caricature of which of his own roles?

Vito Corleone, the role whose Oscar he refused, returned as fond self-parody 18 years on: his Carmine Sabatini looks and talks just like the Godfather, a turn Roger Ebert called 'a brilliant comic masterstroke'.

For which 1996 film did Brando win a Golden Raspberry for Worst Supporting Actor?

The Island of Dr. Moreau gave him a tiny lookalike sidekick, a pairing Mike Myers has said directly inspired Mini-Me in the Austin Powers films.

Brando's last completed film, The Score (2001), paired him with which actor?

Robert De Niro at last shared the screen with the actor he was so often compared to, while Brando feuded with director Frank Oz, a Muppets veteran he taunted as 'Miss Piggy'.

Which friend of Brando's played the rustler he hunts in the western The Missouri Breaks (1976)?

Jack Nicholson, a close friend, leads the horse thieves; Brando plays the hired 'regulator' who picks them off one by one, changing disguises as he goes.

Which actress wrote in her 2013 memoir of a stormy, years-long affair with Brando that began in 1954?

Rita Moreno called the eight years tumultuous; when they were cast as lovers in a 1968 thriller, a fight scene turned real as she let out years of anger, and the director kept the camera rolling.

Brando's second wife, Movita Castaneda, had appeared in which earlier version of a film he later remade?

Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) cast the teenage Movita as an island girl opposite Clark Gable's mutineers; in 1962 her husband took Gable's own role, Fletcher Christian, in the remake.

Which co-star from his 1962 epic became Brando's partner for a decade and the mother of two of his children?

Tarita Teriipaia, born on Bora Bora, played his island love interest; they had two children, Teihotu and Cheyenne, whom she raised in Tahiti rather than Hollywood.

What is Tetiaroa, which Brando bought after falling in love with Tahiti?

A twelve-island atoll about 30 miles north of Tahiti, it was once a retreat for Tahitian royalty; he hoped to make it a conservation laboratory, and it now holds an eco-resort that bears his name.

Brando was arrested near Tacoma in 1964 at what kind of protest for Native American treaty rights?

A fish-in, modelled on civil-rights sit-ins, meant catching salmon in the Puyallup River without state permits; he was arrested with a clergyman, and the prosecutor declined to press charges.

What was the title of Brando's 1994 autobiography?

Songs My Mother Taught Me dwells on his childhood and says almost nothing about his wives or children; he had to be talked into discussing even his films.

Which singer's 2001 music video featured Brando?

Michael Jackson's 'You Rock My World' video came out of a real friendship: Brando's son Miko had worked as the singer's bodyguard, and the actor spent long stays at his ranch.

Brando's final role, voiced in 2004 for the unreleased Big Bug Man, was his only what?

Female character Mrs. Sour, an old lady, was his own pick over the male part he was offered; the director said he recorded her lines in a blond wig, a dress and full makeup.

Which historical ruler did Brando play in the 1954 costume drama Désirée?

Napoleon Bonaparte was a part he took only to settle a studio lawsuit after walking out of another film; when it opened, he said he had let his makeup play the role.

Where were Brando's ashes scattered in 2004?

Tahiti and Death Valley each received a share; in the desert his family also scattered the ashes of a lifelong friend, which Brando had kept at home for three decades.

Which young singer, hailed on his TV breakthrough as 'a guitar-playing Marlon Brando', took the actor as a model?

Elvis Presley borrowed the sideburns and the sneer, and modelled his Jailhouse Rock rebel on Brando's biker; Brando himself was puzzled to find he had become a hero of rock and roll.

Which film brought Brando the first of his four consecutive Best Actor Oscar nominations?

A Streetcar Named Desire turned a Broadway star into a film star; he lost that year, was nominated again in each of the next three, and finally won for On the Waterfront.

Brando's production company, Pennebaker, was named in tribute to whom?

His mother, Dorothy Pennebaker Brando, had died in 1954; he put her maiden name on the company, hired his father as its chief employee and promised films of social value.

Which silent-film legend directed Brando and Sophia Loren in A Countess from Hong Kong (1967)?

Charlie Chaplin, making his last film and his only one in colour, acted out every part for his cast; Brando felt insulted, nearly quit, and later called him 'a fearsomely cruel man'.