Screenland Plus TV-Land (Nov 1952 - Oct 1953)

The indifferent Marlon Brando has been known to treat world famous columnists as if they were imbeciles, yet grant interview to high school paper. had been sought from him well in advance of production and he was happy to do management this favor. Marlon has been known to treat world-famed columnists as if they were imbeciles, but when the seventeen-yearold daughter of a friend of a studio workman asked for an interview to be published in her school paper, Marlon was charming. He spent almost two hours on the set with the girl, answering her questions with grave consideration, talking to her about her experiences in Europe (she was a native of Austria) and asking advice about sights to see and places worth visiting on the Continent. She went away wondering how certain powerful reporters could be so unfair to a man of the greatest courtesy. The answer was, of course, that Marlon Brando does not hunt rabbits. When he goes gunning, it is for game equipped to inflict as much damage, or ideally, more, than he can. Quite a lot has been written about his financial foibles. For years he made it a practice to borrow money indiscriminately, and never pay it back. The reverse side of this coin was that anyone who needed a loan could ask Marlon for it and be assured of his turned-out pockets. If he had fifty dollars or five cents it went to the petitioner and Marlon didn't expect to be repaid. Money, his attitude seemed to say, was like air; everyone should be able to get as much for personal use as he needed. Who would think of storing up air? Or attempting to return it, once used? Marlon's father, an orthodox type, began to collect Marlon's checks, invest the funds, and dole out a weekly allowance. Marlon, nowadays, is always broke on allowance-day-plus-one, mainly because he now repays everything he has borrowed during the lean six days of the previous week. It would be unrealistic to say that he doesn't appreciate the problem and the power of money, because he does — in his own way. During the filming of "The Wild One" a workman was injured in one of those rare accidents that sometimes occur during a complicated sequence. The following day, one of the man's friends took up a collection. Most fellow workers gave five or ten dollars; Marlon had been in touch with his agency and had floated a loan of two hundred dollars which he dropped in the hat, in cash. The collector protested that Marlon was being too generous, but Marlon insisted on giving the whole amount. "It's really swell of you to give so much," the man said. Marlon looked thoughtful. "It's nice to have it so that it can be given," he murmured. "Sometimes I haven't been able to help as much as I've wanted, but it's great to have it when someone needs it." The air-for-all attitude once again, you will notice. Even the Brando sense of humor contains, for other people, almost as much shock as laughter. After a several months' absence from Hollywood, he turned up in the office of a friend one afternoon. During a previous stay in Hollywood he had been a great favorite of the wife of the man to whom he was talking. When Brando asked after the lady's health, her husband nodded to the telephone and suggested, "Why don't you call her? She'd love to hear from you — might invite you out for dinner." Eagerly, Brando dialed the number. When the woman he liked so well answered, he said in a disguised but magnificently official voice, "This is the Edison Gas Company of Southern California and I regret to inform you that, because of your failure to pay for service, and your ignoring our repeated notices of delinquency, we must cut off your service this afternoon. Only your immediate appearance at our offices can forestall this." There is no Edison Gas Company in Southern California, of course, a fact that — in the excitement — escaped the lady. She checked her receipted bills, telephoned the company which did supply her service and gave them a bad thirty minutes. She still doesn't know what imp tossed the monkey wrench in the gas works. On another occasion Brando had been awol for forty-eight hours when he was needed for retakes. At length he wandered into the office of a friend and was told that Stanley Kramer, his agency, and half of the West Coast was ferreting for Brando. Marlon made no answer. He simply dialed his agency office, growled, "This is Stanley Kramer. Unless you bring Brando to my office within the next hour, our deal is off," and hung up. Every man in the agency was alerted and dispatched in search of a man who, if he chose to avoid apprehension, couldn't be found by a psychic St. Bernard accompanied by a brace of bloodhounds. Now and then the telephonic Brando has dialed a wrong number. One drowsy three a.m. when a Brando picture was about three -fourths completed, Marlon telephoned a studio official to say, "This is Jones of The Times. We have a report that Marlon Brando has been critically injured in an automobile accident. Have you any further information?" Shot back the official, "We understand that both legs and both arms are broken and we shall have to replace him in the picture." There was a shocked silence and then a plaintive reply, "My gosh, that's a fine attitude. You don't even sound sorry." Occasionally his sense of humor takes a quotable turn. While he was working in "The Wild One" he reported to the set one morning to spy cameraman Hal Mohr bundled up in beret, woolen muffler, windbreaker, riding trousers and puttees, an oufit that was traditional in the more exotic days of motion pictures. Brando studied this jazz age costume and queried with a straight face, "Where's Clara Bow?" It is pleasant to be able to report that so self-possessed a human being has his weaknesses. He has a terrible time remembering both names and faces. The average human being recalls one or the other, suffers agonies during mental delving for the missing jigsaw of identity. Brando loses both completely out of his consciousness. He tells this story on himself: he boarded a New York bus one afternoon, sat next to a man who greeted him instantly by name and whose conversation indicated that the speaker was familiar with Brando's latest play, with his previous successes, and with his contemplated future. Marlon was more than affable while writhing mentally in an effort toward even partial recall. Not until several hours later did Marlon remember that his "intimate friend" had been the attendant in the men's room in a small Harlem night club which Marlon had visited at wide intervals. It is also pleasant to report that Mar 61