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Courting Brando
Courtesy Everett Collection
With the publication of a new biography of Marlon Brando, Harold Evans recalls the surreal dinners and the moonlight swims he endured to extract a memoir from the legendary actor.
Reading Stefan Kanfer’s excellent new biography of Marlon Brando, Somebody (Knopf), reminds me of one adventure that isn’t there: my own trying to secure Brando’s memoir for Random House during my time as president and publisher.
I was one of any number of New York supplicants who trekked to Los Angeles in February 1991 to persuade the reclusive 66-year-old star that their imprint was the only one capable of doing justice to his life story. Before I flew to L.A., I’d been warned by others that Brando had contempt for anyone suggesting he was an acting genius. In his eyes, acting was a commonplace skill, and the whole admiring East Coast establishment was populated by phonies. He proved it to himself, I heard, by inviting publishers to show their enthusiasm by going down on their knees in front of him. I was ready for that: I was going to tell him that declining to kneel was not a mark of disrespect but recognition of physics. A skiing injury, I’d say, meant I’d never be able to get up again and he’d have a problem disposing of the body.
Brando’s go-between, the elegant producer-director George Englund, had said we’d meet for an hour at Brando’s house on Mulholland Drive at 7 pm, but not eat. As Englund put it, “Marlon has a girth problem."
"He gripped me with his Don Corleone eyes, small but extraordinarily clear.”
I was to press a button on a post and the iron gates would swing open. They didn’t. I fretted by the side of the ridiculously long limo the hotel had ordered for the afternoon, and was about to depart when a familiar voice wafted out of the bushes followed by the 300-lb pound bulk of the Godfather, wearing a leather jacket, a red silk square stuffed in the top of his open white shirt, and his hair tied up in a short ponytail. Englund was behind, the beanpole Laurel to Brando’s Hardy. Brando announced we were going straight to Valentine’s for dinner, climbed into my limo, and promptly locked out Englund. When I opened the door, Brando leaned over and playfully goosed the startled Englund’s genitals.
The restaurant was full. “You watch,” said Brando, who made it a policy never to book ahead. “They’ll shove someone out for us.” (They did of course, Brando speaking to the owner in fluent French; nearby, diners whispered loudly that he was behaving like the Godfather. “Fuck ‘em” was Brando’s smiling response).
To curry favor, I mentioned—knowing Native Americans were his passion—that I once lived on a Navajo reservation and published the prizewinning author of Spirit of Crazy Horse, Peter Matthiessen. I expected an immediate paean of praise for Matthiessen and didn’t get it. Instead Brando stared hard at me. "What I tell you here—look me in the eye!—is between us. Look me in the eye! It’s between us…(pause)…Matthiessen is CIA.” I told him I knew Matthiessen well and found that ridiculous.
"CIA!” insisted Brando. “I went to see him at his home and we talked and I said goodbye in the drive. And then I had an instinct. Don't know why I wanted to say something else to him and went back and he’d gone. I had the temerity to open the door of his house and went into magazines and things in the house. He's CIA.” .
Brando was unquestionably suspicious of anything that moved. He was sometimes also right. Fourteen years later in the book just now published about George Plimpton and the Paris Review, I was stunned to find Matthiessen shamefacedly admitting that in his youth he had indeed been recruited by the CIA. (Later, Brando asked me to get his own records from the CIA and FBI.)
In between the servings of salmon, which Brando didn’t touch, I kept trying to get the talk back to the book I’d come to bid for—the great Brando memoir—but the star was a one-man detour artist. He had a habit of linking one thought and then another so that like someone who gets lost in a road system, you find yourself miles from where you began, wondering how the hell you got there. One of these side-turnings from the CIA and the Sioux found us talking about his admiration of the Jewish people, then Jonas Salk, the inventor of polio vaccine, which led somehow to a ramble about genetics and man and music.
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Harold Evans, author of two histories of America, is writing his memoir. Editor at large of The Week, he was editor of The Sunday Times from 1967-81 and The Times from 1981-82, founding editor of Condé Nast Traveler, and president of Random House Trade Group from 1990-97.
Me think's he was a nutjob.
Big fan of the actor, bigger fan of his movies..., and thats why I read 'Songs my mother taught me', Brando's story in his own words..., found the book to be a bit incomplete, not totally honest and very selective in the episodes that it chose to elaborate on. He fell quite a few notches in my eyes after I finished that book. I will still watch his movies but with a little less awe, Still cant think of anyone else as Stanley Kowalski but will probably never read a book about him that he had anything to do with.
Brando was a natural eccentric, clearly very smart if unfocused, and as the world's most famous and most worshipped actor, he had nothing to lose--except for quite a few pounds. Imagine the freedom of that.
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What an amazingly complex, confused, and scary individual Brando was. I wonder if he was ever diagnosed with a particular form of mental illness? And whether or not the pharmaceuticals helped or contributed to it.
Celebrity causes insanity.
This article reveals as much about book publishing as it does about Brando. Looking back, was any of the expense that RH spent trying to land this book worth it? Reading the story, does it sound like Mr. Evans should have been able to expect a timely, complete manuscript at the time he was there? How about promotion? Gee, it would have sold like hotcakes if (and only if) he'd agreed to be interviewed by Barbara Walters.
Mr Evans undoubtedly published many worthy, fine books. Ones that sold largely because they were worth buying. But this wasn't one of them. I wonder why anyone thought that this article would be more interesting than the book.
In Stefan Kanfer's new bio, the author suggests that Brando was afflicted for decades with mental illness, probably dating all the way back to childhood. Which makes his achievements all the more remarkable, and the fact that he passed before the heyday of Internet gossip and paparazzi potshots a godsend.
I think he was the most overrated actor of the 20th century.
I'm surprised anyone took him so seriously. He was a good actor, but REALLY!
Like all selfish egotists and exhibitionists, Brando left a trail of ruin in the lives of those around him.
I met Brando once back in the early 90's. He was magnificent! His sensitivity about life and people were quite evident. And, his eyes, were just as Harold Evans said: Clear. I loved talking to the man and I wrote it all down; I even got his autograph which is rare. So, please dear commenters, don't project your own negativity and darkness onto this wonderful man.
Songs My Mother Taught Me was a great read and could have sold better, but Evans doesn't have the guts to admit that sales were cannibalized by a sleazy bio released at the same time. Brando's interview on CNN was a highlight of great 1990's television. If Evans and his company hadn't been so dumb, they could have capitalized, smartly, on the notoriety of that interview. You ever wonder why the publishing industry is in the toilet? Look no further than the author of this article.
In the later years he was a sad overweight delude psychotic that mumbled strange things. It was so sad to see him at the Michael Jackson 25th year in the music business concert. He was in a wheel chair because now he was too heavy to walk on his own accord. He was paid $50,000 for a guest appearance and instead of talking about MJ, music or the event he mumbled some illegible nonsense. Maybe he had Alzheimers or schizo, but something happened between the time he was the greatest actor on earth and his later years in life. It was sad seeing such a great talent being wasting away with phantom ghosts in his mind.
Yes, Brando was hugely fat. Yes, he was eccentric to distraction. And yes, he was also a great actor (every now and then).
But he was also one of the dimmest bulbs in Hollywood history. Objectively stupid, persistently ignorant. Dumb as a rock.
Couldn't Harry Evans have got around to pointing that out, too?
Marlon was bisexual (yes, it's true; even his more fallacious biographies mention this; in THE ONLY CONTENDER, Brando said, "I, too, have had homosexual experiences and I am not ashamed"). Marlon (as my late great uncle called him) was magnificently well-endowed: his tumescent girth was easily likened to an aerosol can. My uncle was briefly one of his paramours when Marlon studied at the Actor's studio in NYC early in his career. Their joining consisted entirely of un-reciprocal fellatio. My uncle's jaw and lips were incredibly distended: jowls like a circus clown. He would often joke that he was not born with loose lips; rather, Marlon Brando created them with his relentlessly quick cavitatous festooning.
Like all geniuses MB was usually perched at the zenith of his art - and, like all geniuses he was frequently friggin' nuts!
The name of the restaurant is Valendino's, not "Valentines."
Opps, Valentino's.
Brando was not "dumb as a rock," as someone stated above. I watched him interviewed in the 1960s (recently shown on TCM) on a publicity junket for a movie. He was very sharp, witty, excruciatingly handsome, sexy, astute, and loved to toy with people. It was fascinating to watch. He, naturally, didn't want to talk about the movie, but about the reporters and other topics. How many actors are like that today? Mickey Rourke maybe?
Mr. Evans, thanks very much for your amusing account. What a memory to cherish!
Thank you.
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