Brando: He, too, was a pioneer

I always love "The Egyptian" and then realized on one viewing that it was the Bernard Hermann and Alfred Newman soundtrack and that the movie basically sucked. Cannot believe that would have helped his career as the dialogue is really awful.

Oh yes, unintentionally funny, but it didn't seem so when I first saw it. I had read the book and adored Brando at the time. I was so hoping he'd get the role. (I've often wondered what Bella Darvi thought after she saw herself in those headdresses.) But ,that was then and we've come a long way.

"... the summer (of 1942) was spent on the beach and attending parties, at one of which I met Marlon Brando. At eighteen he was indescribably attractive, but shy and tense. Two years later we met again at a party of Tennessee's [Williams] in a ballroom on Irving Place in New York, just before Marlon got the role of Stanley Kowalski in 'A Streetcar Named Desire.' Hundreds of people milled about or danced to the all-black jazz band. I was standing alone when Marlon approached. 'Don't I know you from somewhere?' he drawled, sizing me up with intense interest.

"'Yeah,' I said with a grin. 'Provincetown. We met once.'"

"Janice Mars and I rented an apartment at 37 West 52nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues (in 1945) ...

"One of our more frequent guests was a young actor who was making his mark in the theater and soon would answer the call of Hollywood. His nickname was 'Bud' and Bud had made a splash in 'I Remember Mama.' He'd go on to do 'Candida' with Katharine Cornell and in 1947 would hit the jackpot playing Stanley Kowalski in 'A Streetcar Named Desire.' Marlon Brando was a great actor and a charter member of the 37 West 52nd Street regulars. Marlon was an original golden boy and you knew he was going to be big time just by the way he looked. Dames chased him and more often than not he'd let himself be caught. He was always wallowing in women. He'd drop by with his girl of the moment, and then go off and leave her with us. We were supposed to pick up the pieces. I spent hours -- days!-- listening to those poor girls sighing over Bud. Janice and I became professionals at doling out tea and sympathy to Marlon's exes. Believe me, they needed plenty of tea and plenty of sympathy -- he was something to sigh about.

"Not only did Bud hang around the apartment, he'd sleep there too. He kept his drums in the closet and would haul them out and start banging away when the mood suited him. Eventually he rented a second-floor apartment in our brownstone ...

"In addition to helping Broadway actors make a painless transition to film, I was taking on such challenges as negotiating a raise for the likes of Marlon Brando, who was then making his Broadway debut in 'I Remember Mama.' Marlon was having a rough time getting by on sixty-five dollars a week. The extra ten I got him made a difference.

"Even if I had only gotten him five dollars more, I suspect that Brando would have kept coming to my office with his girlfriend, Blossom Plumb. The two of them would arrive -- Brando in an old trench coat -- and take chairs in opposite corners of the room. They wouldn't speak, just listen to me making deals on the phone. After a few hours, they'd leave. Next day, same routine. It definitely gave me the idea that Brando was taking notes on my 'character.' Although he did, in later years, develop an agent's instinct for getting his money first and fast, he fortunately never got a part that enabled him to use whatever he learned from me."

"I went up for a part in a play called 'Truckline Cafe.' I didn't get it. Bitter, I went to see the play, watched another actor play my role. I loved the first two acts -- he was terrible. He mumbled, you couldn't hear what he was saying. I congratulated myself on how much better I would have been. Suddenly, in the third act, he erupted, electrifying the audience. I thought, 'My God, he's good!' and looked in the program for his name: Marlon Brando."

"I first met Marlon Brando in 1947 when I was casting 'Streetcar.' I had very little money at the time and was living simply in a broken-down house near Provincetown [Mass.]. I had a houseful of people, the plumbing was flooded, and someone had blown the light fuse. Someone said a kid named Brando was down on the beach and looked good. He arrived at dusk, wearing Levi's, took one look at the confusion around him, and set to work. First he stuck his hand into the overflowing toilet bowl and unclogged the drain, then he tackled the fuses. Within an hour, everything worked. You'd think he had spent his entire antecedent life repairing drains. Then he read the script aloud, just as he played it. It was the most magnificent reading I ever heard, and he had the part [of Stanley Kowalski] immediately. He stayed the night, slept curled up with an old quilt in the center of the floor."

"... hit Stillman's gym every day.

"... I spots this young blond kid always watching me train ... the first thing I think about. Gotta be a fag..."

"He looks like the kinda guy you find delivering groceries for a high-class grocery store ..."

" ... I go away an' come back and the next day an' there's this guy, maybe leaning against a post, watching me for a long time. He's got on a T-shirt, worn-out sneakers, and dungarees. He's dressed just like the kids dress today, only in those days when you dressed like that you were down 'n out ... a bum.

"Before ya know it, he's bringing me my towel when I need it, and he's asking me real nice if I teach him how to stand and t'row a few punches, and maybe spar with him a lil bit ..."

"I say, 'Eh, what's ya name?' and he says, 'Bud.' I look at the kid kinda funny, an he says, 'Lotta people call me Buddy.' That sound better when I think of the song, 'Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?'...

"... 'I'm in a play,' he tells me. He says, 'You know, Rock, you could do me a big favor if you come and see me. I get you two of the best seats in the house, on the arm..."

"After the curtain goes up [on 'A Streetcar Named Desire'] an everything's happening, I get the shock of my life. This kid I been sendin' on errands is the star. Jesus, that's him, that's the kid I been sparring with in the gym. ..."

"Marlon Brando already had quite a reputation among theater people as a brilliant actor because of a small part he'd done in Truckline Café, in which he had one scene and flashed across the stage like sexual lightning. He also had another extraordinary reputation, but I figured it couldn't be true because when did he have time?..."

" ...Marlon invited me to dinner at his...new apartment one night after my show....

"It was really a cold-water flat, there was ice on the inside of the windows! Marlon was lifting weights in an untorn long-sleeved gray sweat shirt and asked me to take my coat off. 'I'll keep it on,' I said.

"Marlon had a goddamned raccoon in a cage, and I think it was wearing some other raccoon's fur coat, it was so cold in there. And it smelled so bad I immediately told Marlon I couldn't stay unless he put it in the bathroom. Marlon explained that the bathroom was just a toilet and was even colder than the living room, which had the smallest electric heater I had ever seen....Marlon compromised by putting the raccoon in the small bathtub next to the kitchen sink. He put a wooden door over it; then he put the heater under the sink, aimed at the bathtub to keep the damned raccoon warm..."

"... with no real boys to answer our pubescent yearnings, we spent our free time indulging in fantasies about Marlon Brando. 'On the Waterfront' had propelled him to the number one position as leading man ..."

"... We were outside his house. Our hearts were beating in syncopated rhythms ..."

"... an old man with a limp exited his house and joined another man who waited outside in a car. We were so grateful for any action it didn't matter who it was. Someone had been in his house and come out! Then it occurred to us -- it was Brando! He was wearing a disguise ... We tailed him for about a quarter of a mile.

"... When we got to the place where Coldwater Canyon intersects, his car slowed down and a hand motioned from the passenger window for us to follow to a wide spot on the side of the road ... We came to a halt about two car lengths behind, and watched, slack-jawed, as Marlon Brando opened the car door and made his way toward us. The limp was gone, so was the gray wig. He was looking straight at us with his head sort of down and his eyes kind of up. There was a smile on his Marlon Brando face, a smile that could have meant anything. He never broke eye contact with us. (I'm pretty sure he was looking at me, but then I bet everyone in the car thought the same for herself.) He walked to us in the slowest, sexiest walk I'd ever seen.

"He bent over, both hands on his knees, scanned the passengers for a moment, and then looking down at his feet said, 'Don't you girls have anything better to do on a Saturday night?' We giggled, cleared throats, and made attempts at responses, but none of us was able. "