marlon Brando could he act?

IMO, lots of superstars can't act. And thousands of great actors aren't superstars.

I do think Brando was a great actor. He wasn't everyone's favorite, of course, but he inspired generations of young men to break away from the typical acting style of previous decades.

Hey, Don. It wasn't so much if he could act or not, it was the new style of acting that he brought to a rather melodramatic Hollywood. I, for one, loved his interp of Marc Antony in Julius Caesar, and yes, On the Waterfront was one of his best.

He was pretty sexy as a young man.

Loved him in Guys and Dolls.

I watched a show about him on Biography.

Apparantly he was rather embarrassed at being an actor. He didn't feel it was manly or real work.

He was one the the first who used Method acting, I forget the name of who taught it...it's on the tip of my tongue.

looked it up..... Lee Strasberg.
saw a Biography on him also, quite controversial.

Looking at the young Brando today, he had incredible animal magnatism.

Like him or not, he did draw you in.

Oh so many good roles he had. I enjoyed his earlier work much more than the later work and his turn in The Men where he portrayed a paraplegic veteran was particular good. Also enjoyed him in Teahouse of The August Moon and One Eyed Jacks.

I will never understand why people start a thread and never return to comment nor acknowledge. No wonder Marlon Brando was so reticent to talk about his life. It must have been difficult to be in the spotlight when so much was expected and there was so little to say.

You know, Don. I hope that you are ok and well, but you really need to let us know.

I'm just giving people time to comment Letty, if you look at the date of my post and the date of yours you will see they are on the same day. I do have a life other than staring at this computer screen.

Sorry, Don. We all have different styles, I guess.

Goodnight.

Marlon Brando was a good journeyman actor. That said, I must add that I also think that he was highly overrated by his adoring public. I agree with Sturgis -- his earlier stuff is much better than his later efforts. The Lee Strasberg connection was touted in his early career as some sort of "new" Method innovation in Hollywood. In fact, he was not much of a Stanislavsky Method actor, the Actors' Studio background notwithstanding. He was way too mannered for that. A Modern Drama professor I once knew told me, "He never played any other role than Stanley Kowalski." (A Streetcar Named Desire.) There is, I think, some truth to that. His best roles were those in which he could, essentially, play himself -- The Wild One, On the Waterfront etc.

Perhaps this is a personal bias but I found some of his best-known roles to be a terrible exploitation of his fame just to appear on screen as a buffoon. I may be alone in this but I find his interpretation of Don Corleone in The Godfather almost as bizarre as his portrayal of Mr. Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty. He ruined both movies for me, as he almost ruined Apocalypse Now, even though his role there is really not a major starring one. Robert Duvall, though, strives valiantly to save that Vietnam War flick.

Marlon Brando was a good journeyman actor. That said, I must add that I also think that he was highly overrated by his adoring public. I agree with Sturgis -- his earlier stuff is much better than his later efforts. The Lee Strasberg connection was touted in his early career as some sort of "new" Method innovation in Hollywood. In fact, he was not much of a Stanislavsky Method actor, the Actors' Studio background notwithstanding. He was way too mannered for that. A Modern Drama professor I once knew told me, "He never played any other role than Stanley Kowalski." (A Streetcar Named Desire.) There is, I think, some truth to that. His best roles were those in which he could, essentially, play himself -- The Wild One, On the Waterfront etc.

Perhaps this is a personal bias but I found some of his best-known roles to be a terrible exploitation of his fame just to appear on screen as a buffoon. I may be alone in this but I find his interpretation of Don Corleone in The Godfather almost as bizarre as his portrayal of Mr. Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty. He ruined both movies for me, as he almost ruined Apocalypse Now, even though his role there is really not a major starring one. Robert Duvall, though, strives valiantly to save that Vietnam War flick.

I agree that in many of his later films he was phoning it in. I can't bear to watch him in The Island of Dr. Moreau or The Score, though I've tried. In fact, I really think of him as two different actors. Everything after Last Tango in Paris is much less interesting to me.

I did enjoy The Freshman, but only because I kept thinking how much fun it must have been for him to do.

He was too old and plump to be taken seriously in the very late roles and was given token parts. His turn as the Don Corleone type in "The Freshman" was hilarious because he played it straight. Those early efforts were small films and then he got absorbed into Hollywood's Big Wide Technicolor Screen Technology which seemed to dwarf him. Still appreciated his performances in the bigger films -- such films as "Sayonara" and "The Ugly American," but they're not his best work.

Merry is right that he just couldn't fit into the shoes of Fletcher Christian (even Mel Gibson did a better job and I think it has to be my favorite Clark Cable performance) and I've always been conflicted on how his Don Corleone reads in the movie. The movie itself is so superbly directed, photographed (the last Technicolor film ever made) and acted by all the stars, not to mention one of the ten best scripts of all time that even with reservations, who else could play Don Corleone?

His finest performance is in "Last Tango in Paris." Another small film. Hasn't this happened to every really good actor who gets involved with small pictures in the beginning which are made with very high creative asperations and accomplish their goal? Could it have anything to do with being directed by Elia Kazan? And then Bertolucci?

Run-of-the-mill studio directors could make any great actor look mediocre. I think it's in their blood.

Marlon Brando was a brilliant actor. He is widely considered to be the greatest actor of his time. He received eight Acadamy Awards.
He payed a wider variety of roles than any other actor and he played them well. He was not a personality actor, that is one who plays himself over and over as, say, someone like John Wayne did.

Off the top of my head:

A young long shore man in "On the Waterfront"
An Asian in "Teahouse of the August Moon"
A Mexian revolutionary in "Viva Zapata"
A German officer in "The Young Lions"
A demented Colonel Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now"
A diplomat in "The Ugly American"
"Julius Caeser"
A gangster in "The Godfather"
etc.

There is a story about Brando when he played Stanley Kowalski in "Street Car Named Desire" opposite Vivien Leigh (then married to Lawrence Olivier) He would imitate Olivier speech while Leigh closed her eyes and listened. She said she could not tell Brando from Olivier.

"I could've been SOMEbody, I could'ah been a contenduh."
Slurred? No. Accent, yes.

Yes, I don't actually buy entirely into stating that he played himself. I think his voice intoned a personality that was unmistakable but he had a wider range than most actors today.

My least favorite performance was Sakini in "Teahouse." Just didn't come together for me. He looked too obviously made-up and his accent was way out in left field. He was not a comic actor. His Fletcher Christian was Stanley Kowalski as Fletcher Christian.

Stanley Kowalski as Fletcher Christian. That is a classic description, LW.

His performances did "bleed over" on one another. He was like the Picasso of actors -- once he established a style and technique it was just repeated over and over ad nauseum.

Still, his early performances are examples of some of the greatest acting in cinema. It was the later charicature of himself that blew the image.

Agreed, Wizard. I think, in part, he just got lazy. His name had become so iconic that simply having it on the marquee would gurantee a great box-office gate. So he accepted dumb roles such as Jor-El in Superman (a 30-second walk-on), collected several million dollars for it and just chilled out. He was so big and so famous he no longer had to take direction from directors seriously. I don't blame Francis Ford Coppola for that boring monolgue Brando delivered in Apoclypse Now. I'm sure Coppola couldn't tell Brando what to do or how to approach a role.

The infamous moan and groan soliloquy, in the fine tradition of, "Oh, woe is me."

On a trip to London in the early seventies, I attended a seminar given by a British director. He was asked whether there was anyone he had not worked with but would like to. His immediate response was "Marlon Brando, the greatest living actor."

I know it's only opinion, but some opinions are more informed than others. I think you guys, Merry Andrew and Lightwizard, certainly fit the "informed" category. Although
I think you're both underrating Brando. LightWizard said "Still, his early performances are examples of some of the greatist acting in cinema."

One thing I do after watching a movie is to notice whether people talk about the characters using the actor's' name or the character's name. (A long way from foolproof, but interesting nonetheless.) Over the years, I heard people discuss "The Godfather" and, more often than not, they refer to Corleone, not Brando. And Michael, not Pacino. Contrast this with personality actors.

It is impossible to prove one work of art better than another.