For years I'd always look forward to the "For Turner Classic Movies, I'm ..." pieces on TCM and being an aspiring filmmaker/actress would dream of doing my own someday, practicing in front of the mirror. One day, I decided to write it out. I've never had my written words too far from me. Always within arms reach. Over the course of time, I've used a piece from it, here and there, but never in its entire text. So, here it is, my would be "For Turner Classic Movies ..." piece:
I read a title once in an issue of Vanity Fair, THE KING WHO WOULD BE MAN … That title was the beginning of my formal introduction to Marlon Brando.
I remember the first time I saw Mr. Brando in a movie other than as the legendary "Godfather" (not knowing at the time that he indeed was a legend, if only for his … individuality, himself). At my age, growing up, the only image I had of Marlon Brando was THE GODFATHER. So, imagine my surprise when I grew up to see GUYS AND DOLLS starring *MARLON BRANDO* one day on Turner Classic Movies! Before the movie had even started I looked up the information to see if I read the cast correctly. And there it was in print (on screen), indeed "MARLON BRANDO SINGS ..." To tell you the truth, I was sitting on edge with anticipation for his arrival onto the screen, I barley noticed Nathan Detroit … not to take away from Frankie; when it comes to singing, he is in my top five! But deuce take it, when I heard the words ...
I remember the first time I saw Mr. Brando in a movie other than as the legendary "Godfather" (not knowing at the time that he indeed was a legend, if only for his … individuality, himself). At my age, growing up, the only image I had of Marlon Brando was THE GODFATHER. So, imagine my surprise when I grew up to see GUYS AND DOLLS starring *MARLON BRANDO* one day on Turner Classic Movies! Before the movie had even started I looked up the information to see if I read the cast correctly. And there it was in print (on screen), indeed "MARLON BRANDO SINGS ..." To tell you the truth, I was sitting on edge with anticipation for his arrival onto the screen, I barley noticed Nathan Detroit … not to take away from Frankie; when it comes to singing, he is in my top five! But deuce take it, when I heard the words ...
-- Sky Masterson!
"Detroit! … How goes your percentage of life Nathan?"
… My speech faltered. I didn't know what to say, I just looked on with amazement … Could this be THE GODFATHER in training? No. It couldn't be … I mean even if it was -- No. Definitely not … Oh, but it was! And it wasn't until ...
"Do you take sinners here?"
… I could allow myself to believe it! This is Marlon Brando. The Marlon Brando, in his youth. That did it, of course I had to know everything there was to know about this man that the paparazzi seemed to enjoy scandalizing in the papers and on television! Why not go to the source himself, right? Well, at least a biographical book anyway. Written by himself, of course. Who could write better about one's life than 'the one,' no? It was there I quickly found out, the more you came to "know him," the less you knew him. You begin to see you're only learning what he wanted you to learn, or what he wanted you to think you learned. Giving you an open book into his inside personal life … Was not about to happen. That, you begin to learn by viewing "the source" from the outside lens, is a vulnerability he's not allowing you access to. But by recognizing this vulnerability you do begin to see there was a shy person there. A personal person. And it is misfortunate that the later generation came to know of him with the association to all that was negative in his life and not the good he tried to do and did do in life. Beginning early on, as seen in a letter he had written home around 1946 after he'd left to make his own way in the world: "Washington is strongly anti-Negro & I'm getting awfully mad, so I hope we leave soon. Saw in the newsreel that the Ku Klux Klan is beginning to function en masse again ... It makes you gape in awe to think about it …," giving the eulogy at Black Panther Party Member Bobby Hutton's service, addressing a crowd afterward urging white America to wake up on racism against black America, being involved in the Civil Rights Movement and speaking at the reception, with Martin Luther King, Jr., after the Freedom Rally, 1963, an active activist with the AIM (American Indian Movement), a voice in the HOLLYWOOD ROUND TABLE 1963 discussion along with Harry Belafonte, Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, James Baldwin, moderated by David Schoenbrun, even singling out someone who everyone has seemed to ignore or felt had little importance or value, befriending them when no one else would, "He'd move around the room, drawing one person after another into a corner, & talking conspiratorially with them one-on-one. He made you feel as if you were the most important person in the world ..." —Sondra Lee
Well as you might have concluded, my cinematic library no longer just consists of THE GODFATHER alone anymore. There isn't anyone who can do what he did in his lifetime when it comes to stage and screen. That book is closed. Influenced by, inspired by, but none other. A great talent may be reborn but not duplicated *as* the original. Though I can say, having learned just enough to know, the amount of carrying on I do about Marlon Brando, his works, his career, he'd probably dislike me to the degree of "shut her up," but his talent, gift and art of acting is worth a bit of recognition. Though, I do believe somewhere within himself, the part he didn't want us to see, under the "I don't care" image, he probably had some satisfaction, some enjoyment out of acting, out of expressing himself through characters on screen and for his time, stage, outside of doing it "just for the money." So instead of more words of bravado, I'll just leave by saying … "Brando," even by his own admission was "not an easy person to get along with. I’m no walk in the park," complex, complicated, but "Bud" was just curiously aware of everybody and everything … As his mentor Stella Adler once said, "he takes in everything, including the size of your teeth."
"For Turner Classic Movies ..." (not really, just a pipe dream), I'm Dominique.
Well as you might have concluded, my cinematic library no longer just consists of THE GODFATHER alone anymore. There isn't anyone who can do what he did in his lifetime when it comes to stage and screen. That book is closed. Influenced by, inspired by, but none other. A great talent may be reborn but not duplicated *as* the original. Though I can say, having learned just enough to know, the amount of carrying on I do about Marlon Brando, his works, his career, he'd probably dislike me to the degree of "shut her up," but his talent, gift and art of acting is worth a bit of recognition. Though, I do believe somewhere within himself, the part he didn't want us to see, under the "I don't care" image, he probably had some satisfaction, some enjoyment out of acting, out of expressing himself through characters on screen and for his time, stage, outside of doing it "just for the money." So instead of more words of bravado, I'll just leave by saying … "Brando," even by his own admission was "not an easy person to get along with. I’m no walk in the park," complex, complicated, but "Bud" was just curiously aware of everybody and everything … As his mentor Stella Adler once said, "he takes in everything, including the size of your teeth."
"For Turner Classic Movies ..." (not really, just a pipe dream), I'm Dominique.