When Blanche Met Brando by Sam Staggs

Author:Sam Staggs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Brando

“Shelley Winters is keeping the telephone busy on the set of A Streetcar Named Desire with her calls to Marlon Brando.” This appeared in a gossip column, but Shelley herself added a raunchy tale.

“I visited the set of Streetcar,” she said, “and Tennessee was there and Kazan, of course. And Marlon said he wanted to talk to me about something and I stepped into his dressing room, one of those wooden dressing rooms on the set. He slammed the door, put the lock on, and he started to shake the dressing room and said, ‘For God’s sake, scream. Don’t you want to help me build up a reputation? Scream!’ I was screaming away and he was shaking the dressing room and everyone on the set was running around. Gadge was saying, ‘Marlon, cut that out! She’s a minor! Leave her alone!’ But Tennessee knew it was a joke.”

The other joke was calling her a minor. She was twenty-eight.

* * *

One day Kim Hunter went to her dressing room to nap between takes. Marlon borrowed a fake tarantula from the prop department, crept to the window, opened it quietly, and lowered the spider onto her pillow. Ten minutes later, hideous screams pierced the air, interrupting a scene Kazan was rehearsing with Vivien, Karl, and Marlon. When she saw the impish look on Brando’s face, Kim chased him down and socked him.

* * *

Brando watched a number of John Barrymore pictures at night during the shoot, including Grand Hotel, Beau Brummel, Dinner at Eight, Arsène Lupin, and Rasputin and the Empress. On the set he raved about Barrymore to Kazan, Vivien Leigh, and others in the cast.

* * *

At the counter of a drugstore near Warner Bros., Brando was having breakfast. He dropped a piece of toast on the floor, picked it up, looked it over as if he were back at the Actors Studio, and continued munching. A woman looked at him askance. “Lucky it fell butter-side up,” he muttered.

* * *

Marlon visited the Oliviers often. On his first visit, when they gave a small dinner party at 2000 Coldwater Canyon, he was the only man present wearing a suit and tie. The next day Vivien made a point of telling everyone, adding, “Now do you believe those stories that Marlon only favors T-shirts and dungarees on social dates?” Later Vivien complained to the studio publicity department about its portrayal of Brando as a screwball in press releases and column “plants.” She thought such publicity in bad taste because of his great talent.

* * *

Another night the Oliviers and Marlon had dinner in a restaurant. From time to time, Marlon tittered like a coy kid for no apparent reason. Vivien asked why. He said it was because the table looked so quaint with candles on it. This irritated Vivien. When she told the story afterward to her stepson, Tarquin Olivier, she was still incredulous that a man of Brando’s sophistication apparently had never dined by candlelight.

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