Ep. 190: Marlon Brando – Top 6 Movies
Intro
Hello and welcome to this episode of the podcast, "The Mnemonic Tree", where we add a single mnemonic leaf to our Tree of Knowledge.
I’m Jans, your Mnemonic Man, and today's episode will be on the mumbling magician, Marlon Brando. And just speaking of mumbling, I might be doing a bit of that today as I’ve managed to catch the flu, so the voice may be coming in a little more baritone!
Born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1924, Brando was one of the greatest American film actors of the twentieth century and one of the leading proponents of the “method” acting style.
He trained at the Actors Studio under Stella Adler, who herself trained under or with Konstantin Stanislavski, whose system was later developed into Method Acting by Lee Strasberg.
Brando’s school years were stained with misbehaving, practical jokes, apathy, and two expulsions. In one practical joke at his school, he stole the clapper, which is the part of the bell that swings and makes the bell ring to signify the start and end of classes, and after he removed it, he buried it in the nearby woods.
He tried to join the Army during World War II but was rejected due to a knee injury from football. He tried again, this time for the Korean War, but was rejected again, this time for mental problems, as he was under psychoanalysis.
His big break came with his performance in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” which earned him his first Academy Award Nomination. He followed this with the classics “The Wild One” in 1953 and “On the Waterfront” in 1954.
During the 1960s, his career suffered a downturn along with trying directing. But the floodgates opened again in the 1970s when he played Vito Corleone in “The Godfather” in 1972. This was followed by “The Last Tango in Paris also in 1972, and “Apocalypse Now” in 1979.
His career has been marked with highs, lows, activism, rebellion, clashes with studios, and clashes with other actors, but he will inevitably go down as one of the greatest actors of his generation.
Today’s mnemonic will be on Marlon Brando’s top six movies.
So, with that being said, we will begin with a summary from Wikipedia.
Wikipedia Summary
Marlon Brando Jr. was an American actor. Widely regarded as one of the greatest cinema actors of the 20th century, Brando received numerous accolades throughout his career, which spanned six decades, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Cannes Film Festival Award, three British Academy Film Awards, and an Emmy Award.
Brando is credited with being one of the first actors to bring the Stanislavski system of acting and method acting to mainstream audiences.
Brando came under the influence of Stella Adler and Stanislavski's system in the 1940s. He began his career on stage, where he was lauded for adeptly interpreting his characters.
He made his Broadway debut in the play I Remember Mama (1944) and won Theatre World Awards for his roles in the plays Candida and Truckline Cafe, both in 1946.
He returned to Broadway as Stanley Kowalski in the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), a role he reprised in the 1951 film adaptation, directed by Elia Kazan.
He made his film debut playing a wounded G.I. in The Men (1950) and won two Academy Awards for Best Actor for his roles as a dockworker in the crime drama film On the Waterfront (1954) and Vito Corleone in the gangster epic The Godfather (1972).
He was Oscar-nominated for playing Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata! (1952), Mark Antony in Julius Caesar (1953), an air force pilot in Sayonara (1957), an American expatriate in Last Tango in Paris (1973), and a lawyer in A Dry White Season (1989).
He also played Sky Masterson in the musical film Guys and Dolls (1955), Fletcher Christian in the action film Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), Jor-El in the superhero film Superman (1978), and as Colonel Kurtz in the Vietnam War drama Apocalypse Now (1979).
He made his directorial film debut in the western drama One-Eyed Jacks (1961), in which he also starred, which did poorly at the box office.
On television, Brando won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for his role in the ABC miniseries Roots: The Next Generations (1979), after which he took a nine-year hiatus from acting. His last films include The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) and The Score (2001).
Extracted from: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlon_Brando]
Mnemonic
Marlon Brando – Top 6 Movies Mnemonic – ATLAS Of emotion
(Picture Marlon Brando with an atlas of emotions, as a result of him studying method acting with Stella Adler)
1. Apocalypse Now (1979)
2. The Godfather (1972)
3. Last Tango in Paris (1972)
4. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
5. Superman (1978)
6. On the Waterfront (1954)
Five Fun Facts
1. Marlon Brando's school years were filled with defiance and insubordination. He was expelled from high school for riding a motorcycle through the halls. He was then sent to the Shattuck Military Academy in Faribault in Minnesota. Here, he was put on probation for insubordination to an officer, after which he was expelled again when he snuck out of school to go downtown.
2. In his early years, Marlon Brando worked as an elevator operator, a waiter, a sandwich man, a short-order cook, and a night watchman in a factory. His first screen role was in “The Men” in 1950, where he played a paralysed soldier returning from World War II. But it wasn’t until his on-stage role in “A Streetcar Named Desire” as Stanley Kowalski in 1947 that he made an impact and ended up earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in the screen adaptation in 1951.
3. Brando won his first Academy Award for “On the Waterfront” in 1954, a movie in which he reportedly was depressed about his performance in. He won his second Oscar for Best Actor for his role as Vito Corleone in “The Godfather,” a role that was to reignite his career. He refused to accept the Oscar though instead sending Littlefeather to partly read a statement about the poor treatment of Indians. Two interesting facts came out of this. Firstly, it was proven that Littlefeather had no native ancestry and secondly, this made Marlon Brando only the third person to decline an Oscar, after Dudley Nichols declined his for Best Original Screenplay for “The Informer,” and George C. Scott declining his Oscar for Best Actor for “Patton.”
4. In Marlon Brando’s heyday, he had some big paydays. He reportedly made around $3.7 million for 10 minutes of screen time in “Superman”, and 2 million to make a cameo in “Scary Movie 2” which was never released after he had to drop out after being hospitalised with pneumonia.
5. Marlon Brando was probably not the most amiable person to get along with and subsequently had a few beefs with certain actors. Firstly, his extreme dislike of Burt Reynolds, where he said that he would drop out of playing Vito Corleone if Reynolds was cast as Michael Corleone. And secondly, Frank Sinatra, who referred to Brando as “Mumbles” and also mocked his method acting. He was also upset over a role being taken from him by Brando. Brando retorted by messing up the very end of a scene a total of nine times. A scene where Sinatra had to eat a piece of cheesecake each time where on the ninth time he threw his plate to the ground, jammed his fork into the table, and screamed at the director, “These fucking New York Actors! How much cheesecake do you think I can eat?"
Three Question Quiz
Q.1. Is Marlon Brando’s voice used in the video game for “The Godfather,” which was released in 2006? Is that True or False
Q.2. Who was the director of The Godfather?
Q.3. How many times was Marlon Brando married?
Bonus Q. During the filming of “Apocalypse Now,” what actor did Brando detest so much that he refused to shoot any of his scenes with him? Options are Martin Sheen, Harrison Ford, or Dennis Hopper
Bonus Q. What is Marlon Brando’s favourite beer?
Mnemonic Recap
Marlon Brando – Top 6 Movies Mnemonic – ATLAS Of emotion
(Picture Marlon Brando with an atlas of emotions, as a result of him studying method acting with Stella Adler)
1. Apocalypse Now (1979)
2. The Godfather (1972)
3. Last Tango in Paris (1972)
4. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
5. Superman (1978)
6. On the Waterfront (1954)
Three Question Quiz Answers
Q.1. Is Marlon Brando’s voice used in the video game for “The Godfather,” which was released in 2006? Is that True or False
A. True. Shortly before his death, he gave EA Games permission to use his voice
Q.2. Who was the director of The Godfather?
A. Francis Ford Coppola
Q.3. How many times was Marlon Brando married?
A. Three times. Anna Kashfi (1957 – 1959), Movita Castaneda (1960 – 1968), and Tarita Teriipaia (1962 – 1972)
Bonus Q. During the filming of “Apocalypse Now,” what actor did Brando detest so much that he refused to shoot any of his scenes with him? Options are Martin Sheen, Harrison Ford, or Dennis Hopper
A. Dennis Hopper
Bonus Q. What is Marlon Brando’s favourite beer?
A. Stella
And if you want the full Marlon Brando experience you can drink your Stellas’ on the island that Marlon Brando bought which is around 30 miles north of Tahiti's main island, which is called The Brando.
Word of the Week
premonish
[ pri-mon-ish ]
verb
to warn beforehand
Example
In the highly controversial scene in the “Last Tango in Paris,” Brando and director Bernardo Bertolucci did not premonish Maria Schneider about using the butter.
Extracted from: [https://www.dictionary.com/]
👉 Free Memory Mnemonics at:
https://www.themnemonictreepodcast.com
Listen on Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-mnemonic-tree-podcast/id1591795132
Listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/3T0LdIJ9PBQMXM3cdKd42Q?si=fqmaN2TNS8qqc7jOEVa-Cw
References
https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/best-marlon-brando-movies-ranked/
https://chatgpt.com/c/681d888b-95cc-8010-9852-b9d50fff1a4a
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/78089/16-fascinating-facts-about-marlon-brando