The First Big Thing
Hartley Pleshaw
The First Big Thing
Hartley Pleshaw
Before there was James Dean or Montgomery Clift, there was Brando. Before there was Elvis, there was Brando. Before there were the Angry Young Men, there was Brando. Before there was Dylan (Bob, not Thomas), there was Brando. Before there was Lennon or Jagger, there was Brando. Before there was Nicholson, Pacino or DeNiro, there was Brando. Before there was Johnny Rotten, there was Brando. Before there was Rap and Hip-Hop, there was Brando. And before there was Johnny Depp or Sean Penn, there was Brando. In some way, shape or form, either directly or through second- or third-generation filters and/or interpreters, Marlon Brando influenced all of the above. And through the above, and also of course through his own work, Brando can be seen as the man who started all that followed: the counterculture, the sexual revolution, the “New” Hollywood. If any man could ever be called a true cultural revolutionary, it was Marlon Brando. This isn’t to say that Brando was always perfect; far from it. In both his work and his life, he was frequently deeply flawed and at times downright terrible. And yet, even this part of his saga adds to the aura. In both his peaks and valleys, Brando never failed to be a generational symbol. Appropriately enough, the first great fissure in what would be the famous “gap” between the World War II generation and its children happened over America’s greatest and most popular art form, film. The Depression/World War II generation went to the movies to escape reality (understandably); its children went to the movies to embrace it. Along with the foreign films of the era (particularly Italy’s), the early films of Marlon Brando served as artistic shock waves in the coming generational culture war. As Johnny in The Wild One, Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire and Terry Malloy in On The Waterfront, Brando created a New Cinematic Actor, one whose very inarticulateness spoke volumes, whose brutality betrayed tenderness, whose machismo was androgynous, whose ugliness was sexy. An actor, a man, whose confusion and contradictions made for something more complete and believable than anything seen on screen before. Brando was sexy, alright, but he had a very different kind of sex appeal from that of the Cary Grants and Clark Gables. When Gable took off his shirt and went topless in It Happened One Night, it was well and duly noted, but it didn’t help to inspire a sexual revolution. When Brando took off his shirt in A Streetcar Named Desire, it did. He had help, of course. Having Stella Adler teaching you, Tennessee Williams and Budd Schulberg writing your lines and Elia Kazan directing you doesn’t exactly give you a one-way ticket to Palookaville. And, in terms of sheer talent, Brando wasn’t unique, or even particularly outstanding. Whenever there’s too much genuflecting toward the Holy Trinity of the Method (Brando, Dean and Clift), it’s important to remember that there were a few other actors of note in that particular era: Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Paul Newman, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, George C. Scott, Lee Marvin and Tony Curtis among them, just for starters. All were every bit as talented as Brando, some perhaps more so. But none helped to inspire the social and cultural convulsions to come. Brando did. Even in decline, Brando served as a cultural and generational pioneer. His personal life became a media circus; the same was true of everyone from Elizabeth Taylor to Jennifer Lopez. He made a fool of himself in well-intentioned but stupidly executed political activities; so did Jane Fonda. He went from being a sexy young rebel of the Fifties to being an eccentric reactionary; Elvis Presley, Jack Kerouac and Brigitte Bardot followed similar paths. He went from being the epitome of physical beauty to being grotesquely fat; Taylor and Presley also knew the drill. (So, too, does the aging baby boomer who greets me in the bathroom mirror every morning—minus the bit about the youthful physical beauty.) He took the easy money for hackwork; who didn’t? He died heavily in debt; have you looked at your own credit report lately? In greatness and in decay,
Marlon Brando showed the way. Befitting his status as the
Eternal Rebel, this piece about him began, and now ends,
by refuting a cliché. Marlon Brando is gone, but if the
past five decades are any indication, we really will see
his like again. Send your questions
comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com |
Marlon
Brando wasn’t, as the saying goes, “present at
the creation.” He was the creation, the template,
the role model, the original article. He was the first
young rebel and the perennial Godfather of the post-war
generation. He set the style, the standard, the attitude
for all that followed.