- John Derek, Knock On Any Door, 1948. Among the star groupies calling at Brando’s Broadway dressingroom during A Streetcar Named Desire, was Humphrey Bogart offering a film debut as Nick Romano – in his Sanatana’s company first production. “We can make beautiful music together.” (By 1954, they were up for the same role!). Marlon lost interest but loved Nick’s coda: “Live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse.” James Dean did. Brando didn’t.
- William Holden, Sunset Blvd, 1949. “Too much of unknown,” said the studio! Director Billy Wilder then looked at Montgomery Clift, Gene Kelly, Fred McMurray before voting Holden. A perfect choice as a string of flops ruined his decade earlier Golden Boy fame. Rather like Gloria Swanson’s gigolo Joe Gillis, Holden had hit zero – and the bottle.
- Kirk Douglas, The Glass Menagerie, 1949. The first Tennessee Williams play to be filmed. By Elia Kazan? Not at all. Irving Rapper got the gig, having moved up from, dialogue director to full-time helmer – and surviving three battles with the irascible Bette Davis. Gertrude Lawrence and Jane Wyman played Amanda and her handicapped daughter, Laura (based on the playwright’s mother and sister). Brando was in the mix (with Montgomery Clift and Ralph Meeker) for Jim O’Connor – Laura’s famous “gentleman caller.” Over the years, he has also been played by such actors as George Gizzard, John Heard and Rip Torn. Later films were way better, even those made in Bollywood and Iran.
- Anthony Quinn, The Brave Bulls, Still hedging his movie bets, “the old lamplighter,” as Brando called himself , director Robert Rossen: “Offer the role to Anthony Quinn. He wants to be me, anyway.”
- Thomas E Breen, The River/Le fleuve, France-India-USA, 1950. The obvious first choice of legendary French realisateur Jean Renoir at the end of his US career – “a film about India without elephants and tiger hunts.” In his seventh and final film, the largely unknown ex-Marine, Tommy Breen, had an asset that no Methodist could match. He’d lost a leg (at Guam) just like novelist Rumer Godden’s creation of flyer Captain John. However, not even Renoir could extract a decent performance out of… the son of (unknown to Renoir), Hollywood’s film censor: head of the Motion Picture Production and Distributors.
- Dick Haymes, St Benny the Dip, 1950. Brando had yet to make a movie – when the Dazinger brothers led the fight to get the Broadway sensation from A Streetcar Named Desire during 1947-1948. Edward J and Harry Lee wanted him to head a gang of small time hoods hiding out as priests. Brando passed. The Dazingers gave Benny to the singer Haymes. Another reason why they ended their days making 76 quota quickies in London. Christopher Lee said if shooting went beyond three days, the budget was used up!
- Kirk Douglas, The Big Sky, The only time Howard Hawks ever envisaged Brando in one of his films was for AB Guthrie Jr’s Western “love story” of Boone Caudill and the older Jim Deakins.
- Dewey Martin, The Big Sky, 1951. The Silver Fox mused upon Brando in either role opposite Sydney Chaplin, Robert Mitchum or, more explosively, Montgomery Clift (!). But he was too expensive at $125,00 (exactly the salary of Douglas a year later) and Hawks slid downwards into Douglas and Dewey Martin.
- Gary Cooper, High Noon, 1951. Sidney Lumet called it ”a romantic version of real life.” Producer Stanley Kramer’s backer, a lettuce tycoon, said Cooper – or, no lettuce. Coop beat Brando’s Zapata to the Oscar on March 19, 1953. Kramer still brought Brando to Hollywood first – for The Men. Among those greeting him at the old Santa Fe rail station (he was afraid of flying), was a young MCA rep who drove him around town. When asked by the chiefs which top agent should handle him, Brando said “the kid from the mail room.” And Jay Kanter became the guy that Brando trusted most in the world. Not vice-versa. Not after Kanter found Marlon screwing the estranged Mrs Kanter: Roberta Haynes.
10 – Jack Palance, Sudden Fear, 1952.
Tallulah Bankhead warned her off the “pig-ignorant slob” but Joan Crawford visited Brando on Broadway for her (very average) thriller. “I always audition the new boy in town.” She got his stage understudy. And made it clear she’d never work with him again. “She accused me of copying Brando,” said Jack. “The cameras were rolling when… getting out of character, she shouted: If I had wanted Marlon Brando to do this scene with me, we would have hired him.” Actually, he had refused. Finally understanding Bankhead, Crawford called hm a “shithead.” Anyway, to paraphrase Hamlet: The best is Palance. He was, after all, Brando’s understudy and eventual successor in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. Palance scored a Oscar nomination for his “big break.” Not to mention an affair with co-star Gloria Grahame.
11 – Gregory Peck, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, 1951. Brando, Bogie, or outsiders Richard Conte and Dale Robertson – didn’t matter who was Harry Street. Because author Ernest Hemingway disliked the movie for swiping chapters from his other novels to pump up this simple tale of a dying Peck mulling over a wasted career. Hemingway, however, adored Ava Gardner. “And the hyena!”
12 – Montgomery Clift, Stazione Termini (US: Indiscretions of an American Wife), Italy, 1952. Brando considered the Zavattini script – in English. When nothing came of a French version for Gérard Philipe and Ingrid Bergman, producder David Selznick won it for his wife Jennifer Jones and Clift, directed by Vittorio De Sica.
13 – James Mason, A Star Is Born, 1953.
14 – Gérard Philipe, Le Rouge et le noir, France-Italy, 1953. Producer Paul Graetz sued for $150,000 when Brando quit some days before becoming Julien Sorel – because of problems with right-wing realisateurClaude Autant-Lara. Plus an MGM call for Julius Caesar. Philipe was never happy with the first French Technicolor film, hating that it was only ever made because he agreed to it. Marlon softened his Nazi character in The Young Lions into “my chance to play Julian Sorel in another version.”
15 – Farley Granger, Senso, Italy, 1953.
When director Mario Soldati planned it as Uragano d’estate, his dream team was Marlon and Ingrid. And, of course, when Visconti made his move on the project, he also wanted Brando – the Italian maestro had already created the Kowalski look in the sweaty-macho-in-a- vest-shape of Massimo Girotti in Obssessione, in 1942, five years before Brando (or Tennessee Williams or Elia Kazan) copied it for A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway in December 1947. Marlon tested – in close-ups, not costumes. Yet Italian maestro Luchino Visconti (a) hardly recognised him, “so short was he,” recalled scenarist Suso Cecchi d’Amico, and (b) he could not raise enough backing for… Brando and Ingrid Bergman! (Much less, Brando and Micheline Presle who became Granger and Alida Valli) ). Marlon was keen, not because of Ingrid being an ex-lover, but that his Paris lover was due to play his pal: French actor Christian Marquand. Visconti’s bravura ideas collapsed when Brando learned the maestro was also seeking.,.. Tab Hunter! After another row with Visconti, Granger flew home, and the maestro had to finish shooting with a double hiding his face.
16 – Laurence Harvey, Romeo and Juliet, 1953. Marlon and Pier Angeli – the lover of both Brando and James Dean. That was the 1952 MGM plan. Until switching Marlon to Julius Caesar. 17 – Edmund Purdom, The Egyptian, 1953. “They want me to play Cleopatra…” He soon objected (fiercely) to the director (Michael Curtiz), the script (Philip Dunne) and partner (Bella Darvi). She was head Fox Darryl Zanuck’s latest French mistress. So who was going to get the best close-ups! “I’m going to find a way out of this Egyptian pile of camel dung.” And he did. As soon as director Michael Curtiz raged over the top: “I’m told you’re a tough pisser to work with… Anytime an actor gets out of line with me… I have this bull whip… and zing it across their buttocks.” Fox borrowed Purdom from MGM after checking out Dirk Bogarde, John Cassevetes, Montgomery Clift, Richard Conte, James Dean, John Derek, Farley Granger, Rock Hudson, John Lund, Guy Madison, Hugh O’Brian, Michael Pate. Zanuck later admitted “even ten Brandos couldn’t have saved this turkey.” He still sued for $2m until Brando “threw him a bone” – agreeing to be Napoleon in Desirée. He called her Daisy-Rae and got “as many laughs out of the part as I could.” 18 – Glenn Ford, Human Desire, 1953. Austrian director Fritz Lang hated the title. “What other kind of desire is there?” Brando hated everything else. “I cannot believe that the man who gave us the über dark Mabuse, the pathetic child murderer in M and the futuristic look at society, Metropolis, would stoop to hustling such crap.” 19 – Humphrey Bogart, The Barefoot Contessa, 1954. Writer-director Joseph Mankiewicz started castng his “Cinderella myth of movie stardom” while shooting Julius Caesar, 1953. He won Edmond O’Brien for the publicist Oscar Muldoon (and Oscar won him an Oscar!), but Marlon would have none of the film-maker Harry Dawes. “I’m not making pictures about movie stars this year. I’m not even into even being a movie star, myself.” Joe nabbed him for his next one: Guys and Dolls, 1955. 20 – James Dean, East of Eden, 1954 Part of his 1947 test was unearthed in 2006. “Cast who you like,” Jack Warner had told Elia Kazan. Obviously, he thought of Brando (not keen on the script) and Clift and was unimpressed with Dean – until meeting him. “We tried to talk, but conversation was not his gift, so we sat looking at each other… This kid actually was Cal.” Al Pacino said James Dean was a sonnet – Brando, a planet unto himself. “He needed to explore his gift, and to fail with it… I’ve always felt that Marlon, genius that he is, was uncomfortable later on being an actor. But [he] set the stage for all of us today.” 21 – John Wayne, The Conqueror, 1954. Oscar Millard wrote Genghis Khan for Brando and it would have killed him… Shooting the rotten movie in Utah’s Snow Canyon downwind from “safe” testing grounds of 11 A-bombs in in Nevada’s Yucca Flats. and upon sand imported from there for studio use, caused fatal cancers for 91 of the 220 cast and crew – including Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz (a suicide on hearing he was terminal), Thomas Gomez, Susan Hayward, John Hoyt, Agnes Moorehead and director Dick Powell. Wayne chose to play Genghis Khan (!), because he saw it as a Chinese Western. His biographer Scott Eyman called it the biggest Ed Wood movie. Feeling “as guilty as hell” about the cancers, RKO Radio Pictures chief Howard Hughes ultimately locked away what many called an RKO Radioactive picture. 22 – Rod Steiger, Oklahoma! 1954. From the outset, director Fred Zinnemann wanted actors rather than singers. Montgomery Clift, James Dean or Paul Newman as Curly… Ailene Roberts, Eva Marie Saint, Joanne Woodward for Laurey… and Brando, Steiger, Lee Marvin or Eli Wallach for p’or Jud Fry – “a bullet-coloured, growly man,” as Curly called him. However, the musical’s parents had casting approval – Rodgers and Hammerstein, agreed only about Steiger. Zinnemann had directed Brando’s film debut, The Men, 1949, and could not persuade him to be Jud instead of joining Guys and Dolls! PS: Oklahoma was shot in… Arizona. No friend or admirer of Brando, Steiger replaced him again – ten years later in Doctor Zhivago,1965. 23 – Richard Burton, Prince of Players, 1954. He invariably rejected real-life characters. Here, it was Edwin Booth, actor brother of President Abraham Lincoln’s killer, John Wilkes Booth. Brando wanted a study of Edwin’s tragic life (a career ruined by the assassination), not clips of classical plays. “When Fox couldn’t get a top-rate actor like Olivier or me, they settled for… a third-rate performer with even worse skin.” Another day, another feud… Burton loved the Moss Hart script. ”But a year later when I actually did it had been murdered by Zanuck and his hacks. Some of it was salvageable, however, which accounts for what little success we had.” His diary notes also added: “I was outrageously pretty in those days and much prefer my present hard and ravaged countenance.” 24 – Stewart Granger, Moonfleet, 1954. Whether Fritz Lang wanted him or not, MGM suggested Brando as Jeremy Fox – who was not in the actual novel by J Meade Falkner. Granger, largely responsible for the film being made, was upset that (a) the film barely followed the book and (b) it was not shot in Cornwell. (The actual setting was Dorset!). 25 – Henry Fonda, Mister Roberts, 1954. “I don’t think there’s anybody better,” said Fonda of Brando, “when he wants to be good.” Fonda had been pushed into theatre by Brando’s mother, Dodie, after flunking Minnesota U and she acted with him once in 1927 at the Omaha Playhouse. (They were also, briefly, lovers). This was (a) the first time the two guys were up for the same role (Brando signed for it when Fonda was deemed too old) and (b) the first time a director (John Ford) positively refused Marlon. Fonda had played Doug Roberts 1,600 times on Broadway. (“He owned it,” said William Holden, passing on the film before Brando). John Ford only agreed to direct if the studio OK’d Fonda who, like Ford, had served in the US Navy during WWII, not to mention six other Ford films. But Ford was drinking way too much. Some called him eratic. More like paralytic. He even punched Fonda in the mouth at one point, ending their 16-year span of making films together. Ford was fired and the Broadway show’s director, Joshua Logan, finished the shoot. They both disowned the movie. Fonda despised it. 26 – Farley Granger, Senso, 1954. Luchino Visconti’s dream team was Brando and Ingrid Bergman. “The Americans wouldn’t have him,” recalled scenarist Suso Cecchi d’Amico, “as he wasn’t famous yet. They were pushing Farley Granger.” Marlon was keen, not because of Bergman being an ex-lover, but that his Paris lover was due to play his pal: French actor Christian Marquand. Visconti’s bravura ideas collapsed when Brando learned the maestro was also chasing… Tab Hunter! 27 – Ernest Borgnine, Marty, 1954. United Artists wanted the box-office clout of Brando. Burt Lancaster as producing, however, and wanted his From Here To Eternity co-star, the ugly, doltish butcher – first played by Rod Seiger on TV. Result: the first Best Picture Oscarr for a film produced by an actor – and the Best Actor trophy for Ernie… who carried on working up to his death after his 206th screen role in 2012. His secret, said Ernie, was… masturbation! 28 – Burt Lancaster, The Rose Tattoo, 1954. Tennessee Williams adored Anna Magnani and wrote this 1951 play for her – but stage acting in English scared her. She persuaded Williams to beef up the Alvaro Mangiacavallo role to win Brando for the film. He was full of respect, not lust. “Why doesn’t she shave?” 29 – Erno Crisa, L’Amant de lady Chatterley/Lady Chatterley’s Lover, France, 1955. Realisateur Marc Allegret got his asisstant Roger Vadim (one of Marlon’s Paris lovers) to call him in Rome… And Brando’s holiday lover, the pretty, Alain Delonesque Guido Arnella – handed on by Tennessee Williams – offered his services. MORE HERE??? 30 – William Holden, Picnic, 1955. He found it too close to A Streetcar Named Desire. No, really. 31 – James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause, 1955. Or, Title Without A Story. Or, first half of a title… Producer Jerry Wald had several scripts of Dr Robert M Lindner’s thesis on juvenile delinquency: Rebel Without a Cause: The Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath. In 1946, Warners wanted Brando (or Sidney Lumet!) for one by Theodore Geisel (future kids’ book author Dr Seuss). Brando tested opposite Ruth Ford (Orson Welles’ God-daughter, Mrs. Peter Van Eyck at the time, and later, Mrs Zachary Scott). Warners then bought Blind Run by Nicholas Ray (the Knock On Any Door director) as long as he used Lindner’s title. The 1949 plan fell apart and by ’55 Marlon was no juvenile. Jimmy Dean was only able to make it because Liz Taylor’s pregnancy delayed the start of Giant… Anyway, Brando had been there in The Wild One. (“What are you rebelling against?” “Whaddyer got?”) Dean became a close collaborator with Nicholas Ray, “practically a co-director,” said Jim Backus who played his emasculated father. After completing his third breakthrough film. Giant, Dean died in a car crash on September 30, 1955. Rebel opened October 27, 1955. 32 – James Dean, Giant, 1955. 33 – Henry Fonda, War and Peace, 1955. Just like 1955, Brando was offered everything, right or wrong. He’d just finished being Napoleon opposite Desirée and was not into in another costumer. Or, at least, certainly not with Audrey Hepburn… So Pierre went to Hank. Much too old and he knew it, but as he said, he money was great! 34 – Cornel Wilde, Hot Blood, 1955. Director Nicholas Ray tried a third time… with this gyspy drama. But no deal for what was then No Return. Stanley Kowalski said it had too much sex and violence! He loved meeting his probable leading lady. Ava Gardner. They dropped Ray and disappeared into the night together. (Second title for The Wild One in 1953, had been Hot Blood). 35 – Kirk Douglas, Lust For Life, 1955. Brando’s first film-maker, Fred Zinnemann (The Men, 1950) talked to him for three years about a Van Gogh biopic – “I can’t envision anybody else.” Warners planned it (of course) for the biopic king Paul Muni, John Garfield chased it, dying before MGM and Vincente Minnelli took it over. Douglas also subbed for another reunion of Marlon and an important director (Elia Kazan) in The Arrangement, 1969. 36 – Frank Sinatra, The Man With the Golden Arm, 1955. A bum decision – and Sinatra set out to prove what he had told director Elia Kazan on their waterfront. “Your darling little mumbler is the most over-rated actor in the world.” Their fight started after the death of John Garfield, the first to buy rights to Nelson Algren’s drug drama novel. Producer-director-ogre Otto Preminger then battled the Production Code (which banned drugs on screen) – for Brando, Montgomery Clift, William Holden or Sinatra. Marlon’s agent was slow in passing him the script, Sinatra read quicker – most of it – and snapped it up. For $100,000 and 12.4% of any profits. 37 – Mike Lane, The Harder They Fall, 1955. Budd Schulberg’s expose of the boxing racket was scheduled for 1950 as Brando’s second film – as the exploited fighter Toro Moreno. With the emphasis switched to his sports writer, it became Humphrey Bogart’s last film. Also considered with Brando: John Garfield whose rejection of Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway made Marlon a star – in December 1947. Brando’s sixth film had been another Budd Schulberg story: On The Waterfront, 1954. 38 – Yul Brynner, The King and I, 1955. Hollywood hated going with the Broadway star. After a brief Brando thought, Fox stayed with the one, the only King Mongkut of Siam. Brando and Brynner were allegedly lovers during the making of Morituri, 1965. 39 – Cliff Robertson, Autumn Leaves, 1956. Even though she said he “looks like he changes his undwear about every two weeks,” Joan Crawford tries again… And put Marlon atop her shit list (“replacing Bette Davis”!) for refusing her offer with a curt message via his agent. “I’m not interested in doing any mother-son films at the present time.” Game, set and match! 40 – Don Murray, Bus Stop, 1956. Yet again Monty Clift and Marilyn were nearly a duo. But that (sadly) didn’t happen until The Misfits, 1960, when Monty was in far from great shape. They had “this same self-destructive temperament,” said their co-star Eli Wallach. “They were at a loss; they couldn’t cope. It’s easy to poke fun at those people – big stars – but it’s very sad.” Elvis Presley was first choice for the dumbcluck cowpoke, Beauregard Decker – aka Bo – taking Marilyn Monroe’s Cherie away from all this bar singing stuff. Elvis & Marilyn – what a wet-dream combo! Except “Colonel” Tom Parker didn’t want nobody takin’ the shine off his boy! Despite (or because of) Marilyn being all Stanislavskjy at the time, Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift weren’t interested. Marilyn only ever wanted Rock Hudson, more into sob schlock opposite Jane Wyman, Fess Parker, aka Davy Crockett, led three tele-cowpokes also being seen: the others were John Smith, from Laramie, and the lanky Rowdy Yates on Rawhide, a certain Clint Eastwood. Murray (the first star I interviewed at the first of my 26 Cannes festivals in 1961) won an Oscar nomination for his debut and wed his other co-star, Hope Lange. 41 – Frank Sinatra, The Pride and the Passion, 1956. Bogart and Brando refused to be Cary Grant’s sidekick, Miguel. What did they know? Frank Sinatra found out – and walked off the “underwhelming” epic when he’d had enough…. (He had also won Ava Gardner back in his arms. She had been up for the ,leading lady, won by Sophia Loren. Ava visited the Spanish shoot and made up with Old Blue Eyes after their latest tiff). “Hot or cold,” he told director Stanley Kramer, “Thursday I’m leaving the movie. So get a lawyer and sue me.” Co-star Cary Grant was staggered by such unprofessionalism. Just as the Italian Sinatra was shocked that Loren preferred Grant to the Italian him. Certainly, Cary preferred her to Sinatra! 42 – Martin Gabel, The James Dean Story, 1956. The director’s first choice for the narrator… Well, Robert Altman aimed high. Right from his beginning. The Rebel Without A Cause scenarist Stewart Stern also wanted him. “I’ll only do it if it’s for free,” said Brando. “But nobody else can take any money either.” Stern said sorry, that’s not how it’s going to be. Brando added: “You need a young voice, It’s a young subject.” OK, Dennis Hopper, said Stern. But Warner Bros, still ruling Dean beyond the grave, preferred Gabel’s deep, booming voice. “I said it would ruin the film… and it did. You might as well have Rabbi Magnin! I had no power. Whatever was pretentious about my script, the narration only added to it.” A great disappointment for Stern. “Jim’s death was a terrible personal loss to me. I felt it as I had felt no other death in my life. I almost can’t explain why becuse it was such a short relationship… But he was an absolutely unique human being. Astonishing… given the background he had. You could not account for it anymore than… for the genius of Mozart as a child.” 43 – Robert Mitchum, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, 1956. Better! Although Gable also fled again. Mitchum (first choice to replace Brando in Streetcar on Broadway – forbidden by Howard Hughes) based Allison on his long-serving, Brooklyn stand-in, Tim Wallace. 44 – Andy Griffith, A Face in the Crowd, 1956. Amazing that Brando would reject this one from his One the Watefront creators. When Donald Trump became the 45th US President, many said if the story was filmed no one would believe it. It had been filmed – Elia Kazan directing Budd Schulberg’s trenchant script about, well, demagoguery. Although the impeccable Andy Grtiffith as “Lonesome” Rhodes is more of a lying Fox News pundit than a US President, he is 100% Trumpian in his rants. “I’m an influence, a wielder of opinions, a force! My flock of sheep, rednecks, crackers, hillbillies, housefraus, shutins, pea-pickers, everybody that’s got to jump when somebody else blows the whistle – they’re even more stupid than I am, so I gotta think for ’em…” . If Rhodes was a prophecy of the news faker to come, maybe the New York Times’ Bosley Crowther’s warning will also come true – about the danger of not truly opposing “his monstrous momentum.” 45 – Alan Ladd, Boy On A Dolphin, 1956. Preposterous! Gable and Mitchum agreed. Cary Grant had o quit on the fourth day, when his wife, Betsy Drake, was among the survivors of the SS Andrea Doria sinking, off Nantucket on July 25, 1956. 46 – John Rait, The Pajama Game, 1956. Frederick Brisson, Robert E Griffith and Hal Prince bought the 7 Cents novel for a stage musical about a strike at a pajama factory. (Honest). And immediately started courting Grant, Marlon Brando, Bing Crosby (too expensive), Van Johnson, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra – surely one would agree to Broadway and Hollywood! No? OK, they’ll discover a new star. And did. Except Rait was wrong! Pity. He looked good, sang good but acted like human parquet. 47 – Red Buttons, Sayonara, 1957. Josh Logan finally got him – but not for the stronger, supporting (and suicidal) role. Marlon preferred the priggish USAF major. Buttons, approved by the star, got the Oscar. 48 – Elvis Presley, King Creole, 1957. Before Elvis there was… everybody! John Cassavetes, Tony Curtis, James Dean, Ben Gazzara. Imagine Presley’s rapture at winning a role once aimed at his idols: Marlon Brando and James Dean! Better yet, Brando visited him, on the set. Newman passed as the tale (when still about a boxer) was much the same as the biopic of boxer Rocky Graziano, Somebody Up There Likes Me, that Jimmy was preparing for and that Newman inherited after Dean’s shock death. Elvis Presley never let his idols down. This is, arguably his best movie. (Well, it was not helmed by Norman Taurog). Elvis was “the surprise of the day,” noted the LA Times, “with good comic timing, considerable intelligence and even flashes of sensitivity.” Sadly, never again. After this, the US Army cut his hair and, apparently, his balls. 49 – Rick Jason, The Wayward Bus, 1957. When Marilyn Monroe, so cruelly scorned by her studio, astounded us in Bus Stop, Fox dusted down John Steinbeck’s busload of Chaucerian passengers to do the same for Jayne Mansfield. (Hah!). The main couple of the bus driver and his alcoholic wife, Alice (running a pitstop diner) went from the unlikely Franco-British Charles Boyer-Gertrude Lawrence to Marlon Brando-Jennifer Jones to Robert Mitchum-Susan Hayward to Richard Widmark-Gene Tierney to, finally, Rick Jason-Joan Collins. Incidentally, Marilyn’s bus driver, Robert Bray, turned up here as a chopper pilot hovering around Collins. (He then blew his career by refusing South Pacific). 50 – Victor Mature, The Long Haul, 1957. Brando and Robert Mitchum passed, so this became the fourth of six films Mature made for Warwick, co-run in London by Irving Allen and a certain Cubby Broccoli. They made a habit of wooing Hollywood talent to prop up their exotic adventures and thrillers: Anita Ekberg, Rhonda Fleming (no kin to Ian), Rita Hayworth, Alan Ladd, Jack Lemmon, Ray Milland, Robert Taylor, Richard Widmark, etc. Cubby got Mitchum later that year for Fire Down Below. 51 – Tyrone Power, The Sun Also Rises, 1957. After the Hays Office censors stopped Fox filming the hedonistic Hemingway book in 1933, Ann Harding picked up the rights and planed to produce a 1935 version and, of course, play Lady Brett Ashley. Allegedly, Howard Hawks also considered Harding for Brett in the late 40s. By 1953, it was Brando (or Clift) and Gene Tierney as Jake and Brett. It took Fox a quarter-century to finally make the film and even then, producer Darryl F Zanuck had to promise not to use the word impotent – he did, anyway! 52 – Frank Sinatra, Pal Joey, 1957. Opposite Mae West! Billy Wilder directing! That was Horrible Harry Cohn’s Columbia plan. “A sorta Diamond Lil meets Stanley Kowalksi drama,” Mae called it. According to director Joseph Mankiewicz, Marlon flirted with the project simply to meet Mae – and find out if she was a guy in drag. He wasn’t disappointed. She went through a monologue of Mae-isms and took him to bed under a mirrored ceiling. “I like to see how I’m doin’.” 53 – Yul Brynner, The Brothers Karamazov, 1957. The jokers sniped, but Marilyn Monroe got everyone interested (they even read or scanned the book because of her). MGM’s Dore Schary tried to set it up with Dimitri Brando and Grushenka Monroe. If only… 54 – Gene Kelly, Marjorie Morningstar, 1957. Warners bought Herman Wouk’s book for Brando and Liz Taylor in 1956 – when Natalie Wood was glued into teen pap with Tab Hunter and made it another of her passion-projects… even with a hopelessly miscast Kelly. 55 – John Wayne, The Barbarian and The Geisha, 1957. Ole Duke was somewhat lost in a John Huston film ear-marked for Marlon – as the first US Consul-General in Japan and having an affair with a geisha of 17. As massive an error as Duke’s Genghis Khan (no, really!) in The Conqueror in 1955, but he hoped for a good partnership with Huston. Never happened. Showing Duke who was boss, Huston started an affair with Wayne’s leading lady, Eiko Ando. And, oh, everything went downhiill from there. 56 – Aldo Ray, The Naked and the Dead, 1957. All set as Charles Laughton’s second directing gig except the flop of his now-classic Night of the Hunter put him off helming for life. Hunter’s producer Paul Gregory secured Raoul Walsh in his place – and wanted Brando, Montgomery Clift or Anthony Perkins as Lieutenant Robert Hearn. The novel was based on the young Norman Mailer’s ‘frigging” WWII experiences as a sergeant in the South Pacific. Hearn or Aldo Ray’s Sergeant Croft were not based by Mailer, himself. He maintained the character closest to him was Roth played by future Sinatra Clan comic Joey Bishop. 57 – Tony Curtis, The Defiant Ones, 1957. Stanley Kramer could think only of Brando and Sidney Poitier as the two escaped convicts, chained together. “You wouldn’t need a script,” he said. “Just turn on the cameras and let things happen.” However, while Brando liked the integration message, he didn’t like the way Kramer had produced their film, The Wild One. Billy Wilder said: Brando wanted to play the black convict, Mitchum would refuse to be in any film “with a nigger” and Kirk Douglas wanted both roles… In fact, Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn and Frank Sinatra all refused to co-star with Sidney Poitier. So much for liberal Hollywood. 58 – Charlton Heston, Ben-Hur, 1958. 59 – Frank Sinatra, Some Came Running, 1958. Sinatra’s last real acting job, probably because he got it away from Brando. Pity because it was first (of many scripts) aimed at Marlon and Marilyn! As Dave and Ginnie. No way, said Sinatra. . The film stemmed from the book by James Jones. He also wrote From Here to Eternity and the movie version saved Sinatra’s career from a 1953 toilet. o Frank was going to make this one, too. 60 – James Stewart, The Mountain Road, 1959. Plan A was Marlon Brando as Major Baldwin opposite Robert Mitchum’s Sergeant Mike Michaelson in an unique WWII story. Well, it was set in East Chjna, 1944. Plan B was the only war film James Stewart agreed to make as he considered such endeavours were rarely realistic. And this one was clearly anti-war. Shot in Arizona, including on the roads to… Stewart Mountain. 61 – Anthony Quinn, The Guns of Navarone, 1960. Writer-producer Carl Foreman was the scenarist of Brando’s screen debut, The Men, 1950. Apparently that didnlt count anymore. He aimed high for his Allied saboteurs in WWII Greece – starting with Brando and Cary Grant! Then again, Foreman said Quinn had been his only choice for Colonel Stravros. As often usual in a Foreman s scenario there were characters named Baker, Barnsby, Grogan and Weaver. I’ve always wondered if these were the names he refused to name during his Hollywood blacklist interrogations . 62 – Ralph Bellamy, Sunrise at Campobello, 1960. They had been hot lovers during Julius Caesar, 1953 – signing hotel registers, Lord and Lady Greystoke! Then, silence. Until Greer Garson called Marlon seven years later about being FDR to her Eleanor Roosevelt. No, he said, no more wheelchairs for him after The Men. He also felt they’d be laughed off the screen. He was too young; she too hetero Republican for such “a lesbian Democrat“ as Eleanor. (Bellamy, the Broadway production’s Tony Award winner for his FDR, played the 32nd POTUS again in The Winds of War, 1983, and its 1988-1989 sequel War and Remembrance. 63 – Dirk Bogarde, The Singer Not the Song, 1960. UK director Ken Annakin (yes, that’s where the Star Wars name came from) immediately thought of Marlon as the Anacleto Comach. However, Annakin’s Elephant Gun, 1957, shot the budget and schedule to bits and. The Rank Organisation gave the movie to Roy Ward Baker, who booked Bogarde, Rank’s contracted star. . Or he did so after Brando and a shocked Charlton Heston refused. Nor even Marlon at his worst could have matchedBogarde camping around Spain as Anacleto in black leather from head to toe – and whip – looking, noted The Times, “like a latterday Queen Kelly.” In a Christmas panto! 64 – Richard Burton, Cleopatra, 1960. 65 – Elvis Presley, Flaming Star, 1960. Bitter foes Brando and Sinatra as half-breedbrothers!! That was back when the Western was called Flaming Lance, Flaming Heart, The Brothers of Broken Lance, Black Star, Black Heart, yada, yada, and Nunnally Johnson was directing. Michael Curtiz took over when the bros became Elvis Presley and Steve Forrest. “Certainly, Presley’s no Brando,” agreed producer David Weisbart. “On the other hand, Brando’s no Presley.” Although hushed up by his manager, Colonel Parker, Elvis was proud of his own Cherokee roots from his maternal great-great-great grandmother Morning Dove White – and shared them with his GI Blues character. 66 – Glenn Ford, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1960. Not sure which would have been the most absurd casting for Julio Desnoyers – Dirk Bogarde, Montgomery Clift or Glenn Ford. They were all too old – 49, 40 and 44 – when Julio’s sister was Yvette Mimieux at… 18. MGM then looked at the pretty boys – Alain Delon, 25, and the German Delon, Horst Buchholz, 27, and George Hamilton, 21. Brando, 36, also refused: “Didn’t Valentino do that? I don’t dance the tango.” Well, not until Bertolucci called him… 67 – Paul Newman, Paris Blues, 1960. Not even Brando’s company, Pennebaker, could pull off the dream teaming of Marlon and Marilyn Monroe. They both lost interest in the jazz tale. Or in each other? Brando asked the Newmans – Paul and his wife, Joanne Woodward – to fill in. Woodward hadn’t been keen on maybe co-starring with Brando again after the tense teaming in The Fugitive Kind during the summer of ’59. And Pennebaker never made, as planned, To Tame A Land, Man on Spikes, Hang Me High, The Spellbinder (set for Errol Flynn), Tiger On A Kite. 68 – James Mason, Lolita, 1960. 69 – Maximilian Schell, Judgment At Nuremberg, 1961. For once Marlon was extremely keen on a role –German lawyer Hans Rolfe, trying to defend German judges for knowingly sending innocents to certain death in the Nazi concentration camps. However, producer-director Stanley Kramer and scenarist Abby Mann didn’t need him. They’d already assembled Montgomery Clift, Marlene Dietrich, Burt Lancaster (replacing first choice Laurence Olivier), Spencer Tracy and Richard Widmark. Plus they were smitten with Schell, the Austrian actor who played Rolfe in Mann’s 1959 TVersion. “We’ve got to watch out for that young man,” Tracy told Widmark. ”He’s very good. He’s going to walk away with the Oscar for this picture.” And he djd. (Brando and Schell were Nazi officers in The Young Lions, 1958. which also featured Clift). 70 – Peter O’Toole, Lawrence of Arabia, 1961. 71 – Nehemiah Persoff, The Comancheros, 1961. The Pennebaker project started at as Ride Comancheros, with the boss as an Indian chief called Graile and drifted off to John Wayne subbing for a dying Michael Curtiz, refusing to have him (or his credit dropped. (He did the same for an ailing George Sherman during Big Jake, 1971). Brando treated his directors like enemies and humiliated most of them, Chaplin and Coppola included – with the exception of Bryan Singer on Superman Returns, 2005. 72 – Paul Newman, Sweet Bird of Youth, 1961. As one ex-lover – Geraldine Page – was recreating her Broadway role of fading star Alexandra Del Lago, Brando talked with another former lover – playwright Tennessee Williams – about playing the hustler Chance Wayne. For once, MGM insisted on the Broadway stars: Newman, Page and her future husband Rip Torn. (Their post-box was labelled: Torn/Page). Brando was sure that Alexandra was based on yet another of his old lovers, Tallulah Bankhead (who called him a “pig-ignorant slob”). Marlon had the last word: “I know more about hustlng than Newman. Besides, I hear my prick is bigger than his.” 73 – Burt Lancaster, Il gattopardo (The Leopard), Italy-France, 1962. First choice of Italian maestro Luchino Visconti for Prince Don Fabrizio Salina. (He’d try again in the 70s for the unmade A la recherche du temps perdu). Next: Laurence Olivier or Russia’s Ivan The Terrible: Nikolai Cherkasov. Fox insisted on a Hollywoodian. “You can have Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, Spencer Tracy. Or even Burt Lancastr. “Oh, no!” squealed Visconti. “A cowboy!’ And treated him badly until Burt exploded on the set and impressed the Italian with his passion. They later made Gruppo di famiglia in un interno (Conversation Piece), 1974. “Each time I was playing Visconti,” said the cowboy. 74 – Robert Mitchum, Man in the Middle (aka The Winston Affair), 1963. Mr Mumbles’ copmpany Pennebaker Films, boibht the Hopward (Spartacus) Fast novel for the boss. But he passed Keenan Wynn’s WWII trial’s defence attorney to Mitchum… who had never looked so bored in all his career. Or, as the New York Times critic Bosley Crowther noted: “sleep-walking, grumbling and looking tough, and he stays more or less in that mood all the way through the film.” 75 – Paul Newman, What a Way to Go!, 1963. A certain Louisa May Foster takes her shrink through her five late husbands – every one a laugh. (If only). Prepared for Marilyn Monroe before her tragic death, I Love Louisa was given to Elizabeth Taylor with Marilyn’s Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Marcello Mastroianni, David Niven. Finally, Shirley MacLaine wed Robert Mitchum, Paul Newman, Dick Van Dyke… but not Frank Sinatra who wanted $500,000 or no show. Oh and Dean Martin as a department store mogul called Lennie Crawley, no less. This is where I usually say: And you can never go wrong with a Crawley. Not this (terrible) time! Steve McQueen and Charlton Heston were up for Hubby #2, Paul Newman’s American in Paris artist. Sounded like a reprise for Gene Kelly. Except he was Hubby #4, described as a song and dance man about to break into Hollywood – what at age 51! Yes, the movie was that bad. “An abomination,” said The New Leader critic John Simon. 76 – Richard Burton, The Night of the Iguana, 1963. 77 – Sean Connery, Marnie, 1963. Brando topped Alfred Hitchcock’s list for Mark Rutland. Well, obviously… Or, he did until Cubby Broccoli showed Hitch and his scenarist, Jay Presson Allen, a few glimpses of his charismatic 007 in Dr No. And, although, Sean didn’t match their “American aristocrat hero” at hero at all, the role was his. 78 – Paul Newman, The Outrage, 1963. “It’s not right for me,” said Paul Newman (very true) on the movie of Fay and Michael Kanin’s stage version of Kurosawa’s classic 1953 film, Rashomon. “Maybe Brando would be interested in it.” But once Brando loved the script, Newman said he’d do it after all! Prothetic nose, included. Two fresh plastic noses were reportedly shipped in from Culver City to Tuscon every day during thj shoot. Result: Total disaster. He was a character actor. Not just yet. 79 – Rod Steiger, Doctor Zhivago, 1964. After Lawrence of Arabia, director David Lean tried again. Brando did not even reply to Lean’s letter. So James Mason was Viktor Komarovsky – until Steiger played it. For a year! And he was surrounded by many great British actors. “All I wanted to do was not embarrass myself.” 80 – Michael Parks, Wild Seed (UK: Farago), 1964. Brando bought the Les Pine script in 1957. By the time his company got around to making it, as the final Pennebaker movie, he was too old at 40. (And looking older.) Parks was the latest “new Brando” from Bus Riley’s Back in Town, his co-star Celia Milius was the second wife of writer-director John Milius, and their producer Albert S Ruddy, soon better known for a litt 81 – George Segal, King Rat, 1964. Blacklisted Hollywood writer Carl Foreman (High Noon) decided to film James Cavell’s tough book about his three years as a WWII prisoner of the Japanese. With the finest UK actors: new guys Albert Finney, Peter O’Toole, veterans Trevor Howard, John Mills. He then
Brando’s five-minute test was more of him and the ( very early) script than the role. [© Warner Bros, 1947].
His ’56 Marc Antony showed how superb he could have been. Instead, moaned scenarist Gore Vidal, “we got Heston – solid balsa wood.” word and sandal epics were in. And producer Sam Zimbalist, who’d made one of the biggest – Quo Vadis, 1950 – was back in Rome in charge of the better (well, William Wyler was directing) re-make of the 1923 silent Ben-Hur, racing chariots and all. (Sergio Leone claimed he directed the stunning chariot race. He did not). Sam even considered retaining his Vadis trio: Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Stewart Granger. Friendly rivals Marlon Brando and Paul Newman were up for the titular Judah; still smarting from his 1954 debut, The Silver Chalice, Newman hated ancient Rome costumes, or cocktail dresses as he termed them. Director William Wyler (part of the original’s 1924 crew) also studied Richard Burton from The Robe (a film, not a cocktail dress), Montgomery Clift, Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson (furious with Universal refusing to loan him out), Van Johnson (no, really!), Burt Lancaster (an atheist with no interest in Christianity commercials, although he had earlier tried to mount his own version), true Brit Edmond Purdom… plus Italians, known and unknown: Vittorio Gassman and Cesare Danova. MGM voted Heston, C B De Mille’s Moses in The Ten Commandments, 1954. According to “contributing writer” Gore Vidal, Willie Wyler called Heston wooden. Brando, for one, would not disagree. And yet Judah Ben-Heston won his Oscar on April 4 1960.
Nipping in quick, producer Ray Stark paid $500,000 for the new Tennessee Williams play – before it opened as his last Broadway hut in 1961. The main character is the Reverend T Lawrence Shannon, reduced to being a Mexico tour guide after bejng defrocked for calling God a juvenile delinquent. So who should be Shannon: Stanley Kowalski or Brick Pollit? Aka Marlon Brando from A Streetcar Named Desire or Paul Newman from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. (He’d also been another Williams sad-sack in Sweet Bird of Youth). Also up for the Rev were, Richard Harris, William Holden, Burt Lancaster (too close to his Oscar-winning Elmer Gantry, 1959) and, surprisingly, James Garner – “Just too Tennessee Williams for me!” there was more tenson off-screen as among those putting Puerto Vallarta on the tourist map, were… Elizabeth Taylor living with Burton, whose agent was her first ex-husband, Michael Wilding. Plus Ava Gardner’s old, “platonic bedmate,” Peter Viertel, was also around as he was now wed to co-star Deborah Kerr! To help avoid friction, John Huston gifted each star with a gold-plated pistol, complete with bullets engraved with the names of the other stars, so the right bullet could be used (or, aimed, at least!) on the right target! It worked well. Nary a discouraging word. Except from the critics.
- Birth year: 1924
- Death year: 2004
- Casting Calls: 171