Marlon Brando

   Marlon Brando, often referred to as the greatest movie actor of all time, was born in Omaha on April 3, 1924.  His parents and older sister, Jocelyn, were active in the Omaha Community Playhouse and the family often associated with the likes of the young Henry Fonda and Dorothy McGuire until their relocation to Illinois when Brando was about six.  Brando’s home life was less than ideal.  His father’s job as a traveling salesman kept him away from home often, and his mother was an alcoholic.  Never a model student, a teenage Brando was sent to a military academy that he was subsequently expelled from for riding a motorcycle through the hallways.  A bad knee kept him from enlisting in the Army, and a stint digging ditches helped him decide in 1943 to join Jocelyn in New York City, where she had gone to pursue acting. 
   In New York, Brando enrolled in acting classes at the now famous Dramatic Workshop of The New School and the Actor’s Studio.  It was through his studies that Brando was introduced to “The Method” style of acting, whereby the actor “engenders in themselves the thoughts and emotions of their characters in an effort to create lifelike performances.”  Brando so excelled in this new form of acting that today his name is often synonymous with its “marbles in the mouth” style of acting.
   After only a year of acting school and a season of summer stock theater, Brando made his Broadway debut in the role of Nels in “I Remember Mama”.   This would be the first of many stage roles Brando would own, including his most famous role playing Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
   By early 1948, with less than five years of acting to his credit, Look Magazine described Brando with these words:  “A poet’s face, a football player’s physique and a volcanic personality make him a perfect figure around which to build a legend.”
   But in 1949 Brando famously left the stage to devout himself completely to film.  Many critics say he squandered his talent, but before his death on July 1, 2004, he would star in forty-four films, collecting eight academy award nominations and two wins as Terry Malloy in “On The Waterfront” and as Vito Corleone in “The Godfather”.

                                                                — Diane Snider
DCHS Board Member

Sources:
Vertical Files, Douglas County Historical Society Library Archives Center