Old Hollywood Spotlight: Marlon Brando

October is about getting in the Halloween spirit by choosing who you want to be for one day. Marlon Brando was various characters with the help of makeup, wardrobe, and portrayal. He was a motorcycle punk, a Mexican revolutionary, a Roman politician, and the Godfather.

Marlon Brando was considered to be ahead of his time. He didn’t pretend to be a character; he was the character. He tested methods of sustainability with his house in Tahiti, and he set an example of racial integration in the ’50s and ’60s.

Even though Brando is known as a Hollywood star, he wasn’t as successful as many would think. He only appeared in 39 movies and a few TV series throughout his career. He wasn’t considered financially successful until his role in The Godfather in 1972.

Marlon Brando was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on April 3, 1924, and was raised in Illinois. Brando moved to New York to study acting with coach Stella Adler after he was kicked out of a military academy, and Adler is considered the primary inspiration for Brando’s early career because she introduced him to literature, music, and theater. The Nebraskan native also studied at Lee Strasberg’s Actors’ Studio, where he adopted method acting — which is acting by trying to understand and portray why a character does certain things.

Brando made his acting debut in the Broadway plays I Remember Mama (1944), Truckline Caf (1946), and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). After he reprised his role as Stanley Kowalski in the 1951 movie adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire, his second Hollywood acting credit, Brando became a recognized figure. During the rest of the 1950s, he played Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata! (1952) and Marc Antony in Julius Caesar (1953). He also starred as the motorcycle gang leader in The Wild One (1954) and as Napoleon Bonaparte in Désirée, and he won an Academy Award for his role in On the Waterfront. He continued to appear in films, and from 1955 to 1958, he was voted one of the top 10 box office draws in the nation.

According to a 2014 article in The Atlantic, Marlon Brando was an actor whose major role changes characterized him as a chameleon. This chameleon effect made him like no other actor because he became his characters, giving his films a “whole new gravitational center.” James Franco described Brando’s work as revolutionary American acting because “he didn’t seem to be ‘performing,’ in the sense that he wasn’t putting something on as much as he was being.”

Brando wasn’t the kind to follow the script. If there was something method acting taught him, it was to truly be the character and understand the reasons for his actions. As a result, Brando often rewrote his scenes to make his characters more realistic and believable. He worked in 39 movies and continued to act until 2001; The Score with Robert DeNiro was his last film.

Marlon Brando did more than just change the movies and revolutionize acting. While filming Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) in Tahiti, Brando fell in love with the island and its people, and he eventually bought a group of 12 coral reef islands surrounding a lagoon named Tetiaroa. He tested ocean farming, found new food sources, and discovered seawater technology, which is similar to solar power. He wanted to create an environmentally-friendly and sustainable resort, which opened in 2014 after many plan revisions.

Even though race-integrated marriages were still unwelcome in the 1950s, Brando married Indian actress Anna Kashfi in 1957, Mexican-American actress Movita Castaneda in 1960, and Tarita Teriipaia in 1962. Racial integration was important to him, and he even participated in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s March on Washington in 1963.

By the mid 1990s, Brando had gained up to 300 pounds, and in 2004 he died at the age of 80 due to pulmonary fibrosis.

It might be easy to dress up as your favorite character on Halloween, but imagine becoming that person, monster, goblin, or cartoon for various days, not only acting like the character but being the character. Marlon Brando was ahead of his time when it came to his career, his goal to create environmental awareness, and his support of interracial relationships.