Welcome back to our biography series sharing inspiring people and an abundance of resources to learn everything about them your heart desires!
Aries icon Marlon Brando is today’s subject. He was born April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, and is still considered one of the greatest actors of all time by the majority of film enthusiasts.
Brando was raised in a household with both parents being alcoholics and an abusive, overly critical father. These factors played a major role in shaping Marlon into the reclusive, fiercely rebellious person everyone knew him as. His “bad boy” reputation began early in life; one example of that being his riding a motorcycle through his Illinois high school’s hallways leading to expulsion. That particular incident led to Brando’s father, Marlon Brando Sr., enrolling him in military school, which Marlon also managed to get expelled from.
Quickly after leaving school behind, Brando made the decision to move to New York, pursue acting as his sister did, and study under Stella Adler in 1943. He worked on four different Broadway productions before securing his place in entertainment history with his portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in the 1947 stage production of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire.
When remembering Marlon Brando, it is vital to know the steps he took to, in his own way, fight for the causes most important to him. In his fight for equality, Brando stood his ground for Sayonara to end with a marriage between him and his Japanese lover. The 1960s found Marlon Brando marching and standing in solidarity with Martin Luther King Jr. in his fight for racial equality. Following the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Brando passed on the role in a major film announcing his devotion to the civil rights movement. Widely discussed to this day, Marlon rejected his 1973 Oscar win by sending Sacheen Littlefeather in his place with pages of a speech in hand to shine a light on the mistreatment of American Indians by the film industry. He denied awards afterward as well sharing that doing so would make him part of the problem. There is a brilliant article here that includes some fantastic quotes from Marlon himself about this time and goes more in-depth about his goals.
Eternally on a quest for innovation and change, Marlon utilized his private island in Tahiti to test sustainability methods, alternative food sourcing, the generation of air conditioning via seawater technology, and ocean farming. Few people within entertainment dedicated themselves so wholely to the desire to produce a better world as Brando did.
Marlon Brando passed away at the age of 80 on July 1, 2004, due to pulmonary fibrosis. He was cremated and scattered by family in Tahiti and Death Valley, California.
Marlon Brando Films You May Recognize:
If you wish to continue learning about Marlon, the following resources are readily available for you to visit…
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Featured image credit: Ed Clark (1949) – The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Dominique Benedict is the founder and owner of Breakfast At Dominique’s. Her favorite topics include classic everything from movies to music to cars and the 90s film, Dazed and Confused.