Word: marlon
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon BrandoStefan KanferKnopf; 350 pages...
...Gist:A film critic at TIME for decades, Kanfer delivers another in a long line of Marlon Brando biographies (including 1999's Brando, by Richard Schickel, another TIME critic). Looking particularly closely at the actor's self-destructive tendencies, Somebody take the Brando myth up to his 2004 death and beyond...
...missed opportunity: "For despite the recent box-office disappointment, Sam Spiegel believed that Marlon would be an ideal Lawrence of Arabia, made his an offer, and sent him Robert Bolt's vivid scenario. To Peter O'Toole's undying gratitude, Marlon responded: 'I'll be damned if I'll spend two years of my life out in the desert on some f-----g camel...
...Brando at a White House dinner with President John F. Kennedy: "As Marlon attacked the pasta, Kennedy challenged him: 'Marlon, have you gained weight? Looks like you've put on a few.''Nary an ounce.''Kennedy grinned. "Then the CIA sent up some wrong information.'Marlon bet the president that JFK weighed more than he did. A bathroom scale was brought into the room. Brando checked in at 187 pounds. Kennedy was eleven pounds lighter.'Get some food into this man,' Marlon told the other guests. 'You can't lead the country at a hundred seventy...
...Lowdown:Why pen another bio of the much studied Marlon Brando? To take him seriously. To get inside his head and then recreate him from the inside out, much as Brando tried to do to the characters he played. The prurient details of Brando's life (and there are many) are downplayed here. Rather, Kanfer portrays Brando as a man at war with himself: self-loathing, self-destructive and self-sabotaging. Beautiful performances were often followed up by several lazy ones. Brando would blatantly goof off like a petulant child if he didn...