Marlon Brando :: Biographies Biography

Marlon Brando was born on April 3rd 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, the third and last child of Dorothy Pennebaker Brando and Marlon Brando, Senior. He had two sisters Jocelyn and Frances and was descended from Irish immigrants. In 1935, his parents separated, and his mother moved with her three children to Santa Ana in Orange County, California. Two years later, in 1937, his parents were reconciled again, and the family moved to Libertyville, Illinois, north of Chicago near Lake Michigan. (Bosworth, 2004) In 1940, he was sent to a military boarding school - Shattuck Military Academy in Fairbult, Minnesota, from which he was eventually expelled for insubordination. In 1943, Brando relocated to New York City to study the Stanislavsky method under Stella Adler. (Editor, 2004) Brando's, first film was Fred Zinnemann's The Men in 1950. In 1951, he played in A Streetcar Named Desire .The role he performed in that movie earned him the first of four consecutive Best Actor Academy Award nominations. He followed up with impressive, very individualistic performances as a Mexican revolutionary in Viva Zapata in 1952 and as Marc Anthony in Joseph L Mankiewicz's adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in 1953. (Maltin, 2004) In 1954, he performed in On the Waterfront, as a washed-up boxer. His great performance in the movie won him an Academy Award. In1956, he performed in Sayonara, for which he garnered another Oscar nomination. (Editor, 2004) In 1957, he married Anna Kashfi but unfortunately their marriage only lasted for two years. In 1962, he married Mivta but their marriage also did not last for a long time, and they divorced in 1963.Some of his movies in 60’s were, Mutiny On The Bounty in 1962, The Ugly American in 1967,and Reflections in a Golden Eye in 1967. (Editor, 2004) The Brando renaissance began with 1972's The Godfather. Against the objections of Paramount, director Francis Ford Coppola cast him to play the aging head of a Mafia crime family. Brando was brilliant, delivering his best performance in well over a decade. His great performance in The Godfather won him another Academy Award. (David Thomson) Brando did not appear on screen for three years, finally resurfacing in The Missouri Breaks in 1976 opposite Jack Nicholson. His next appearance, in Coppola's 1979 Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now, was largely incoherent, while for 1980's The Formula, he appeared in only three scenes. For a decade, he did not perform in any movies.