Marlon Brando, whose blend of sensitivity and savagery brought him acclaim as the greatest actor of his generation and whose tumultuous personal life made him a fascinating spectacle in popular culture, died on Thursday in a Los Angeles hospital, his attorney said. He was 80. The lawyer, David Seeley, told the Associated Press that the cause of death was being withheld. Moody performers such as Humphrey Bogart made the stiff, oily leading man seem obsolete by the 1940s. But it was Brando — sweaty, mumbling, wounded, brutish and beautiful — who further heightened expectations in post-war cinema. He won two Academy Awards, for On the Waterfront and The Godfather, created a menagerie of unforgettable performances, from A Streetcar Named Desire to Apocalypse Now, and became an icon of defiance on-screen and off. His naked emotional display on film was matched by often-tragic events in his private life, from his childhood to his failed marriages to his self-castigating courtroom pleas during his son Christian’s manslaughter trial. He also made disastrously indulgent career choices as he came to view acting as a lark and spent decades teetering between being a has-been and creating major milestones in performance. As Newsweek cultural observer Jack Kroll wrote in 1994, ‘‘That will be Brando’s legacy whether he likes it or not — the stunning actor who embodied a poetry of anxiety that touched the deepest dynamics of his time and place.’’ It was clear from Brando’s cinema debut as a scornful, paraplegic war veteran in The Men (1950) and his explosive work as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) that he was a towering new breed of actor, able to display a raw soul that ached with passion but also was unpredictably bestial. One critic noted that in The Men, Brando ‘‘comes like a blood transfusion into cinema acting,’’ and later writers confirmed his legacy: With his magnetism and dazzling range, he simply dominated all discussions about film acting. In more than 40 films, his gallery of most-admired performances include: Viva Zapata! (1952), as Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata; Julius Caesar (1953), as Mark Antony; On the Waterfront (1954), as longshoreman Terry Malloy, who takes a lonely stand against organised crime; The Wild One (1954), as a motorcycle gang leader; and Sayonara (1957), as an Army officer who romances a Japanese dancer. After a series of 1960s flops, he experienced an unexpected renaissance with The Godfather (1972), as mafia chieftain Vito Corleone; Last Tango in Paris (1973), as a man who, after his wife’s suicide, goes on a sexual spree that is both liberating and tortuous; and Apocalypse Now (1979), as Army Col. Walter Kurtz, a symbol of madness during the Vietnam War. Although his role was brief, he also played Jor-El, the title superhero’s father, in the blockbuster Superman (1978). Brando also had a huge impact on public behaviour. He was, at first, a strikingly muscular and vital figure who defined 1950s leather-jacketed masculinity. He wore jeans to swank parties, insulted starmaking gossip columnists and flaunted his preference for dark-skinned women, then a social taboo — anything to pique the Hollywood system that tried to control his public image. He infuriated studio executives by going millions over budget on his only directorial effort, the revenge western One-Eyed Jacks (1961) and was largely blamed for immense cost overruns on the South Sea Island set of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). Mutiny director Lewis Milestone was one of many directors and studio officials he confounded with his distaste for authority. ‘‘Before he would take direction, he would ask why,’’ Milestone said. ‘‘Then when the scene was being shot, he put earplugs in so that he couldn’t hear my direction.’’ Brando saw his overall attitude differently. ‘‘I am myself,’’ he once said, ‘‘and if I have to hit my head against a brick wall to remain myself, I will do it.’’ Starting in the 1960s, Brando became one of the first actor-activists to march for civil and Native American rights. He refused to appear at the Oscar ceremony to accept his award for The Godfather, protesting what he felt was discrimination against Native Americans on film and in government policy. With time, he represented the disintegration of a sex symbol as his muscular physique crumbled and he ballooned to more than 300 pounds. Marlon Brando Jr, the youngest of three children, was born in Omaha to the former Dorothy Pennebaker, a vivacious beauty and local actress, and Marlon Brando Sr, an insecticide salesman. His father, of French-Alsatian lineage, had changed his surname from Brandeaux. When the family moved to Illinois, Dorothy Brando turned increasingly to drink, including one night when her son found her naked in a bar. The move to Illinois also propelled Brando’s unruliness in the face of authority, such as pouring hydrosulphate into his high school’s blower to create a rotten-egg smell. In 1943, he moved to New York to join his sisters, Frances and Jocelyn. He was a ditch digger, a department store elevator man and a factory night watchman. In 1944, Brando was hired to play the teenage son Nels in John van Druten’s I Remember Mama. The hit play brought Brando a swathe of admirers, including director Elia Kazan. Kazan persuaded producer Irene Selznick to hire Brando for the Broadway role of Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Streetcar and Brando’s performance in it were hailed as landmark theatrical events. The filmed version of Streetcar launched him onscreen, but Brando was upset when he lost the Oscar to Bogart in The African Queen. Film historians considered Bogart’s win ‘‘sentimental,’’ and the loss burnished Brando’s dismissive views of the film community. He won the Oscar for best actor in Kazan’s On the Waterfront, marking an early pinnacle of his career as a conscience-stricken former boxer. Brando delivered to his screen brother, Rod Steiger, the ‘‘I coulda been a contender’’ speech, considered one of the great film moments of all time. After a fiasco with Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), he spent more time on his social activism and entered his longest commercial slump as an actor with a series of films casting a critical gaze on American society. Out of nowhere, author Mario Puzo sent Brando The Godfather script, hoping he would play Don Vito Corleone. Onscreen, he emulated the pinched voice of organised-crime figure Frank Costello during a 1950s Senate hearing and ate a large dinner with underworld potentates to copy their mannerisms. The Godfather and his next role in Last Tango in Paris, in which he has a fatal fling with a young Frenchwoman, prompted a massive rethinking of Brando’s career. Last Tango in Paris, which received an X-rating, featured a highly improvisational Brando using many details to flesh out his character. Brando said he made many of his later films for the money — he reportedly made $3.7 million for 12 days of work on Superman. He earned his final Oscar nomination, for best supporting actor in A Dry White Season (1989). Morbidly obese and depressed after the deaths of relatives and friends, he spent the last decade more as a symbol of media curiosity than as an actor looking for the next challenge. He resigned himself to insubstantial parts in panned films such as The Island of Dr Moreau (1996). His marriages to actresses Anna Kashfi, Movita Castenada and Tarita Teriipaia ended in divorce. Survivors include a son from his first marriage, Christian; two children from his second marriage, Miko and Rebecca; and a son from his third marriage, Teihotu. — (LAT-WP) THE WASHINGTON POST
