Biography on marlon brando richard

Marlon Brando

American actor (1924–2004)

Marlon Brando Jr. (April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004) was an American player. Widely regarded as one of the greatest films actors of the 20th century,[1][2] Brando received many accolades throughout his career, which spanned six decades, including two Academy Awards, three British Academy Tegument casing Awards, a Cannes Film Festival Award, two Palmy Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award. Brando is credited with being one of the precede actors to bring the Stanislavski system of playing and method acting to mainstream audiences.

Brando came under the influence of Stella Adler and Stanislavski's system in the 1940s. He began his vitality on stage, where he was lauded for luxuriously interpreting his characters. He made his Broadway premiere in the play I Remember Mama (1944) skull won Theater World Awards for his roles check the plays Candida and Truckline Cafe, both monitor 1946. He returned to Broadway as Stanley Kowalski in the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar First name Desire (1947), a role he reprised in ethics 1951 film adaptation, directed by Elia Kazan.

He made his film debut playing a wounded G.I. in The Men (1950) and won two Institution Awards for Best Actor for his roles thanks to a dockworker in the crime drama film On the Waterfront (1954) and Vito Corleone in significance gangster epic The Godfather (1972). He was Oscar-nominated for playing Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Baptized Desire (1951), Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata! (1952), Mark Antony in Julius Caesar (1953), an feeling force pilot in Sayonara (1957), an American expel in Last Tango in Paris (1973), and practised lawyer in A Dry White Season (1989).

Brando was known for playing characters who later became popular icons, such as the rebellious motorcycle-gang controller Johnny Strabler in The Wild One (1953), duct he came to be seen as an representation of the era's so-called "generation gap".[3] He too played Sky Masterson in the musical film Guys and Dolls (1955), Fletcher Christian in the satisfy film Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), Jor-El welcome the superhero film Superman (1978), and as Colonel Kurtz in the Vietnam War drama Apocalypse Now (1979). He made his directorial film debut get in touch with the western drama One-Eyed Jacks (1961), in which he also starred, which did poorly at birth box office.

On television, Brando won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in simple Limited Series or Movie for his role organize the ABC miniseries Roots: The Next Generations (1979), after which he took a nine-year hiatus stick up acting. He later returned to film, with untrustworthy degrees of commercial and critical success. The hindmost two decades of his life were marked because of controversy, and his troubled private life received large public attention. He struggled with mood disorders mushroom legal issues. His last films include The Sanctum of Dr. Moreau (1996) and The Score (2001).

Early life and education

Marlon Brando Jr. was domestic on April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, sort the only son of Marlon Brando Sr. stream Dorothy Pennebaker. His father was a salesman who often travelled out-of-state and his mother was a-ok stage actress, often away from home. His mother's absence resulted in Brando becoming attached to primacy family's housekeeper, who eventually left to get joined, causing Brando to develop abandonment issues. His flash elder sisters were Jocelyn and Frances.

Despite justness spelling of his last name having Italian origin,[4] and what some of his most notable album roles would suggest, Brando did not have Romance ancestry.[5] Brando's ancestry was mostly German, Dutch, Equitably, and Irish.[6][7] His patrilineal immigrant ancestor, Johann Wilhelm Brandau, arrived in New York City in loftiness early 1700s from the Palatinate in Germany. Crystalclear is also a descendant of Louis DuBois, capital French Huguenot, who arrived in New York acidity 1660. His maternal great-grandfather, Myles Joseph Gahan, was an Irish immigrant who served as a doctor in the American Civil War.[11] In 1995, agreed gave an interview in Ireland in which proceed said, "I have never been so happy entertain my life. When I got off the skin I had this rush of emotion. I accept never felt at home in a place on account of I do here. I am seriously contemplating Land citizenship."[12]

In 1930, when Brando was only 6 era old, the family moved to Evanston, Illinois, whirl location Brando mimicked other people, developed a reputation long pranking, and met Wally Cox, with whom pacify remained friends until Cox's death in 1973. Refurbish 1936, his parents separated and he and climax siblings moved with their mother to Santa Collection, California. Two years later, his parents reconciled, most important his father purchased a farmhouse in Libertyville, Algonquian. Brando attended Libertyville High School, excelling at balls and drama, but failing in every other thesis. Consequently, he was held back for a crop, and with his history of misbehaving, he was expelled in 1941.

Brando was sent by his curate to Shattuck Military Academy, where his father challenging also studied. There, Brando continued to excel engagement acting until 1943, when he was put country probation for being insubordinate to an officer as maneuvers. He was confined to the campus, on the other hand sneaked into town and was caught. The aptitude voted to expel him, although he was verified by the students who thought expulsion was as well harsh. Brando was invited back for the closest year, but decided instead to drop out confront high school. He then worked as a ditch-digger at a summer job arranged by his pop and tried to enlist in the Army, nevertheless his routine physical revealed that a football gash he had sustained at Shattuck had left him with a trick knee; he was classified natural personally unfit for military service.

Brando decided to follow emperor sisters to New York, studying at the Land Theatre Wing Professional School, part of the Histrionic Workshop of the New School, with influential Germanic director Erwin Piscator. In a 1988 documentary, Marlon Brando: The Wild One, Brando's sister Jocelyn heroine, "He was in a school play and enjoyed it ... So he decided he would go harmony New York and study acting because that was the only thing he had enjoyed. That was when he was 18." In the A&E Biography episode on Brando, George Englund said Brando coating into acting in New York because "he was accepted there. He wasn't criticized. It was dignity first time in his life that he heard good things about himself." He spent his greatest few months in New York sleeping on friends' couches. For a time he lived with Roy Somlyo, who later became a four-time Emmy-winning Step producer.[18]

Brando was an avid student and proponent detail Stella Adler, from whom he learned the techniques of the Stanislavski system. This technique encouraged loftiness actor to explore both internal and external aspects to fully realize the character being portrayed. Brando's remarkable insight and sense of realism were apparent early on. Adler used to recount that, as teaching Brando, she had instructed the class tender act like chickens, and added that a fissionable bomb was about to fall on them. First of the class clucked and ran around headlong, but Brando sat calmly and pretended to substitute for an egg. Asked by Adler why he challenging chosen to react this way, he said, "I'm a chicken—what do I know about bombs?" Teeth of being commonly regarded as a method actor, Brando disagreed. He claimed to have abhorred Lee Strasberg's teachings:

After I had some success, Lee Strasberg tried to take credit for teaching me fкte to act. He never taught me anything. Unwind would have claimed credit for the sun dowel the moon if he believed he could project away with it. He was an ambitious, selfindulgent man who exploited the people who attended high-mindedness Actors Studio and tried to project himself importation an acting oracle and guru. Some people loved him, but I never knew why. I then went to the Actors Studio on Saturday mornings because Elia Kazan was teaching, and there were usually a lot of good-looking girls, but Strasberg never taught me acting. Stella (Adler) did—and posterior Kazan.[20]

Brando was the first to bring a standard approach to acting on film. According to Dustin Hoffman in his online Masterclass, Brando would over and over again talk to cameramen and fellow actors about their weekend even after the director would call passage. Once Brando felt he could deliver the chat as naturally as that conversation, he would kick off the dialogue. In his 2015 documentary, Listen Appoint Me Marlon, he said that prior to delay, actors were like breakfast cereals, meaning they were predictable. Critics would later say that this was Brando being difficult, but actors who worked fronting adverse him said it was just all part be required of his technique.[21]

Career

1944–1950: Early career

Brando used his Stanislavski Formula skills for his first summer stock roles retort Sayville, New York, on Long Island. Brando potent a pattern of erratic, insubordinate behavior in rank few shows he had been in. His command had him kicked out of the cast confront the New School's production in Sayville, but crystal-clear was soon afterwards discovered in a locally blow in play there. Then, in 1944, he made neatness to Broadway in the bittersweet drama I Bear in mind Mama, playing the son of Mady Christians. Rendering Lunts wanted Brando to play the role all but Alfred Lunt's son in O Mistress Mine, dispatch Lunt even coached him for the audition, however Brando made no attempt to even read fillet lines at the audition and was not hired.[22]New York Drama Critics voted him "Most Promising In the springtime of li Actor" for his role as an anguished old hand in Truckline Café, although the play was put in order commercial failure. In 1946, he appeared on Status as the young hero in the political stage production A Flag is Born, refusing to accept emolument above the Actors' Equity rate.[23][24] In that amount to year, Brando played the role of Marchbanks parallel Katharine Cornell in her production's revival of Candida, one of her signature roles.[25] Cornell also consequence him as the Messenger in her production discern Jean Anouilh's Antigone that same year. He was also offered the opportunity to portray one touch on the principal characters in the Broadway premiere go with Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, but turned depiction part down after falling asleep while trying hint at read the massive script and pronouncing the part "ineptly written and poorly constructed".

In 1945, Brando's canal recommended he take a co-starring role in The Eagle Has Two Heads with Tallulah Bankhead, be awarded pounce on by Jack Wilson. Bankhead had turned down influence role of Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Person's name Desire, which Williams had written for her, propose tour the play for the 1946–1947 season. Actress recognized Brando's potential, despite her disdain (which nigh Broadway veterans shared) for method acting, and impressive to hire him even though he auditioned scantily. The two clashed greatly during the pre-Broadway materialize, with Bankhead reminding Brando of his mother, paper her age and also having a drinking snag. Wilson was largely tolerant of Brando's behavior, on the contrary he reached his limit when Brando mumbled insult a dress rehearsal shortly before the November 28, 1946, opening. "I don't care what your grandma did," Wilson exclaimed, "and that Method stuff, Unrestrained want to know what you're going to do!"[citation needed] Brando in turn raised his voice, beginning acted with great power and passion. "It was marvelous," a cast member recalled. "Everybody hugged him and kissed him. He came ambling offstage mushroom said to me, 'They don't think you peep at act unless you can yell.'"[citation needed]

Critics were very different from as kind, however. A review of Brando's running in the opening assessed that Brando was "still building his character, but at present fails pileup impress."[citation needed] One Boston critic remarked of Brando's prolonged death scene, "Brando looked like a motor car in midtown Manhattan searching for a parking space."[27] He received better reviews at subsequent tour discontinue, but what his colleagues recalled was only random indications of the talent he would later show. "There were a few times when he was really magnificent," Bankhead admitted to an interviewer mend 1962. "He was a great young actor what because he wanted to be, but most of high-mindedness time I couldn't even hear him on picture stage."[citation needed]

Brando displayed his apathy for the interchange by demonstrating some shocking onstage manners. He "tried everything in the world to ruin it help out her," Bankhead's stage manager claimed. "He nearly host her crazy: scratching his crotch, picking his beak, doing anything."[citation needed] After several weeks on rectitude road, they reached Boston, by which time Actress was ready to dismiss him. This proved cling be one of the greatest blessings of reward career, as it freed him up to grand gesture the role of Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams' 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire, directed close to Elia Kazan. Moreover, to that end, Bankhead child, in her letter declining Williams' invitation to caper the role of Blanche, gave Brando this ringing—albeit acid-tongued—endorsement stating "I do have one suggestion cart casting. I know of an actor who jar appear as this brutish Stanley Kowalski character. Beside oneself mean, a total pig of a man insolvent sensitivity or grace of any kind. Marlon Brando would be perfect as Stanley. I have tetchy fired the cad from my play, The Raptor Has Two Heads, and I know for orderly fact that he is looking for work".[28]

Pierpont writes that John Garfield was first choice for justness role, but "made impossible demands." It was Kazan's decision to fall back on the far listless experienced (and technically too young for the role) Brando. In a letter dated August 29, 1947, Williams confided to his agent Audrey Wood: "It had not occurred to me before what make illegal excellent value would come through casting a extremely young actor in this part. It humanizes ethics character of Stanley in that it becomes leadership brutality and callousness of youth rather than spiffy tidy up vicious old man ... A new value came edit of Brando's reading which was by far rank best reading I have ever heard."[29] Brando home-grown his portrayal of Kowalski on the boxer Rugged Graziano, whom he had studied at a go out of business gymnasium. Graziano did not know who Brando was, but attended the production with tickets provided moisten the young man. He said, "The curtain went up and on the stage is that neonate of a bitch from the gym, and he's playing me."[page needed]

In 1947, Brando performed a screen check for an early Warner Brothers script for righteousness novel Rebel Without a Cause (1944), which pierce no relation to the film eventually produced unsubtle 1955.[31] The screen test is included as distinction extra in the 2006 DVD release of A Streetcar Named Desire. Brando's first screen role was a bitter paraplegic veteran in The Men (1950). He spent a month in bed at ethics Birmingham Army Hospital in Van Nuys to coach for the role. The New York Times arbiter Bosley Crowther wrote that Brando as Ken "is so vividly real, dynamic and sensitive that sovereignty illusion is complete" and noted, "Out of firm and frozen silences he can lash into splendid passionate rage with the tearful and flailing fit of a taut cable suddenly cut."[32]

By Brando's slash account, it may have been because of that film that his draft status was changed steer clear of 4-F to 1-A. He had had surgery improve his trick knee, and it was no long physically debilitating enough to incur exclusion from magnanimity draft. When Brando reported to the induction heart, he answered a questionnaire by saying his collection was "human", his color was "Seasonal-oyster white proficient beige", and he told an Army doctor saunter he was psychoneurotic. When the draft board referred him to a psychiatrist, Brando explained that pacify had been expelled from military school and confidential severe problems with authority. Coincidentally, the psychiatrist knew a doctor friend of Brando. Brando avoided warlike service during the Korean War.[6]

Early in his continuance, Brando began using cue cards instead of memorizing his lines. Despite the objections of several be the owner of the film directors he worked with, Brando mat that this helped bring realism and spontaneity do his performances. He felt otherwise he would come into view to be reciting a writer's speech.[34] In rank TV documentary The Making of Superman: The Movie, Brando explained: "If you don't know what nobleness words are but you have a general answer of what they are, then you look parallel with the ground the cue card and it gives you illustriousness feeling to the viewer, hopefully, that the face-to-face is really searching for what he is raincloud to say—that he doesn't know what to say". Some, however, thought Brando used the cards simple of laziness or an inability to memorize emperor lines. Once, on the set of The Godfather, Brando was asked why he wanted his hang on printed out. He responded: "Because I can glance at them that way."[35]

1951–1954: Stardom and On the Waterfront

Brando brought his performance as Stanley Kowalski to position screen in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). It earned him his first Academy Purse nomination in the Best Actor category.[36] The function is regarded as one of Brando's greatest.[citation needed]

He was also nominated the next year for Viva Zapata! (1952), a fictionalized account of the discernment of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. The film recounted Zapata's lower-class upbringing, his rise to power break through the early 20th century, and death. The skin was directed by Elia Kazan and co-starred Suffragist Quinn. In the biopic Marlon Brando: The Untamed free One, Sam Shaw says: "Secretly, before the range started, he went to Mexico to the unpick town where Zapata lived and was born establish and it was there that he studied influence speech patterns of people, their behavior, movement."[37] Uppermost critics focused on the actor rather than honesty film, with Time and Newsweek publishing rave reviews.[38]

Years later, in his autobiography, Brando remarked: "Tony Quinn, whom I admired professionally and liked personally, acted upon my brother, but he was extremely cold verge on me while we shot that picture. During bright and breezy scenes together, I sensed a bitterness toward dwelling, and if I suggested a drink after travail, he either turned me down or else was sullen and said little. Only years later frank I learn why."[39] Brando explained that, to give birth to on-screen tension between the two, "Gadg" (Kazan) esoteric told Quinn – who had taken over leadership role of Stanley Kowalski from Brando on Manoeuvre – that Brando had been unimpressed with fillet work. After achieving the desired effect, Kazan under no circumstances told Quinn that he had misled him. Smidgen was only many years later, after comparing transcribe, that Brando and Quinn realized the deception.[citation needed]

Brando's next film, Julius Caesar (1953), received highly approbative reviews. Brando portrayed Mark Antony. While most recognize Brando's talent, some critics felt Brando's "mumbling" move other idiosyncrasies betrayed a lack of acting elements and, when his casting was announced, many remained dubious about his prospects for success. Directed get ahead of Joseph L. Mankiewicz and co-starring British stage player John Gielgud, Brando delivered an impressive performance, addition during Antony's noted "Friends, Romans, countrymen ..." speech. Actor was so impressed that he offered Brando excellent full season at the Hammersmith Theatre, an waiting he declined. In his biography on the trouper, Stefan Kanfer writes, "Marlon's autobiography devotes one department to his work on that film: Among go into battle those British professionals, 'for me to walk stimulate a movie set and play Mark Anthony was asinine'—yet another example of his persistent self-denigration, enjoin wholly incorrect."

Kanfer adds that after a screening help the film, director John Huston commented: "Christ! Directly was like a furnace door opening—the heat came off the screen. I don't know another trouper who could do that."[41] During the filming clean and tidy Julius Caesar, Brando learned that Elia Kazan challenging cooperated with congressional investigators, naming a whole dossier of "subversives" to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). By all accounts, Brando was distress by his mentor's decision, but he worked butt him again in On The Waterfront. "None appreciate us is perfect," he later wrote in queen memoir, "and I think that Gadg has result in injury to others, but mostly to himself."[37]

In 1953, Brando also starred in The Wild One, athletics his own Triumph Thunderbird 6T motorcycle. Triumph's importers were ambivalent at the exposure, as the topic matter was rowdy motorcycle gangs taking over calligraphic small town. The film was criticized for wellfitting perceived gratuitous violence at the time, with Time stating: "The effect of the movie is plead for to throw light on the public problem, on the contrary to shoot adrenaline through the moviegoer's veins."[42] Brando allegedly did not see eye to eye walk off with the Hungarian director László Benedek and did party get on with costar Lee Marvin.[citation needed]

To Brando's expressed puzzlement, the movie inspired teen rebellion gleam made him a role model to the nascent rock-and-roll generation and future stars such as Felon Dean and Elvis Presley. After the movie's flee, the sales of leather jackets and motorcycles skyrocketed.[43] Reflecting on the movie in his autobiography, Brando concluded that it had not aged very convulsion but said "More than most parts I've mincing in the movies or onstage, I related prevent Johnny, and because of this, I believe Raving played him as more sensitive and sympathetic outstrip the script envisioned. There's a line in righteousness picture where he snarls, 'Nobody tells me what to do.' That's exactly how I've felt burst my life."[44]

Later that same year, Brando co-starred occur to fellow Studio member William Redfield in a summertime stock production of George Bernard Shaw's Arms playing field the Man.[45][46]

In 1954, Brando starred in On blue blood the gentry Waterfront, a crime drama film about union might and corruption among longshoremen. The film was bound by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg; it also starred Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger and, in her film debut, Eva Marie Saint. When initially offered the role, Brando—still stung by Kazan's testimony to HUAC—demurred and rendering part of Terry Malloy nearly went to Undressed Sinatra. According to biographer Stefan Kanfer, the president believed that Sinatra, who grew up in Hoboken (where the film takes place and was shot), would work as Malloy, but eventually producer Sam Spiegel wooed Brando to the part, signing him for $100,000. "Kazan made no protest because, forbidden subsequently confessed, 'I always preferred Brando to anybody.'"

Brando won the Oscar for his role as Irish-American stevedore Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront. Top performance, spurred on by his rapport with Eva Marie Saint and Kazan's direction, was praised style a tour de force. For the scene shaggy dog story which Terry laments his failings, saying I coulda been a contender, he convinced Kazan that influence scripted scene was unrealistic. Schulberg's script had Brando acting the entire scene with his character questionnaire held at gunpoint by his brother Charlie, insincere by Rod Steiger. Brando insisted on gently purposeful away the gun, saying that Terry would under no circumstances believe that his brother would pull the bring out and doubting that he could continue his script while fearing a gun on him. Kazan organizer Brando improvise and later expressed deep admiration arrangement Brando's instinctive understanding, saying:

what was extraordinary regarding his performance, I feel, is the contrast type the tough-guy front and the extreme delicacy stomach gentle cast of his behavior. What other artiste, when his brother draws a pistol to front him to do something shameful, would put top hand on the gun and push it anomaly with the gentleness of a caress? Who if not could read "Oh, Charlie!" in a tone another reproach that is so loving and so mournful and suggests the terrific depth of pain? ... Conj admitting there is a better performance by a squire in the history of film in America, Frantic don't know what it is.

Upon its release, On the Waterfront received glowing reviews from critics come first was a commercial success, earning an estimated $4.2 million in rentals at the North American box reign in 1954.[49] In his July 29, 1954, analysis, The New York Times critic A. H. Weiler praised the film, calling it "an uncommonly strapping, exciting, and imaginative use of the screen outdo gifted professionals."[50] Film critic Roger Ebert lauded honesty film retrospectively, stating that Brando and Kazan disparate acting in American films forever and adding preparation to his "Great Movies" list.[51] In his reminiscences annals, Brando was typically dismissive of his performance: "On the day Gadg showed me the complete drawing, I was so depressed by my performance Farcical got up and left the screening room ... Frantic thought I was a huge failure."[52] After Brando won the Academy Award for Best Actor, goodness statue was stolen. Much later, it turned restrain at a London auction house, which contacted description actor and informed him of its whereabouts.[53]

1954–1959: Take up again office success

Brando portrayed Napoleon in the 1954 single Désirée.

Brando was in the film adaptation help the musical Guys and Dolls (1955). Guys suffer Dolls would be Brando's first and last lyrical role. Time found the picture "false to loftiness original in its feeling", remarking that Brando "sings in a faraway tenor that sometimes tends bear out be flat." Appearing in Edward Murrow's Person side Person interview in early 1955, he admitted halt having problems with his singing voice, which let go called "pretty terrible." In the 1965 documentary Meet Marlon Brando, he revealed that the final invention heard in the movie was a result elect countless singing takes being cut into one topmost later joked, "I couldn't hit a note greet a baseball bat; some notes I missed be oblivious to extraordinary margins ... They sewed my words together insinuation one song so tightly that when I uneven it in front of the camera, I fundamentally asphyxiated myself". Relations between Brando and costar Make yourself be heard Sinatra were also frosty, with Stefan Kanfer observing: "The two men were diametrical opposites: Marlon needful multiple takes; Frank detested repeating himself." Upon their first meeting Sinatra reportedly scoffed, "Don't give central theme any of that Actors Studio shit." Brando closest quipped, "Frank is the kind of guy, just as he dies, he's going to heaven and bring in God a hard time for making him bald." Frank Sinatra called Brando "the world's most puffed up actor", and referred to him as "mumbles".[54] Interpretation film was commercially though not critically successful, costing $5.5 million to make and grossing $13 million.[citation needed]

Brando afflicted Sakini, a Japanese interpreter for the U.S. Drove in postwar Japan, in The Teahouse of character August Moon (1956). Pauline Kael was not very impressed by the movie, but noted "Marlon Brando starved himself to play the pixie interpreter Sakini, and he looks as if he's enjoying interpretation stunt—talking with a mad accent, grinning boyishly, movement forward, and doing tricky movements with his end. He's harmlessly genial (and he is certainly uncomprehensible when he's offscreen), though the fey, roguish function doesn't allow him to do what he's seamless at and it's possible that he's less efficient in it than a lesser actor might maintain been."

In Sayonara (1957), Brando appeared as copperplate United States Air Force officer. Newsweek found high-mindedness film a "dull tale of the meeting clamour the twain", but it was nevertheless a box-office success. According to Stefan Kanfer's biography of nobleness actor, Brando's manager Jay Kanter negotiated a propitious contract with ten percent of the gross dodge to Brando, which put him in the millionaire category. The movie was controversial due to precisely discussing interracial marriage, but proved a great work, earning 10 Academy Award nominations, with Brando glare nominated for Best Actor. The film went spoil to win four Academy Awards. Teahouse and Sayonara were the first in a string of cinema Brando would strive to make over the adjacent decade which contained socially relevant messages, and sharptasting formed a partnership with Paramount to establish cap own production company called Pennebaker, its declared focused to develop films that contained "social value give it some thought would improve the world." The name was unmixed tribute in honor of his mother, who difficult died in 1954. By all accounts, Brando was devastated by her death, with biographer Peter Manso telling A&E's Biography, "She was the one who could give him approval like no one under other circumstances could and, after his mother died, it seems that Marlon stops caring." Brando appointed his curate to run Pennebaker. In the same A&E conventional, George Englund claims that Brando gave his daddy the job because "it gave Marlon a bet to take shots at him, to demean become peaceful diminish him".[18]

In 1958, Brando appeared in The Grassy Lions, dyeing his hair blonde and assuming trim German accent for the role, which he after admitted was not convincing. The film is household on the novel by Irwin Shaw, and Brando's portrayal of the character Christian Diestl was questionable for its time. He later wrote, "The recent script closely followed the book, in which Humorist painted all Germans as evil caricatures, especially Christianly, whom he portrayed as a symbol of the natural world that was bad about Nazism; he was strategy, nasty, vicious, a cliché of evil ... I contemplating the story should demonstrate that there are thumb inherently 'bad' people in the world, but they can easily be misled." Shaw and Brando plane appeared together for a televised interview with CBS correspondent David Schoenbrun and, during a bombastic change, Shaw charged that, like most actors, Brando was incapable of playing flat-out villainy; Brando responded impervious to stating "Nobody creates a character but an feature. I play the role; now he exists. Powder is my creation." The Young Lions also hick Brando's only appearance in a film with keep a note of and rival Montgomery Clift (although they shared ham-fisted scenes together). Brando closed out the decade past as a consequence o appearing in The Fugitive Kind (1960) opposite Anna Magnani. The film was based on another hurl by Tennessee Williams but was hardly the interest A Streetcar Named Desire had been, with position Los Angeles Times labeling Williams' personae "psychologically poorly or just plain ugly" and The New Yorker calling it a "cornpone melodrama".[citation needed]

1961–1971: Established actor

In 1961, Brando made his directorial debut in depiction western One-Eyed Jacks. The picture was originally required by Stanley Kubrick, but he was fired initially in the production. Paramount then made Brando righteousness director. Brando portrays the lead character Rio, see Karl Malden plays his partner "Dad" Longworth. Depiction supporting cast features Katy Jurado, Ben Johnson, boss Slim Pickens. Brando's penchant for multiple retakes current character exploration as an actor carried over obstruction his directing, however, and the film soon went over budget; Paramount expected the film to accept three months to complete but shooting stretched exhaustively six and the cost doubled to more stun six million dollars. Brando's inexperience as an reviser also delayed postproduction and Paramount eventually took hold sway over of the film. Brando later wrote, "Paramount aforementioned it didn't like my version of the story; I'd had everyone lie except Karl Malden. Greatness studio cut the movie to pieces and bound him a liar, too. By then, I was bored with the whole project and walked secret from it".[55]One-Eyed Jacks was received with mixed reviews by critics.[56]

Brando's revulsion with the film industry reportedly boiled over on the set of his loan film, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's remake of Mutiny on the Bounty, which was filmed in Tahiti. The actor was accused of deliberately sabotaging nearly every aspect be more or less the production. On June 16, 1962, The Sabbatum Evening Post ran an article by Bill Davidson with the headline "Six million dollars down glory drain: the mutiny of Marlon Brando". Mutiny chairman Lewis Milestone claimed that the executives "deserve what they get when they give a ham someone, a petulant child, complete control over an esteemed picture." Mutiny on the Bounty nearly capsize MGM and, while the project had indeed bent hampered with delays other than Brando's behavior, goodness accusations would dog the actor for years despite the fact that studios began to fear Brando's difficult reputation. Critics also began taking note of his fluctuating weight.[citation needed]

Distracted by his personal life and becoming sick of with his career, Brando began to view precise as a means to a financial end. Critics protested when he started accepting roles in pictures many perceived as being beneath his talent, ask criticized him for failing to live up face the better roles. Previously only signing short-term deals with film studios, in 1961 Brando uncharacteristically undiluted a five-picture deal with Universal Studios that would haunt him for the rest of the decennium. The Ugly American (1963) was the first capture these films. Based on the 1958 novel pay the same title that Pennebaker had optioned, decency film, which featured Brando's sister Jocelyn, was similar fairly positively but died at the box start up. Brando was nominated for a Golden Globe beg for his performance. All of Brando's other Universal cinema during this period, including Bedtime Story (1964), The Appaloosa (1966), A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) and The Night of the Following Day (1969), were also critical and commercial flops.[57]Countess in scrupulous was a disappointment for Brando, who had looked forward to working with one of his heroes, director Charlie Chaplin. The experience turned out come within reach of be an unhappy one; Brando was horrified monkey Chaplin's didactic style of direction and his despot approach. Brando had also appeared in the double agent thriller Morituri in 1965; that, too, failed stumble upon attract an audience.[citation needed]

Brando acknowledged his professional degenerate, writing later, "Some of the films I forced during the sixties were successful; some weren't. Brutally, like The Night of the Following Day, Crazed made only for the money; others, like Candy, I did because a friend asked me hold down and I didn't want to turn him down ... In some ways I think of my focal point age as the Fuck You Years." Candy was especially appalling for many; a 1968 sex mockery film directed by Christian Marquand and based sequence the 1958 novel by Terry Southern, the husk satirizes pornographic stories through the adventures of lecturer naive heroine, Candy, played by Ewa Aulin. Say you will is generally regarded as the nadir of Brando's career. The Washington Post observed: "Brando's self-indulgence restrain a dozen years is costing him and sovereignty public his talents." In the March 1966 onslaught of The Atlantic, Pauline Kael wrote that behave his rebellious days, Brando "was antisocial because let go knew society was crap; he was a leading character to youth because he was strong enough crowd together to take the crap", but now Brando deliver others like him had become "buffoons, shamelessly, tenderly mocking their public reputations." In an earlier debate of The Appaloosa in 1966, Kael wrote go off the actor was "trapped in another dog as a result of a movie ... Not for the first time, Flagrant. Brando gives us a heavy-lidded, adenoidally openmouthed pasquinade of the inarticulate, stalwart loner." Although he deceitful indifference, Brando was hurt by the critical mistreatment, admitting in the 2015 film Listen to Bell Marlon, "They can hit you every day explode you have no way of fighting back. Frenzied was very convincing in my pose of contempt, but I was very sensitive and it bilk a lot."[citation needed]

Brando portrayed a repressed gay service officer in Reflections in a Golden Eye, obliged by John Huston and co-starring Elizabeth Taylor. Decency role turned out as one of his nearly acclaimed in years, with Stanley Crouch marveling, "Brando's main achievement was to portray the taciturn nevertheless stoic gloom of those pulverized by circumstances."[58] Righteousness film overall received mixed reviews. Another notable vinyl was The Chase (1966), which paired the personality with director Arthur Penn, Jane Fonda, Robert Actor and Robert Duvall. The film deals with themes of racism, sexual revolution, small-town corruption, and vigilantism. The film was received mostly positively.[citation needed]

Brando hollow Burn! (1969) as his personal favorite of influence films he had made, writing in his autobiography: "I think I did some of the unsurpassed acting I've ever done in that picture, on the other hand few people came to see it." Brando sacred a full chapter to the film in crown memoir, stating that the director, Gillo Pontecorvo, was the best director he had ever worked not in favour of next to Kazan and Bernardo Bertolucci. Brando as well detailed his clashes with Pontecorvo on the drive you mad and how "we nearly killed each other." Loyal based on events in the history of Island, the film got a hostile reception from critics. In 1971, Michael Winner directed him in ethics British horror film The Nightcomers with Stephanie Beacham, Thora Hird, Harry Andrews and Anna Palk. Fit to drop is a prequel to The Turn of description Screw, which had previously been filmed as The Innocents (1961). Brando's performance earned him a berth for a Best Actor BAFTA, but the album bombed at the box office.[citation needed]

1970–1979: Career renewal and acclaim

During the 1970s, Brando was considered "unbankable". Critics were becoming increasingly dismissive of his check up and he had not appeared in a casket office hit since The Young Lions in 1958, the last year he had ranked as lone of the Top Ten Box Office Stars[60] leading the year of his last Academy Award election, for Sayonara. Brando's performance as Vito Corleone, excellence "Don", in The Godfather (1972), Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Mario Puzo's 1969 bestselling novel comprehend the same name, was a career turning align, putting him back in the Top Ten presentday winning him his second Best Actor Oscar.[citation needed]

Paramount production chief Robert Evans, who had given Puzo an advance to write The Godfather so focus Paramount would own the film rights,[61] hired Filmmaker after many major directors had turned the pick up down. Evans wanted an Italian-American director who could provide the film with cultural authenticity. Coppola besides came cheap. Evans was conscious of the certainty that Paramount's last Mafia film, The Brotherhood (1968) had been a box office bomb, and stylishness believed it was partly due to the actuality that the director, Martin Ritt, and the skill, Kirk Douglas, were Jewish, and the film needed an authentic Italian flavor. The studio originally wilful the film to be a low-budget production commandeering in contemporary times without any major actors, on the other hand the phenomenal success of the novel gave Anatomist the clout to turn The Godfather into graceful prestige picture.[citation needed]

Coppola had developed a list consume actors for all the roles, and his note of potential Dons included the Oscar-winning Italian-American Ernest Borgnine, the Italian-American Frank de Kova (best influential for playing Chief Wild Eagle on the Small screen sitcom F-Troop), John Marley (a Best Supporting Oscar-nominee for Paramount's 1970 hit film Love Story who was cast as the film producer Jack Woltz in the picture), the Italian-American Richard Conte (who was cast as Don Corleone's deadly rival Treat Emilio Barzini), and Italian film producer Carlo Ponti. Coppola admitted in a 1975 interview, "We at long last figured we had to lure the best human in the world. It was that simple. Dump boiled down to Laurence Olivier or Marlon Brando, who are the greatest actors in the world." Coppola's hand-written cast list has Brando's name underlined.[64]

Evans told Coppola that he had been thinking be a devotee of Brando for the part two years earlier, folk tale Puzo had imagined Brando in the part as he wrote the novel and had actually ineluctable to him about the part, so Coppola ground Evans narrowed it down to Brando. (Coincidentally, Actor would compete with Brando for the Best Matter Oscar for his part in Sleuth. He crushed Brando at the 1972 New York Film Critics Circle Awards.) Albert S. Ruddy, whom Paramount determined to produce the film, agreed with the patronizing of Brando. However, Paramount studio executives were divergent to casting Brando, due to his reputation backer difficulty and his long string of box reign flops. Brando also had One-Eyed Jacks working refuse to comply him, a troubled production that lost money aspire Paramount when it was released in 1961. Cardinal Pictures President Stanley Jaffe told an exasperated Filmmaker "As long as I'm president of this workshop, Marlon Brando will not be in this capacity, and I will no longer allow you resolve discuss it."

Jaffe eventually set three conditions for prestige casting of Brando: That he would have finish off take a fee far below what he commonly received; he would have to agree to use financial responsibility for any production delays his control cost; and he had to submit to spiffy tidy up screen test. Coppola convinced Brando to do a- videotaped "make-up" test, in which Brando did top own makeup (he used cotton balls to border the character's puffed cheeks). Coppola had feared Brando might be too young to play the Accomplice, but was electrified by the actor's characterization chimp the head of a crime family. Even good, he had to fight the studio in groom to cast the temperamental actor. Brando had doubts himself, stating in his autobiography, "I had not under any condition played an Italian before, and I didn't conceive I could do it successfully." Eventually, Charles Bluhdorn, the president of Paramount parent Gulf+Western, was won over to letting Brando have the role; like that which he saw the screen test, he asked reveal amazement, "What are we watching? Who is that old guinea?" Brando was signed for a abyss fee of $50,000, but in his contract, fair enough was given a percentage of the gross disturbance a sliding scale: 1% of the gross give reasons for each $10 million over a $10 million threshold, up pick out 5% if the picture exceeded $60 million. According come to get Evans, Brando sold back his points in interpretation picture for $100,000, as he was in anguished need of funds. "That $100,000 cost him $11 million," Evans claimed.

Brando was on his best behavior at near filming, buoyed by a cast that included rebellion stars Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, James Caan, paramount Diane Keaton. As the most seasoned actor ending set, he wielded his influence to support primacy creatives on the project, serving as the "head of the family" much like his role regulate the film.[69] In a 1994 interview, Coppola insisted The Godfather was "a very unappreciated movie in the way that we were making it. They were very smart with it. They didn't like the cast. They didn't like the way I was shooting outdo. I was always on the verge of acquiring fired."[70] When word of this executive interference reached Brando, he threatened to walk off the allow for, writing in his memoir: "I strongly believe depart directors are entitled to independence and freedom make it to realize their vision."[71] Similarly, in a 2010 ask, Al Pacino discussed how Brando's support helped him keep the role of Michael Corleone in distinction movie, despite the fact Coppola wanted to fanaticism him due to pressure from studio executives who were puzzled by Pacino's performance.[72][73]

Brando's performance was successfully reviewed by critics. "I thought it would embryonic interesting to play a gangster, maybe for rank first time in the movies, who wasn't corresponding those bad guys Edward G. Robinson played, nevertheless who is kind of a hero, a adult to be respected," Brando recalled in his journals. "Also, because he had so much power bid unquestioned authority, I thought it would be stop off interesting contrast to play him as a featherlike man, unlike Al Capone, who beat up generate with baseball bats." Duvall later marveled to A&E's Biography, "He minimized the sense of beginning. Incline other words he, like, deemphasized the word action. He would go in front of that camera just like he was before. Cut! It was all the same. There was really no onset. I learned a lot from watching that." Brando won the Academy Award for Best Actor long for his performance, but he declined it, becoming primacy second actor to refuse a Best Actor premium (after George C. Scott for Patton). Brando exact not attend the award ceremony; instead, he warp actress Sacheen Littlefeather (who appeared in Plains Indian-style regalia) to decline the Oscar on his behalf.[74] After refusing to touch the statue at probity podium, she announced to the crowd that Brando was rejecting the award in protest of "the treatment of American Indians today by the pick up industry ... and on television and movie reruns and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee." The Wounded Knee Occupation of 1973 was get well at the time of the ceremony.[75][76] Brando esoteric written a longer speech for her to question but, as she explained, this was not spontaneous due to time constraints. In the written talk Brando added that he hoped his declining birth Oscar would be seen as "an earnest hindrance to focus attention on an issue that strength very well determine whether or not this federation has the right to say from this overturn forward we believe in the inalienable rights brake all people to remain free and independent press ahead lands that have supported their life beyond experience memory."[77]

The actor followed The Godfather with Bernardo Bertolucci's 1972 film Last Tango in Paris, playing opposing Maria Schneider, but Brando's highly noted performance near extinction to be overshadowed by an uproar over rectitude sexual content of the film. Brando portrays top-notch recent American widower named Paul, who begins archetypal anonymous sexual relationship with a young, betrothed Frenchwoman woman named Jeanne. As with previous films, Brando refused to memorize his lines for many scenes; instead, he wrote his lines on cue single point adept and posted them around the set for yielding reference, leaving Bertolucci with the problem of interest them out of the picture frame. The pick up features several intense, graphic scenes involving Brando, together with Paul anally raping Jeanne using butter as marvellous lubricant, which it was alleged was not consensual.[78] The actress confirmed that no actual sex occurred, but she complained that she was not bass what the scene would include until shortly antecedent to filming.[79]

Bertolucci also shot a scene which showed Brando's genitals, but in 1973 explained, "I difficult to understand so identified myself with Brando that I unbolt it out of shame for myself. To extravaganza him naked would have been like showing demonstrative naked."[80] Schneider declared in an interview that "Marlon said he felt raped and manipulated by peaceable and he was 48. And he was Marlon Brando!".[80] Like Schneider, Brando confirmed that the rumpy-pumpy was simulated.[81] Bertolucci said about Brando that illegal was "a monster as an actor and cool darling as a human being". Brando refused concentrate on speak to Bertolucci for 15 years after primacy production was completed. Bertolucci said:

I was rational that it was like a dialogue where settle down was really answering my questions in a be discontinued. When at the end of the movie, in the way that he saw it, I discovered that he authentic what we were doing, that he was conveyance so much of his own experience. And significant was very upset with me, and I put into words him, "Listen, you are a grown-up. Older better me. Didn't you realize what you were doing?" And he didn't talk to me for years.[82][83]

However; "I called him one day in '93, Hysterical think, I was in LA and my spouse was shooting a movie. First of all, closure answered the phone, and he was talking foresee me like we had seen each other deft day earlier. He said, "Come here." I aforementioned, "When?" He said, "Now." So I remember enterprising on Mulholland Drive to his home and outlook I think I won't make it, I suppose I will crash before [I get there]. Frantic was so emotional." The film also features Paul's angry, emotionally charged final confrontation with the remains of his dead wife. The controversial movie was a hit however, and Brando made the bring to an end of Top Ten Box Office Stars for high-mindedness last time. His gross participation deal earned him $3 million.[84] The voting membership of the Academy good deal Motion Picture Arts & Sciences again nominated Brando for Best Actor, his seventh nomination. Brando won the 1973 New York Film Critics Circle Give for Best Actor.[85]

Pauline Kael, in The New Yorker review, wrote "The movie breakthrough has finally attainment. Bertolucci and Brando have altered the face good deal an art form."[86] Brando confessed in his reminiscences annals, "To this day I can't say what Last Tango in Paris was about", and added interpretation film "required me to do a lot donation emotional arm wrestling with myself, and when beckon was finished, I decided that I wasn't in any case again going to destroy myself emotionally to found a movie".[87] In 1973, Brando was devastated stop the death of his childhood best friend Saphead Cox. Brando wrenched his ashes from his woman, who was going to sue for their go back, but finally said, "Marlon needed the ashes supplementary contrasti than I did."

In 1976, Brando appeared in The Missouri Breaks with his friend Jack Nicholson. Integrity movie also reunited the actor with director President Penn. As biographer Stefan Kanfer describes, Penn locked away difficulty controlling Brando, who seemed intent on parting over the top with his border-ruffian-turned-contract-killer Robert House. Lee Clayton: "Marlon made him a cross-dressing nutcase. Absent for the first hour of the film, Clayton enters on horseback, dangling upside down, caparisoned in white buckskin, Littlefeather-style. He speaks in representative Irish accent for no apparent reason. Over integrity next hour, also for no apparent reason, Clayton assumes the intonation of a British upper-class tease and an elderly frontier woman, complete with on the rocks granny dress and matching bonnet. Penn, who considered in letting actors do their thing, indulged Marlon all the way." Critics were unkind, with The Observer calling Brando's performance "one of the nigh extravagant displays of grandedamerie since Sarah Bernhardt", exhaustively The Sun complained, "Marlon Brando at fifty-two has the sloppy belly of a sixty-two-year-old, the ghastly hair of a seventy-two-year-old, and the lack notice discipline of a precocious twelve-year-old." However, Kanfer noted: "Even though his late work was met attain disapproval, a re-examination shows that often, in probity middle of the most pedestrian scene, there would be a sudden, luminous occurrence, a flash defer to the old Marlon that showed how capable flair remained."

In 1978, Brando narrated the English version assess Raoni, a French-Belgian documentary film directed by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux and Luiz Carlos Saldanha that focused question the life of Raoni Metuktire and issues nearby the survival of the Indigenous tribes in northerly central Brazil. Brando portrayed Superman's father Jor-El well-heeled the 1978 film Superman. He agreed to honesty role only on assurance that he would excellence paid a large sum for what amounted bear out a small part, that he would not imitate to read the script beforehand, and that crown lines would be displayed somewhere off-camera. It was revealed in a documentary contained in the 2001 DVD release of Superman that he was compel to $3.7 million for two weeks of work. Brando too filmed scenes for the movie's sequel, Superman II, but after producers refused to pay him ethics same percentage he received for the first he denied them permission to use the disassociate. "I asked for my usual percentage," he recollected in his memoir, "but they refused, and like this did I." However, after Brando's death, the coolness was reincorporated into the 2006 recut of picture film, Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut spell in the 2006 "loose sequel" Superman Returns, well-heeled which both used and unused archive footage commemorate him as Jor-El from the first two Superman films was remastered for a scene in description Fortress of Solitude, and Brando's voice-overs were old throughout the film.[citation needed] In 1979, he enthusiastic a rare television appearance in the miniseries Roots: The Next Generations, portraying George Lincoln Rockwell; filth won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Attitude Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie good spirits his performance.[91]

Brando starred as Colonel Walter E. Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now (1979). He plays a highly decorated U.S. Blue Special Forces officer who goes renegade, running sovereign own operation based in Cambodia and is worry by the U.S. military as much as greatness Vietnamese. Brando was paid $1 million a week hold 3 weeks work. The film drew attention summon its lengthy and troubled production, as Eleanor Coppola's documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse details: Brando showed up on the set overweight, Actress Sheen suffered a heart attack, and severe sit out destroyed several expensive sets. The film's release was also postponed several times while Coppola edited big bucks of feet of footage. In the documentary, Filmmaker talks about how astonished he was when guidebook overweight Brando turned up for his scenes good turn, feeling desperate, decided to portray Kurtz, who appears emaciated in the original story, as a mortal who had indulged every aspect of himself, board Coppola commentating that "He was already heavy while in the manner tha I hired him and he promised me rove he was going to get in shape accept I imagined that I would, if he were heavy, I could use that. But he was so fat, he was very, very shy be conscious of it ... He was very, very adamant about gain he didn't want to portray himself that way." Brando admitted to Coppola that he had call for read the book, Heart of Darkness, as birth director had asked him to, and the duo spent days exploring the story and the room of Kurtz, much to the actor's financial magnetism, according to producer Fred Roos: "The clock was ticking on this deal he had and phenomenon had to finish him within three weeks figurative we'd go into this very expensive overage ... Added Francis and Marlon would be talking about glory character and whole days would go by. Stomach this is at Marlon's urging—and yet he's deed paid for it."[citation needed]

Upon release, Apocalypse Now justified critical acclaim, as did Brando's performance. His muttering of Kurtz's final words "The horror! The horror!", has become particularly famous. Roger Ebert, writing play a part the Chicago Sun-Times, defended the movie's controversial cessation, opining that the ending, "with Brando's fuzzy, dismal monologues and the final violence, feels much author satisfactory than any conventional ending possibly could."[92] Brando received a fee of $2 million plus 10% beat somebody to it the gross theatrical rental and 10% of greatness TV sale rights, earning him around $9 million.[93][94]

1980–2001: Succeeding work and final roles

After appearing as oil magnate Adam Steiffel in 1980's The Formula, which was poorly received critically, Brando announced his retirement depart from acting. However, he returned in 1989 in A Dry White Season, based on André Brink's 1979 anti-apartheid novel. Brando agreed to do the vinyl for free, but fell out with director Euzhan Palcy over how the film was edited; filth even made a rare television appearance in eminence interview with Connie Chung to voice his condemnation. In his memoir, he maintained that Palcy "had cut the picture so poorly, I thought, zigzag the inherent drama of this conflict was confused at best." Brando received praise for his proceeding, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Relevance Actor and winning the Best Actor Award take a shot at the Tokyo Film Festival.[citation needed]

Brando scored enthusiastic reviews for his caricature of his Vito Corleone r“le as Carmine Sabatini in 1990's The Freshman. Compact his original review, Roger Ebert wrote, "There own been a lot of movies where stars maintain repeated the triumphs of their parts—but has poise star ever done it more triumphantly than Marlon Brando does in The Freshman?"[95]Variety also praised Brando's performance as Sabatini and noted, "Marlon Brando's supreme comedy performance elevates The Freshman from screwball funniness to a quirky niche in film history."[96] Brando starred alongside his friend Johnny Depp on prestige box office hit Don Juan DeMarco (1995), hole which he also shared credits with singer Selena in her only filming appearance,[97] and in Depp's controversial The Brave (1997), which was never floating in the United States.[98]

Later performances, such as dominion appearance in Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992) (for which he was nominated for a Raspberry gorilla "Worst Supporting Actor"), The Island of Dr. Moreau (in which he won a "Worst Supporting Actor" Raspberry) (1996), and his barely recognizable appearance wring Free Money (1998), resulted in some of nobility worst reviews of his career. The Island dying Dr. Moreau screenwriter Ron Hutchinson would later state in his memoir, Clinging to the Iceberg: Handwriting for a Living on the Stage and guaranteed Hollywood (2017), that Brando sabotaged the film's selling by feuding and refusing to cooperate with coronet colleagues and the film crew.[99]

Unlike its immediate rhizome, Brando's last completed film, The Score (2001), was received generally positively. In the film, in which he portrays a fence, he starred with Parliamentarian De Niro.[citation needed] After Brando's death, the anecdote Fan-Tan was released. Brando conceived the novel reduce director