Gawd ... I love Mark Steyn he never fails to deliver! Always thought he was an overpaid hack ... but then it’s hard to take any of these people seriously for playing make-believe and getting paid millions!
One has to read the whole article to get the full hilariously cruel but completely honest writing of Steyn on Brando. Here’s one gem:
” . . . if it’s authenticity you’re after, Brando had a lot more of it half a century later as the fattest star in motion picture history - a huge, wobbling, blubber-ass pushing 400 pounds and wheezing his way through sight-read dialogue written on his shirt. And, with Brando’s shirt size, that’s a lot of dialogue.”
Steyn ping.
I love Steyn as well - and have a book of his theater reviews. But this one is way off base. He concentrates on Brando’s offstage behavior which any good critic knows to avoid. Strange because Steyn is a good critic.
The fact that Brando got fat during the 70s should have no bearing on his prior work. He gave many fine film performances prior to the 1980s and Steyn knows that.
While he talks about how people think that Brando designed his wardrobe for “Streetcar,” he neglects to say that the half-hour ovation he received for that show was very odd - because he was a secondary character - not the lead. Jessica Tandy could not outshine Brando in the lead role and so he stole it from her. As Brando says in his autobiography, it was Vivien Leigh who balanced out the play and put him in his rightful place during the making of the film. A generous comment from a man not known for a tiny ego.
I also take exception to Mark’s comment that Brando had an abortionist on retainer without any sourcing. That’s a terrible thing to write about a man without a source.
Brando actually was not into Tahitian chicks as much as he was into Latinas. Rita Moreno was probably the one constant in his life. He gave up on Indians in the 1990s when he found a dirty diaper stuck down in one of the cushions of his couch in his house on Mulholland Drive. He threw all the Indians out and that was the end of THAT.
The simple problem with Brando? He was dumb. Truman Capote wrote an entire essay on this back in the late 50s and Steyn must be aware of it. But, he was a brilliant film actor and in his time, one of the great “beauties” of the cinema. RIP, Bud!
I never understood what people saw in Brando.
He was acceptable as the Godfather but it wasn’t exactly a role many others couldn’t have played as well or better.
I get the vague impression that Steyn is not a Brando fan.