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Marlon Brando
"I don't want to spread the peanut butter of my personality
on the moldy bread of the commercial press."
WARNING! This story is for adults only. Meaning, if you can’t deal with
the dead people, overweight people, naked people or bisexual people, do not click on a single image.
Why I totally went nuts for him? Aside from the photograph above, the guy
was very funny. Here are some quotes taken from Conversations with
Brando, by Lawrence Groble:
“The most repulsive thing you could ever imagine is the inside of a camel’s mouth. It’s so awful.
I mean, I’m not squeamish about anything. I could make an ocarina out of a petrified turd with no problem, but that… it just makes me sick. I don’t like to look at somebody’s sticky saliva. These people who laugh, and there’s a string of saliva from their upper tooth to the bottom lip and it bends every time they go
Ha Ha, it pulsates. Jesus, with one girl you could take her saliva and walk across the street with it and lay down on the sidewalk and still be connected. The viscosity of some people’s saliva is remarkable.”
When I knew we were kindred spirits:
“Bob Hope will go to the opening of a phone booth in a gas station in Anaheim, providing they have a camera there and three people. He’ll go to the opening of a market to receive
an award. He’d get an award from Thom McCan for wearing their shoes. It’s pathetic. It’s a bottomless pit. A barrel that has no floor. He must be a man who has an ever-crumbling estimation of himself. He’s constantly filling himself up. He’s like a junkie – an applause
junkie. What happens to those people when they can’t get up and do their shtick, God only knows. Bob Hope, Christ, instead of growing old gracefully or doing something with his money, be helpful, all he does is he has an anniversary with the President looking on. It’s sad.
He gets on an airplane every two minutes always going someplace. It didn’t bother him at all to work the Vietnam War. Oh, he took that in his stride. He did his World War One and Korean War act. “Our boys” and all that. He’s a pathetic guy."
On the other hand, he was so smart, he bored easily. Did anyone else see that interview with Larry King a few years ago? His issues, important ones like racism, were very dear to his heart. He fought for these things when it wasn't fashionable to do so. But the Larry King interview, eating the cookies, going on about the oil used to make those cookies could save the world... tedious. Pure and simple. Sometimes he used his celebrity wisely, but unfortunately the only way people could talk to him, was let him go on and on about his plights and passions, no matter how dull.
Why my fondness for him is set in stone:
Cybill Shepherd said in her book: "It would be an understatement to say that I failed to impress Marlon Brando. On a warm summer night Peter
[Bogdanovich] and I drove the great acting coach Stella Adler to a party in her honor at Brando's home atop Mulholland Drive. There were Japanese lanterns strung through the trees, and I was seated on a garden bench next to Brando, but for once
(I'll bet) I was chattering away rather than deferring to the conversation of others. Brando was holding a beer bottle when he looked at me with unsubtle disgust.
"'If this girl doesn't shut up,' he said to no one in particular, 'I'm going to hit her in the face with this bottle.' Then he turned to me and said, 'Would you get up and go over there so I can watch you walk away?'
Fatherhood wise, I'm pretty sure Marlon loved his children dearly. This is the paragraph where you should click cautiously - especially if you are at work. But being the son of Marlon Brando could not have been easy, and the kids were screwed up. Most famously, Christian Brando killed his sister Cheyenne's boyfriend Dag Drollet in Marlon's Mulholland Drive home in 1990. Cheyenne was not the most stable of creatures, and she probably manipulated her brother to do it. She tried killing herself a few times after that, and finally succeeded in 1995. She is now buried with her dead boyfriend. Christian had a relationship with that pig Bonnie Lee Bakley that Robert Blake probably murdered. To rehash, she got preggers, named her kid Christian coz she thought it was Brando's kid, but DNA proved to be Blake's. Oinker. Oh yeah, and Marlon liked men too.
November 06: Clarification on the BJ picture. Someone on the tour recently told me that it was actually a carrot being fed to a horse in the film Missouri Breaks. I rented the film and waited patiently for that scene, and found it. so I changed it to black and white, and flipped it, and got this.
Now, you compare.
Marlon lived in his home on Mulholland for
decades. The single gate in
front of this estate, also let in neighbors Jack Nicholson and Shaquille O'Neal,
if they punched in the right
code. Since Shaq has been let go by the Lakers, his house is on the market
for 7.5 Mil. I like Shaq. He's stopped my tour bus three different
times, and made sure everyone saw him, gave a goofy grin and waved, and took
off. That's cool. It sucks that he and Kobe didn't get along.
Especially when Kobe is making 137 million over a few years, and to make sure he
stayed, they got rid of Shaq. I hate Kobe. He's talented, but an
asshole. There. I said it. Back to Brando. Wanna see his
mailbox?
On June 30th, 2004, at 11:10pm, Marlon was taken to the UCLA
Medical Center, because he was having chest pains. He'd been suffering
from several medical conditions in recent years, including obesity.
In fact, the tabloids were always spitting out some "tragic last days"
story. While they were testing and X-raying Marlon, he took a turn for the
worse. He was admitted to Intensive Care on July 1, and died a few hours
later, right around 6:30pm. He was 80 years old. Cause of death:
pulmonary fibrosis, a condition that involves scarring of the lungs.
This death certificate comes courtesy of Kevin Hassell. Thanks KEV!
Brando's older sister, Jocelyn, said that Marlon's death "was a big surprise to everyone. He'd been on oxygen for about a year. He went in to get a couple of things looked at, and he just took off." She also added that "There will be no service of any kind."
Hollywood went in to mourning. Of course, per contractual agreement, there were flowers placed on Marlon's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It became a shrine. About 3'oclock am, some friends of mine stopped by to pay our respects. We got back in the taxi, and I'll be darned if this silly thing didn't jump in after us.
There was some sort of memorial service. I know that coz I know Shelley Winters went. She came to the Silver Spoon afterward. Rumor is that Marlon was cremated, possibly at Hollywood Forever, and his ashes are somewhere in LA. He was originally going to have them scattered on that island he owned in Tahiti, but he supposedly never returned there after his daughter Cheyenne killed herself there.
Jack Nicholson was reportedly devastated. No news on how Elizabeth Taylor
is coping.
Trivia: One of the Hillside Strangler victims was found in back of his home.
More: He was a good friend of Wally Cox, and rumor is, Marlon had Wally’s cremains on his
mantelpiece.
Well, this is now fact. Findadeath.com friend Greg sent in a link stating that the ashes of legendary actor Marlon Brando were spread in Tahiti and Death Valley, according to a newspaper report. A memorial service for Brando, who died of lung failure at age 80 on July 1, was held at the home of Hollywood producer Mike Medavoy and was attended by Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson and Sean Penn. Some of Brando's ashes were scattered in Death Valley, a place that the actor cherished, his son Miko Brando told the newspaper. The ashes of Brando's late friend Wally Cox, who died in 1973, were also poured onto the desert landscape as part of the same ceremony; how Cox's ashes were in the possession of Brando's family was unknown.
This fascinating article was sent in by findadeath.com friend Brad, which explains the Brando/Cox friendship and ashes issue.
Findadeath friend Chris in Boston
sends us this trivia: Just a little info I heard about Marlon Brando.
On a Boston morning radio show a couple of weeks ago, a local
entertainment reporter who digs up the really dirty dirt (pun intended, you'll
understand in a second) it
turns out Mr. Brando got clipped in 1984, I mean circumcised Not by his
choice). Apparently he kept getting a visit from Mr. Stinky Gunky and had
to finally resort to the snipping.
Brando's will is available for purchase,
and is indeed a fascinating document - mentioning his kids, dead and alive...
More: When putting this together, and the quote about a camel's mouth came about, it reminded me of one of my favorite websites. Know the toe.
www.findadeath.com