Brando: The Biography (ISBN 0786881283)

A Mixed Bag:
Manso's biography of Marlon Brando is a mixed bag. It is distinguished and praiseworthy for its incredible detail. Manso conducted an enormous number of interviews for this work, and he is able to provide valuable detail on Brando's acting career, personal life, politics, and relationships--detail that is not available elsewhere. This is the strongest attribute of the work. A problem, though, is that it is difficult to know how much of the detail to actually believe. Manso is manifestly hostile toward his subject, giving every other person in his life the benefit of the doubt instead of Brando. Manso also has a rather distasteful eye for the salacious--the more tabloid-like the better. Thus the reader does not know quite what to believe. A good example is Manso's treatment of Brando's alleged bisexuality. He is able to give names, dates, places, addresses, favorite colors, shoe sizes, and any other detail when discussing any of Brando's hundreds of heterosexual partners, but is not able to supply a single name when speaking about allegations and rumors of homosexual conduct. In a way, Manso's prejudiced stance toward his subject, and his own propensity to wallow in the gutter, marred what would otherwise have been a more valuable work.

1,100 Page Smear of a Titan:
I finally managed to read Manso's long, laborious biography of Marlon Brando. Overall, it's a disappointing piece of work. It seems like Manso made up his mind on Brando very quickly during his exhaustive 7 year stretch to research and write this book. And it isn't pretty. Reading this massive tome, the reader comes away feeling that Brando was little more than a very talented yet egocentric, sexist, misguided, confused, cruel jerk. Brando, like many cult personalities, sharply divides people. Usually, you either love him or hate him. Legions of actors like Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Johnny Depp, etc, worship Brando and put him on an Olympian pedestal with no equal. Obviously, they love the man. Yet other people like certain movie critics, Hollywood producers, some former friends and acquaintances, etc., sharply loathe Brando and found him troublesome, vindictive, mean and incredibly ungrateful for his talent and for the money he was paid for his film work. Manso falls in this latter category. It's hard to judge a guy like Brando. At the tender age of 23, Brando starred in the stage version of A Streetcar Named Desire and completely revolutionized acting. At age 30 he won an Oscar for Best Actor for On the Waterfront and was promptly proclaimed as the greatest, most electrifying actor in films. I think thereafter he quickly became bored and disdainful of films and Hollywood in general. He had the world at his feet...nothing much else to do or prove. He then fueled his main interests: food, sex, social activism and intellectual interests. To Brando, acting was merely the best way to pursue these other things. I agree with another reviewer, for a more insightful treatment of Brando, read George Englund's biography, The Way It's Never Been Done Before : My Friendship with Marlon Brando. Englund does a much better job capturing the real Brando. Englund doesn't portray Brando as a saint or sugarcoat the man's eccentricities. He shows Brando's shortcomings and loutish behavior. However, Englund also shows a real affection and admiration for Brando. Brando would say that few of us are all good or bad. We're "polka-dot" people. Manso, unfortunately, saw little good in Brando and decided to dish the dirt in a very demeaning way. I'm giving it 2 stars instead of 1 because I'm amazed that despite his contempt for his subject, Manso still managed to write this thing!

Brando; a deeply repulsive man:
I'm a big fan of Brando. His smouldering sexual charisma changed movies. Even so there came a time later in his life where he became such a repulsive self-indulgent slug that you had to wonder; was he always such a nasty mess? Did we all just excuse it because he was easy on the eyes? On top of that, as much as he altered the gender role of the fifties, there is another trend across his career of playing against that type, in a series of fops & closet cases: Moreau, Mutiny on the Bounty, Teahouse of the August Moon, Reflections in a Golden eye. You just don't choose to play this many roles as dandies by accident. There really is no bigger story of squandered talent in Hollywood, so what the hell was going on inside him? This is not the book to read if you're a fan and you need the PR world to move heaven and earth to meet you where you are. There are any number of fanboy Brando biographies (inlcluding Brando's own limp effort) to choose from. Instead this painstakingly researched book presents such a disturbing portrait of Brando that I lost any remaining respect I had for him. Consider it a favor! Manso presents Brando as a rapacious, predatory sociopath who used his sexuality to bed & manipulate hundreds of women. That's consistent with other versions. Manso continues though and argues that the actor probably molested his own daughter, Cheyenne; that all has not been told about the shooting death of her boyfriend on his Tahitian island. There is a strong suggestion via Brando's intrusion on the Miachael Jackson molestation lawsuit that Brando may have even been into children himself. You get the sense that his Tahitian island was a place where his unrestrained self-indulgence could construct & rule over a childish feifdom. (Moreau anyone) without witnesses. It is very difficult to finish this book, as you beome repulsed by Brando so early. But the real proof of whether this is unfair or not is that Brando failed to bring a lawsuit against Manso, choosing instead to publish his own belated, tepid, ghost-written effort to combat the Manso press. Which means it's safe to assume that Manso's book is not far off the mark. For those who can't bear to hear criticism of Brando, I suggest you look up the word "hagiography," because what you prefer has a name.

Missed some interesting stories:
Mr. Manso researched this book for ten years and apparently forgot to mention Marlon Brando's involvement with "Rebel Without A Cause". He either did a screen test for it or shot scenes which were not used (the footage can be seen in the special edition of "Streetcar"). It's interesting stuff and even includes a brief interview with a shy Brando between takes. After I saw the footage, I looked up "Rebel" in the Manso book. He completely ignored it! Poor research or poor judgement, I say.

A troubled Genius:
Although this is a terribly good book, and covers every aspect of Brando's life in excruciating detail, if one is in search of the source of his genius, as I was, he is likely to be disappointed. As that is one thing he is unlikely to find here. Like in the case of Miles Davis, the source of Brando's genius remains a mystery. Except for being a cantankerous iconoclast, there is not much rhyme or reason to Brando's life that would single him out to become a great actor. He grew up insecure and uncertain of his place in the family or in society. His mother was an amateur actor who exposed Brando to the artsy side of life at an early age, but she was also a lush - a free-spirit and a loose woman at a time when it was scandalous to be any of those. She was just short of an "unfit mother." His father was a nondescript nobody. But none of this explains much... Brando lurched about as a troubled child and for a short while was a teen bully, getting kicked out of a military school where he was sent because of his behavior. This was about as close as one could get to a reform school in those days. Until he stumbled upon acting, his life was headed nowhere in particular. But even though he was naturally talented, and found acting easy, he was never enamored with it, or particularly committed to it. Until his death, he held the whole profession in laughable contempt. His talents were raw and his ability to explode emotionally placed him in a very elite group, early on. He just happened to have come on the scene at the right time: when "Method Acting" was "the new thing." The Meizners, Stella and Steve, set off a revolution in acting in the U.S. and Brando's talent, was exhibit Number One. With Stella's tutelage, Brando's raw talent was honed until he repeatedly "blew away" those "in the know." His meteoric rise to the top of acting royalty was based on sheer, raw talent. The rest of his life was troubled but terribly uninteresting in my view. But the writing is good. Four stars.