Marlon "The Godfather" Brando dead at 80

[Timmychuck]

Sad, but true

http://www.comcast.net/News/ENTERTAINMENT//XML/1402_Movies/d02acaa9-bcb3-479b-87f4-4ae4c607ab81.html

[gitreel]

It is a sad day.

[BJ_M]

i am surprised he lived this long -- but yes , a sad passing

[DVD_Ripper]

Very sad indeed.....

[indolikaa]

[housepig]

I'll never forget his immortal line from "Hearts of Darkness"...

"... I ... swallowed a bug."

[Supreme2k]

It's even sadder that he died broke and in squalor (according to some articles).

[ViRaL1]

It's even sadder that he died broke and in squalor (according to some articles).

The horror.

[BJ_M]

i doubt he was broke -- but not much is known about his personal life (not even all the names of his 9-12 kids (9 known (2 no names) and several others reported) and his 3 known wives and/or unknown for sure:

Josanne Marianna Berenger, model
Rita Moreno, actress; 12-year on-and-off relationship
Wife: Anna Kashfi, married October 1957; divorced 1959
Wife: Movita, married 1960; marriage annulled 1968
Wife: Tarita Teriipia, former waitress, actress; married 1962
Christina Ruiz, former maid

so maybe he ended up broke or close to it ... he still owns his LA and Tahiti island* estates as far as anyone knows ..

he was pretty sick for quite awhile though ....

*Once the holiday residence of the Tahitian royal family, this small wreath of 12 islets enclosing a sparkling lagoon is owned by Marlon Brando . Including a resort and hotel and small airfield.


edit: maybe he was pretty broke : http://celebrityjustice.warnerbros.com/news/03/06/24a.html

[JohnnyCNote]

He was definitely a strange one. I have rather mixed feelings about him. My main beef is in how he treated Francis Coppola. After Coppola resurrected his career by fighting with the studios to cast him as Vito Corleone, Brando all but screwed him over on Apocalypse Now! (which heads my list of of all time favorite movies).

He demanded an exhorbitant salary, which he wouldn't have even been able to earn had it not been for Coppola's help in the first place. Then he wouldn't learn his lines, instead demanding that he be allowed to make up his own. This is not to mention his very "unsoldier-like" appearance, although that could be argued to be in keeping with a character who'd lost touch with his old, disciplined self.

Marlon Brando was paid $1 million in advance. He threatened to quit and keep the advance. Coppola told his agent that he didn't care, and if they couldn't get Brando, they would try Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, and then Al Pacino. Brando eventually turned up late, drunk, 40kg overweight, and admitted he hadn't read the script or even "Heart of Darkness", the book it was based on. He read Coppola's script, and refused to do it. After days of arguments over single lines of dialogue, an ad-lib style script was agreed upon, and this was shot according to Brando's stipulations that he appears in shadows.

There are some other accounts of his difficult nature on the sets of The Freshman , which he dismissed as a movie hardly woth seeing - until it was quite successful, leading him to change his tune:

During post-production, Brando claimed this film would be the biggest turkey of all time, but subsequently changed his mind, saying it would be "reasonable".

Then his conduct on The Score was quite unprofessional:

Director Frank Oz went to Brando's house and offered him $3 million dollars to play the role of a gay master thief. But when Brando showed up on the set wearing livid make up and talking with a lisp, Oz tried to steer him toward a more low-key portrayal. Brando responded with a typically mumbled profanity and refused to come on the set if Oz was there. Co-star Robert DeNiro ended up directing Brando's scenes, with Oz sending in suggestions from another room.

Nevertheless, it's sad to see such a great actor die the way he did. The pictures of him in the wheechair were particularly pitiful. He was completely unrecognizable.....

[Keefkey]

I can appreciate Brando's impact within the movie industry, his influence on a movie-going generation as well as numerous actors, but that was all a long time ago.

It looks like a combination of poor choices, personal tragedies and health problems all contributed to his decline. It was indeed a sad ending but he isn't the first, and he won't be the last actor, to end up this way.