Marlon Brando: An icon

Born Marlon Brando, Jr. on April 3, 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska to a salesman and his artistically inclined wife Dorothy, "Bud" Brando was one of three children. The environment was conducive to his growth as an actor. His oldest sister Jocelyn was also an actress, following the footsteps of their mother, who engaged in amateur theatricals and mentored a then-unknown Henry Fonda, another Nebraska native, in her role as director of the Omaha Community Playhouse. Frannie, Brando's other sibling, was an artist. Both older Brando sisters departed to New York city, Jocelyn to study acting and Frannie to study art. Marlon managed to escape a stifling environment to follow his sister Jocelyn in the acting profession. Capitalising on his acting prowess, he decided to make it his career.

Brando's early days may have sown the seeds of an enormous talent. He was a lonely child, his father was away on the road while his mother was often in an alcoholic stupor. Some of those traumatic times remained with him. As his character Paul said in The last tango in Paris (1972), to his young lover Jeanne, "I don't have many good memories." Anthony Quinn, his Oscar-winning co-star in Viva Zapata! told Brando's first wife Anna Kashfi, "I admire Marlon's talent, but I don't envy the pain that created it."

Brando made his debut on the boards of Broadway on October 19, 1944, in I Remember Mama, a great success. Brando staged an entry into motion pictures with Fred Zinneman's The Men (1950) for producer Stanley Kramer. Playing a paraplegic soldier, Brando imparted a high level of realism to his character. Then came A streetcar named desire, written by Tennessee Williams.

After the movie Streetcar, for which he received the first of his eight Academy Award nominations, Brando appeared in a string of Academy Award-nominated performances in Viva Zapata! (1952), Julius Caesar (1953), and the summit of his early career, On the waterfront (1954).

In the second half of his career (1955-62) Brando managed to uniquely establish himself as a great actor who also was a Top 10 movie star. True the star began to dim after the box office highpoint of his early career, 1957's Sayonara (for which he received his fifth Best Actor Oscar nomination). Brando tried his hand at directing a film, the well-reviewed One Eyed Jacks (1961) that he made for his own production company.

After a reprise of his Godfather character in the satire The freshman (1990), Brando decided to appear in cameos, although he played a shared lead with Johnny Depp in the whimsical Don Juan DeMarco in 1995. His last few performances, including a turn with his "Best Actor of His Generation" heirs Robert De Niro and Edward Norton in The score (2001), were mostly forgettable. However, Brando will live on in the collective memory for succeeding generations as long as film survives and acting is considered an art.

Brando's life came to an end on July 1, 2004.

Compiled by Cultural Correspondent