BRANDO: THE BIOGRAPHY (Peter Manso, 1994)

I bought this thing ten years ago, and have been putting off reading it for a decade due to the commitment of time and physical carryingaroundedness that comes with it's great girth (over a thousand chunky pages).

Having now finished it after some months, i'm not sure how i feel about the whole experience. As with many biographies of artists (though Brando would shudder at being called one), it's most enjoyable in the parts when they're going through their development and working their way up to their artistic peak, and then the last 30 or 40 years tends to be a bit of a slog. And in this case, reading about those youthful days of Brando in the broiling bohemian New York scene of the 1940's really does seem like a lifetime ago! But they was good days to read about...

It's an incredibly thorough biography, with over 700 people interviewed, and it starts with his grandparents and gives you a very good feel for what kind of people they and their children were before we get to Marlon being born. He comes across as being very "Brando-esque" from about the age of 6. Wounded, thoughtful, manipulative, sensual...

Some people would consider this biography something of a hatchet job, and though Manso does seem to have developed quite a distaste for the man over his seven years of research, it seems fairly evenhanded to me. Brando done just been a fucking jerk a whole lot of the time! At times you have to remind yourself that he had a certain magnetism and charm that kept people coming back to him even when he treated them so badly, because on face value it just doesn't seem plausible. You do start to get awful sick of the guy quite early on in the book, because he's so fucked up that he's never happy with anything even when he seems to have the world at his feet, but it's written in such a way that you have the background and you understand why he's that way and sympathize to a point. But it's still very frustrating...

In the end, i'm glad i read it. I'll never see Brando the same way again, but at the same time the deeper understanding I have of the guy lends an extra layer to watching his great performances, and I do like having a deeper understanding of things I love...