Today we’re celebrating Brando’s 92th birthday. His style, his “method”, his talent. Truly an original. One of the greatest actors of all time!

“Listen to Me Marlon” is the outstanding, award-winning documentary airing on cable’s Showtime about Brando in his own words:

April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004

Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American actor, film director, and activist. He is hailed for bringing a gripping realism to film acting and is often cited as one of the greatest and most influential actors of all time.

“The Wild One”

Biography’s Documentary on Brando:

Brando is also credited with helping to popularize the Stanislavski system of acting, today more commonly referred to as method acting. A cultural icon, Brando is most famous for his Academy Award-winning performances as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954) and Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972), as well as influential performances in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), The Wild One (1953), Last Tango in Paris (1972), and Apocalypse Now (1979).

Marlon Brando initially gained acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for reprising the role of Stanley Kowalski in the 1951 film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, a role that he had originated successfully on Broadway.

“On the Waterfront”

“The Godfather”

The sixties were an artistic bust for Brando but ten years later he made his successful and award-winning comeback with his portrayal of Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather”. The studio was opposed to his casting so he had to audition for the role. He improvised with cotton in his mouth to come up with the mumbling sound of The Don. The studio relinquished and the rest is cinema history.

“Superman”

As a result of regaining his box office gravitas with “The Godfather” and “Last Tango in Paris”, Brando became a highly paid character actor with roles in films like “Superman” which according to the Guinness Book of World Records, Brando was paid a record $3.7 million ($14 million in inflation-adjusted dollars) and 11.75% of the gross profits for 13 days’ work.

Brando was ranked by the American Film Institute as the fourth greatest movie star among male movie stars whose screen debuts occurred in or before 1950. He was one of only three professional actors, along with Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe, named in 1999 by Time magazine as one of its 100 Most Important People of the Century. He died of respiratory failure on July 1, 2004, at age 80. (Wikipedia)