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Marlon conceded that "when I came to Hollywood I had a rather precious and coddled attitude about my own integrity. It was stupid of me to resist so directly the prejudice that money is right. But just because the big shots were nice to me I saw no reason to overlook what they did to others and to ignore the fact that they normally behave with the hostility of ants at a picnic. The marvelous thing about Hollywood is that these people are recognized as sort of the norm, while I am the flip. These gnarled and twisted personalities see no other way to live except on a pedestal of malicious gossip and rumor to be laid on the ears of unsuspecting people who believe them.
"Well, I really did feel I had every right in the world to resist the insipid protocol of turning my private life into the kind of running serial you find on bubble-gum wrappers. You can't just take sensitive parts of yourself and splatter them around like so much popcorn butter. Personal freedom has always been terribly important to me, and I have carried aloofness as a sort of banner to my sense of freedom."
What horrified Brando most: "People have asked me if I'm really Stanley Kowalski. Why, he's the antithesis of me. He is intolerant and selfish. Kowalski is a man without any sensitivity, without any kind of morality except his own mewling, whimpering insistence on his own way. I can't think—I can't believe—that we are here for one terrible, gnashing, stomping moment and that's all."
Marlon's friends insist that he is a thoroughly misunderstood young man. "If this is a slob," says Producer George Glass, "it should of happened to me." Director Kazan calls him "one of the gentlest—every possibly the gentlest—person I have ever known." A girl friend claims that until recently he was so sensitive that he hated to eat lettuce because it was so noisy. Wally Cox says he is "a creative philosopher, a very deep thinker. He's a real liberating force for his friends."
His openheartedness is attested to on every side. Taken as a whole, his life suggests strongly that the heart of the matter was expressed in a crudely chalked sign that he once nailed up in his flat. It read: "You Ain't Livin' If You Don't Know It."
Quicksand & Old Corsets. Marlon Brando Jr. was born on April 3, 1924 in Omaha, Neb., the third child, first son of a salesman of limestone products. His mother, described years later by Actress Stella Adler as "a very beautiful, a heavenly, lost, girlish creature," played leads for the local dramatic society and burned for a larger stage of life. Her children caught fire. "She was a wonderful, wonderful woman," says daughter Jocelyn, now a Broadway actress (Mister Roberts), "with a great capacity for understanding and giving." Marlon, says Jocelyn, was "a blond, fat-bellied little boy, quite serious and very determined." He showed his sense of drama early. Whenever anybody would look, the little ham would shinny up on the mantelpiece, pose there like a general, clutch his heart all at once as if shot, and topple like a corpse to the floor.