Short Biography
Marlon Brando, Jr. was a two-time Academy Award-winning American actor whose body of work spanned over half a century. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential actors of the 20th Century. Brando is best known for his roles in A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront, both directed by Elia Kazan in the early 1950s, and his Academy-Award winning performance as Vito Corleone in The Godfather and as Colonel Walter E. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, the latter two directed by Francis Ford Coppola in the 1970s.Brando was also an activist, lending his presence to many issues, including the American Civil Rights and American Indian Movements. He was named the fourth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.Brando was born to Marlon Brando Sr. (1895–1965) and Dorothy Pennebaker Brando (1897-1954) in Omaha, Nebraska.[1] In 1935, when he was 11 years old, his parents separated. His mother briefly took her three children (Marlon, Jocelyn (1919–2005) and Frances Brando (1922-1994) to live with her mother in Santa Ana, California, until 1937 when the parents reconciled and moved to Libertyville, Illinois, a village northwest of Chicago. The family was primarily of Dutch, Irish, German, Huguenot and English stock. Contrary to what is stated in some biographies, Brando`s grandfather was not French; he, Eugene E. Brando, was from New York state.[2] Brando`s grandmother Marie Holloway abandoned Eugene and their son Marlon Brando Sr. when he was five years old.[3] The Brando family had been long settled in New York state. The family name was earlier spelled Brandow and originated with a German immigrant, Johann Wilhelm Brandau, who settled in America in the early 1700s.[4] Brando`s mother, Dodie, was an unconventional but intelligent and talented woman. She smoked, wore pants and drove automobiles at a time when it was unusual for women to do so. However she suffered from alcoholism and often had to be retrieved from Chicago bars by Brando`s father. She later became a leader of Alcoholics Anonymous. Dodie was an actress and administrator in local theater and was written about for her theatrical work by the Omaha newspapers. She helped a young Henry Fonda to begin his own acting career, and fueled Brando`s interest in stage acting. His father, Marlon Sr., was a gifted amateur photographer. Brando`s maternal grandmother, Bessie Gahan Pennebaker Meyers, to whom Brando was perhaps closer than his own mother, was also unconventional. Widowed at a young age, she worked to support herself as a secretary and later as a Christian Science healer, and was well known in Omaha. Her father, Myles Gahan, was a doctor from Ireland and her mother, Julia Watts, was from England. Brando was a gifted mimic from early childhood and developed a rare ability to absorb the tics and mannerisms of people he played and to display those traits dramatically while staying in character. His sister, Jocelyn Brando, however, was the first to pursue a career in acting, going to New York to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Art. She later appeared on Broadway, in movies and on television. Next, Marlon`s sister Frannie left college in California to study art
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