“When I attended the acting school in New York, years ago, It was said that Marlon Brando had changed the way of playing people, while James Dean had changed his way of life. He was the biggest actor, he was simply a genius, “he said once Martin Sheenwho based on Dean his interpretation of Kit Carruthers, the character of Young anger (1973) who launched his career.
Each maximum is liable to discussion, but when it comes to the Most influential male interpreters of the twentieth century (and who continue to be a point of reference also in the XXI) Marlon Brando and James Dean will always be on top of many lists.
Their lives and their careers ended up being very different, especially because Dean died at the age of 24 in a fateful road accident while Brando lived up to 80 years, but but Both proceeded on the beginning on the same track.
In fact, both broke through in the 1950s and followers of the Stanislavsky method werethe approach that revolutionized Hollywood starting from that era and that is based on psychological and emotional immense with the characters in an attempt to transmit authentic emotions (at the beginning, Marlon even wanted at all the costs that the jokes were written on cards out of the field instead of memorizing them to obtain, in theory, higher levels of realism and spontaneity, with great disappointment of the directors with whom he worked).
Its expansion center was theActors Studiothe legendary New York acting school founded by Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford and Robert Lewis In 1947 Lee Strasbergthe most famous school director and godfather of the method in the United States.
As you can deduce, Brando was older than Dean (they had seven years of difference) and got known before: when Dean obtained his first cinematographic role as a protagonist in The Eden Valley (1955), Brando had already shot A tram called desire (1951), Long live Zapata! ( 1952), Julius Caesar (1953), The wild (1953) e Front of the port (1954). His raid was revolutionary, both for what he transmitted on the screen and for what he represented: A new visceral, magnetic, rebellious and deeply sexual masculinity, which broke with the repressive canons of the time.
In other words, when Dean came (breakdowns the door, it must be said) Brando’s immortality was practically already insured; The comparisons, however, were inevitable, and Dean was immediately labeled as the new Marlon Brando (as happened to many musical artists who followed the disruptive trail of Bob Dylan in the 60s and 70s). Dean had many of his own qualities, both as an actor and how Sex Symbol; Furthermore, He too was a outsiderbut with an aesthetic from Pretty Boy cleanercloser to what the nascent rock culture required, which was about to consecrate Elvis Presley After 60 million people had seen him perform atAnd Sullivan Show in 1956.
These similarities did not go unnoticed to Elia Kazan, the director who gave both the first great opportunity in A tram called desire And The Eden Valleyrespectively. For this second film, adaptation of the famous novel by John Steinbeck, Kazan initially wanted to play the siblings Cal and Aroni were Brando and Montgomery Cliftbut he gave up when he realized that they would not be credible in the role of two teenagers (at the time they had 30 and 34 years respectively). Also Paul Newman He was about to win the role of Cal, but in the end James Dean was chosen, who was six years older than Newman and seven less than Brando.
At the beginning the choice did not seem to regret Brando, who even visited the set (One of the few existing images of the two actors together was taken on that occasion) with Dean’s great joy, which idolized him and considered him his point of reference. It was only after the release of the film in March 1955, when the titles of the newspapers made it clear that there was a new challenger who threatened the throne on which Omaha’s actor sat since the beginning of the decade, which Brando began to get agitated (his ego has always been as big as his figure).
Most of the critics compared Dean’s mannerisms to those of Brando (Truman Capote himself did it a few years later) and, as if that were not enough, Jack Moffitt ofHollywood Reporter He was committed in praise of the former: «The most important thing for the proceeds is the debut, in the main role, of An attractive and dynamic young actor named James Dean “wrote Moffitt. «This boy is able to conquer the typical cinema fans, regardless of whether they love tragic stories. It is a rarity, a young man who is a great actor, eloquent when he comes to telling the problems of an incomplete youth, which can transform it into the symbol of a generation. He is the only actor that I saw that it would be perfect for interpreting Romeo. And the comparison with Marlon Brando is inevitable … “.
During his life, Brando publicly spoke of Dean very few times, but in the year of the release of The Eden Valley released to Modern Screen A statement that made it clear how the comparisons had accepted: «Jim and I worked together with the New York Actors Studio and I have great respect for his talent. However, in that film Mr. Dean gave me the impression of using my clothes from last year, as well as my talent last year “.
In the biography Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando (2008) by Stefan Kanfer, the author cites an episode in which Brando and Dean met by chance at a party and Brando took Dean aside to give him a little friendly advice: “Jimmy, you must be what you are, not what I am”.
If between the two there were envy or disagreements, they ended up very early and abruptly because James Dean lost his life before the end of the year, on September 30, in an accident with his Porsche 550 Spyder. Less than a month later it came out Burn youthwho made him an even bigger star (and still had another pending film, The giantwho came the following year) but The alleged rivalry with Brando died with him.
Voices of a flirtation between legends
Another legend with less solid bases circulates the relationship between these two myths of Hollywood, even if a controversial book published in 2016 has faced it directly. Before talking about it, it is necessary to understand another of the facets that Brando and Dean represented: the two, in fact, were sexual icons in many respects, also from the point of view of fluid sexuality.
Dean, on the contrary, had imposed himself on the attention of Hollywood after having played a gay character in a theatrical reduction of 1954 of The immoralist by André Gide, and an alleged quote is attributed to him in which he would have said: “No, I’m not homosexual. But I don’t even intend to live with one hand tied behind my back “.
Brando, for his part, was clearer on his experiences with bisexuality in a 1976 interview with the journalist Gary Carey for the biography Marlon Brando: The Only Contender: «Like many other men, I also had homosexual experiences “. And now the legend: in 2016 the writers Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince published James Dean: Tomorrow Never Comesa rather sensationalistic biography based on alleged testimonies of disappeared and unreliable sources that have been contested by other Dean experts. In the biography it is argued that James Dean and Marlon Brando had a flirtation. Any confirmation is missing, but a complicated relationship remains.
Source: Vanity Fair
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