Songs My Mother Taught Me
By Marlon Brando with Robert Lindsey - Random House © 1994
When my good friend loaned me Marlon Brando’s autobiography, I knew nothing about the man beyond a bit of Hollywood lore. With the exception of The Godfather, I’d only ever seen a few of his lesser-known films – The Score and The Missouri Breaks – two films with small roles for the man many consider the greatest actor of all time. Even after reading Songs My Mother Taught Me, I can’t say that I know much more about his films than when I began, and apart from a few classics, feel no strong desire to go out and binge watch all things Brando. That is because Brando didn’t care much for most of his own films. Or the film industry at large. Acting was his job. A job he obviously did well. And while he enjoyed the usual perks that fame brought he never sought fame out and, in most cases, shunned the spotlight. Brando didn’t even want to write the book and it took some cajoling to get it done. But I’m glad he did.
What Songs My Mother Taught Me lacks in detail about the movie making process or his famed Tinseltown escapades (and they were many) it more than makes up for in his rich storytelling and deep personal recollections and admissions. When you reach the last page, you feel as if you know the man, even if you’ve never seen him on screen. All 468 pages drip with his philosophies on life, love, culture, sex, relationships, politics, race, war; heavy topics from a heavy thinker.
What you really walk away with is an appreciation for Brando’s sharp inquisitive mind and sensitive soul. Contrary to popular thought and legend, Brando was not one of The Wild Ones off screen. He certainly wasn’t Stanley Kowalski from A Streetcar Named Desire, a character he played both on stage and screen, so convincingly that many people believed that was the real Brando – a coarse brute. Hardly.
Like so many geniuses, actors and otherwise, Brando was most assuredly a troubled man and admits to every mistake he made. Trauma from a childhood growing up with two absent, alcoholic parents plagued him his entire life and fanned the flames of intensity you see in many of his roles. As he says in his closing chapter,
“I suppose the story of my life is a search for love, but more than that, I have been looking for a way to repair myself from the damages I suffered early on and to define my obligations, if I had any, to myself and my species.”
Thoughts like this fill the book and show Brando’s vulnerability throughout. Of course there are stories about Stella Adler, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Jack Nicholson, and the Oscar he refused in support of the American Indian. But the stories are never self-serving and act instead as a window into Brando’s heart and mind and work as a vehicle for sharing his philosophies. Beliefs not come by easily or quickly, and born as much from the struggles of his life off camera as on.
