Marlon Brando: the men and women of his life (PHOTOS)

Marlon Brando was unquestionably a sacred monster of cinema in the 1950s. After starting his career on stage in the mid-1940s, filmmaker Eli Kazan offered him his first major role in the film A streetcar named desire, adapted from the play by Tennessee Williams. Overnight, Marlon Brandon became one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood, which allowed him to chain feature films, including The wild outfit, Julius Caesar, On the quays or Desiree. After the many successes, his career declined slightly in the 1960s. But the actor finally regained his legendary status thanks to Francis Ford Coppola who offered him a role in The Godfather (whose backstage was staged in the mini-series The Offer available on Paramount+). Outside of his professional life, Marlon Brando had a very turbulent love life, marked by numerous affairs with women and men.

Edith Piaf, Marylin Monroe… the sulphurous life of Marlon Brando

According to the biography Marlon Brando: The Last Secrets by Darwin Porter the actor has had many affairs, notably with Bette Davis, Marlène Dietrich and… Edith Piaf in the 1950s. Marlon Brando would then have fallen for Marylin Monroe. They reportedly had a brief affair and remained good friends until the actress’ death. The actor was also in shock when he learned of the death of his colleague. “Do you remember Marylin’s death? Everyone stopped working, and everyone had the same expression on their faces. We all thought the same thing: a girl who had so much success, fame, youth, money, beauty… how could she kill herself? No one understood, because these are things that everyone envies, and you couldn’t imagine that life meant nothing to Marylin Monroe or that her life was somewhere else.“, he said in an interview.

A brief affair with a former first lady

If Jackie Kennedy is known for her unions with John F. Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis, few people know that the former First Lady had a crush on Marlon Brando. The latter would have spent two nights with the actor, who wanted to talk about their story in his autobiography Songs my mother taught me. But according to writer Clemens David Heymann, these passages were deleted on the advice of an editor who was a friend of JFK’s ex-wife. The short relationship between Jackie Kennedy and Marlon Brando was finally chronicled in the book Bobby and Jackie : A Love Story. “Jackie and the actor danced and drank together. As they danced, Jackie, deeply attracted to Brando, pressed her thighs suggestively around his. They danced again, then sat down and started kissing“, can we read in the biography of Clemens David Heymann. The latter also claimed that the former First Lady had ended their romance.

Marlon Brando: James Dean, Cary Grant… The men in his life

Although he was married three times to women, Marlon Brando never hid his bisexuality. “Homosexuality is so fashionable that it no longer makes headlines. Like many men, I too have had homosexual experiences, and I am not ashamed of them. I never really cared what people thought of me. But if some people are convinced that I’m the lover of Jack Nicholson, they continue to think so. I find it amusing“, he said in an interview with journalist Gary Carey in 1976. According to the biography Marlon Brando: The Last Secrets, the actor reportedly had an affair with Cary GrantMontgomery Clift ou encore James Dean. A biography titled James Dean : Tomorrow never comes revealed the underside of the sadomasochistic relationship between these two cinema legends, who would have met at the end of the 1950s when James Dean was only a film student. A relationship that Marlon Brando had denied during his lifetime in his memoirs Songs my mother taught me.

Article written in collaboration with 6Médias