Marlon Brando was the original angry young man, winning an Oscar for Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront, a film about union corruption. However, at the Italian premiere in 1954, he realized that his voice had been dubbed and refused to watch it in anger, a new book has revealed.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me they were going to watch the dubbed version?” he spluttered, furious inside the darkened cinema. His bewildered agent, who was expecting the original English version, recalled him “staggering out of his seat as if he had had a heart attack” and frantically whispering, “Get me out of here!” Ta.
Brand could not calm down. “I’ve never seen myself dubbed,” he was quoted as saying. “I’m an actor, not a ventriloquist’s dummy. For Christ’s sake. Can you imagine what it’s like to hear someone else’s voice coming out of my mouth? When I watch a sideshow, I realize that I’m a total weirdo.” I feel like, “Christ, why didn’t someone prepare me?” Don’t you guys know?”
The incident was one of those exposed in the memoirs of an American couple, Hank Kaufman and Gene Lerner, who arrived in Rome from New York in 1953 and met with big names such as Anita Ekberg and Eva. He became an agent, friend, and confidant to movie stars. Gardner and Simone Signoret.
Mr. Kaufman and Mr. Lerner died in 2012 and 2004, respectively. Now, their role as the unsung architects and shakers of the industry in the 1950s and 1960s is being recognized with the publication of their memoir, Hollywood on the Tiber.
They wrote the book in the late 1970s, but it was only published in Italian in 1982. The stars who appeared on its pages may have objected to revelations that reflected the ups and downs of celebrity, which Lerner described as “toxic.” Everyone from Charlie Chaplin to Federico Fellini appears.
The memoir will be published in English for the first time next week by Sticking Place Books, which specializes in neglected publications. Paul Cronin, who published the book, said, “When I first encountered this book, I thought, “This is La Dolce Vita meets Call My Agent!” spoke.
He said that for nearly two decades, Kaufman and Lerner have been intimately involved with their clients’ ambitions, fantasies, hopes and loves, on screen and off, day and night.
In a chapter about Brando’s premiere, they say that when Brando was escorted to the movie theater in a black Cadillac, they were “not prepared for hysteria” at the “screaming crowd” that engulfed Brando as he emerged from the car. I’m writing. Once inside, I was overwhelmed with nervousness as I was seated next to 19-year-old Italian actor Sophia Loren.
“Brando has made art out of tweets. But now the films in which he has achieved such complete obscurity that it overwhelms him, and the breathtaking double-takes as amazing as the one prompted by Lauren’s frontal device. It wasn’t there yet…Marlon’s efforts not to stare It was just as farcical as the first time. He couldn’t speak, and they sat in restless silence, except for occasional smiles at each other. Every time it appeared, Marlon stared at Sophia with his mouth open and his eyes wide.
When Brando was about to leave the theater after the dubbing, Lerner warned him: They’ll say you hated it, denied it, whatever. They write a lot of movies, but they don’t say anything about the quality of the movies. ”
No one would be the wiser, Brando visited a nearby bar and was persuaded to sneak back into the theater five minutes before the movie ended, investigators recalled. “As the theater lights went up, Brando stood leaning over the mezzanine railing to enthusiastic applause and shouts of bravo.”
In the memoir, the couple also recalled that Ava Gardner was in a state of “hysteria” because her boyfriend, Italian actor Walter Chiari, was “addicted” to cocaine. “He smells. He could be doing something worse,” she cried, pleading with them to “do something.”
They also described the sordid side of the industry, pointing to Anita Ekberg’s reaction when she heard that a director wanted to meet her, saying, “Who is he to just disrespect me?” “Are you some other kind of person who just wants to make my body black?”
When Ekberg heard that Sean Connery had married Diane Cilento, he was shocked and told Lerner: When it comes to true love, I’m always fooled. ”
Agents remember that Shelley Winters became “extremely jealous” when she discovered her husband Vittorio Guzman playing “hanky-panky” with another actor backstage. “Sherry had a fetish for mirrors. She screamed and slammed many of them against the wall of Guzman’s dressing room. Fortunately… she was not injured by the flying glass shards.”
The memoir has a foreword by Sandy Lieberson, who worked with Kaufman and Lerner in Rome and went on to produce films such as Nicolas Roeg’s Performance. He writes: “Myths and legends, but also the abyss of drug addiction, unfulfilled dreams, sexual fetishes and their filth. Hollywood on the Tiber has it all. It’s heaven and hell.”
This article headline was amended on January 4, 2025 to correct a misspelling of Marlon Brando’s last name.
