Warning: this post contains references to trauma and abuse
Brando on the set of On the Waterfront
In part A, I found some illustrations of how Marlon Brando, as a child, experienced a range of specific traumatic experiences. There were experiences of abuse – which appeared to occur within a void in his life – a void of love, compassion and affirmation. In particular, his main caregivers left him emotionally neglected and verbally condemned. Attachment theory predicts that the child who learns to avoid depending on their caregiver, will later show an avoidant or dismissive relational style in their adult relationships – until something changes the attachment pattern. This forms part of what is known as narcissism1 .
Central to narcissism, following these kinds of experiences, is a turning away from using emotional connection to manage emotions and to get through life generally. The adult will have a kind of phobia of being in a vulnerable role in relationships. They may be capable of giving but find it impossible to receive. This sets up a vacuum of need. How do they get what they need if unable to ask or acknowledge any need of another person? How do they find a way to be in a helpful, dependent relationship in which needs are met mutually on both sides. How do they deal with feelings of resentment that their own struggles and needs are left unseen?
Finding distance from vulnerability can look like greatness, power, fame, admiration. But what does it look like in real relationships? On the map of narcissism, this role of being unable to depend, can be found in the neglecting dismissing pair of roles. Here, the narcissistic strategy is firstly to neglect and dismiss their own emotions and desires. This is actually the first ‘lack of empathy’ - less visible though it is. The person may be so dismissing of their own feelings that they are unable to notice or track them at all. What then happens to those dissociated (disconnected) emotions: desire, sadness, anger? The needs are there but are not being managed in a way that works with the rest of the person.
‘Sex-addiction’ and narcissism
This is one explanation for compulsive behaviour, such as “sex-addiction” (as Brando once called his problem). Marlon never became dependent on drugs in the classic way. But for him, each sexual conquest was, it seems, like a wrap of heroin. Waking up with a woman, he would find himself, lying next to her, but planning his next fix – with someone else. Always moving on.
The map of narcissism2*
At the end of his life, Brando said,
“I had a lot of affairs. Far too many to describe me as a perfectly normal reasonable, intelligent person”3
This was perhaps an understatement. There were hundreds of women, and more than a few men. This ‘moving on’ kept Brando at a distance from dependence and emotional vulnerability. Tarita Teriipaia, Marlon’s third wife, remembered once trying to say to Marlon that she loved him. Angrily, he made her promise never to say these words again. She promised she wouldn’t.3
But this moving on, for Brando, also seemed to show a second ‘lack of empathy’ – a lack of empathy for others. People got hurt. When Alice Marchack took over as Marlon’s personal secretary, she had been told that the previous two women in the role had had “nervous breakdowns”. Alice became something of a witness to Marlon’s private life. At times, she said, when a woman was devastated by his dismissive treatment, he would say to her, “can you believe she really thought I was in love with her?”
In the life of Charles Chaplin, I found a similar pattern of compulsive sexual conquests – some abusive - that were unsustainable. On the map of narcissism, sex can be a vehicle to move away from vulnerability – towards power, idealisation or even the humiliation of the other. On one occasion Marlon began an affair with a married woman who was playing a bit part in One Eyed Jacks. He was the famous director of the film and so there was already a big power differential. One night, whilst he had her at his house, he called her husband and invited him to come over. The husband was devastated. They divorced soon after. Another woman, Janice Mars, said “you had a perverse need to humiliate…to see how far a female would go to indulge you.“3 In his epic biography of the actor, William Mann concludes that Marlon “was lonely, and envious of those who weren’t.”3 Brando’s agent’s wife was not off limits. But mutually dependent relationships apparently were.
Biographer William Mann said of Brando that, “he was a man utterly at ease with his fluid sexuality” and “he was insecure about many things, but sex was not one of them”.2 Im not sure about this idea. Brando is described by the same biographer as a survivor of at least two sexually abusive relationships by the time he was 18. He had an addictive compulsive relationship with sex in which others were humiliated and exploited. The more vulnerable he felt, the more people he would sleep with. It was specifically his sexual behaviour that became out of control. He later tried to deal with this in psychotherapy, because, he said, “I was killing myself and nearly killing everybody around me”3. In the 1940s and 50s America, it is also hard to imagine Brando not suffering with internalised homophobia. So, I am not convinced about this apparent ‘ease’ – and I wonder if it was another part of Marlon’s façade.
Brando won best actor Oscar for On The Waterfront. Eva Marie Saint co-starred.
Some particular relationships in Brando’s life lasted longer than the one-night encounters, and these are well documented. Let’s look at three women:
Rita Moreno: collusion, humiliation and pain
Actress Rita Moreno, best known for her role in West Side Story, first met Brando on the set of Desiree. Their romance would come and go over a number of years but was torturous. She later spoke openly about Marlon and said he was “maddeningly slow to understand the suffering he caused so many of the women in his life.” In the Spring of 1961, whilst Marlon was sleeping with both Rita and Tarita, Rita attempted suicide by overdosing on Marlon’s own Valium supply. She said she had wanted to just “end the humiliation and pain”. Moreno stated that,
“Whatever damage was done to Marlon in his childhood was compounded by the hurt he inflicted on others.” (Rita Moreno)3.
Years later in interview, Moreno candidly spelt out the kind of relationship she had with Brando – in a way that relates strongly to narcissism. Phobic of vulnerability, the person can avoid vulnerability in themselves, or alternatively find vulnerability in the other person. Marlon did both:
“You collude. I’ll be your little girl and your little maid, and your geisha and you be my daddy and you take care of me” (Rita Moreno)3
Anna Kashfi: Brando’s first wife
Anna Kashfi was the first woman that Marlon married. This man; desperate to avoid dependence, and so good at getting beautiful women into bed, married Anna. What was different about her? She was pregnant. But there was also something else about Anna. Shortly after they started dating, Anna Kashfi lay in a hospital bed with TB for 10 months. She later remembered that he was,
“Very attentive. Very kind – to me and all the other patients…as soon as I was on my feet, he didn’t like that independence” (Anna Kashfi)4
They married, and Anna gave birth to Marlon’s first son, Christian. But the relationship was again torturous. One day Anna and Marlon were arguing over the phone. After Anna had hung up, five-year-old Christian called his father back and warned him not to argue with his mother like that – because “the operator is listening”3. History was starting to repeat itself, and the emotional trauma was starting to be passed from one generation to the next. Christian would later be given a 10-year prison sentence for shooting his sister’s ex-boyfriend.
Ellen Adler – the love of Brando’s life?
Ellen Adler was different. She was the daughter of actress Stella Adler, Marlon’s tutor at the Drama Workshop in New York. A fellow student said of Stella that “she had this image of herself as a great beautiful goddess. Her whole life had been spent in making this glamourous, elegant, powerful creation”3. Stella saw potential in Marlon and became a mentor, and in some ways his first therapist. According to some, this goddess became a mother figure (she never had a son). Marlon was in many ways adopted into the Adler family and their community of Jewish intellectuals. Later, Marlon’s mother would meet Stella and thank her for all she had done.
Ellen Adler was a few years younger than Marlon but became an incredibly important person in his life – even when they were both seeing other people or married. By the time the stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire opened on Broadway – marking the beginnings of his fame – Marlon skipped the after party and headed to Ellen’s house, even though her date that night had been someone else. When they were dating, Marlon had once asked Ellen to buy the perfume his mother had always worn.
Whilst Marlon’s relationships with women in general were narcissistic; dismissive, one sided, exploitative and devoid of dependence on his part, his relationship with Ellen was not so much like this. Marlon “could admit that he didn’t know something and not feel inferior; he didn’t feel threatened when she challenged him or told him he was being foolish.“3
Just before Marlon started work on Waterfront, in 1953, he started seeing Ellen again. When she flew back to Paris, he planned to visit her, and they spoke about making a go of a more committed relationship – to “try to be together” as Ellen put it. They agreed that Ellen would come to the US after Waterfront to pick things up. On February 4th 1954, Ellen arrived back in the US. But Marlon was not answering the phone. He was in crisis. The day before, 20th Century fox had filed a lawsuit demanding damages as he had refused to show up to his next film.
As Marlon lay in bed, with the shutters down, an 18-year-old French model called Josanne Marian lay next to him, struggling to know how to help. Marlon would later get engaged to Josanne – apparently only for publicity purposes – and she would return alone to France, humiliated. Once again, Marlon had ghosted dependence itself. When Ellen finally got to speak with him, she furiously demanded that he have nothing more to do with her – until she was married to someone else. Ellen later said that,
Marlon “was still powerless to stop re-enacting the old dramas of his family. He still demanded that his women adore him, serve him, love him extravagantly – all to make up for what he’d never gotten from Dodie.” (Ellen Adler)3
Ellen and Marlon did reignite their friendship after Ellen had got married. She remained one of the very few people that Marlon could confide in. Marlon never turned into reality the character of Don Vito Corleone (The Godfather), a strong, married father with his children around him. But according to a number of people close to him, he wanted to be such a man, more than he himself knew. Perhaps this was one of the forces behind this Oscar winning performance.
In his memoir, the name of Ellen Adler, this woman who had been a soul mate in his life, whom he respected as an equal, loved and whom he had spectacularly failed to keep by his side, cannot be found. In his memoir, Brando disguised Ellen Adler; as “Celia Webb”. It is as if even here in his memoirs, he cannot face her fully. He said of this “Celia Webb”,
“She was not only physically beautiful, but bursting with elegance, charm and taste and appreciation for beautiful things”3
At the end of his life, he would confess that he regretted having not made “a more permanent investment in her” - referring to Ellen by name.
Ultimately, Brando invested his millions in something he thought more dependable than people: gold. He did this through a new company named after the person who had failed to be dependable: his mother.
Shooting the famous taxi scene for On The Waterfront
The Godfather
I have looked in the life of Brando for illustrations of the specific kinds of childhood experience implicated in the map of narcissism: condemnation and shaming on the one hand and the dismissing of emotional need on the other. Both shame and emotional vulnerability are experienced as unsafe. On the map, in order to distance from these experiences, narcissistic strategies are relied upon: performance and admiration, the dismissing of feelings and the humiliation or shaming of others. Through acting, Brando achieved the first of these. Through sex and the avoidance of dependence, he maintained distance from vulnerability and at times, the locating of vulnerability and shame – even humiliation - in others.
Even early on in his career, an actress on stage with Brando came away saying she had “never been on stage with this kind of thing before”.3 Brando moved acting and the cinema forward. He excelled. But the flip side of this same creative legacy included pain and trauma for a large number of people. How do we choose, select or elect such people to the powerful and influential positions they occupy? How do the Brandos of today get selected? I think the answer is usually that they are intensely motivated to rise, to perform, to do what it takes to get noticed. Perhaps we select the person who needs fame, power and influence excessively. And not the person next to them. Perhaps those in the industry who are partly responsible for selecting these icons, such as Stella Adler, have similar charisma, and similar blind spots to those who are selected.
Where does this leave us with each new story about a celebrity who, whilst gifted and admired, seems to treat those around them badly? We seem to assume that behind their ability to ‘connect’ in front of the camera, or an audience, (or parliament), they are ok with everyday intimacy and connectedness. In the case of Marlon Brando, there was greatness in one, and at the same time sheer poverty in the other. And the greatness and the poverty were connected.
Disclaimer: All views expressed are my own unless otherwise stated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any institution I have been employed by. The content here is for information and should not be interpreted as advice.
*Ryle did not apply this approach only to narcissism. If this mapping approach has been used in your own therapy, this does not mean that you have narcissistic difficulties.
References
1. Jellema, A. (2000). Insecure attachment states: Their relationship to borderline and narcissistic personality disorders and treatment process in cognitive analytic therapy. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy. 7, 138–154.
2. Ryle, A. & Kerr, I.B. (2002). Introducing Cognitive Analytic Therapy. Wiley.
3. Mann, W.J. (2019). The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando. Harper.
4. Women talking about Brando. On: Y. Campbell YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@doctornov7).