Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me - Marlon Brando [113]
These were the kinds of memories, along with travel and experiencing new cultures, that made making movies fun. I also enjoyed a picture called The Saboteur: Code Name Morituri because my pals Wally Cox and Billy Redfield were in it. I played a World War II saboteur sent on a secret mission aboard a ship commanded by Yul Brynner, who wasn’t a great actor but who taught me a lesson about making movies. Yul was a nice man, but like David Niven, he liked to hang out at chic places and be seen with fashionable people, which didn’t appeal to Wally, Billy or me. Someone, probably Wally, joked, “I wonder what Yul would look like if he ever put his legs together.” This was because he was constantly striking the magisterial pose he used in The King and I, with his legs separated, planted firmly on the ground, and his hands on his hips. But Yul did something in that picture that impressed me. In one scene I thought his acting was very stagy and artificial, but when I saw the scene on film it succeeded because the lighting was effective, and I learned he had suggested to the lighting man how to light the scene. I had never paid much attention to lighting, and it made me realize that the man who sets it up can do a lot for your performance or break your neck if he wants to. With lights, he can add drama to your face, make it dull, or put you in darkness. From then on, I began checking with the lighting man before doing a scene, using a mirror to see what effect different lighting gave my appearance and performance.
Another picture I enjoyed making was The Nightcomers, a 1971 thriller based on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw that was directed by Michael Winner, an Englishman who, like David Niven, had an arch sense of humor as well as a stout, characteristically British sense of class. In a big country house near Cambridge that he used for the filming, he outfitted a beautiful dining room with expensive china, linen and cutlery, and said it was to be used only by me, Alice Marchak, Jay Kantor, my friends Philip and Marie Rhodes and himself. I said I didn’t find that type of class distinction appropriate and wanted to eat with the other actors and members of the crew, but Michael said, “Marlon, I am sorry to say this, but the crew do not wish you to eat with them. They are much happier in the next-door canteen eating on their own and not worrying about the overpowering presence of their employers and a major star.”
I left and went into the canteen room, sat down at the table, and when the other actors and crew members entered holding their lunch trays, I held up my hand urging them to sit near me, but they all walked on. “Marlon,” Michael said, “it’s no good waving your arms about; none of these people are going to sit with us. They’d all much rather gossip among themselves and they’re all terrified of you.” Apparently he was right, because no one would sit near me except him and my friends from the other room. The next day, when we had to shoot some scenes in a churchyard, Michael again arranged a special dining room for me and my friends—this time in a local vicarage. I invited two of the actresses in the picture, Stephanie Beacham and a famous old English character actress, Thora Hird, to join us. At first they didn’t say much, but after I kept asking them questions and encouraging them to talk, Thora began speaking virtually nonstop in a thick northern English accent that I couldn’t penetrate.
Afterward, I said to Michael, “I couldn’t understand a word she said. Why didn’t you help me?”
“Well, Marlon,” he said, “you invited them, and since they’re very