Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me - Marlon Brando [19]
Some mornings when I didn’t feel like studying, I got up early, stuck a paper clip in the lock on the classroom door and worked it back and forth till it broke off. By the time the locksmith would be summoned from town, everybody would be locked out, and there would be no class that day. I ruined lots of locks that way. Then I found out it was just as easy to lock the masters into their apartments so they couldn’t get to class. They lived across from each other along a hallway, and I discovered that by tying a rope to the door knobs of two opposing apartments the occupants of neither of them could open their doors, which swung inside. Since they usually lived on the second floor, they couldn’t get out a window, so they would be prisoners in their own rooms and there would be no class that day.
Because I flunked or dropped out of so many classes, I ended up spending a lot of time in study hall, which is where you were sent if you were kicked out of a class. I made a list of 125 or so of the songs my mother had taught me, and every time I went to study hall, I’d pull out the list, pick a song and whistle it softly into my cupped hands.
One of the few classes I liked was English, which was taught by Earle Wagner, a master known to everyone as Duke. Through him, I discovered Shakespeare, whose marvelous use of language transported me into a new universe. In the study hall, I had many hours to read Shakespeare, memorizing lines that I remember to this day. I also liked to riffle through the pages of the National Geographic, where I made another wonderful discovery, Tahiti. I was entranced by the beauty of its beaches and the customs of the Tahitians, but most of all by the expressions on their faces. They were happy, unmanaged faces. No manicured expressions, just kind, open maps of contentment. To a captive on what seemed like Devil’s Island, Tahiti appeared to me at least a sanctuary, and at best nirvana.
8
DUKE WAGNER WORE an old battered hat at an improbable angle and thought of himself as a debonair, rakish figure, although I think he was too frightened of the world ever really to be a rake. He had a slanted smile and a devil-may-care mustache, and walked around the campus with his dog, an English bulldog, a few steps behind him, his trench coat worn off the shoulders, dashing and capelike. He was cavalier and regal in his bearing and theatrical in his style—a duke, I suppose, in his own mind.
Besides heading the English department, Duke was in charge of the Dramatic Association of Shattuck School. He invited me to try out for a part in A Message from Khufu, a one-act play inspired by the King Tut legend. I got the part of a character named Ben. When my friends said that I had done well and Duke did too, I felt good. Except for sports, it was the first time since my shop teacher at Julius C. Lathrop Junior High in Santa Ana had said he liked my work that anyone had ever told me I did anything well. When tryouts for other plays came up, I went after them, too. “I am learning lots of new words and am studying Hamlet in English class,” I wrote Frannie. “The way Wagner teaches things you are smart when it’s over.” In a letter to my parents, I said, “English is very hard but very interesting because we are studying plays. We are doing Shakespeare. What a man Duke!”
In my second year at Shattuck, I made the drill team, which was called the Crack Squad. It was considered one of the best in the country and was a prestigious assignment. In parades and competitions with other schools, we marched in close-order formation, threw our rifles into the air and did complicated drills with everything synchronized and coordinated. We were never defeated in competition, but it was hard work; for every minute of our performance,