Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me - Marlon Brando [27]
Traditions passed on via the Torah and Talmud have somehow helped Jews to fulfill the destiny they have claimed, a kind of “chosen people,” if spectacular success in so many, many fields is proof of that. Whatever the reasons for their brilliance and success, I was never educated until I was exposed to them. They introduced me to a sense of culture that has lasted me a lifetime.
As well as academics and scholars from Eastern Europe, Jewish girls, most of whom were more educated, sophisticated and experienced in the ways of the world than I was, were my teachers during those early days in New York. It was common in those days for girls from wealthy New York Jewish families to rent an apartment in the city and have a little fling before striking out on a career or marriage after they had graduated from college. With my inept, simple ways, I must have seemed to them like an alien from a galaxy beyond the Milky Way. I was a gentile in a Jewish world who had hardly been to school; I rode a motorcycle; I was young, reasonably attractive, full of vim, vigor and sexuality, an exotic specimen if for no other reason than I was different from the boys these girls had grown up with. I didn’t follow any of their rules and they didn’t follow any of mine. They were fascinated by me and I by them. Many were more experienced sexually than I was, and I was a willing and happy pupil. I remember especially Caroline Burke, a beautiful woman who was about ten years older than I was, in whom I always regretted not making a more permanent investment. She was not only physically attractive and well educated, but bursting with elegance, charm, taste and appreciation for beautiful things. She lived in an apartment filled with antiques and always wore delicious perfume. To her, I suppose I was a kind of bumpkin—a nineteen-year-old farm boy who still worried secretly that he had manure on his shoes, but she taught me a great deal.
I was walking down Fifty-seventh Street with Caroline one day and innocently asked, “Isn’t it funny how you see so many women with blond hair and a mink coat?” There was a woman in front of us with blond hair wearing a mink coat and we were talking about her, when Caroline said, “She’s Jewish.” I asked, “How do you know?” She answered, “Well, it’s because … I don’t know, she’s just Jewish.” I said, “You mean to say, just because she has blond hair and a mink—” She interrupted, “Look, I’m a Jew, and I know what Jews are like from the front, back, side or top.” “Well, how can you tell a Jew from a non-Jew?” She replied, “Well, you have to be Jewish to know that.” I was stunned, and I thought Caroline had remarkable powers of perception.
After several months in New York, I was still interested in becoming a modern dancer, but then I took an acting class at the New School’s Dramatic Workshop and everything changed. During that fall of 1943, I kept my parents informed of my progress in letters that seem to have been written by a person I barely recognize, a naïve kid trying hard to understand the galaxy he had stumbled into and looking for a place in it as well as a purpose in life:
Dear Folks:
I am fine, depimpled and healthy. I haven’t found a room as yet but I think by the end of this week I will have gotten one that I’ve had my eye on … last week, we did “Tonight We Improvise” by Pirandello and it was good. Piscator liked me in it. It was lots of fun. I have met an interesting girl whose name is Renata (beautiful name).