Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me - Marlon Brando [38]
One of the talent scouts got word to Joe Schenck, a Twentieth Century-Fox executive who was one of the pioneers in the movie business, that there was a young actor he might be interested in. I went over for an interview, and Schenck, a frail near-octogenarian who had all but been put out to pasture by the studio, looked at this young kid in front of him and said, “What have you done, son?”
“I’ve done a couple of plays—”
“Why don’t you get your nose fixed?” he asked.
“Why should I get my nose fixed?”
“Because you’ll look better,” he said. Then he turned around and looked at a huge picture of Tyrone Power covering the entire wall behind him. “Well, we’ll talk some other time,” he said, and that was the end of my interview.
Broadway producer Edward Dowling told me that the American Theatre Wing was going to produce a new play by Eugene O’Neill and asked me to try out for it. Although I had read several of O’Neill’s plays, including Desire Under the Elms, I’d always thought he was dour, negative and too dark, and I couldn’t understand the philosophical import of what he was trying to say. But I told Mr. Dowling I’d come over for an audition. The night before, he sent me a copy of the script, which was about an inch and a half thick. I started reading it, but couldn’t get through it because I thought the speeches were too long and boring. After reading about a tenth of it, I fell asleep. The next day I went to the theater and argued with Mr. Dowling and Margaret Webster, the coproducer, for about half an hour about why I thought the play was ineptly written, poorly constructed and would never be a success. “What did you think of it?” I finally asked. “Tell me its virtues.”
I had to ask the question because even though I was spouting off with self-assurance, I hardly knew anything about it, since I hadn’t even read all of the first act.
Patiently, Eddie told me why he thought it was a good play and what he thought O’Neill was trying to say. I continued bluffing, still not having any idea of what the story was about, and finally told him that I didn’t want to do it.
Of course when it opened The Iceman Cometh was called O’Neill’s masterpiece.
15
INSTEAD OF The Iceman Cometh, I acted in a play directed by Stella’s brother Luther, A Flag Is Born. It was a powerful, well-written pageant by Ben Hecht with music by Kurt Weill, although it was essentially a piece of political propaganda advocating the creation of the state of Israel and indirectly condemning the British for stopping the Jewish refugees en route from Europe to colonize Palestine. At that time, September 1946, the New York Jewish community and Jews throughout the world were fixated on the future of Palestine and Zionism. I wanted to act in the play because of what we were beginning to learn about the true nature of the killing of the Jews and because of the empathy I felt for the Adlers and the other Jews who had become my friends and teachers and who told me of their dreams for a Jewish state. In hindsight, I think it was also because I was starting what would become a journey to try to understand the human impulse that makes it not only possible but easy for one group of people to single out another and try to destroy it. It was the beginning of a lifelong interest in the dark side of human behavior.
Everyone in A Flag Is Born was Jewish except me. Paul Muni, the star, gave an astonishing performance, the best acting I have ever seen. I was onstage with him and he gave me goose-bumps. His performance was magical and affected me deeply. He was the only actor who ever moved me to leave my dressing room to watch him from the wings. He never failed to chill me with one particular speech. I played a young Jewish firebrand named David struggling to find his way to Palestine; in a graveyard he meets the wounded and dying Tevya, a prophetlike man, played by Muni, who tries to help him but dies. David covers him with a Jewish