Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me - Marlon Brando [51]
When Irene walked into my room, I sank into my bed with the covers up to my chin, my eyes half closed, and asked wearily, “Irene, when are they going to let me out of here?”
From the frightened look on her face, I knew she was stunned. She looked down at me and said, “My God, Marlon. You can’t go back to work. You stay right where you are; we’ll get by without you until you’re better. Get some rest. We’ll tell you when it’s time for you to get out.”
“Please,” I said. “Irene, I’m dying in here, I’ve got to get out.”
“You stay right where you are,” she ordered.
So I got another week in the hospital.
21
WHEN A Streetcar Named Desire closed in 1949, after a run of two years, I spent three months in Europe, mostly in Paris, picking up a little French and having a wonderful time. I was one of the wild boys of Paris. I did everything, slept with a lot of women, had no sense of time and slept until two P.M. every day. Anything that was imaginable, I did in Paris. When I returned to New York, most of my clothes and almost everything else I owned were gone. I’d always been generous with my friends and had given away a lot of the money I made, but if I didn’t give it, sometimes they stole it. One night I awoke and looked up at the face of one of my closest friends. There was a table between us; on it was a box where I kept my money and his hands were in it. When I opened my eyes, he withdrew his hands, put them on his hips, said “Hi,” and gave me the look of a jackal. He wasn’t the only friend who took advantage of the fact that I didn’t pay much attention to material things, and when I was in Paris some of these friends came to my apartment, fought over my clothes and stole everything in sight.
The success of Streetcar meant I’d found a way to support myself in a fashion I liked, but it also skewed and shaped my life in ways that saddened me. Fame cuts two ways, I learned: it has at least as many disadvantages as it does advantages. It gives you certain comforts and power, and if you want to do a favor for a friend, your calls are answered. If you want to focus attention on a problem that bothers you, you may be listened to—something, incidentally, that I find ludicrous because why is a movie star’s opinion valued more than that of any other citizen? I’ve had interviewers ask me questions about quantum physics and the sex life of fruit flies as if I knew what I was talking about—and I’ve answered the questions! It doesn’t matter what the question is; people listen to you. A lot of reporters have come to see me after having already written their articles in their heads; they expect Marlon Brando to be eccentric, and so they say to themselves, I’ll ask him a silly question and he’ll answer it.
The power and influence of a movie star is curious: I didn’t ask for it or take it; people gave it to me. Simply because you’re a movie star, people empower you with special rights and privileges. Fame and its effects on people are a fairly new phenomenon; until a couple of centuries ago, unless they were royalty or a religious prophet whose image was polished by their court or disciples who produced Scripture and Holy Writ, people were seldom famous beyond their own villages. Most people couldn’t read, and what knowledge they had was passed on via word of mouth. Then along came better schools, newspapers, magazines, the dime novel, radio, movies and television, and fame became an instant global commodity. It took 1,500 years for Buddhism to travel up the Silk Road and establish itself in China; it took only two weeks for the Twist to go from the Peppermint Lounge to Tahiti. A century and a half ago, many Americans didn’t know who they had elected president until weeks after an election because it took that long for news to reach the hinterlands. Now when