Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me - Marlon Brando [55]
Notified that my draft status had been changed from 4-F to 1-A, I went to the induction center in New York. I’d had an operation on the knee I injured at Shattuck, and was no longer lame enough to be excluded from the draft. I was given a questionnaire and instructed to fill it out.
Race?
“Human,” I wrote.
Color?
“Seasonal—oyster white to beige.”
When an army doctor asked me if I knew of any reasons why I shouldn’t be inducted into the armed services, I answered, “I’m psychoneurotic.”
He referred me to a psychiatrist, who asked, “Why do you think you are psychoneurotic and unsuitable for military service?”
“I had a very bad history in military school,” I answered, “I don’t respond well to authority and I got kicked out. Besides, I have emotional problems.”
Skeptically the doctor asked if I was being treated for any psychological problems, and I told him that I was seeing Dr. Bela Mittelman.
He gave me a funny look and said, “Who?”
“Bela Mittelman.”
“Bela Mittelman! For Chrissake, where is he?”
I said he had an office down the street about two blocks away.
“I’ll be goddamned,” he said. They were old friends. Then he scribbled on my induction papers: “Not suited for military service.”
We chatted a few more minutes, and then as I was going out the door, he gave me his card and said, “Tell Bela to call me.”
I answered, “He’s in the book, but I’ll tell him …”
And that was why I didn’t go to Korea.
22
MY SECOND MOTION picture was A Streetcar Named Desire. Although Hollywood censors sapped Tennessee’s story of some of its sting, I thought it was better than the play. Vivien Leigh, who had played Blanche in the London stage production, was brought over from England for the movie, and I’ve always thought it was perfect casting. In many ways she was Blanche. She was memorably beautiful, one of the great beauties of the screen, but she was also vulnerable, and her own life had been very much like that of Tennessee’s wounded butterfly. It had paralleled Blanche’s in several ways, especially when her mind began to wobble and her sense of self became vague. Like Blanche, she slept with almost everybody and was beginning to dissolve mentally and to fray at the ends physically. I might have given her a tumble if it hadn’t been for Larry Olivier. I’m sure he knew she was playing around, but like a lot of husbands I’ve known, he pretended not to see it, and I liked him too much to invade his chicken coop.
Making the movie reinforced my decision not to take on another Broadway play. I’ve heard it said that I sold out to Hollywood. In a way it’s true, but I knew exactly what I was doing. I’ve never had any respect for Hollywood. It stands for avarice, phoniness, greed, crassness and bad taste, but when you act in a movie, you only have to work three months a year, then you can do as you please for the rest.
Although I decided not to make another long-term commitment to the stage, I was glad to get back to New York after the filming of Streetcar. I lived in an apartment at Sixth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street near Carnegie Hall and dropped in from time to time at the Actors Studio to meet girls. One of them was Marilyn Monroe, who was being exploited by Lee Strasberg. I had first met her briefly shortly after the war and bumped into her again—literally—at a party in New York. While the other people at the party drank and danced, she sat by herself almost unnoticed in a corner, playing the piano. I was talking to someone with a drink in my hand, having a good time, when someone tapped me on the shoulder; I spun around quickly and hit her with a sharp elbow to the head. It was a solid knock and I knew it must have hurt.
“Oh, my God,” I said, “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. It was an accident.”
Marilyn looked