Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me - Marlon Brando [56]
She meant it to be funny and I laughed. I sat down beside her and said, “Let me show you how to play a piano. You can’t play worth a damn.”
I did my best for a few bars; then we chatted, and thereafter I called her from time to time. Finally one night I phoned her and said, “I want to come over and see you right now, and if you can’t give me a good reason why I shouldn’t—maybe you just don’t want me to—tell me now.”
She invited me over, and it wasn’t long before every soldier’s dream came true.
Marilyn was a sensitive, misunderstood person, much more perceptive than was generally assumed. She had been beaten down, but had a strong emotional intelligence—a keen intuition for the feelings of others, the most refined type of intelligence. After that first visit, we had an affair and saw each other intermittently until she died in 1962. She often called me and we would talk for hours, sometimes about how she was beginning to realize that Strasberg and other people were trying to use her. She was becoming a much healthier person emotionally. The last time we spoke was two or three days before she died. She called from her home in Los Angeles and invited me to come over for dinner that night. I said I had already made plans for the evening and couldn’t, but I promised to call the following week to set a date for dinner. She said, “Fine,” and that was it. It’s been speculated that she had a secret rendezvous with Robert Kennedy that week and was distraught because he wanted to end an affair between them. But she didn’t seem depressed to me, and I don’t think that if she was sleeping with him at the time she would have invited me over for dinner.
I’m pretty good at reading people’s moods and perceiving their feelings, and with Marilyn I didn’t sense any depression or clue of impending self-destruction during her call. That’s why I’m sure she didn’t commit suicide. If someone is terminally depressed, no matter how clever they may be or how expertly they try to conceal it, they will always give themselves away. I’ve always had an unquenchable curiosity about people, and I believe I would have sensed something was wrong if thoughts of suicide were anywhere near the surface of Marilyn’s mind. I would have known it. Maybe she died because of an accidental drug overdose, but I have always believed that she was murdered.
Another friend from that era who died sadly and prematurely was Montgomery Clift. We were both from Omaha and broke into acting about the same time. We had the same agent, Edie Van Cleve, and, although he was four years older than me, we were sometimes described as rivals for the same parts. There may have been a rivalry between us—in those days I was a competitive young man determined to be the best and he was a very good actor—but I don’t remember ever feeling that way about him. In my memory he was simply a friend with a tragic destiny.
We met while I was in Truckline Cafe. By then Monty had been in several plays, and I was curious about how good he was and went to see him in The Searching Wind. He was good, and after the play I introduced myself and we went out for dinner. Since we shared a lot of similar experiences, there was a lot to talk about and we became friends, though not close ones. There was a quality about Monty that was very endearing; besides a great deal of charm, he had a powerful emotional intensity, and, like me, he was troubled, something I empathized with. But what troubled him wasn’t evident. Later on, I went out with a girl he had dated, and she said she thought he might be a bisexual or a homosexual, but I found it hard to believe. I never asked him and never suspected it, but if he was a homosexual, I imagine he was torn asunder by it. Whatever the reason, he was a tortured man, and to deaden his pain he began drinking chloral hydrate and then became an alcoholic.
At the time I didn’t understand what was happening or why Monty wanted to destroy himself, but it was tragic to watch. By 1957, when I was in The Young Lions, nobody wanted