Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me - Marlon Brando [72]
On the day Gadg showed me the completed picture, I was so depressed by my performance I got up and left the screening room. I thought I was a huge failure, and walked out without a word to him. I was simply embarrassed for myself.
None of us are perfect, and I think Gadg has done great injury to others, but mostly to himself. I am indebted to him for all that I learned. He was a wonderful teacher.
I had a great conflict about going to the Academy Awards and accepting an Oscar. I never believed that the accomplishment was more important than the effort. I remember being driven to the Awards still wondering whether I should have put on my tuxedo. I finally thought, what the hell; people want to express their thanks, and if it is a big deal for them, why not go? I have since altered my opinion about awards in general, and will never again accept one of any kind. This doesn’t mean that what other people believe has any less validity; many people I know and care about believe that awards are valuable and involve themselves in the process of the Academy Awards and others. I don’t look down upon them for doing so, and I hope that they do not look down upon me.
If I regretted anything, it may have been that Duke Wagner wasn’t around for that evening. By that time he was dead.
I don’t know what happened to the Oscar they gave me for On the Waterfront. Somewhere in the passage of time it disappeared. I didn’t think about it until a year or so ago, when my lawyer called and told me that an auction house in London was planning to sell it. When I wrote a letter to them saying that they had no right to do so, they replied that they would abide by my wishes, but that the person who had put it up for sale wouldn’t relinquish it because supposedly I had given it to him or her. This is simply untrue.
29
WHEN I MUMBLED my lines in some parts, it puzzled theater critics. I played many roles in which I didn’t mumble a single syllable, but in others I did it because it is the way people speak in ordinary life. I wasn’t the first actor to do it. Dame May Whitty, who, like Eleonora Duse, was a fine actress who deviated from the traditional acting school’s techniques of declaiming, superficial gesture and stilted dialogue, was famous for muttering and mumbling. In her day it was unheard of for actors to mumble or slur their words and speak like ordinary people, but she got away with it.
If everyone spoke according to the rules of the old school of acting, we’d never pause to search for words, never slur a word, never say something like, “Uh …” or “What did you say?”
In ordinary life people seldom know exactly what they’re going to say when they open their mouths and start to express a thought. They’re still thinking, and the fact that they are looking for words shows on their faces. They pause for an instant to find the right word, search their minds to compose a sentence, then express it.
Until Stella Adler came along, few actors understood this; they recited speeches given to them by a writer in the style of an elocution school, and if audiences didn’t instantly understand them or had to work a little to do so, the performers were criticized. The audience was conditioned to expect actors to speak in a way seldom heard outside a theater. Today actors are expected to speak, think and search for words to give the impression that they are actually living in that moment. Most actors in America now strive for this effect. However, there are other affectations that have crept in. For example, many actors rely on cigarettes to convey naturalness. When smoking was in vogue, Stella criticized some actors’ behavior and would refer to it as cigarette-acting. Generally actors don’t realize how deeply affected the technique of acting was by the fact that Stella went to Russia and studied