Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me - Marlon Brando [84]
However, earlier in my life I often affixed myself to what the press called “causes.” What affected me most was the suffering of children. I couldn’t understand how the world could let so many children starve to death. Nor could I remain silent when I saw the strong exploit the weak. People pigeonholed me as a knee-jerk liberal and mouthed clichés like, “Brando is a defender of the underdog.” I bridled at words like “militant,” “radical” and “liberal” because they were so glibly used to confuse and mislabel complex attitudes. Still, to be fair, I can understand, given the natural human proclivity to see things in black and white, how some of the things I did during the middle of my life produced this image in some minds.
I thought about becoming a minister, not because I was a religious person, other than having an inexhaustible awe and reverence for nature, but because I thought it might give me more of a purpose in life. I flirted with the idea for a while, but in the end it never developed sufficient force to make me want to do it. Or maybe it was because I became interested in the United Nations, which for a while I saw as perhaps our last hope for peace, social justice and a more equitable sharing of the earth’s resources. For the first time in history, people from different nations with diverse natures, colors, religions and philosophies were working together for the common good. I was impressed by what I read about the UN’s technical-assistance program, which promised to give poor people the know-how and tools to feed themselves, and to create jobs and develop industry. I volunteered to help the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund because it was trying to feed millions of starving children around the world, and I became a roving ambassador for the agency, preaching a different kind of religion: that above all, the world owes its children a decent life. I made television spots for UNICEF and traveled to dozens of countries, holding press conferences to spread the word about the importance of its work and putting on shows to raise money for it. I also decided to make a film about the UN, believing with foolish vanity that I could make a difference by using my movie experience to focus attention on the despair and anguish so many children were enduring. In the spring of 1955, I organized my own movie production company—named Pennebaker Productions after my mother’s maiden name—with three objectives: to make films that would be a force for good in the world, to create a job for my father that would give him something to do after my mother died and to cut taxes. He complained constantly that taxes were taking 80 percent of what I earned, and that by forming a corporation we would be able to cut them substantially to put away some money for my retirement.
As I’ve noted, I had earned $550 a week for A Streetcar Named Desire and more later, and I had given almost all of it to my father to invest. Money was never important to me once I’d fed myself, had a place to sleep and had enough to take care of my family and people I loved.