marlon moment

On that remembered afternoon in 1947, Marlon Brando was still relatively unknown; at least, I hadn’t a clue to who he might be when, arriving too early at the “Streetcar” rehearsal, I found the auditorium deserted and a brawny young man stretched out atop a table on the stage under the gloomy glare of work lights, solidly asleep. Because he was wearing a white T shirt and denim trousers, because of his squat gymnasium physique—the weight-lifter’s arms, the Charles Atlas chest (though an opened “Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud” was resting on it)—I took him for a stagehand. Or did until I looked closely at his face. It was as if a stranger’s head had been attached to the brawny body, as in certain counterfeit photographs. For this face was so very untough, superimposing, as it did, an almost angelic refinement and gentleness upon hard-jawed good looks: taut skin, a broad, high forehead, wide apart eyes, an aquiline nose, full lips with a relaxed, sensual expression. Not the least suggestion of Williams’ unpoetic Kowalski. It was therefore rather an experience to observe, later that afternoon, with what chameleon ease Brando acquired the character’s cruel and gaudy colors, how superbly, like a guileful salamander, he slithered into the part, how his own persona evaporated. — Truman Capote, on first meeting Marlon Brando