How Marlon Brando “loosened up” when it came to having sex with men
A post shared by Marlon Brando: Hollywood Rebel (@marlonbrandobook)Coinciding with the April 3 centennial of an undisputed American legend is the new book, “Marlon Brando: Hollywood Rebel.” The revelatory biography by author, journalist, and pop culture authority Burt Kearns digs deep into unexplored aspects of Brando’s career, interests, and personality, revealing how his roles on stage and screen, combined with his wild and restless personal life, helped to transform popular culture and society.
In short: how the greatest actor of the twentieth century helped lead the world into the twenty-first. In this excerpt, the author explores how Brando helped liberalize and “loosen up” attitudes toward sex and sexuality.It has been acknowledged by Brando himself that he was very comfortable having sexual relations with men as well as women, and sometimes with men and women together.
In Brando: The Biography, Peter Manso listed no less than sixteen index entries under “Brando, Marlon, Jr. (‘Bud’): bisexuality of,” with witness testimony dating back to his school days at the Shattuck Military Academy, where he had an open relationship with a fellow cadet, who “was several years younger than Marlon, finely featured to the point of almost being pretty.”Subscribe to our newsletter for a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.Truman Capote interviewed Brando in Kyoto, Japan, during the filming of Sayonara, for what would be an uncomfortably revealing piece in The New Yorker.
During their conversation, Capote mentioned a mutual friend who claimed he’d had sex with the actor. “I asked Marlon and he admitted it,” Capote told his biographer Gerald Clarke. “He said he went to bed with lots of other men, too, but that he didn’t consider himself a homosexual.
