(New York Daily News published this on July 3, 2004. This was written by Phil Roura and Corky Siemaszko)
The Godfather is no more.
Marlon Brando, the rebel who revolutionized American acting and won two Oscars playing a mixed-up boxer in “On the Waterfront” and Mafia don Vito Corleone in “The Godfather,” died Thursday. He was 80.
Gasping for breath and weakened by congestive heart and liver failure, Brando spent his last days bedridden in his Beverly Hills, Calif., home, hooked up to an oxygen tank.
“I feel lousy,” Brando told his friend Ellen Adler, daughter of his legendary late acting teacher, Stella Adler.
“We last spoke on Wednesday,” Adler said. “He was very sick. He’d been in bed for a long time.”
The next day, at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, death made Brando an offer he couldn’t refuse.
The actor’s longtime friend and former agent Jay Kanter said Brando died of pulmonary fibrosis at 6:20 p.m. Thursday.
“A couple of family members were with him when he died,” Kanter said. “He was a good friend. I loved him very much.”
Tributes to the Hollywood legend poured in from fellow actors such as Robert Duvall, one of his co-stars in “The Godfather.” “He was like a godfather to many young actors worldwide, but particularly in this country,” Duvall said.
Eva Marie Saint, Brando’s co-star in “On the Waterfront,” said the reason he played washed-up boxer Terry Malloy so authentically was because “he was that fighter.”
“He was so sensitive,” she said. “You just felt that when he looked in your eyes, he knew everything about you.”
President Bush said, “America has lost a great actor of the stage and screen.”
But Brando hated the spotlight, and Adler said he would have been embarrassed by the tributes on his passing.
“He loathed the success he had,” she said. “He had no more privacy once he became famous. His greatest joy in life had been to sit and watch people. He’d remember their every gesture.”
Brando knew his days were numbered last year and began planning his own funeral. According to published reports, he wanted actor Jack Nicholson, a neighbor, to lead the mourning.
A source close to the Brando family told the Daily News they are considering “scattering his ashes in Tahiti,” where his daughter Cheyenne is buried beside her lover, Dag Drollet.
Considered by many critics the greatest actor of his generation, Brando was born in Omaha on April 3, 1924. The son of an alcoholic whose original family name was Brandeau and a frustrated actress, Brando was a wild child everyone called Bud.
Rebellious and defiant, Brando was packed off by his dad to military school, but was expelled.
Unable to take part in World War II because of his 4-F status, Brando at age 19 moved to Manhattan. His sister, Jocelyn, was taking classes from Stella Adler, studying method acting – a technique that encouraged actors to become the roles they played.
On a whim, Brando took a class and found his calling.
He rocketed to stardom playing the brutal Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire” and won his first Academy Award for “On the Waterfront.”
Clad in a black leather jacket and tight T-shirt, Brando was the anti-leading man with a dangerous sexuality and a rebellious streak that set him apart from the well-groomed – and publicly well-behaved – actors of the time.
It was impossible to separate Brando from the character he played in “The Wild One”: Johnny, the motorcycle gang leader, who, when asked what he was rebelling against, replied, “Whattaya got?”
Brando also rebelled against Hollywood conventions and refused to play the role of movie star.
“Hollywood is ruled by fear and love of money,” he said. “But it can’t rule me, because I’m not afraid of anything and I don’t love money.”
Brando bolstered his reputation as a difficult star on the set of “Mutiny on the Bounty” when he got a director fired. But it was while making the movie that he fell for a Tahitian beauty named Tarita Teriipia, who became his third wife.
Brando bought an island, Tetiaroa, and went native, venturing back to Hollywood only when the money ran out. His career was on the wane until director Francis Ford Coppola cast him in “The Godfather.”
Brando’s jowly, raspy-voiced Vito Corleone became one of the screen’s most unforgettable characters – and won him a second Oscar. But in a Brandoesque move, he refused to pick up the prize in protest of the federal government’s treatment of American Indians. And he courted even more controversy with a critically acclaimed turn in the erotically charged French-Italian film “Last Tango in Paris.”
After that, the actor whose early work influenced James Dean, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro as well as Nicholson became infamous for demanding big bucks but rarely delivering a memorable performance. He got good reviews playing insane Col. Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now,” but he was more interested in making money in blockbusters such as “Superman.”
Brando, whose broken-nosed beauty and chiseled physique once made him the epitome of American macho, also grew enormously fat and became the butt of comedians’ jokes.
Thrice married and the father of at least nine children, Brando saw his private life become tabloid fodder in 1990 when his first son, Christian, fatally shot his half-sister’s lover, Drollet.
Christian said the shooting was accidental but was found guilty and sent to prison after a sensational trial.
“Perhaps I failed as a father,” Brando said on the stand.
That tragedy was compounded in 1995 when Brando’s beloved daughter Cheyenne committed suicide at age 25.
Brando’s reclusiveness and eccentric behavior fueled rumors that he was broke and living like a bum. There were reports he hawked his Oscars to pay millions in back taxes.
“That’s absolute rubbish,” Ellen Adler said. “He could have been a billionaire if he hadn’t been so generous to people or invested more wisely. But he was by no means destitute.”
