Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me Part 10

42.

SO MANY THINGS happened during the sixties and seventies that now a lot of those years are a blur. I was still trying to give my life some meaning and enlisted in almost any campaign I thought would help end poverty, racial discrimination and social injustice. But that wasn't all I did in those years; there was a lot of partying, getting drunk, having fun, jumping into swimming pools, smoking gra.s.s, lying on beaches and watching the sun go down. During the sixties in Hollywood, everybody was sleeping with everybody. It was part of the game to screw the other guy's wife or girlfriend and vice versa, and I did my share of it. As always, making movies was a means to an end: earning enough money to feed myself and my family, make my alimony payments, pay for my projects on Teti'aroa and help people in need. I did as much playing as I did worrying about the state of the world, but I still felt that films ought to address issues like hypocrisy, injustice and the corruptness of government policies. Sometimes I would decide to stop making movies altogether and I told my secretary to send back all scripts unread because I didn't want to make any more money. California is a community-property state, which meant that my wife of record was ent.i.tled to half of everything I made, and sometimes I refused to work. happened during the sixties and seventies that now a lot of those years are a blur. I was still trying to give my life some meaning and enlisted in almost any campaign I thought would help end poverty, racial discrimination and social injustice. But that wasn't all I did in those years; there was a lot of partying, getting drunk, having fun, jumping into swimming pools, smoking gra.s.s, lying on beaches and watching the sun go down. During the sixties in Hollywood, everybody was sleeping with everybody. It was part of the game to screw the other guy's wife or girlfriend and vice versa, and I did my share of it. As always, making movies was a means to an end: earning enough money to feed myself and my family, make my alimony payments, pay for my projects on Teti'aroa and help people in need. I did as much playing as I did worrying about the state of the world, but I still felt that films ought to address issues like hypocrisy, injustice and the corruptness of government policies. Sometimes I would decide to stop making movies altogether and I told my secretary to send back all scripts unread because I didn't want to make any more money. California is a community-property state, which meant that my wife of record was ent.i.tled to half of everything I made, and sometimes I refused to work.

I still couldn't help being concerned for people who were less fortunate than me, who were up against it or were treated wrongly by others. Above all, I detested those who abused authority, whether they were parents or presidents, and trampled on other people. Injustice, prejudice, poverty, unfairness and racial discrimination offended me, whether it involved groups not fortunate enough to be favored by our political system or individuals like Caryl Chessman, whose execution I opposed because I thought he had been unjustly condemned to die.

The movie about the United Nations that I had intended to make when we organized Pennebaker in 1955 evolved six years later into The Ugly American The Ugly American, which was based on the book by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burd.i.c.k. I played a U.S. amba.s.sador, Harrison Carter McWhite, a vain and seemingly well-intentioned man who was sent to a fictional country in Southeast Asia and brought with him all the misconceptions and self-interest of the American ruling cla.s.s. I regarded him as a metaphor of the ways the United States condescendingly and selfishly treated poorer nations in the so-called Third World. In hindsight I now realize that the movie was also a metaphor for all the policies that led to Vietnam and the loss of 58,000 American lives, largely because of myths about the "Communist conspiracy" and the "domino theory" that sprang out of the heads of the Dulles brothers.

As I've already mentioned, when I first heard about the UN's technical-a.s.sistance program and America's foreign aid, I had thought of them as wonderful examples of the haves helping the have-nots with compa.s.sion and charity. But when I visited Third World countries for UNICEF, I had realized that the policies of the industrialized nations were not only selfish, self-serving and misguided, but also weren't working. In the name of all that was decent, the United States and companies like the United Fruit Company claimed the right to run the world; throughout Latin America and Asia the United States bankrolled any government, no matter how corrupt, that agreed to oppose communism and to favor American interests. But the populations of these countries were being alienated by us. The leaders of the so-called free world created dictators.h.i.+ps and propped up tyrants whose only indigenous support was among the wealthy elite, resisting ordinary citizens' democratic dreams. Tolerating murder and corruption, the United States rationalized that it was better for a nation like the Philippines to have a tyrannical dictator like Ferdinand Marcos, who opposed communism, than a leader who would be responsive to peasants' wanting a share of the prosperity that was concentrated in the hands of only 2 percent of the population. The CIA destabilized elected governments and intervened in other countries' internal affairs. Our government created dictators who robbed, cheated and murdered their people with impunity, but as long as they were against communism, it let them get away with anything, including murder. Further, if we sent any aid to these countries, there were strings attached. It wasn't because we wanted to fight starvation, ignorance, disease and poverty; it was because of self-interest, greed and the myths about communism.

When The Ugly American The Ugly American opened in Bangkok, Kukrit Pramoj, a former government minister of Thailand who in the movie played the prime minister of our fictional country, threw a party and invited Thailand's entire diplomatic corps, I flew over for it and, as one of the guests of honor, was seated in a prominent position where everybody could see me. The princ.i.p.al entertainment was a formal Thai opera, which consisted of dancers in bare feet moving very slowly. It seemed to take them years to move their eyes from one side to the other and centuries to move their hands or feet. Before long, I couldn't stay awake, and someone beside me had to keep poking me to keep me conscious. It would have been a terrible insult to fall asleep, because I was the guest of honor. Between acts, the music stopped and I had to get up and walk over to the players and, with appropriate gestures and greetings in Thai, tell them through a translator how wonderful they were. It was hard to make a sensible commentary about the wonders of the Thai opera, but I was told that in the next act the Monkey King would attack and there would be a fierce battle. At last, I thought, some action and excitement are coming up. It is difficult to credit, but this part of the opera was even slower than the others; the high point was some finger-wagging and eye movements that each took about a minute to complete. Fighting the two stevedores who were pulling my eyelids down, I overcompensated and must have looked like a zombie with my eyes frozen open. opened in Bangkok, Kukrit Pramoj, a former government minister of Thailand who in the movie played the prime minister of our fictional country, threw a party and invited Thailand's entire diplomatic corps, I flew over for it and, as one of the guests of honor, was seated in a prominent position where everybody could see me. The princ.i.p.al entertainment was a formal Thai opera, which consisted of dancers in bare feet moving very slowly. It seemed to take them years to move their eyes from one side to the other and centuries to move their hands or feet. Before long, I couldn't stay awake, and someone beside me had to keep poking me to keep me conscious. It would have been a terrible insult to fall asleep, because I was the guest of honor. Between acts, the music stopped and I had to get up and walk over to the players and, with appropriate gestures and greetings in Thai, tell them through a translator how wonderful they were. It was hard to make a sensible commentary about the wonders of the Thai opera, but I was told that in the next act the Monkey King would attack and there would be a fierce battle. At last, I thought, some action and excitement are coming up. It is difficult to credit, but this part of the opera was even slower than the others; the high point was some finger-wagging and eye movements that each took about a minute to complete. Fighting the two stevedores who were pulling my eyelids down, I overcompensated and must have looked like a zombie with my eyes frozen open.

I don't know how I made it through the performance. Afterward I met all the diplomats and dignitaries at the event; there were handshakes all around and much conversation in French, Thai, English and broken English. I was nearly dead asleep, but for some reason I enjoyed it all very much. Back at my hotel, I collapsed on the floor because the air conditioning was coolest there. My feet itched terribly but I didn't know why. Before I finally fell asleep, I remember thinking that if only the hog gnawing on my heels would stop chewing on me for half a minute everything would be wonderful.

Strange as it may seem, it was nights like these that made being in the movies worthwhile. They gave me a chance to meet people like Justice William O. Douglas, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dag Hammarskjold, Sukarno, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Robert and John Kennedy.

When JFK ran for president, I believed he was a new kind of politician whom I could admire, so I supported him, even though I have rarely voted in my life. He was not only charming but bright, and he had a sense of history and curiosity and an apparent sincerity about wanting to right some of the wrongs in our country.

At a fund-raising dinner I attended, Kennedy began working the room, table-hopping and shaking hands with everyone. "You must be pretty bored by all this," I said when he got to me.

"As a matter of fact," he said, a little startled and perhaps offended, "I'm not bored at all. I'm interested in what people have to say, what their opinions are and-"

"C'mon," I said. "You mean you're thrilled to death to sit here and make cracker-crumb conversation with a lot of purple-haired ladies?"

"I like those ladies," Kennedy said.

"Oh, c'mon."

Kennedy looked at me with undisguised hostility and suspicion until I smiled at him and said, "You really can't be all that serious."

He smiled back, and it was a lovely smile, when he realized that I was not being critical, that I was simply saying, in effect, that just once I'd like to hear a politician tell the truth.

After dinner a Secret Service agent came over and told me the president wanted to see me.

This will be interesting, I thought, and followed the man upstairs to Kennedy's hotel room. He hadn't eaten at the fundraiser because he was so busy shaking hands, so he was going to have dinner now and invited me to join him. But before that we proceeded to get drunk.

Kennedy was unbridled, spirited and full of zest and curiosity about the women I knew in Hollywood. Then he changed the subject, looked at me suspiciously and said, "We know what you've been doing with the American Indians," wagging a finger at me.

"Well," I said, "I know what you've not not been doing with the American Indians." been doing with the American Indians."

Changing the subject again, he said, "You're getting too fat for the part."

"What part? "I asked.

"That's not important. It's the fat that's important...."

"Are you kidding?" I said. "Have you looked in the mirror lately? Your jowls won't even fit in the frame of the television screen. When they have to go in for a close-up, they lose half your face. You look like the moon on television. I can hardly see your face, it's so fat."

Kennedy said he weighed a lot less than I did, and I said, "No, you don't." So we headed for the bathroom, both of us weaving, and I got on the scale. I can't remember what my weight was, but when he got on it I put my toe on the corner and made him about twenty-five pounds heavier, so that he weighed more than I did. "Let's go, Fatso, you lost," I said.

A few years later, while the Vietnam War was beginning to blossom into the tragedy it became, I went back to Asia for a UNICEF emergency-food program in the northeastern Indian state of Bihar, which had been struck by a devastating famine. The suffering moved me to make a forty-five-minute movie about it, which I filmed with a sixteen-millimeter camera. I traveled with UNICEF workers from village to village by Jeep over such rutted, muddy roads that it took longer to drive seventy-five miles on some of them than to fly between Los Angeles and New York. Most of the villages were laid out in a figure eight: on one side lived the Brahmans and the Indians of other upper castes; on the other side lived the untouchables. Usually the wells on the untouchables' side of town were dried up, and no one had the money to drill a new one, yet they were forbidden to take any water from the wells used by people of higher castes because according to their beliefs they were unclean and would pollute them. Even if an untouchable received water in an earthen jug from a Brahman well, it was believed that he would pollute the Brahman.

My mind became bent trying to follow the logic of all this and the ways in which the untouchables were treated. They had to sweep the streets and to gather up human dung with their hands. To the Hindus they were not only untouchable, but unhearable. In times gone by they couldn't play musical instruments in some villages because they would pollute the ears of any Brahmans who heard the music; they couldn't walk on some roads because they would be seen seen and thus pollute the vision of the Brahmans; they had to carry a bell when they walked to announce their presence so that Brahmans could avoid unintentional contact. In one village I saw an untouchable standing outside a store trying to be heard. The merchant came out on his porch and asked, "What do you want?" The untouchable answered, "I want some rice." The shopkeeper told him how much it cost, then backed off; the untouchable placed some rupees on a post outside the shop then backed away, the merchant came out, took the money, put the rice on the post, then disappeared, and the untouchable came forward slowly and took the rice. He had accepted his position in the hierarchy. Meanwhile the shopkeeper had to perform a religious ritual to purify himself because he had been polluted by the untouchable's money. and thus pollute the vision of the Brahmans; they had to carry a bell when they walked to announce their presence so that Brahmans could avoid unintentional contact. In one village I saw an untouchable standing outside a store trying to be heard. The merchant came out on his porch and asked, "What do you want?" The untouchable answered, "I want some rice." The shopkeeper told him how much it cost, then backed off; the untouchable placed some rupees on a post outside the shop then backed away, the merchant came out, took the money, put the rice on the post, then disappeared, and the untouchable came forward slowly and took the rice. He had accepted his position in the hierarchy. Meanwhile the shopkeeper had to perform a religious ritual to purify himself because he had been polluted by the untouchable's money.

The Bihari children I filmed were emaciated and covered with smallpox lesions and scabs; many were dying. Usually there was no hospital for many miles; if there was one, it was understaffed and had little medicine or food. The hospital beds were gray with flies and the children were laid out on them according to caste; even there the untouchables were outcasts. In almost all the villages, children suffered from malnutrition and diarrhea. Mothers had no milk because they had had no food and little water. One little girl came up to a relief worker who was offering her food and she reached out with the folds of her sari to collect it, but the garment was so threadbare there wasn't a square inch of cloth strong enough to hold the food.

In many villages cows had chewed the thatch off the roofs because they had nothing to eat, and people were so thin it seemed incredible that they could walk. If you touched the cheek of a child, a hollow spot remained in her flesh after you removed your hand; the skin had no resiliency and was like that of a cadaver.

In one village I was photographing a group of Indians when a woman came out of the crowd and offered her baby to the camera as if it possessed a magic that could save her child. As I photographed dying children, it seemed surreal that not far away people were killing each other in Vietnam. How I would have liked to take a tiny portion of the money being spent on bombs for that country to hire teams of hydrologists who could go from village to village digging new wells.

India's caste system is the most insidious social system man has ever devised, though in principle it is no different from caste systems in all societies. Similar hierarchies exist in all anthropoidal systems, among humans, baboons, chimpanzees and gorillas. In India the system is simply more complex and stratified, with some nineteen thousand subcastes in Hindu society. People born into inferior castes are presumed to have done evil in a previous life; at the top of the hierarchy, the Brahmans claim to be descendants of the holiest priestly cla.s.s. Yet even some Brahmans won't marry other Brahmans because they are not in the same subcaste. Because of Gandhi, it has been illegal since 1949 to treat untouchables as inferior, but laws can't change how people think. Even with all his force and power, Gandhi barely made a dent. This appalling system, with variations, is common in all societies, including ours, as a result of the fundamental human drive to organize into groups and identify others as inferior. It is ironic that when the British, whose cla.s.s system is as rigid, if not as complex, as the Indians', ruled the country, they treated the Brahmans as if they were a lowly caste.

In the United States we've always had our own untouchables-American Indians, blacks, h.o.m.os.e.xuals. Who knows who will be next?

On my last day of filming, after photographing a child who had died right in front of me, I put my camera down and cried. I couldn't take any more. I knew that I had to get the scenes I had filmed to the American people and thought if I did so, the whole country would be appalled and do whatever it took to ameliorate this misery. When I got home, I showed the film to Jack Valenti, who became president of the Motion Picture a.s.sociation of America after serving as a presidential aide; he told me he had shown it to President Johnson, but that was the last I heard of it. I showed it to as many prominent people in Hollywood as I could, but n.o.body offered to help arrange to show it in movie theaters as a doc.u.mentary, even though among those who saw the film there wasn't anybody with a dry eye later, except for the wife of one producer, who said, "You know, Marlon, we ought to take care of our own first"-one of our famous phrases. After striking out in Hollywood, I thought the picture might reach an even wider audience on television, so I showed it to an executive at CBS News, who said, "It's an effective film, but we can't use it."

"Why not?" I asked.

He said, "Because our news department produces all its own stuff; we don't requisition or use outside doc.u.mentaries."

"Why not? I was there. What I'm showing you is the truth."

"Well, we have policies we have to follow, and we can't make exceptions."

NBC told me the same thing, so I never got the film on television and that was the end of it.

43.

ONE FACT ABOUT MY LIFE I constantly find amazing: I was born only sixty-two years after one human being could still buy another human being in America. I remember first being amazed by this discovery when I was an adolescent, and wondered how it could be. I read the history of black people, began to empathize with them and tried as best I could to imagine what it would be like to be black-which, of course, is impossible, though it took me many years to learn that. I began thinking of African Americans as a heroic people because of their enormous resiliency acquired over almost four hundred years; despite slavery and torturous treatment by whites, they had never allowed their spirit to be broken. Through every adversity and hards.h.i.+p, they preserved something, even if it was only their music or religion. They were yanked out of their homes in Africa, forced to endure a long trek to a seaport in chains, then imprisoned at sea before being delivered somewhere to be sold. They survived not only these hards.h.i.+ps but the uncertainty and shock of not knowing where they were headed or what would happen to them when they got there; then they were thrust into what must have been a terrifying world of a different language, customs and culture. Families were split up and sold to slave owners who forced them to work like animals on whatever diet their masters deigned to allow them. They had to live this way from generation to generation, beaten down and made to feel like animals. The ones who survived had to be very strong, which is why I've always thought of American blacks as being different from African ones; their ancestors had to endure so much that only the strongest could survive. I constantly find amazing: I was born only sixty-two years after one human being could still buy another human being in America. I remember first being amazed by this discovery when I was an adolescent, and wondered how it could be. I read the history of black people, began to empathize with them and tried as best I could to imagine what it would be like to be black-which, of course, is impossible, though it took me many years to learn that. I began thinking of African Americans as a heroic people because of their enormous resiliency acquired over almost four hundred years; despite slavery and torturous treatment by whites, they had never allowed their spirit to be broken. Through every adversity and hards.h.i.+p, they preserved something, even if it was only their music or religion. They were yanked out of their homes in Africa, forced to endure a long trek to a seaport in chains, then imprisoned at sea before being delivered somewhere to be sold. They survived not only these hards.h.i.+ps but the uncertainty and shock of not knowing where they were headed or what would happen to them when they got there; then they were thrust into what must have been a terrifying world of a different language, customs and culture. Families were split up and sold to slave owners who forced them to work like animals on whatever diet their masters deigned to allow them. They had to live this way from generation to generation, beaten down and made to feel like animals. The ones who survived had to be very strong, which is why I've always thought of American blacks as being different from African ones; their ancestors had to endure so much that only the strongest could survive.

When Lincoln gave blacks their so-called freedom, it was transformed with the speed of summer lightning into the sharecropper system. Then came the KKK, the lynchings, the theft of their const.i.tutional rights and all the modern kinds of slavery. Blacks were free, but discrimination was so complete and insidious that all it did was change the form of slavery. White people were in the majority, and blacks have been conditioned from birth into thinking of themselves as inferior. They sense it every day; they are denied hope, yet have survived adversities while enriching our culture enormously. Much American humor comes from blacks; so does our music. Blacks taught the world how to dance, from the jitterbug to rock 'n' roll, and I believe they were largely responsible for helping liberate Americans from the puritan att.i.tudes toward s.e.xuality that weighed down our culture for most of this century and the one before it. Along with their music, s.e.x was among the few things granted slaves, because when they procreated it meant a new chattel. Their dancing and music were expropriated by whites, but through it they taught us, and others in much of the rest of the world, to be aware of our s.e.xuality and be less inhibited by the impulses that are a natural part of all of us.

When the civil rights movement took shape in the late fifties and early sixties, I did whatever I could to support it and went down South with Paul Newman, Virgil Frye, Tony Franciosa and other friends to join the freedom marches and be with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At the March on Was.h.i.+ngton, I stood a few steps behind Dr. King when he gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, and it still reverberates in my mind. He was a man I deeply admired. I've always thought that while a part of him regretted having to become so deeply involved in the cause of racial equality, another part of him drove him to it, though I'm convinced he knew he would have to sacrifice himself.

I have never been so moved by anything as the words King spoke the night before he was murdered in Memphis: "I just want to do G.o.d's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you..." but his people would reach the promised land. "I'm not fearing any man." He said he would like to live a long life, for longevity had its place, but, "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord...." It was almost as if he were announcing his death; somehow he knew it was near and inevitable. I believe he was ready to die. He had accomplished much, but I think he felt such anguish and pain that he was near the end of his tether. His mission in Memphis had simply been to get a small wage increase for the city's garbage collectors, a job that was among the best a black man could hope for. His bravery and courage in the face of imminent disaster still move me.

After King's murder and the a.s.sa.s.sinations of Bobby Kennedy and Medgar Evers, black people could rightly say that they no longer had any reason to have faith in nonviolence and pa.s.sive resistance. Mayor John Lindsay asked me to walk with him through the streets of Harlem to cool things down after Dr. King's a.s.sa.s.sination, and I agreed, not realizing it was a political act meant to court black votes. The mayor's staff alerted the press, so as soon as we arrived we were surrounded by photographers. People from Harlem began pus.h.i.+ng and shoving me; I thought they wanted to ask me for an autograph, but instead they were pleading for jobs.

After I returned to California, I read an article about the Black Panther party, whose members the year before had invaded the state capitol in Sacramento. I didn't know anything about them or their agenda, but I was curious, and so I called their headquarters in Oakland and spoke to one of the leaders-either Bobby Seale or Eldridge Cleaver, I don't remember-who invited me to Oakland. I was met at the airport by a contingent of Panthers, who took me to Eldridge's apartment, where I stayed most of the night with him, his wife, Kathleen, a man named Crutch, Bobby Seale and a seventeen-year-old Black Panther named Bobby Hutton.

I was hungry for information about the Panthers and still trying to understand what it was like to be a black man in America. Other than my friends.h.i.+p with Jim Baldwin, I had no frame of reference and felt I had to know. Eldridge spoke with incisive and impressive intelligence about poverty, prejudice and white resistance to black equality. He was a sensitive man but, like a lot of Black Panthers whose masculinity had been threatened by racism, he spoke with bravado. He said that by being aggressive in pursuing their const.i.tutional rights, the Panthers wanted to give younger black men more pride in themselves. At a fundamental level I believe that all they really wanted was respect as human beings; one of the realities of being young and black in America, Cleaver said, was not having any black heroes to wors.h.i.+p or identify with. All the history books, all the movies and television shows, he said, were about white people. However, it wasn't this kind of prejudice that hurt blacks the most, he said; it was that in a white-dominated society, it was as if blacks didn't count.

We talked until almost four A.M. A.M., and I learned a great deal about a variety of subjects, but especially about the day-to-day experiences of being a black man in Oakland-of being stopped and searched by policemen simply because he was black, of being degraded, belittled and called "n.i.g.g.e.r" by cops, of applying for a job and seeing in the eyes of employers that as soon as he entered their doors the job no longer existed.

About two weeks later, Bobby Hutton and Eldridge Cleaver were trapped in a house and surrounded by the Oakland police. The house caught fire, and when Bobby Hutton walked outside, the police shot him, killing a beautiful boy. Eldridge, who was still inside, took his clothes off when he saw what had happened, then came outside with his hands up and his fingers spread, totally naked. It was an intelligent move because there were too many witnesses for the police to a.s.sa.s.sinate a man who plainly had no weapons. I'm sure this act saved his life.

The killing of Bobby Hutton confirmed everything I'd heard during that long night in Oakland. The next day I flew back to Oakland. Jim Farmer, the founder of the Congress of Racial Equality, was also there that day, and it was one of the few times in my life I have felt real danger. There was so much tension in Oakland that I sensed the police would use any excuse to kill someone sympathetic to the Black Panthers. The Cleaver house still reeked of tear gas and it made my eyes water, even though the doors and windows had been thrown open. Glancing around, I saw Farmer, whom I knew only slightly, looking at me with hatred in his eyes. They told me that he despised me because I was just another knee-jerk white liberal to him.

At Bobby Hutton's funeral, I began to sense why Jim Farmer had looked at me that way and to understand-as I have at other moments in my life in other places when I was among people I wanted to help-that I was an outsider. I sat in the second row at the church. Behind me women were sobbing, and in front of me, in the first two rows of pews, the Black Panthers sat silently and stoically. Bobby Seale spoke about Hutton and was fearless in denouncing the Oakland Police Department. The coffin lay open, and on its handle was a bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums; as Seale spoke, a few chrysanthemum petals dropped and fell on Bobby's face and chest. Then the Panthers lined up to pa.s.s by his coffin in their black uniforms, black berets, dark gla.s.ses and leather jackets. Most simply paused, looked down at him and raised their fists in a salute. Then one came forward, took a cartridge out of a carbine and placed it in Hutton's hands. Not one of them cried, though I couldn't contain myself. There was a coldness in the church that was palpable and formidable, rooted in a long history of suffering; they were beyond tears.

Those Panthers made me realize how protected my life had been as a white person, and how, despite a lifetime of searching, curiosity and empathy, I would never understand what it was to be black. There were limits to empathy; it was impossible for me to walk in their shoes. I had been determined to join them in their battle, but I was an outsider and always would be. Later this was brought home to me when several blacks told me they disliked me because I was a white man trying to fight a black man's war. Among them was Rap Brown, who lambasted me as a shallow liberal poking his nose into a world he didn't know and in which he didn't belong. Brown's point was well taken; white people would never be able to understand what it is like to be black in America, and to live the kind of life Toni Morrison writes about so eloquently in her books. They are books of genius, but for all the beauty of her prose, for all its anguish, pain, perception, humor and devotion to the black race, and no matter how touchingly and explosively she communicates, white people are never going to understand what it is like to be conditioned from childhood into believing that you are hated, unwelcome and inferior.

When Congress finally began to pa.s.s civil rights legislation, I wrote to Jimmy Baldwin that it wasn't because of "Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey or any of the rest of them. It was Bessie Smith, Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, yourself, Rosa Parks, James Meredith...many who were, as you've often said, 'witnesses who managed to survive.'"

After the pa.s.sage of the civil rights bill, the Black Panthers seemed to become less relevant, and there was a split in the party leaders.h.i.+p. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale gave up violence to achieve the Panthers' goals, while Eldridge Cleaver went into exile. With the pa.s.sage of the bill, everybody hoped that life would improve for blacks, and in some ways it has; they now have a little more opportunity than they once did. One thing hasn't changed, however: what is most crippling for a young black child to realize is that he has little chance of achieving his hopes because unconsciously he is still trained to believe that he has no chance. It is not the racism of the Ku Klux Klan, which everybody recognizes is a s.h.i.+p of fools, that debilitates blacks, but the subtle, insidious racism that robs black children of pride and self-esteem so that they never have a chance.

44.

SOME OF THE PICTURES I made during the sixties were successful; some weren't. Some, like I made during the sixties were successful; some weren't. Some, like The Night of the Following Day The Night of the Following Day, I made only for the money; others, like Candy Candy, I did because a friend asked me to and I didn't want to turn him down. I was ridiculous in that picture, and everyone else in it was diminished by it. Some of the movies made a lot of money; some didn't. I was interested in other things, but I had to make a living and took what was available.

What I remember most about the pictures during those years was the fun of traveling to different places and making new friends. Bedtime Story Bedtime Story, my first movie after The Ugly American The Ugly American, was the only one I ever made that made me happy to get up in the morning and go to work. I couldn't wait for the day's shooting to begin. I've never been a comic actor and am not very good at it, but this script about a couple of con men who happily preyed on women for money and s.e.x on the French Riviera was hilarious, and working with David Niven was a treat. How he made me laugh. David was one of those British actors who, like Laurence Olivier, refused to play down-that is, use an accent beneath his station. He had a wonderful, understated, sophisticated wit that reduced me to a guffawing bowl of Jell-O. The first day on the set, I noticed that David seemed nervous; when he read his lines, his hands were trembling so much that the pages of his script were shaking. I asked him about it later, but instead of admitting that he was nervous he responded with a hilarious zinger that bowled me over. I think Niven was born with a curse, a voice in his head that constantly told him, "You'd better make everyone laugh today and charm them too, because if you don't, you're dead." He wanted to be thought of as an aristocrat, and he liked to hang out with the sort of gentry who owned chalets in Gstaad and berthed their yachts in Nice. In some funny way, I think he felt inadequate, and his ability to charm and make people laugh gave him confidence and strength. His humor was very English. I couldn't act well on that picture because I was always breaking up. Together we wasted a lot of film. After I blew six or seven takes in one scene, I tried looking over his shoulder so I couldn't see him, but I still couldn't deliver my lines. Out of frustration, the director went to a close-up of David and put me off camera; even then, I couldn't stop laughing, so he pleaded with me to go to my dressing room; I did, and put my face into a pillow to stifle the sound, but David told me later that on the set he could still hear me laughing.

These were the kinds of memories, along with travel and experiencing new cultures, that made making movies fun. I also enjoyed a picture called The Saboteur: Code Name Morituri The Saboteur: Code Name Morituri because my pals Wally c.o.x and Billy Redfield were in it. I played a World War II saboteur sent on a secret mission aboard a s.h.i.+p commanded by Yul Brynner, who wasn't a great actor but who taught me a lesson about making movies. Yul was a nice man, but like David Niven, he liked to hang out at chic places and be seen with fas.h.i.+onable people, which didn't appeal to Wally, Billy or me. Someone, probably Wally, joked, "I wonder what Yul would look like if he ever put his legs together." This was because he was constantly striking the magisterial pose he used in because my pals Wally c.o.x and Billy Redfield were in it. I played a World War II saboteur sent on a secret mission aboard a s.h.i.+p commanded by Yul Brynner, who wasn't a great actor but who taught me a lesson about making movies. Yul was a nice man, but like David Niven, he liked to hang out at chic places and be seen with fas.h.i.+onable people, which didn't appeal to Wally, Billy or me. Someone, probably Wally, joked, "I wonder what Yul would look like if he ever put his legs together." This was because he was constantly striking the magisterial pose he used in The King and I The King and I, with his legs separated, planted firmly on the ground, and his hands on his hips. But Yul did something in that picture that impressed me. In one scene I thought his acting was very stagy and artificial, but when I saw the scene on film it succeeded because the lighting was effective, and I learned he had suggested to the lighting man how to light the scene. I had never paid much attention to lighting, and it made me realize that the man who sets it up can do a lot for your performance or break your neck if he wants to. With lights, he can add drama to your face, make it dull, or put you in darkness. From then on, I began checking with the lighting man before doing a scene, using a mirror to see what effect different lighting gave my appearance and performance.

Another picture I enjoyed making was The Nightcomers The Nightcomers, a 1971 thriller based on Henry James's The Turn of the Screw The Turn of the Screw that was directed by Michael Winner, an Englishman who, like David Niven, had an arch sense of humor as well as a stout, characteristically British sense of cla.s.s. In a big country house near Cambridge that he used for the filming, he outfitted a beautiful dining room with expensive china, linen and cutlery, and said it was to be used only by me, Alice Marchak, Jay Kantor, my friends Philip and Marie Rhodes and himself. I said I didn't find that type of cla.s.s distinction appropriate and wanted to eat with the other actors and members of the crew, but Michael said, "Marlon, I am sorry to say this, but the crew do not wish you to eat with them. They are much happier in the next-door canteen eating on their own and not worrying about the overpowering presence of their employers and a major star." that was directed by Michael Winner, an Englishman who, like David Niven, had an arch sense of humor as well as a stout, characteristically British sense of cla.s.s. In a big country house near Cambridge that he used for the filming, he outfitted a beautiful dining room with expensive china, linen and cutlery, and said it was to be used only by me, Alice Marchak, Jay Kantor, my friends Philip and Marie Rhodes and himself. I said I didn't find that type of cla.s.s distinction appropriate and wanted to eat with the other actors and members of the crew, but Michael said, "Marlon, I am sorry to say this, but the crew do not wish you to eat with them. They are much happier in the next-door canteen eating on their own and not worrying about the overpowering presence of their employers and a major star."

I left and went into the canteen room, sat down at the table, and when the other actors and crew members entered holding their lunch trays, I held up my hand urging them to sit near me, but they all walked on. "Marlon," Michael said, "it's no good waving your arms about; none of these people are going to sit with us. They'd all much rather gossip among themselves and they're all terrified of you." Apparently he was right, because no one would sit near me except him and my friends from the other room. The next day, when we had to shoot some scenes in a churchyard, Michael again arranged a special dining room for me and my friends-this time in a local vicarage. I invited two of the actresses in the picture, Stephanie Beacham and a famous old English character actress, Thora Hird, to join us. At first they didn't say much, but after I kept asking them questions and encouraging them to talk, Thora began speaking virtually nonstop in a thick northern English accent that I couldn't penetrate.

Afterward, I said to Michael, "I couldn't understand a word she said. Why didn't you help me?"

"Well, Marlon," he said, "you invited them, and since they're very nice people I thought you would deal with them splendidly." Thereafter, I ate in my dressing room or trailer while Michael used the dining room with the linen tablecloths. On the last day of filming, however, when he arrived for lunch I was seated there with all my friends. For a moment he looked pleased, but then we all got up at once and walked into the canteen to join the other actors and crew for lunch. He joined us.

Six years later, when I went to London for the filming of Superman Superman, I invited Michael for dinner at a house that had been rented for me in Shepperton, a house that was colder than the ice cave in the picture; if the water heater was turned on, for some reason the furnace wouldn't function. When Michael noticed that I'd stuffed the inside of my clothes with newspaper he asked about it and I told him that it was a trick I'd learned long ago as a hobo.

During the evening I asked him, "How do you p.r.o.nounce the word 'integral'?"

"Integral," he answered.

"No, I think it's p.r.o.nounced intigral."

"That's not how it's p.r.o.nounced in England," he said.

I responded that there must be only one proper p.r.o.nunciation for the word, and repeated that I thought it was intigral. He insisted he was right, so I said, "Let's have a bet."

"All right, Marlon-a hundred pounds," he said, and walked toward me offering his hand.

"No," I said, "let's think of something else...I know: the loser has to sell French ticklers in Piccadilly Circus for one hour."

"Come on, Marlon," he said, "you know you'll never do that. I think a bet is important and has to be honored, and I don't want to lose our friends.h.i.+p because you lose the bet, which you're definitely going to, and then won't go down to Piccadilly."

"I promise you I'll go, there's absolutely no question of it," I said, and we shook on it.

Late the next afternoon, which was the first day of filming on Superman Superman, Michael telephoned. "Why didn't you call sooner?" I asked, and told him I'd already figured out how I was going to pay off the bet: by selling French ticklers in Piccadilly Circus disguised as a blind beggar.

"Unfortunately you don't have to," Michael said.

He had checked the Oxford English Dictionary and established that there was only one p.r.o.nunciation of the word: intigral. A few months later, after asking his chauffeur to buy a large number of French ticklers of various shapes and sizes from a chain of London s.e.x shops for 2, he stood in Piccadilly for an hour offering them for 1. Despite the bargain price, he sold only a couple-and those to friends who happened by. Disposing of the rest of his inventory, he told me, was daunting. Too embarra.s.sed to ask his staff-a religious lot-to destroy them, he spent an evening cutting and shredding them in a waste basket.

Besides traveling often to Tahiti, I spent a lot of time during the sixties exploring New Mexico, Arizona, South Dakota, remote parts of California and other places. I would get on a motorcycle and ride off by myself, or with a girl, in search of somewhere interesting. Once I bought a new bike, left the highway and rode across Death Valley, racing across the desert as fast as I could. The temperature was at least 115 degrees and the engine gave out; it hadn't been broken in properly and simply died from heat exhaustion. I couldn't restart it and had to walk out several miles. A park ranger told me I had been lucky to survive and pointed out a spot not far from the ranger station where two people not long before had expired from the depletion of fluids and electrolytes in their bodies.

While I was making a western called The Appaloosa The Appaloosa near St. George, Utah, Lisa, the designer from New York who thought she had saved my life with sperm therapy, came to see me. I offered her a ride on my motorcycle. We were steaming across the desert when we came upon the shriveled cadavers of thirty or forty cows lying in the sagebrush. It was an eerie tableau. Later I realized they must have died from radiation blown north from a nuclear test in Nevada or by nerve gas from a military installation in Utah. This was in the same area where John Wayne had made a movie in which several members of the cast and crew were exposed to radiation and later died of cancer. I've always found it ironic that John Wayne, the gung-ho proponent of nuke 'em American militarism, may have died as a result of radiation from atomic weaponry. near St. George, Utah, Lisa, the designer from New York who thought she had saved my life with sperm therapy, came to see me. I offered her a ride on my motorcycle. We were steaming across the desert when we came upon the shriveled cadavers of thirty or forty cows lying in the sagebrush. It was an eerie tableau. Later I realized they must have died from radiation blown north from a nuclear test in Nevada or by nerve gas from a military installation in Utah. This was in the same area where John Wayne had made a movie in which several members of the cast and crew were exposed to radiation and later died of cancer. I've always found it ironic that John Wayne, the gung-ho proponent of nuke 'em American militarism, may have died as a result of radiation from atomic weaponry.

I drove Lisa a few more miles and decided that the desert was a perfect place to make love. The desert, and beyond it a backdrop of rose-colored mountains, were beautiful; except for a few birds, the two of us could have been alone on the moon. But as I started to climax, the earth began to shake; suddenly it seemed as if a million tons of TNT were being detonated beneath us, and as the earth shook, an enormous, vibrating tremor swept through my entire body. What kind of an o.r.g.a.s.m is this? My G.o.d, this is magical! I thought. This is the o.r.g.a.s.m to end my life; I'm going to die of o.r.g.a.s.m right here in the middle of the desert. Then there was a tremendously loud blast.

Lisa looked up at me and asked, "What was that?"

Then it occurred to me that the sound had probably been from some young air force pilot in a supersonic jet flying fifty feet off the ground. It happened so fast that I never saw the plane-if there was one. But if there had been, the shock waves and sonic boom washed over us at exactly the right moment. I've never had an o.r.g.a.s.m like that before or since. For a moment I thought I was going to die. What a way to go!

45.

YEARS AFTER OUR troubles over troubles over The Egyptian The Egyptian, I saw Darryl Zanuck humiliate his son Richard unmercifully. He had hired Richard to run Twentieth Century-Fox, then fired him and announced his dismissal as if it were a personal triumph. He said things no son should ever hear from his father. Later, when I ran into Zanuck at the Stork Club in New York, I stood beside his table and said in a voice that everyone could hear that he should be ashamed of himself.

I saw this happen again when I worked with Charlie Chaplin on A Countess from Hong Kong A Countess from Hong Kong. Chaplin was an actor I had always admired greatly. Some of his films, such as City Lights City Lights, still move me to tears as well as laughter. In the beginning of that movie, he introduces himself and establishes his character in a hilarious scene by having the camera discover him asleep in the arms of a statue. At the end of the film, after he has been sent to jail for stealing money to pay for a blind girl's operation to give her sight, he pa.s.ses her flower shop. He recognizes her, but of course she does not know him because previously she was blind. He is now a tramp with holes in his shoes and the ragged tail of his s.h.i.+rt sticking out of his trousers. He is stunned when he sees her. As he starts to walk past, she runs out from the shop and pins a rose in his b.u.t.tonhole; then when she feels his suit and shoulders, her face brightens, and the audience realizes that she recognizes with her fingers the man who helped give her sight and whom she loves. The viewer experiences not only her love but his shame as she realizes that he is a tramp. The moment is magical, one that reaches into the audience's unconscious, which only the best acting can do. Chaplin knew exactly what the audience would experience. I don't know if it was conscious or instinctive, but he understood the myth he had created with the Little Tramp and attached himself to it tenaciously.

Comic genius or not, when I went to London to work with him late in his life, Chaplin was a fearsomely cruel man. He was almost seventy-seven when he offered me the part of a diplomat named Ogden Mears in A Countess from Hong Kong A Countess from Hong Kong. In this comedy set aboard a luxury liner sailing between Hong Kong and San Francisco, Sophia Loren played an impoverished former dance-hall girl who stowed away in my room. Although I revered Chaplin, who had written the story based on a voyage he had taken from Shanghai in 1931, when he offered me the part in 1966, I told him I didn't believe I was right for it. I've always been leery of comedies, but he insisted that I could do it, and since I regarded him as a genius, I agreed to be a marionette in his hands. I figured he must know something I didn't, that he thought I could add something to the picture not apparent to me, and that I could help him achieve it.

But A Countess from Hong Kong A Countess from Hong Kong was a disaster, and while we were making it I discovered that Chaplin was probably the most s.a.d.i.s.tic man I'd ever met. He was an egotistical tyrant and a penny-pincher. He hara.s.sed people when they were late, and scolded them unmercifully to work faster. Worst of all, he treated his son Sydney, who played my sidekick, cruelly. In front of everybody, he humiliated him constantly: "Sydney, you're so stupid! Don't you have enough brains to know how to place your hand on a doork.n.o.b? was a disaster, and while we were making it I discovered that Chaplin was probably the most s.a.d.i.s.tic man I'd ever met. He was an egotistical tyrant and a penny-pincher. He hara.s.sed people when they were late, and scolded them unmercifully to work faster. Worst of all, he treated his son Sydney, who played my sidekick, cruelly. In front of everybody, he humiliated him constantly: "Sydney, you're so stupid! Don't you have enough brains to know how to place your hand on a doork.n.o.b? You know what a doork.n.o.b is, don't you? You know what a doork.n.o.b is, don't you? All you do is turn the k.n.o.b, open the door and enter. All you do is turn the k.n.o.b, open the door and enter. Isn't that easy, Sydney?" Isn't that easy, Sydney?"

Chaplin spoke to his son this way again and again and reshot his scenes over and over for no reason, berating him and never speaking to him with anything except sarcasm. Oona O'Neill, Charlie's wife, was always there but never defended her stepson. It was painful to watch, especially after Sydney told me that Chaplin treated all his children this way. He said that one of Charlie's sons had gone to Paris over his objections, returned home at Christmas and knocked on the door. Charlie opened it and broke his nose with one punch, then slammed the door, leaving his son bleeding on the ground, and refused to let him in. He was a very rich man, but from what Sydney said, he never gave his children any money to speak of. For example, Sydney dreamed of opening a restaurant, but his father, who was worth millions, wouldn't lend him anything.

"Sydney, why do you take this?" I asked him one day. "Why don't you walk off the set? Why don't you tell him off? Why do you accept this kind of humiliation? There's no reason for it."

"He's getting old," Sydney said, and made excuses for his father: he was having problems with the picture, he had the flu, he was worried about this or that.

I said, "None of that's an excuse for being so s.a.d.i.s.tic, especially to your own son." But I could never persuade Sydney to stand up to his father, and he continued to take the abuse.