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Brando a reluctant Godfather
03/02/2005 14:35 - (SA)
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| Marlon Brando almost didn't play mob boss Vito Corleone in The Godfather. (AP) |
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Los Angeles - Screen legend Marlon Brando repeatedly turned down his Oscar-winning role as Don Corleone in The Godfather for fear of glorifying the Mafia, a report said on Wednesday. The late superstar's friend Budd Schulberg told Vanity Fair that Brando's assistant persuaded him to read Mario Puzo's novel. But Brando, who died in July of lung failure at the age of 80, repeatedly resisted taking what would become one of the defining roles of his career. "Its about the Mafia. I won't glorify the Mafia," Brandon reportedly told his assistant Alice Marchak. But Marchak, who was in touch with Puzo, won the author's support for Brando taking the lead role in the movie and kept wearing down her unpredictable boss's resistance until he finally agreed to consider it. Marchak realised Brando had warmed to the idea when he penciled on a moustache and asked here: "How do I look?" However when he agreed to the role, sceptical Hollywood producers, leery of his reputation as difficult to work with, asked one of the world's most famous actors to do the unthinkable - take a screen test. When his portrayal of Don Carleone won him the best actor Academy Award in 1973, Brando famously snubbed the honour, sending an actress disguised as an American Indian to refuse it because of Hollywood's portrayal of Native Americans. Immortalised in a computer game In death, Brando still personifies the world's best known Mafia don. Before he died the actor gave permission for his image to be used in a new video game based on the film. The Hollywood Reporter said this week that Brando's co-stars James Caan and Robert Duvall had also signed on to join him in the video game: It was a triumph for Brando and is one of the greatest roles he played on screen.
- AFP
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