Brando (22 page)

Clearly, inside Peggy there was someone very much like me. Those moments I shared with her were awesome, and they will stay fresh in my mind till they close the lid.

After this experience I decided to buy a chimp, but before I did, my mother gave me Russell, the young raccoon. My mother had a great imagination that went along with her marvelous sense of humor. To make a pet out of a raccoon, you have to start when they are young; as with most animals, it is best to feed a raccoon by hand and handle it until it becomes trusting and familiar with your touch. Raccoons don’t see well, but they have a keen sense of smell and unquenchable curiosity, and their tactile sense is unequaled in the world of animals. When Russell was awake, he never stopped moving, feeling and exploring every crack he could find; once he completely took apart a wristwatch, springs and all. Sometimes he slept down by my feet in my bed, and when he woke up he would stick his paws between my toes and tickle me. He was a sleep wrecker, so I didn’t let him get in bed with me often. We would chase each other around the apartment and play fight and tickle, which he loved.

Russell also loved water and played for hours in the bathtub, which I would fill with stones and any objects that it would be fun to feel. He also enjoyed sitting on my bathroom windowsill and looking at the street five floors below. He was a hit at parties and liked to sit on my shoulders and watch the guests. He would play with my hair or stick his fingers in my ears, then reach around and try to get his paw into my nose or mouth. He was always unpredictable.

It is generally believed that raccoons wash their food, but that’s a misinterpretation; they do this simply because they love water. During their waking hours, they move ceaselessly, putting their paws into cracks and recesses looking for grubs, crayfish or worms.

When I had people over to the apartment or had to leave it, I
usually put him in the bathroom. He also slept there because he would tear any other room apart. In the winter the bathroom was cold; I remember going in there one morning, and because I was still sleepy I sat down to piss. Russell was wide awake. He came over and stood on his hind feet and put his freezing cold front paws on the edge of the toilet seat. Then he went around to the back of the John. I had my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands, trying to stay as close to sleep as possible. The next instant, I found myself shrieking and two feet off the floor. Russell had found the space between my ass and the toilet seat and had put the coldest paw in North America under my behind, giving me the goose of a lifetime, right on target.

Russell spent a great deal of time sitting on the ledge of the bathroom window. During lunch hour more than once he stopped traffic on Fifty-seventh Street and Sixth Avenue. Crowds would gather below the apartment and wonder what they were looking at; to collect a crowd in New York, all you have to do is look up and point. One day I was reading, and the doorbell rang. Usually I never answer the door if I don’t know who it is; my friends always use code knocks. But this time someone was thumping on the door with his fist, so I opened the door. I found myself staring at a belt buckle; then, as my eyes floated upward, I saw a badge and a face. It was one of New York’s finest bulls, and he asked me, “Do you own a wild animal?” I answered, “I, ahh … well, he’s an animal, but he’s not wild.” The cop said, “Do you know where he is?” I said, “He’s in the bathroom.” “No, he isn’t. He’s in your
neighbor’s
bathroom.” I replied, “What? What’s he doing in there?” “I don’t know, buddy, but you’ll have to get him out of there. Does he bite?” “Oh, my goodness, no, he wouldn’t even bite a cookie,” I replied, lying as fast as my brain would work. (Russell nipped almost everybody who didn’t know how to handle him on the back of their necks.)

I went over to my neighbor’s apartment. The woman was Standing with her hands between her breasts, her mouth open, and she looked at me with Eddie Cantor eyes; she was stunned. “Where is he?” I asked, but she couldn’t speak; she raised her entire arm and pointed toward her bathroom. I went in, and there was Russell playing in the toilet. When I called him and his head popped up, I said, “What the hell are you doing?” and he twittered some raccoon reply. He was soaking wet. I gave him my palm, he put his paws in it and I gripped him. I always carried him around this way. As I left the woman’s apartment, I said, “I’m terribly sorry about this. I don’t know how it could have happened.” While I was apologizing, Russell’s tail was dripping toilet water all over her beige rug. She was still aghast, bewildered and silent. As I passed the giant policeman, I said, “I’m awfully sorry, officer, it will never happen again.” I entered my apartment still mumbling apologies, closed the door and waited for that ham-fisted policeman to knock on it with a ticket, but nothing happened. To this day, I cannot understand how Russell got into Mrs. Goldman’s bathroom because both bathroom window ledges were only two inches wide and were separated by a one-foot gap five stories up.

One of the fondest memories I have of Russell was when my mother was showing him off to a couple of snooty ladies. He was sitting on her shoulder, playing with her beads and sticking a paw in each ear, which provoked a titter from the ladies, as well as a proud “Ain’t he cute” smirk from my mother. Then he reached around and was feeling the crevice of her smile when she made the fatal error of opening her mouth slightly to say, “No, dear.” That’s all he needed. He shot his paw into her mouth and out came her false teeth. She grabbed them and tried to put them back in her mouth, but Russell was sure he had a good thing and wanted to keep them out of her mouth just as much as she wanted to keep them in. Her hat went one way and her dignity went the other. Finally she was able to outwrestle
him and recovered her dentures, if not her poise. I had a seizure and had to hold on to the kitchen door to remain erect. It was one of the silliest scenes I have ever witnessed.

Eventually as Russell matured, he became uncontrollable. He had thrown all the books out of the bookcase, had peed on every record I owned, and the apartment looked as though it had been through a drug raid. It was time to let Russell go. I took him back to the family farm in Illinois in early winter, when his semihibernating instincts would take over. I carried him out to the barn, made him a nest of some hay and left some food there for him. Every couple of hours I would tiptoe through the snow and peek through a crack in the wall to see him all curled up in a ball. I wanted so much to play with him, but I knew I couldn’t. I had a lump in my throat when I turned away.

When spring came and the sap began to run in the trees, Russell had left the security of the barn for whatever destiny promises a raccoon. He returned every once in a while in hopes of finding a treat in his bowl, but later in the spring his sap was running, too. He must have found some irresistible lady raccoon and begun to raise his family, and I never saw him again. I miss him.

UNBEKNOWNST TO ME
I had been snookered into making a two-picture deal with Darryl Zanuck that would include
Viva Zapata!
and one other. In those days I never read a contract. I remember that my agent and friend Jay Kantor chased me for quite a while to get me to renew the agency contract. He finally cornered me and told me he was going to lose his job if I didn’t sign it. “Please do this as a favor to me,” he said. So I went into my bedroom, got my special pen and affixed my moniker. I have never seen a man so relieved as Jay when he walked out the door with the contract under his arm. What he didn’t know was that I had signed it with disappearing ink so that when he arrived back at the agency, it would be discovered that there was no signature on it. Finally he called and asked me if I had kept the signed copy. His brain was in a whirl. I said, “Don’t you remember? You took it with you.”

I suppose the reasons I was averse to signing contracts was because I didn’t want to feel hemmed in. In those days it was even hard for me to make a commitment for the next day. Even now I still put things off, although I’m much better than I used to be. But I still play practical jokes, and when they are played on me, I always laugh the hardest.

•  •  •

When Zanuck insisted that I do
The Egyptian
, I simply went back to New York and waited for the hit teams from my agency. He had sued me for two million dollars. Sure enough, the designated hitters showed up, Jerry Gershwin and Jay Kantor. At the time my father was telling me that I had run out of money, but I didn’t care. I said, “Let them sue.” The hitters said, “Come on, Marlon, pay the two dollars,” and I said, “Hell, no.”

Finally Zanuck backed off and came back with the counterproposal that I play the role of Napoleon in a movie called
Desirée
. It was half a victory. So I accepted the arrangement. The film was directed by Henry Koster. I did all my homework and did the best I could. A kind and pleasant man, Koster was a lightweight who was much more interested in uniforms than in the impact of Napoleon on European history. I had a chance to work with Jean Simmons, who was cast in the role of Josephine. She was winning, charming, beautiful and experienced, and we had fun together. Unfortunately, she was married to Stewart Granger, the great white hunter. By my lights,
Desirée
was superficial and dismal, and I was astonished when told that it had been a success. H. L. Mencken’s words came to mind; he said, “No one ever lost money underestimating the taste of the American public.” In this case it seemed to have been borne out.

DURING THE THIRTIES
, several members of the Group Theatre, including Gadg, joined the Communist party—largely, I suppose, because of an idealistic belief that it offered a progressive approach to ending the Depression and the increasing economic inequity in the country, confronted racial injustice and stood up to fascism. Many, including Gadg, soon became disenchanted with the party, but they were appealing targets during the hysteria of the McCarthy era.

The House Un-American Activities Committee was headed by J. Parnell Thomas, a righteous pillar of our political community who later was sent to jail for fraud. The other members of the committee were much more concerned with exploiting the public’s fascination with Hollywood and with generating publicity for themselves than with anything else. They subpoenaed Gadg, and his testimony has wounded him to this day. Not only did he admit that he had been a Communist, but he identified all the other members of the Group Theatre who had also been Communists. Many of his oldest friends were furious, called the testimony an act of betrayal and refused to speak to him or work with him again.

Until then, Gadg had collaborated with Arthur Miller, for
whom he had directed
All My Sons
. After that, he presented me with a movie script about life on the New York waterfront. When Miller backed out of the project, Gadg called Budd Schulberg, the novelist, who like himself had named names before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Schulberg had been working on a script about corruption on the docks that was based on a prize-winning newspaper series describing how the Mafia took a bite out of every piece of cargo moving in and out of the ports of New York and New Jersey. Gadg and Schulberg merged their subjects, and for months tried to find a studio that would finance it. Darryl F. Zanuck tentatively agreed to do so, then backed out, saying he thought it a poor story to tell on the wide Technicolor screen of CinemaScope, which he thought of as Hollywood’s salvation from television. Finally Sam Spiegel, an independent producer and the last of the great schnorrers, who had made
The African Queen
, agreed to produce it, and Harry Cohn at Columbia agreed to finance the picture that eventually would be called
On the Waterfront
.

The part I would play was that of Terry Malloy, an ex-pro boxer whose character was based on a real longshoreman who, despite threats against his life, testified against the “Goodfellas” who ran the Jersey waterfront. I was reluctant to take the part because I was conflicted about what Gadg had done and knew some of the people who had been deeply hurt. It was especially stupid because most of the people named were no longer Communists. Innocent people were also blacklisted, including me, although I never had a political affiliation of any kind. It was simply because I had signed a petition to protest the lynching of a black man in the South. My sister Jocelyn, who’d appeared in
Mister Roberts
on Broadway and became a very successful actress, was also blacklisted because her married name was Asinof and there was another J. Asinof. In those days, stepping off the sidewalk with your left foot first was grounds for suspicion that you were a member of the
Communist party. To this day I believe that we missed the establishment of fascism in this country by a hair.