Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando (Vintage)
Stefan Kanfer, commended memoirist of Lucille Ball and Groucho Marx, now gives us the decisive life of Marlon Brando, neatly intertwining the person and the work to give us a fabulous and illuminating assessment. Starting with Brando’s turbulent infancy, Kanfer follows him to NY where he made his star-making Broadway debut as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Wish at age twenty-three. Brando then decamped for Hollywood, and Kanfer investigates each of Brando’s films over the yearsfrom The Men in 1950 to The Score in 2001offering cultured and judicious research of his occasionally brilliant, sometimes bewildering performances. And, eventually, Kanfer brings into focus Brando’s self-destructiveness, uncertainty toward his craft, and the crises that shadowed his last years.