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Well known actor and film director. His career spanned 60 years. He also help during the civil rights movement.

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Marlon Brando Jr. (April 3, 1924 - July 1, 2004) was an American actor and activist. Widely considered one of the greatest actors of the 20th century, he received numerous accolades throughout his career, which spanned six decades, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, one Cannes Film Festival Award, and three British Academy Film Awards. Brando is credited with being one of the first actors to bring the Stanislavski system of acting and method acting to mainstream audiences.

Brando fell under the influence of Stella Adler and Stanislavski's system in the 1940s. He began his career on stage, adeptly reading his characters and consistently anticipating where scenes flowed. He transitioned to film, initially gaining acclaim and his first Academy Award for Best Actor nomination for the role of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). He received further praise and his first Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for his performance as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954), which remains a watershed moment in the history of Hollywood, and his work continues to be studied and interpreted. His portrayal of the rebellious motorcycle gang leader Johnny Strabler in The Wild One (1953) became an emblem of the era's generational gap.

The 1960s saw Brando's career take a commercial and critical downturn. He directed and starred in One-Eyed Jacks (1961), a commercial flop, after which he delivered a series of notable box-office failures, beginning with Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), which damaged his career. After ten years of underachieving and markedly diminished interest in his films, he starred as Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972), which helped him win his second Academy Award and Golden Globe Award in a performance considered among the finest in the art form's history, based on extensive surveys of critics, directors and other actors. With this and his Oscar-nominated performance in Last Tango in Paris (1972), Brando reestablished himself in the ranks of top box-office stars.

After a hiatus in the early 1970s, Brando was generally content with being a highly paid character actor in supporting roles of varying quality such as Jor-El in (1978), as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (1979) and as Adam Steiffel in The Formula (1980) before taking a nine-year break from film. The last two decades of Brando's life were marked with controversy, and his troubled private life received significant attention. He struggled with mood disorders and legal issues. Brando continues to be respected and held in high regard.

Early life and education

Brando c. 1934

Marlon Brando Jr. was born on April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, as the only son of Marlon Brando Sr. and Dorothy Pennebaker. His father was a salesman who often travelled out-of-state and his mother was a stage actress, often away from home. His mother's absence resulted in Brando becoming attached to the family's housekeeper, who eventually left to get married, causing Brando to develop abandonment issues. His two elder sisters were Jocelyn and Frances.

Brando's ancestry was mostly German, Dutch, English, and Irish. His patrilineal immigrant ancestor, Johann Wilhelm Brandau, arrived in New York City in the early 1700s from the Palatinate in Germany. He is also a descendant of Louis DuBois, a French Huguenot, who arrived in New York around 1660. His maternal great-grandfather, Myles Joseph Gahan, was an Irish immigrant who served as a medic in the American Civil War. In 1995, he gave an interview in Ireland in which he said, "I have never been so happy in my life. When I got off the plane I had this rush of emotion. I have never felt at home in a place as I do here. I am seriously contemplating Irish citizenship."

In 1930, when Brando was only 6 years old, the family moved to Evanston, Illinois, where Brando mimicked other people, developed a reputation for pranking, and met Wally Cox, with whom he remained friends until Cox's death in 1973. In 1936, his parents separated and he and his siblings moved with their mother to Santa Ana, California. Two years later, his parents reconciled, and his father purchased a farmhouse in Libertyville, Illinois. Brando attended Libertyville High School, excelling at sports and drama, but failing in every other subject. Consequently, he was held back for a year, and with his history of misbehaving, he was expelled in 1941.

Brando was sent by his father to Shattuck Military Academy, where his father had himself studied. There, Brando continued to excel at acting until 1943 when he was put on probation for being insubordinate to an officer during maneuvers. He was confined to the campus, but sneaked into town and was caught. The faculty voted to expel him although he was supported by the students who thought expulsion was too harsh. Brando was invited back for the following year but decided instead to drop out of high school. He then worked as a ditch-digger as a summer job arranged by his father and tried to enlist in the Army, but his routine physical revealed that a football injury he had sustained at Shattuck had left him with a trick knee; he was classified physically unfit for military service.

Brando decided to follow his sisters to New York, studying at the American Theatre Wing Professional School, part of the Dramatic Workshop of the New School, with influential German director Erwin Piscator. In a 1988 documentary, Marlon Brando: The Wild One, Brando's sister Jocelyn remembered, "He was in a school play and enjoyed it ... So he decided he would go to New York and study acting because that was the only thing he had enjoyed. That was when he was 18." In the A&E Biography episode on Brando, George Englund said Brando fell into acting in New York because "he was accepted there. He wasn't criticized. It was the first time in his life that he heard good things about himself." He spent his first few months in New York sleeping on friends' couches. For a time he lived with Roy Somlyo, who later became a four time Emmy winning Broadway producer.

Brando was an avid student and proponent of Stella Adler, from whom he learned the techniques of the Stanislavski system. This technique encouraged the actor to explore both internal and external aspects to fully realize the character being portrayed. Brando's remarkable insight and sense of realism were evident early on. Adler used to recount that when teaching Brando, she had instructed the class to act like chickens, and added that a nuclear bomb was about to fall on them. Most of the class clucked and ran around wildly, but Brando sat calmly and pretended to lay an egg. Asked by Adler why he had chosen to react this way, he said, "I'm a chicken-what do I know about bombs?" Despite being commonly regarded as a method actor, Brando disagreed. He claimed to have abhorred Lee Strasberg's teachings:

After I had some success, Lee Strasberg tried to take credit for teaching me how to act. He never taught me anything. He would have claimed credit for the sun and the moon if he believed he could get away with it. He was an ambitious, selfish man who exploited the people who attended the Actors Studio and tried to project himself as an acting oracle and guru. Some people worshipped him, but I never knew why. I sometimes went to the Actors Studio on Saturday mornings because Elia Kazan was teaching, and there were usually a lot of good-looking girls, but Strasberg never taught me acting. Stella (Adler) did-and later Kazan.

Early career: 1944-1951

Brando used his Stanislavski System skills for his first summer stock roles in Sayville, New York, on Long Island. Brando established a pattern of erratic, insubordinate behavior in the few shows he had been in. His behavior had him kicked out of the cast of the New School's production in Sayville, but he was soon afterwards discovered in a locally produced play there. Then, in 1944, he made it to Broadway in the bittersweet drama I Remember Mama, playing the son of Mady Christians. The Lunts wanted Brando to play the role of Alfred Lunt's son in O Mistress Mine, and Lunt even coached him for the audition, but Brando made no attempt to even read his lines at the audition and was not hired. New York Drama Critics voted him "Most Promising Young Actor" for his role as an anguished veteran in Truckline Café, although the play was a commercial failure. In 1946, he appeared on Broadway as the young hero in the political drama A Flag is Born, refusing to accept wages above the Actors' Equity rate. In that same year, Brando played the role of Marchbanks alongside Katharine Cornell in her production's revival of , one of her signature roles. Cornell also cast him as the Messenger in her production of Jean Anouilh's that same year. He was also offered the opportunity to portray one of the principal characters in the Broadway premiere of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, but turned the part down after falling asleep while trying to read the massive script and pronouncing the play "ineptly written and poorly constructed".

Brando in 1948

In 1945, Brando's agent recommended he take a co-starring role in The Eagle Has Two Heads with Tallulah Bankhead, produced by Jack Wilson. Bankhead had turned down the role of Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, which Williams had written for her, to tour the play for the 1946-1947 season. Bankhead recognized Brando's potential, despite her disdain (which most Broadway veterans shared) for method acting, and agreed to hire him even though he auditioned poorly. The two clashed greatly during the pre-Broadway tour, with Bankhead reminding Brando of his mother, being her age and also having a drinking problem. Wilson was largely tolerant of Brando's behavior, but he reached his limit when Brando mumbled through a dress rehearsal shortly before the November 28, 1946, opening. "I don't care what your grandmother did," Wilson exclaimed, "and that Method stuff, I want to know what you're going to do!" Brando in turn raised his voice, and acted with great power and passion. "It was marvelous," a cast member recalled. "Everybody hugged him and kissed him. He came ambling offstage and said to me, 'They don't think you can act unless you can yell.'"

Critics were not as kind, however. A review of Brando's performance in the opening assessed that Brando was "still building his character, but at present fails to impress." One Boston critic remarked of Brando's prolonged death scene, "Brando looked like a car in midtown Manhattan searching for a parking space." He received better reviews at subsequent tour stops, but what his colleagues recalled was only occasional indications of the talent he would later demonstrate. "There were a few times when he was really magnificent," Bankhead admitted to an interviewer in 1962. "He was a great young actor when he wanted to be, but most of the time I couldn't even hear him on the stage."

From left to right: Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter and Brando in the original 1947 Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Brando displayed his apathy for the production by demonstrating some shocking onstage manners. He "tried everything in the world to ruin it for her," Bankhead's stage manager claimed. "He nearly drove her crazy: scratching his crotch, picking his nose, doing anything." After several weeks on the road, they reached Boston, by which time Bankhead was ready to dismiss him. This proved to be one of the greatest blessings of his career, as it freed him up to play the role of Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams' 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Elia Kazan. Moreover, to that end, Bankhead herself, in her letter declining Williams' invitation to play the role of Blanche, gave Brando this ringing-albeit acid-tongued-endorsement stating "I do have one suggestion for casting. I know of an actor who can appear as this brutish Stanley Kowalski character. I mean, a total pig of a man without sensitivity or grace of any kind. Marlon Brando would be perfect as Stanley. I have just fired the cad from my play, The Eagle Has Two Heads, and I know for a fact that he is looking for work".

Pierpont writes that John Garfield was first choice for the role, but "made impossible demands." It was Kazan's decision to fall back on the far less experienced (and technically too young for the role) Brando. In a letter dated August 29, 1947, Williams confided to his agent Audrey Wood: "It had not occurred to me before what an excellent value would come through casting a very young actor in this part. It humanizes the character of Stanley in that it becomes the brutality and callousness of youth rather than a vicious old man ... A new value came out of Brando's reading which was by far the best reading I have ever heard." Brando based his portrayal of Kowalski on the boxer Rocky Graziano, whom he had studied at a local gymnasium. Graziano did not know who Brando was, but attended the production with tickets provided by the young man. He said, "The curtain went up and on the stage is that son of a bitch from the gym, and he's playing me."

Brando in 1950

In 1947, Brando performed a screen test for an early Warner Brothers script for the novel Rebel Without a Cause (1944), which bore no relation to the film eventually produced in 1955. The screen test is included as an extra in the 2006 DVD release of A Streetcar Named Desire. Brando's first screen role was a bitter paraplegic veteran in (1950). He spent a month in bed at the Birmingham Army Hospital in Van Nuys to prepare for the role. The New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowther wrote that Brando as Ken "is so vividly real, dynamic and sensitive that his illusion is complete" and noted, "Out of stiff and frozen silences he can lash into a passionate rage with the tearful and flailing frenzy of a taut cable suddenly cut."

By Brando's own account, it may have been because of this film that his draft status was changed from 4-F to 1-A. He had had surgery on his trick knee, and it was no longer physically debilitating enough to incur exclusion from the draft. When Brando reported to the induction center, he answered a questionnaire by saying his race was "human", his color was "Seasonal-oyster white to beige", and he told an Army doctor that he was psychoneurotic. When the draft board referred him to a psychiatrist, Brando explained that he had been expelled from military school and had severe problems with authority. Coincidentally, the psychiatrist knew a doctor friend of Brando. Brando avoided military service during the Korean War.

Early in his career, Brando began using cue cards instead of memorizing his lines. Despite the objections of several of the film directors he worked with, Brando felt that this helped bring realism and spontaneity to his performances. He felt otherwise he would appear to be reciting a writer's speech. In the TV documentary The Making of Superman: The Movie, Brando explained: "If you don't know what the words are but you have a general idea of what they are, then you look at the cue card and it gives you the feeling to the viewer, hopefully, that the person is really searching for what he is going to say-that he doesn't know what to say". Some, however, thought Brando used the cards out of laziness or an inability to memorize his lines. Once, on the set of The Godfather, Brando was asked why he wanted his lines printed out. He responded: "Because I can read them that way."

Rise to fame: 1951-1954

Brando brought his performance as Stanley Kowalski to the screen in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). It earned him his first Academy Award nomination in the Best Actor category. The role is regarded as one of Brando's greatest.

Brando as Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata! (1952)

He was also nominated the next year for Viva Zapata! (1952), a fictionalized account of the life of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. The film recounted Zapata's lower-class upbringing, his rise to power in the early 20th century, and death. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and co-starred Anthony Quinn. In the biopic Marlon Brando: The Wild One, Sam Shaw says: "Secretly, before the picture started, he went to Mexico to the very town where Zapata lived and was born in and it was there that he studied the speech patterns of people, their behavior, movement." Most critics focused on the actor rather than the film, with Time and Newsweek publishing rave reviews.

Years later, in his autobiography, Brando remarked: "Tony Quinn, whom I admired professionally and liked personally, played my brother, but he was extremely cold to me while we shot that picture. During our scenes together, I sensed a bitterness toward me, and if I suggested a drink after work, he either turned me down or else was sullen and said little. Only years later did I learn why." Brando explained that, to create on-screen tension between the two, "Gadg" (Kazan) had told Quinn - who had taken over the role of Stanley Kowalski from Brando on Broadway - that Brando had been unimpressed with his work. After achieving the desired effect, Kazan never told Quinn that he had misled him. It was only many years later, after comparing notes, that Brando and Quinn realized the deception.

Brando's next film, Julius Caesar (1953), received highly favorable reviews. Brando portrayed Mark Antony. While most acknowledged Brando's talent, some critics felt Brando's "mumbling" and other idiosyncrasies betrayed a lack of acting fundamentals and, when his casting was announced, many remained dubious about his prospects for success. Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and co-starring British stage actor John Gielgud, Brando delivered an impressive performance, especially during Antony's noted "Friends, Romans, countrymen ..." speech. Gielgud was so impressed that he offered Brando a full season at the Hammersmith Theatre, an offer he declined. In his biography on the actor, Stefan Kanfer writes, "Marlon's autobiography devotes one line to his work on that film: Among all those British professionals, 'for me to walk onto a movie set and play Mark Anthony was asinine'-yet another example of his persistent self-denigration, and wholly incorrect."

Kanfer adds that after a screening of the film, director John Huston commented: "Christ! It was like a furnace door opening-the heat came off the screen. I don't know another actor who could do that." During the filming of Julius Caesar, Brando learned that Elia Kazan had cooperated with congressional investigators, naming a whole string of "subversives" to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). By all accounts, Brando was upset by his mentor's decision, but he worked with him again in On The Waterfront. "None of us is perfect," he later wrote in his memoir, "and I think that Gadg has done injury to others, but mostly to himself."

In 1953, Brando also starred in The Wild One, riding his own Triumph Thunderbird 6T motorcycle. Triumph's importers were ambivalent at the exposure, as the subject matter was rowdy motorcycle gangs taking over a small town. The film was criticized for its perceived gratuitous violence at the time, with Time stating: "The effect of the movie is not to throw light on the public problem, but to shoot adrenaline through the moviegoer's veins." Brando allegedly did not see eye to eye with the Hungarian director László Benedek and did not get on with costar Lee Marvin.

To Brando's expressed puzzlement, the movie inspired teen rebellion and made him a role model to the nascent rock-and-roll generation and future stars such as James Dean and Elvis Presley. After the movie's release, the sales of leather jackets and motorcycles skyrocketed. Reflecting on the movie in his autobiography, Brando concluded that it had not aged very well but said "More than most parts I've played in the movies or onstage, I related to Johnny, and because of this, I believe I played him as more sensitive and sympathetic than the script envisioned. There's a line in the picture where he snarls, 'Nobody tells me what to do.' That's exactly how I've felt all my life."

Later that same year, Brando co-starred with fellow Studio member William Redfield in a summer stock production of George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man.

In 1954, Brando starred in On the Waterfront, a crime drama film about union violence and corruption among longshoremen. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg; it also starred Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger and, in her film debut, Eva Marie Saint. When initially offered the role, Brando-still stung by Kazan's testimony to HUAC-demurred and the part of Terry Malloy nearly went to Frank Sinatra. According to biographer Stefan Kanfer, the director believed that Sinatra, who grew up in Hoboken (where the film takes place and was shot), would work as Malloy, but eventually producer Sam Spiegel wooed Brando to the part, signing him for $100,000. "Kazan made no protest because, he subsequently confessed, 'I always preferred Brando to anybody.'"

Brando won the Oscar for his role as Irish-American stevedore Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront. His performance, spurred on by his rapport with Eva Marie Saint and Kazan's direction, was praised as a tour de force. For the scene in which Terry laments his failings, saying I coulda been a contender, he convinced Kazan that the scripted scene was unrealistic. Schulberg's script had Brando acting the entire scene with his character being held at gunpoint by his brother Charlie, played by Rod Steiger. Brando insisted on gently pushing away the gun, saying that Terry would never believe that his brother would pull the trigger and doubting that he could continue his speech while fearing a gun on him. Kazan let Brando improvise and later expressed deep admiration for Brando's instinctive understanding, saying:

what was extraordinary about his performance, I feel, is the contrast of the tough-guy front and the extreme delicacy and gentle cast of his behavior. What other actor, when his brother draws a pistol to force him to do something shameful, would put his hand on the gun and push it away with the gentleness of a caress? Who else could read "Oh, Charlie!" in a tone of reproach that is so loving and so melancholy and suggests the terrific depth of pain? ... If there is a better performance by a man in the history of film in America, I don't know what it is.

Upon its release, On the Waterfront received glowing reviews from critics and was a commercial success, earning an estimated $4.2 million in rentals at the North American box office in 1954. In his July 29, 1954, review, The New York Times critic A. H. Weiler praised the film, calling it "an uncommonly powerful, exciting, and imaginative use of the screen by gifted professionals." Film critic Roger Ebert lauded the film, stating that Brando and Kazan changed acting in American films forever and added it to his "Great Movies" list. In his autobiography, Brando was typically dismissive of his performance: "On the day Gadg showed me the complete picture, I was so depressed by my performance I got up and left the screening room ... I thought I was a huge failure." After Brando won the Academy Award for Best Actor, the statue was stolen. Much later, it turned up at a London auction house, which contacted the actor and informed him of its whereabouts.

Box office success: 1954-1959

Following On the Waterfront, Brando remained a top box office draw, but critics increasingly felt his performances were half-hearted, lacking the intensity and commitment found in his earlier work, especially in his work with Kazan. He portrayed Napoleon in the 1954 film . According to co-star Jean Simmons, Brando's contract forced him to star in the movie. He put little effort into the role, claiming he didn't like the script, and later dismissed the entire movie as "superficial and dismal". Brando was especially contemptuous of director Henry Koster.

Brando and Simmons were paired together again in the film adaptation of the musical Guys and Dolls (1955). Guys and Dolls would be Brando's first and last musical role. found the picture "false to the original in its feeling", remarking that Brando "sings in a faraway tenor that sometimes tends to be flat." Appearing in Edward Murrow's Person to Person interview in early 1955, he admitted to having problems with his singing voice, which he called "pretty terrible." In the 1965 documentary Meet Marlon Brando, he revealed that the final product heard in the movie was a result of countless singing takes being cut into one and later joked, "I couldn't hit a note with a baseball bat; some notes I missed by extraordinary margins ... They sewed my words together on one song so tightly that when I mouthed it in front of the camera, I nearly asphyxiated myself". Relations between Brando and costar Frank Sinatra were also frosty, with Stefan Kanfer observing: "The two men were diametrical opposites: Marlon required multiple takes; Frank detested repeating himself." Upon their first meeting Sinatra reportedly scoffed, "Don't give me any of that Actors Studio shit." Brando later quipped, "Frank is the kind of guy, when he dies, he's going to heaven and give God a hard time for making him bald." Frank Sinatra called Brando "the world's most overrated actor", and referred to him as "mumbles". The film was commercially though not critically successful, costing $5.5 million to make and grossing $13 million.

Brando played Sakini, a Japanese interpreter for the U.S. Army in postwar Japan, in The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956). Pauline Kael was not particularly impressed by the movie, but noted "Marlon Brando starved himself to play the pixie interpreter Sakini, and he looks as if he's enjoying the stunt-talking with a mad accent, grinning boyishly, bending forward, and doing tricky movements with his legs. He's harmlessly genial (and he is certainly missed when he's offscreen), though the fey, roguish role doesn't allow him to do what he's great at and it's possible that he's less effective in it than a lesser actor might have been."

In (1957), Brando appeared as a United States Air Force officer. found the film a "dull tale of the meeting of the twain", but it was nevertheless a box-office success. According to Stefan Kanfer's biography of the actor, Brando's manager Jay Kanter negotiated a profitable contract with ten percent of the gross going to Brando, which put him in the millionaire category. The movie was controversial due to openly discussing interracial marriage, but proved a great success, earning 10 Academy Award nominations, with Brando being nominated for Best Actor. The film went on to win four Academy Awards. Teahouse and Sayonara were the first in a string of films Brando would strive to make over the next decade which contained socially relevant messages, and he formed a partnership with Paramount to establish his own production company called Pennebaker, its declared purpose to develop films that contained "social value that would improve the world." The name was a tribute in honor of his mother, who had died in 1954. By all accounts, Brando was devastated by her death, with biographer Peter Manso telling A&E's , "She was the one who could give him approval like no one else could and, after his mother died, it seems that Marlon stops caring." Brando appointed his father to run Pennebaker. In the same A&E special, George Englund claims that Brando gave his father the job because "it gave Marlon a chance to take shots at him, to demean and diminish him".

In 1958, Brando appeared in The Young Lions, dyeing his hair blonde and assuming a German accent for the role, which he later admitted was not convincing. The film is based on the novel by Irwin Shaw, and Brando's portrayal of the character Christian Diestl was controversial for its time. He later wrote, "The original script closely followed the book, in which Shaw painted all Germans as evil caricatures, especially Christian, whom he portrayed as a symbol of everything that was bad about Nazism; he was mean, nasty, vicious, a cliché of evil ... I thought the story should demonstrate that there are no inherently 'bad' people in the world, but they can easily be misled." Shaw and Brando even appeared together for a televised interview with CBS correspondent David Schoenbrun and, during a bombastic exchange, Shaw charged that, like most actors, Brando was incapable of playing flat-out villainy; Brando responded by stating "Nobody creates a character but an actor. I play the role; now he exists. He is my creation." The Young Lions also features Brando's only appearance in a film with friend and rival Montgomery Clift (although they shared no scenes together). Brando closed out the decade by appearing in The Fugitive Kind (1960) opposite Anna Magnani. The film was based on another play by Tennessee Williams but was hardly the success A Streetcar Named Desire had been, with the Los Angeles Times labeling Williams' personae "psychologically sick or just plain ugly" and The New Yorker calling it a "cornpone melodrama".

One-Eyed Jacks and Mutiny on the Bounty

In 1961, Brando made his directorial debut in the western One-Eyed Jacks. The picture was originally directed by Stanley Kubrick, but he was fired early in the production. Paramount then made Brando the director. Brando portrays the lead character Rio, and Karl Malden plays his partner "Dad" Longworth. The supporting cast features Katy Jurado, Ben Johnson, and Slim Pickens. Brando's penchant for multiple retakes and character exploration as an actor carried over into his directing, however, and the film soon went over budget; Paramount expected the film to take three months to complete but shooting stretched to six and the cost doubled to more than six million dollars. Brando's inexperience as an editor also delayed postproduction and Paramount eventually took control of the film. Brando later wrote, "Paramount said it didn't like my version of the story; I'd had everyone lie except Karl Malden. The studio cut the movie to pieces and made him a liar, too. By then, I was bored with the whole project and walked away from it". One-Eyed Jacks was received with mixed reviews by critics.

Brando's revulsion with the film industry reportedly boiled over on the set of his next film, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's remake of Mutiny on the Bounty, which was filmed in Tahiti. The actor was accused of deliberately sabotaging nearly every aspect of the production. On June 16, 1962, The Saturday Evening Post ran an article by Bill Davidson with the headline "Six million dollars down the drain: the mutiny of Marlon Brando". Mutiny director Lewis Milestone claimed that the executives "deserve what they get when they give a ham actor, a petulant child, complete control over an expensive picture." Mutiny on the Bounty nearly capsized MGM and, while the project had indeed been hampered with delays other than Brando's behavior, the accusations would dog the actor for years as studios began to fear Brando's difficult reputation. Critics also began taking note of his fluctuating weight.

Box office decline: 1963-1971

Distracted by his personal life and becoming disillusioned with his career, Brando began to view acting as a means to a financial end. Critics protested when he started accepting roles in films many perceived as being beneath his talent, or criticized him for failing to live up to the better roles. Previously only signing short-term deals with film studios, in 1961 Brando uncharacteristically signed a five-picture deal with Universal Studios that would haunt him for the rest of the decade. The Ugly American (1963) was the first of these films. Based on the 1958 novel of the same title that Pennebaker had optioned, the film, which featured Brando's sister Jocelyn, was rated fairly positively but died at the box office. Brando was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance. All of Brando's other Universal films during this period, including Bedtime Story (1964), The Appaloosa (1966), A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) and The Night of the Following Day (1969), were also critical and commercial flops. Countess in particular was a disappointment for Brando, who had looked forward to working with one of his heroes, director Charlie Chaplin. The experience turned out to be an unhappy one; Brando was horrified at Chaplin's didactic style of direction and his authoritarian approach. Brando had also appeared in the spy thriller in 1965; that, too, failed to attract an audience.

Brando acknowledged his professional decline, writing later, "Some of the films I made during the sixties were successful; some weren't. Some, like The Night of the Following Day, I made only for the money; others, like , I did because a friend asked me to and I didn't want to turn him down ... In some ways I think of my middle age as the Fuck You Years." Candy was especially appalling for many; a 1968 sex farce film directed by Christian Marquand and based on the 1958 novel by Terry Southern, the film satirizes pornographic stories through the adventures of its naive heroine, Candy, played by Ewa Aulin. It is generally regarded as the nadir of Brando's career. The Washington Post observed: "Brando's self-indulgence over a dozen years is costing him and his public his talents." In the March 1966 issue of The Atlantic, Pauline Kael wrote that in his rebellious days, Brando "was antisocial because he knew society was crap; he was a hero to youth because he was strong enough not to take the crap", but now Brando and others like him had become "buffoons, shamelessly, pathetically mocking their public reputations." In an earlier review of The Appaloosa in 1966, Kael wrote that the actor was "trapped in another dog of a movie ... Not for the first time, Mr. Brando gives us a heavy-lidded, adenoidally openmouthed caricature of the inarticulate, stalwart loner." Although he feigned indifference, Brando was hurt by the critical mauling, admitting in the 2015 film Listen to Me Marlon, "They can hit you every day and you have no way of fighting back. I was very convincing in my pose of indifference, but I was very sensitive and it hurt a lot."

Brando portrayed a repressed gay army officer in Reflections in a Golden Eye, directed by John Huston and co-starring Elizabeth Taylor. The role turned out as one of his most acclaimed in years, with Stanley Crouch marveling, "Brando's main achievement was to portray the taciturn but stoic gloom of those pulverized by circumstances." The film overall received mixed reviews. Another notable film was (1966), which paired the actor with director Arthur Penn, Jane Fonda, Robert Redford and Robert Duvall. The film deals with themes of racism, sexual revolution, small-town corruption, and vigilantism. The film was received mostly positively.

Brando cited (1969) as his personal favorite of the films he had made, writing in his autobiography: "I think I did some of the best acting I've ever done in that picture, but few people came to see it." Brando dedicated a full chapter to the film in his memoir, stating that the director, Gillo Pontecorvo, was the best director he had ever worked with next to Kazan and Bernardo Bertolucci. Brando also detailed his clashes with Pontecorvo on the set and how "we nearly killed each other." Loosely based on events in the history of Guadeloupe, the film got a hostile reception from critics. In 1971, Michael Winner directed him in the British horror film The Nightcomers with Stephanie Beacham, Thora Hird, Harry Andrews and Anna Palk. It is a prequel to The Turn of the Screw, which had previously been filmed as The Innocents (1961). Brando's performance earned him a nomination for a Best Actor BAFTA, but the film bombed at the box office.

The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris

During the 1970s, Brando was considered "unbankable". Critics were becoming increasingly dismissive of his work and he had not appeared in a box office hit since The Young Lions in 1958, the last year he had ranked as one of the Top Ten Box Office Stars and the year of his last Academy Award nomination, for Sayonara. Brando's performance as Vito Corleone, the "Don," in The Godfather (1972), Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Mario Puzo's 1969 bestselling novel of the same name, was a career turning point, putting him back in the Top Ten and winning him his second Best Actor Oscar.

Paramount production chief Robert Evans, who had given Puzo an advance to write The Godfather so that Paramount would own the film rights, hired Coppola after many major directors had turned the film down. Evans wanted an Italian-American director who could provide the film with cultural authenticity. Coppola also came cheap. Evans was conscious of the fact that Paramount's last Mafia film, The Brotherhood (1968) had been a box office bomb, and he believed it was partly due to the fact that the director, Martin Ritt, and the star, Kirk Douglas, were Jewish, and the film lacked an authentic Italian flavor. The studio originally intended the film to be a low-budget production set in contemporary times without any major actors, but the phenomenal success of the novel gave Evans the clout to turn The Godfather into a prestige picture.

Coppola had developed a list of actors for all the roles, and his list of potential Dons included the Oscar-winning Italian-American Ernest Borgnine, the Italian-American Frank de Kova (best known for playing Chief Wild Eagle on the TV sitcom ), John Marley (a Best Supporting Oscar-nominee for Paramount's 1970 hit film who was cast as the film producer Jack Woltz in the picture), the Italian-American Richard Conte (who was cast as Don Corleone's deadly rival Don Emilio Barzini), and Italian film producer Carlo Ponti. Coppola admitted in a 1975 interview, "We finally figured we had to lure the best actor in the world. It was that simple. That boiled down to Laurence Olivier or Marlon Brando, who are the greatest actors in the world." Coppola's hand-written cast list has Brando's name underlined.

Evans told Coppola that he had been thinking of Brando for the part two years earlier, and Puzo had imagined Brando in the part when he wrote the novel and had actually written to him about the part, so Coppola and Evans narrowed it down to Brando. (Coincidentally, Olivier would compete with Brando for the Best Actor Oscar for his part in He bested Brando at the 1972 New York Film Critics Circle Awards.) Albert S. Ruddy, whom Paramount assigned to produce the film, agreed with the choice of Brando. However, Paramount studio executives were opposed to casting Brando, due to his reputation for difficulty and his long string of box office flops. Brando also had One-Eyed Jacks working against him, a troubled production that lost money for Paramount when it was released in 1961. Paramount Pictures President Stanley Jaffe told an exasperated Coppola: "As long as I'm president of this studio, Marlon Brando will not be in this picture, and I will no longer allow you to discuss it."

Jaffe eventually set three conditions for the casting of Brando: That he would have to take a fee far below what he typically received; he would have to agree to accept financial responsibility for any production delays his behavior cost; and he had to submit to a screen test. Coppola convinced Brando to do a videotaped "make-up" test, in which Brando did his own makeup (he used cotton balls to simulate the character's puffed cheeks). Coppola had feared Brando might be too young to play the Don, but was electrified by the actor's characterization as the head of a crime family. Even so, he had to fight the studio in order to cast the temperamental actor. Brando had doubts himself, stating in his autobiography, "I had never played an Italian before, and I didn't think I could do it successfully." Eventually, Charles Bluhdorn, the president of Paramount parent Gulf+Western, was won over to letting Brando have the role; when he saw the screen test, he asked in amazement, "What are we watching? Who is this old guinea?" Brando was signed for a low fee of $50,000, but in his contract, he was given a percentage of the gross on a sliding scale: 1% of the gross for each $10 million over a $10 million threshold, up to 5% if the picture exceeded $60 million. According to Evans, Brando sold back his points in the picture for $100,000, as he was in dire need of funds. "That $100,000 cost him $11 million," Evans claimed.

In a 1994 interview that can be found on the Academy of Achievement website, Coppola insisted: " The Godfather was a very unappreciated movie when we were making it. They were very unhappy with it. They didn't like the cast. They didn't like the way I was shooting it. I was always on the verge of getting fired." When word of this reached Brando, he threatened to walk off the picture, writing in his memoir: "I strongly believe that directors are entitled to independence and freedom to realize their vision, though Francis left the characterizations in our hands and we had to figure out what to do." In a 2010 television interview with Larry King, Al Pacino also talked about how Brando's support helped him keep the role of Michael Corleone in the movie-despite the fact Coppola wanted to fire him. Pacino also explained in the Larry King interview that, while Coppola expressed disappointment in Pacino's early scenes, he did not specifically threaten to fire him; Coppola himself was feeling pressure from studio executives who were puzzled by Pacino's performance. In the same interview, Pacino credits Coppola with getting him the part. Brando was on his best behavior during filming, buoyed by a cast that included Pacino, Robert Duvall, James Caan, and Diane Keaton. In the Vanity Fair article "The Godfather Wars", Mark Seal writes, "With the actors, as in the movie, Brando served as the head of the family. He broke the ice by toasting the group with a glass of wine." 'When we were young, Brando was like the godfather of actors,' says Robert Duvall. 'I used to meet with Dustin Hoffman in Cromwell's Drugstore, and if we mentioned his name once, we mentioned it 25 times in a day.' Caan adds, 'The first day we met Brando everybody was in awe.'"

Brando's performance was glowingly reviewed by critics. "I thought it would be interesting to play a gangster, maybe for the first time in the movies, who wasn't like those bad guys Edward G. Robinson played, but who is kind of a hero, a man to be respected," Brando recalled in his autobiography. "Also, because he had so much power and unquestioned authority, I thought it would be an interesting contrast to play him as a gentle man, unlike Al Capone, who beat up people with baseball bats." Duvall later marveled to A&E's Biography, "He minimized the sense of beginning. In other words he, like, deemphasized the word action. He would go in front of that camera just like he was before. Cut! It was all the same. There was really no beginning. I learned a lot from watching that." Brando won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, but he declined it, becoming the second actor to refuse a Best Actor award (after George C. Scott for ). Brando did not attend the award ceremony; instead, he sent actress Sacheen Littlefeather (who appeared in Plains Indian-style regalia) to decline the Oscar on his behalf. After refusing to touch the statue at the podium, she announced to the crowd that Brando was rejecting the award in protest of "the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry ... and on television and movie reruns and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee." The Wounded Knee Occupation of 1973 was occurring at the time of the ceremony. Brando had written a longer speech for her to read but, as she explained, this was not permitted due to time constraints. In the written speech Brando added that he hoped his declining the Oscar would be seen as "an earnest effort to focus attention on an issue that might very well determine whether or not this country has the right to say from this point forward we believe in the inalienable rights of all people to remain free and independent on lands that have supported their life beyond living memory."

The actor followed The Godfather with Bernardo Bertolucci's 1972 film Last Tango in Paris, playing opposite Maria Schneider, but Brando's highly noted performance threatened to be overshadowed by an uproar over the sexual content of the film. Brando portrays a recent American widower named Paul, who begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young, betrothed Parisian woman named Jeanne. As with previous films, Brando refused to memorize his lines for many scenes; instead, he wrote his lines on cue cards and posted them around the set for easy reference, leaving Bertolucci with the problem of keeping them out of the picture frame. The film features several intense, graphic scenes involving Brando, including Paul anally raping Jeanne using butter as a lubricant, which it was alleged was not consensual. The actress confirmed that no actual sex occurred, but she complained that she was not told what the scene would include until shortly prior to filming.

Bertolucci also shot a scene which showed Brando's genitals, but in 1973 explained, "I had so identified myself with Brando that I cut it out of shame for myself. To show him naked would have been like showing me naked." Schneider declared in an interview that "Marlon said he felt raped and manipulated by it and he was 48. And he was Marlon Brando!". Like Schneider, Brando confirmed that the sex was simulated. Bertolucci said about Brando that he was "a monster as an actor and a darling as a human being". Brando refused to speak to Bertolucci for 15 years after the production was completed. Bertolucci said:

I was thinking that it was like a dialogue where he was really answering my questions in a way. When at the end of the movie, when he saw it, I discovered that he realized what we were doing, that he was delivering so much of his own experience. And he was very upset with me, and I told him, "Listen, you are a grown-up. Older than me. Didn't you realize what you were doing?" And he didn't talk to me for years.

However;

I called him one day in '93, I think, I was in LA and my wife was shooting a movie. First of all, he answered the phone, and he was talking to me like we had seen each other a day earlier. He said, "Come here." I said, "When?" He said, "Now." So I remember driving on Mulholland Drive to his home and thinking I think I won't make it, I think I will crash before [I get there]. I was so emotional.

The film also features Paul's angry, emotionally charged final confrontation with the corpse of his dead wife. The controversial movie was a hit however, and Brando made the list of Top Ten Box Office Stars for the last time. His gross participation deal earned him $3 million. The voting membership of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences again nominated Brando for Best Actor, his seventh nomination. Brando won the 1973 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor.

Pauline Kael, in The New Yorker review, wrote "The movie breakthrough has finally come. Bertolucci and Brando have altered the face of an art form." Brando confessed in his autobiography, "To this day I can't say what Last Tango in Paris was about", and added the film "required me to do a lot of emotional arm wrestling with myself, and when it was finished, I decided that I wasn't ever again going to destroy myself emotionally to make a movie".

In 1973, Brando was devastated by the death of his childhood best friend Wally Cox. Brando wrenched his ashes from his widow, who was going to sue for their return, but finally said, "Marlon needed the ashes more than I did."

In 1976, Brando appeared in The Missouri Breaks with his friend Jack Nicholson. The movie also reunited the actor with director Arthur Penn. As biographer Stefan Kanfer describes, Penn had difficulty controlling Brando, who seemed intent on going over the top with his border-ruffian-turned-contract-killer Robert E. Lee Clayton: "Marlon made him a cross-dressing psychopath. Absent for the first hour of the movie, Clayton enters on horseback, dangling upside down, caparisoned in white buckskin, Littlefeather-style. He speaks in an Irish accent for no apparent reason. Over the next hour, also for no apparent reason, Clayton assumes the intonation of a British upper-class twit and an elderly frontier woman, complete with a granny dress and matching bonnet. Penn, who believed in letting actors do their thing, indulged Marlon all the way." Critics were unkind, with The Observer calling Brando's performance "one of the most extravagant displays of grandedamerie since Sarah Bernhardt", while complained, "Marlon Brando at fifty-two has the sloppy belly of a sixty-two-year-old, the white hair of a seventy-two-year-old, and the lack of discipline of a precocious twelve-year-old." However, Kanfer noted: "Even though his late work was met with disapproval, a re-examination shows that often, in the middle of the most pedestrian scene, there would be a sudden, luminous occurrence, a flash of the old Marlon that showed how capable he remained."

In 1978, Brando narrated the English version of , a French-Belgian documentary film directed by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux and Luiz Carlos Saldanha that focused on the life of Raoni Metuktire and issues surrounding the survival of the Indigenous tribes in north central Brazil. Brando portrayed Superman's father Jor-El in the 1978 film . He agreed to the role only on assurance that he would be paid a large sum for what amounted to a small part, that he would not have to read the script beforehand, and that his lines would be displayed somewhere off-camera. It was revealed in a documentary contained in the 2001 DVD release of Superman that he was paid $3.7 million for two weeks of work. Brando also filmed scenes for the movie's sequel, Superman II, but after producers refused to pay him the same percentage he received for the first movie, he denied them permission to use the footage. "I asked for my usual percentage," he recollected in his memoir, "but they refused, and so did I." However, after Brando's death, the footage was reincorporated into the 2006 recut of the film, Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut and in the 2006 "loose sequel" Superman Returns, in which both used and unused archive footage of him as Jor-El from the first two Superman films was remastered for a scene in the Fortress of Solitude, and Brando's voice-overs were used throughout the film. In 1979, he made a rare television appearance in the miniseries Roots: The Next Generations, portraying George Lincoln Rockwell; he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his performance.

Brando starred as Colonel Walter E. Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now (1979). He plays a highly decorated U.S. Army Special Forces officer who goes renegade, running his own operation based in Cambodia and is feared by the U.S. military as much as the Vietnamese. Brando was paid $1 million a week for 3 weeks work. The film drew attention for its lengthy and troubled production, as Eleanor Coppola's documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse documents: Brando showed up on the set overweight, Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack, and severe weather destroyed several expensive sets. The film's release was also postponed several times while Coppola edited millions of feet of footage. In the documentary, Coppola talks about how astonished he was when an overweight Brando turned up for his scenes and, feeling desperate, decided to portray Kurtz, who appears emaciated in the original story, as a man who had indulged every aspect of himself. Coppola: "He was already heavy when I hired him and he promised me that he was going to get in shape and I imagined that I would, if he were heavy, I could use that. But he was so fat, he was very, very shy about it ... He was very, very adamant about how he didn't want to portray himself that way." Brando admitted to Coppola that he had not read the book, Heart of Darkness, as the director had asked him to, and the pair spent days exploring the story and the character of Kurtz, much to the actor's financial benefit, according to producer Fred Roos: "The clock was ticking on this deal he had and we had to finish him within three weeks or we'd go into this very expensive overage ... And Francis and Marlon would be talking about the character and whole days would go by. And this is at Marlon's urging-and yet he's getting paid for it."

Upon release, Apocalypse Now earned critical acclaim, as did Brando's performance. His whispering of Kurtz's final words "The horror! The horror!", has become particularly famous. Roger Ebert, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, defended the movie's controversial denouement, opining that the ending, "with Brando's fuzzy, brooding monologues and the final violence, feels much more satisfactory than any conventional ending possibly could." Brando received a fee of $2 million plus 10% of the gross theatrical rental and 10% of the TV sale rights, earning him around $9 million.

After appearing as oil tycoon Adam Steiffel in 1980's The Formula, which was poorly received critically, Brando announced his retirement from acting. However, he returned in 1989 in A Dry White Season, based on André Brink's 1979 anti-apartheid novel. Brando agreed to do the film for free, but fell out with director Euzhan Palcy over how the film was edited; he even made a rare television appearance in an interview with Connie Chung to voice his disapproval. In his memoir, he maintained that Palcy "had cut the picture so poorly, I thought, that the inherent drama of this conflict was vague at best." Brando received praise for his performance, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and winning the Best Actor Award at the Tokyo Film Festival.

Brando scored enthusiastic reviews for his caricature of his Vito Corleone role as Carmine Sabatini in 1990's The Freshman. In his original review, Roger Ebert wrote, "There have been a lot of movies where stars have repeated the triumphs of their parts-but has any star ever done it more triumphantly than Marlon Brando does in The Freshman?" also praised Brando's performance as Sabatini and noted, "Marlon Brando's sublime comedy performance elevates The Freshman from screwball comedy to a quirky niche in film history." Brando starred alongside his friend Johnny Depp on the box office hit Don Juan DeMarco (1995), in which he also shared credits with singer Selena in her only filming appearance, and in Depp's controversial (1997), which was never released in the United States.

Later performances, such as his appearance in Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992) (for which he was nominated for a Raspberry as "Worst Supporting Actor"), The Island of Dr. Moreau (in which he won a "Worst Supporting Actor" Raspberry) (1996), and his barely recognizable appearance in (1998), resulted in some of the worst reviews of his career. The Island of Dr. Moreau screenwriter Ron Hutchinson would later say in his memoir, Clinging to the Iceberg: Writing for a Living on the Stage and in Hollywood (2017), that Brando sabotaged the film's production by feuding and refusing to cooperate with his colleagues and the film crew.

Unlike its immediate predecessors, Brando's last completed film, (2001), was received generally positively. In the film, in which he portrays a fence, he starred with Robert De Niro.

Final years and death

Brando's notoriety, his troubled family life and his obesity attracted more attention than his later acting career. He gained a great deal of weight in the 1970s; by the early-to-mid-1990s, he weighed over 300 pounds (140 kg) and suffered from Type 2 diabetes. He had a history of weight fluctuation throughout his career that, by and large, he attributed to his years of stress-related overeating, followed by compensatory dieting. He also earned a reputation for being difficult on the set, often unwilling or unable to memorize his lines and less interested in taking direction than in confronting the film director with odd demands. He also dabbled with some innovation in his last years. He had several patents issued in his name from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, all of which involve a method of tensioning drumheads, between June 2002 and November 2004 (for example, see U.S. Patent 6,812,392). His assistant, Alice Marchak, resigned from her role due to his eccentric and unpredictable behavior. Brando also made sketches and art as hobby.

A sketch by Marlon Brando from "Scrawl: An A to Z of Famous Doodles"

A longtime close friend of entertainer Michael Jackson, Brando paid regular visits to his Neverland Ranch, resting there for weeks at a time. Brando also participated in the singer's two-day solo career 30th-anniversary celebration concerts in 2001 and starred in his 13-minute-long music video " You Rock My World", in the same year.

The actor's son, Miko, was Jackson's bodyguard and assistant for several years and was a friend of the singer. "The last time my father left his house to go anywhere, to spend any kind of time, it was with Michael Jackson", Miko stated. "He loved it ... He had a 24-hour chef, 24-hour security, 24-hour help, 24-hour kitchen, 24-hour maid service. Just carte blanche." "Michael was instrumental helping my father through the last few years of his life. For that I will always be indebted to him. Dad had a hard time breathing in his final days and he was on oxygen much of the time. He loved the outdoors, so Michael would invite him over to Neverland. Dad could name all the trees there and the flowers, but being on oxygen it was hard for him to get around and see them all, it's such a big place. So Michael got Dad a golf cart with a portable oxygen tank so he could go around and enjoy Neverland. They'd just drive around-Michael Jackson, Marlon Brando, with an oxygen tank in a golf cart." In April 2001, Brando was hospitalized with pneumonia.

In 2004, Brando signed with film director Ridha Behi and began preproduction on a project to be titled Brando and Brando. Up to a week before his death, he was working on the script in anticipation of a July/August 2004 start date. Production was suspended in July 2004 following Brando's death, at which time Behi stated that he would continue the film as an homage to Brando, with a new title of Citizen Brando.

On July 1, 2004, Brando died of respiratory failure from pulmonary fibrosis with congestive heart failure at the UCLA Medical Center. The cause of death was initially withheld, with his lawyer citing privacy concerns. He also suffered from diabetes and liver cancer. Shortly before his death and despite needing an oxygen mask to breathe, he recorded his voice to appear in The Godfather: The Game, once again as Don Vito Corleone. Brando recorded only one line due to his health and an impersonator was hired to finish his lines. His single recorded line was included within the final game as a tribute to the actor. Some additional lines from his character were directly lifted from the film. Karl Malden-Brando's co-star in three films (A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and One-Eyed Jacks)-spoke in a documentary accompanying the DVD of A Streetcar Named Desire about a phone call he received from Brando shortly before Brando's death. A distressed Brando told Malden he kept falling over. Malden wanted to come over, but Brando put him off, telling him there was no point. Three weeks later, Brando was dead. Shortly before his death, he had apparently refused permission for tubes carrying oxygen to be inserted into his lungs, which, he was told, was the only way to prolong his life.

Brando was cremated and his ashes were put in with those of Wally Cox. They were then scattered partly in Tahiti and partly in Death Valley.

Personal life

Brando was known for his tumultuous personal life and his large number of partners and children. He was the father to at least 11 children, three of whom were adopted. In 1976, he told a French journalist, "Homosexuality is so much in fashion, it no longer makes news. Like a large number of men, I, too, have had homosexual experiences, and I am not ashamed. I have never paid much attention to what people think about me. But if there is someone who is convinced that Jack Nicholson and I are lovers, may they continue to do so. I find it amusing."

During the 1947 production of A Streetcar Named Desire, Brando became enamored with fellow cast member Sandy Campbell, who played the minor role of the young collector. Brando had asked Campbell to have an affair with him and was often seen standing in the wings with Campbell and holding his hand. According to Truman Capote, both Campbell and Brando confessed to having been in a sexual relationship. "I asked Marlon, and he admitted it. He said he went to bed with lots of other men, too, but that he didn't consider himself a homosexual. He said they were all so attracted to him. 'I just thought that I was doing them a favor,' he said." In his 1957 interview with Brando for The New Yorker, Capote claimed to have first encountered Brando at a rehearsal for A Streetcar Named Desire while he was sleeping on a table on the stage in an empty auditorium. However, the story was appropriated from Sandy Campbell, as confirmed by his partner, Donald Windham.

He met nisei actress and dancer Reiko Sato in the early 1950s. Though their relationship cooled, they remained friends for the rest of Sato's life, with her dividing her time between Los Angeles and Tetiaroa in her later years. In 1954 Dorothy Kilgallen reported they were an item. Brando also dated actress Ariane "Pat" Quinn.

Katy Jurado in 1953

Brando was smitten with the Mexican actress Katy Jurado after seeing her in . They met when Brando was filming Viva Zapata! in Mexico. Brando told Joseph L. Mankiewicz that he was attracted to "her enigmatic eyes, black as hell, pointing at you like fiery arrows". Their first date became the beginning of an extended affair that lasted many years and peaked at the time they worked together on One-Eyed Jacks (1961), a film directed by Brando.

Brando met actress Rita Moreno in 1954, and they began a love affair. Moreno later revealed in her memoir that when she became pregnant by Brando, he arranged for an abortion. After the abortion was botched, and Brando fell in love with Tarita Teriipaia, Moreno attempted suicide by overdosing on Brando's sleeping pills. Years after they broke up, Moreno played his love interest in the film The Night of the Following Day.

Brando was briefly engaged to the 19 year-old French actress Josanne Mariani, whom he met in 1954. They broke their engagement when Brando discovered that his other girlfriend, Anna Kashfi, was pregnant and went on to marry her instead in 1957.

In 1960, Brando married Movita Castaneda, a Mexican-American actress; the marriage was annulled in 1968, after it was discovered her previous marriage was still active. Castaneda had appeared in the first Mutiny on the Bounty film in 1935, some 27 years before the 1962 remake with Brando as Fletcher Christian. They had two children together: Miko Castaneda Brando (born 1961) and Rebecca Brando (born 1966).

French actress Tarita Teriipaia, who played Brando's love interest in Mutiny on the Bounty, became his third wife on August 10, 1962. She was twenty years old, 18 years younger than Brando, who was reportedly delighted by her naïveté. Because Teriipaia was a native French speaker, Brando became fluent in the language and gave numerous interviews in French. Brando and Teriipaia had two children together: Simon Teihotu Brando (born 1963) and Tarita Cheyenne Brando (1970-1995). Brando also adopted Teriipaia's daughter, Maimiti Brando (born 1977) and niece, Raiatua Brando (born 1982). Brando and Teriipaia divorced in July 1972.

After Brando's death, the daughter of actress Cynthia Lynn claimed that Brando had had a short-lived affair with her mother, who appeared with Brando in Bedtime Story, and that this affair resulted in her birth in 1964. Throughout the late 1960s and into the early 1980s, he had a tempestuous, long-term relationship with actress Jill Banner.

Brando had a long-term relationship with his housekeeper Maria Cristina Ruiz, with whom he had three children: Ninna Priscilla Brando (born May 13, 1989), Myles Jonathan Brando (born January 16, 1992) and Timothy Gahan Brando (born January 6, 1994). Brando also adopted Petra Brando-Corval (born 1972), the daughter of his assistant Caroline Barrett and novelist James Clavell.

Brando's close friendship with Wally Cox was the subject of rumors. Brando told a journalist: "If Wally had been a woman, I would have married him and we would have lived happily ever after." Two of Cox's wives, however, dismissed the suggestion that the love was more than platonic.

Brando's grandson Tuki Brando (born 1990), son of Cheyenne Brando, is a fashion model. His numerous grandchildren also include Prudence Brando and Shane Brando, children of Miko C. Brando; the children of Rebecca Brando; and the three children of Teihotu Brando among others.

Stephen Blackehart has been reported to be the son of Brando, but Blackehart disputes this claim.

In 2018, Quincy Jones and Jennifer Lee claimed that Brando had had a sexual relationship with comedian and Superman III actor Richard Pryor. Pryor's daughter Rain Pryor later disputed the claim.

Brando earned a reputation as a " bad boy" for his public outbursts and antics. According to Los Angeles: "Brando was rock and roll before anybody knew what rock and roll was." His behavior during the filming of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) seemed to bolster his reputation as a difficult star. He was blamed for a change in director and a runaway budget, though he denied responsibility for both. On June 12, 1973, Brando broke paparazzo Ron Galella's jaw. Galella had followed Brando, who was accompanied by talk show host Dick Cavett, after a taping of The Dick Cavett Show in New York City. He paid a $40,000 out-of-court settlement and suffered an infected hand as a result. Galella wore a football helmet the next time he photographed Brando at a gala benefiting the American Indians Development Association in 1974.

The filming of Mutiny on the Bounty affected Brando's life in a profound way, as he fell in love with Tahiti and its people. He bought a twelve-island atoll, Tetiaroa, and in 1970, hired an award-winning young Los Angeles architect, Bernard Judge, to build his home and natural village there without despoiling the environment. An environmental laboratory protecting sea birds and turtles was established, and for many years student groups visited. The 1983 hurricane destroyed many of the structures, including his resort. A hotel using Brando's name, The Brando Resort opened in 2014. Brando was an active ham radio operator, with the call signs KE6PZH and FO5GJ (the latter from his island). He was listed in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) records as Martin Brandeaux to preserve his privacy.

In the A&E Biography episode on Brando, biographer Peter Manso comments: "On the one hand, being a celebrity allowed Marlon to take his revenge on the world that had so deeply hurt him, so deeply scarred him. On the other hand he hated it because he knew it was false and ephemeral." In the same program another biographer, David Thomson, says:

"Many, many people who worked with him, and came to work with him with the best intentions, went away in despair saying he's a spoiled kid. It has to be done his way or he goes away with some vast story about how he was wronged, he was offended, and I think that fits with the psychological pattern that he was a wronged kid".

Political activism

In 1946, Brando performed in Ben Hecht's Zionist play A Flag Is Born. He attended some fundraisers for John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election. In August 1963, he participated in the March on Washington along with fellow celebrities Harry Belafonte, James Garner, Charlton Heston, Burt Lancaster and Sidney Poitier. Along with Paul Newman, Brando also participated in the Freedom Rides. Brando supported Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1964 United States presidential election.

Brando with the Finnish First Lady, Sylvi Kekkonen, in 1967

In autumn of 1967, Brando visited Helsinki, Finland at a charity party organized by UNICEF at the Helsinki City Theatre. The gala was televised in thirteen countries. Brando's visit was based on the famine he had seen in Bihar, India, and he presented the film he shot there to the press and invited guests. He spoke in favor of children's rights and development aid in developing countries.

In the aftermath of the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Brando made one of the strongest commitments to furthering King's work. Shortly after King's death, he announced that he was bowing out of the lead role of a major film,The Arrangement (1969), which was about to begin production, in order to devote himself to the civil rights movement. "I felt I'd better go find out where it is; what it is to be black in this country; what this rage is all about," Brando said on the late-night ABC-TV talk show Joey Bishop Show. In A&E's Biography episode on Brando, actor and co-star Martin Sheen states: "I'll never forget the night that Reverend King was shot and I turned on the news and Marlon was walking through Harlem with Mayor Lindsay. And there were snipers and there was a lot of unrest and he kept walking and talking through those neighborhoods with Mayor Lindsay. It was one of the most incredible acts of courage I ever saw, and it meant a lot and did a lot."

Brando's participation in the civil rights movement actually began well before King's death. In the early 1960s, he contributed thousands of dollars to both the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (S.C.L.C.) and to a scholarship fund established for the children of slain Mississippi N.A.A.C.P. leader Medgar Evers. In 1964, Brando was arrested at a " fish-in" held to protest a broken treaty that had promised Native Americans fishing rights in Puget Sound. By this time, Brando was already involved in films that carried messages about human rights: , which addressed interracial romance, and The Ugly American, depicting the conduct of U.S. officials abroad and the deleterious effect on the citizens of foreign countries. For a time, he was also donating money to the Black Panther Party and considered himself a friend of founder Bobby Seale. He also gave a eulogy after Bobby Hutton was shot by the police. Brando ended his financial support for the group over his perception of its increasing radicalization, specifically a passage in a Panther pamphlet put out by Eldridge Cleaver advocating indiscriminate violence, "for the Revolution."

Brando (right) with Charlton Heston, James Baldwin, Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte at the March on Washington in 1963.

Brando was also a supporter of Native American rights and the American Indian Movement. The March 1964 fish-in protest near Tacoma, Washington, where he was arrested while protesting for fishing treaty rights, won him respect from members of the Puyallup tribe, who reportedly dubbed the spot where he was arrested "Brando's Landing." At the 1973 Academy Awards ceremony, Brando refused to accept the Oscar for his career-reviving performance in The Godfather. Sacheen Littlefeather represented him at the ceremony. She appeared in full Apache attire and stated that owing to the "poor treatment of Native Americans in the film industry", Brando would not accept the award. This occurred while the standoff at Wounded Knee was ongoing. The event grabbed the attention of the US and the world media. This was considered a major event and victory for the movement by its supporters and participants.

Outside of his film work, Brando appeared before the California Assembly in support of a fair housing law, and personally joined picket lines in demonstrations protesting discrimination in housing developments in 1963.

He was also an activist against apartheid. In 1964, he favored a boycott of his films in South Africa to prevent them from being shown to a segregated audience. He took part at a 1975 protest rally against American investments in South Africa and for the release of Nelson Mandela. In 1989, Brando also starred in the film A Dry White Season, based upon André Brink's novel of the same name.

Comments on Jews and Hollywood

In an interview in magazine in January 1979, Brando said: "You've seen every single race besmirched, but you never saw an image of the kike because the Jews were ever so watchful for that-and rightly so. They never allowed it to be shown on screen. The Jews have done so much for the world that, I suppose, you get extra disappointed because they didn't pay attention to that."

Brando made a similar comment on Larry King Live in April 1996, saying:

Hollywood is run by Jews; it is owned by Jews, and they should have a greater sensitivity about the issue of-of people who are suffering. Because they've exploited-we have seen the-we have seen the nigger and greaseball, we've seen the chink, we've seen the slit-eyed dangerous Jap, we have seen the wily Filipino, we've seen everything, but we never saw the kike. Because they knew perfectly well, that that is where you draw the wagons around.

Larry King, who was Jewish, replied: "When you say-when you say something like that, you are playing right in, though, to anti-Semitic people who say the Jews are-" Brando interrupted: "No, no, because I will be the first one who will appraise the Jews honestly and say 'Thank God for the Jews'."

Jay Kanter, Brando's agent, producer, and friend, defended him in Daily Variety: "Marlon has spoken to me for hours about his fondness for the Jewish people, and he is a well-known supporter of Israel;" Kanter himself was Jewish. Similarly, Louie Kemp, in his article for Jewish Journal, wrote: "You might remember him as Don Vito Corleone, Stanley Kowalski or the eerie Col. Walter E. Kurtz in 'Apocalypse Now', but I remember Marlon Brando as a mensch and a personal friend of the Jewish people when they needed it most."

That will be Brando's legacy whether he likes it or not-the stunning actor who embodied a poetry of anxiety that touched the deepest dynamics of his time and place.

Brando was one of the most respected actors of the post-war era. He is listed by the American Film Institute as the fourth greatest male star whose screen debut occurred before or during 1950 (it occurred in 1950). He earned respect among critics for his memorable performances and charismatic screen presence. He helped popularize 'method acting'. He is regarded as one of the greatest cinema actors of the 20th century. Furthermore, he was one of only six actors named in 1999 by magazine in its list of the 100 Most Important People of the Century. In this list, Time also designated Brando as the "Actor of the Century".

Cultural influence

He was our angry young man-the delinquent, the tough, the rebel-who stood at the center of our common experience.

Marlon Brando is a cultural icon with enduring popularity. His rise to national attention in the 1950s had a profound effect on American culture. According to film critic Pauline Kael, "Brando represented a reaction against the post-war mania for security. As a protagonist, the Brando of the early fifties had no code, only his instincts. He was a development from the gangster leader and the outlaw. He was antisocial because he knew society was crap; he was a hero to youth because he was strong enough not to take the crap ... Brando represented a contemporary version of the free American ... Brando is still the most exciting American actor on the screen."

Sociologist Suzanne McDonald-Walker states: "Marlon Brando, sporting leather jacket, jeans, and moody glare, became a cultural icon summing up 'the road' in all its maverick glory." His portrayal of the gang leader Johnny Strabler in The Wild One has become an enduring image, used both as a symbol of rebelliousness and a fashion accessory that includes a Perfecto style motorcycle jacket, a tilted cap, jeans and sunglasses. Johnny's haircut inspired a craze for sideburns, followed by James Dean and Elvis Presley, among others. Dean copied Brando's acting style extensively and Presley used Brando's image as a model for his role in Jailhouse Rock. The "I coulda been a contender" scene from On the Waterfront, according to the author of Brooklyn Boomer, Martin H. Levinson, is "one of the most famous scenes in motion picture history, and the line itself has become part of America's cultural lexicon." An example of the endurance of Brando's popular "Wild One" image was the 2009 release of replicas of the leather jacket worn by Brando's Johnny Strabler character. The jackets were marketed by Triumph, the manufacturer of the Triumph Thunderbird motorcycles featured in The Wild One, and were officially licensed by Brando's estate.

Brando was also considered a male sex symbol. Linda Williams writes: "Marlon Brando [was] the quintessential American male sex symbol of the late fifties and early sixties". Brando was an early lesbian icon who, along with James Dean, influenced the butch look and self-image in the 1950s and after.

Brando has also been immortalized in music; most notably, he was mentioned in the lyrics of " It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City" by Bruce Springsteen, in which one of the opening lines read "I could walk like Brando right in to the sun", and in Neil Young's " Pocahontas" as a tribute to his lifetime support of Native Americans and in which he is depicted sitting by a fire with Neil and Pocahontas. He was also mentioned in " Vogue" by Madonna, "Is This What You Wanted" by Leonard Cohen on the album New Skin for the Old Ceremony, "Eyeless" by Slipknot on their self-titled album, and most recently in the song simply titled "Marlon Brando" off the Australian singer Alex Cameron's 2017 album Forced Witness. Bob Dylan's 2020 song " My Own Version of You" references one of his most famous performances in the line, "I'll take the Pacino and the Brando / Mix 'em up in a tank and get a robot commando".

Brando is also visible on the cover of the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, among a tableau of celebrities and historical figures.

Brando's films, along with those of James Dean, caused Honda to come forward with its "You Meet the Nicest People on a Honda" ads, in order to curb the negative association motorcycles had gotten with rebels and outlaws.

Views on acting

In his autobiography Songs My Mother Taught Me, Brando observed:

I've always thought that one benefit of acting is that it gives actors a chance to express feelings that they are normally unable to vent in real life. Intense emotions buried inside you can come smoking out the back of your head, and I suppose in terms of psychodrama this can be helpful. In hindsight, I guess my emotional insecurity as a child-the frustrations of not being allowed to be who I was, of wanting love and not being able to get it, of realizing that I was of no value-may have helped me as an actor, at least in a small way. It probably gave me a certain intensity that most people don't have.

He also confessed that, while having great admiration for the theater, he did not return to it after his initial success primarily because the work left him drained emotionally:

What I remember most about A Streetcar Named Desire was the emotional grind of acting in it six nights and two afternoons. Try to imagine what it was like walking on stage at 8:30 every night having to yell, scream, cry, break dishes, kick the furniture, punch the walls and experience the same intense, wrenching emotions night after night, trying each time to evoke in audiences the same emotions I felt. It was exhausting.

Brando repeatedly credited Stella Adler and her understanding of the Stanislavski acting technique for bringing realism to American cinema, but also added:

This school of acting served the American theater and motion pictures well, but it was restricting. The American theater has never been able to present Shakespeare or classical drama of any kind satisfactorily. We simply do not have the style, the regard for the language or the cultural disposition ... You cannot mumble in Shakespeare. You cannot improvise, and you are required to adhere strictly to the text. The English theater has a sense of language that we do not recognize ... In the United States the English language has developed almost into a patois.

In the 2015 documentary Listen to Me Marlon, Brando shared his thoughts on playing a death scene, stating, "That's a tough scene to play. You have to make 'em believe that you are dying ... Try to think of the most intimate moment you've ever had in your life." His favorite actors were Spencer Tracy, John Barrymore, Fredric March, James Cagney and Paul Muni. He also showed admiration for Sean Penn, Jack Nicholson, Johnny Depp and Daniel Day-Lewis.

Filmography and accolades

Works cited

Adler, Stella; Paris, Barry (1999). Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov. New York City: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-42442-3.

Brando, Anna Kashfi; Stein, E.P. (1979). Brando for Breakfast. New York: Crown Publishers. ISBN 0-517-53686-2.

Brando, Marlon; Lindsey, Robert (1994). Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me. Random House. ISBN 978-0-679-41013-3.

Ebert, Roger (2010). The Great Movies III. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-18208-7.

Girgus, Sam B. (1998). Hollywood Renaissance: The Cinema of Democracy in the Era of Ford, Capra, and Kazan. New York City: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-62552-4.

Graziano, Rocky; Barber, Rowland (1955). Somebody Up There Likes Me. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Kanfer, Stefan (2008). Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-1-4000-4289-0.

Pierpont, Claudia Roth (October 27, 2008). "Method Man". New Yorker.

Santopietro, Tom (2012). The Godfather Effect: Changing Hollywood, America, and Me. New York City: Thomas Dunne Books. ISBN 978-1-250-00513-7.

Williams, Linda (2008). Screening Sex. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-4285-4.

Further reading

Bain, David Haward. The Old Iron Road: An Epic of Rails, Roads, and the Urge to Go West. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. ISBN 0-14-303526-6.

Brando, Marlon and Donald Cammell. Fan-Tan. New York: Knopf, 2005. ISBN 1-4000-4471-5.

Englund, George. The Way It's Never Been Done Before: My Friendship With Marlon Brando. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2004. ISBN 0-06-078630-2.

Grobel, Lawrence. "Conversations with Brando." New York, Hyperion, 1990. Cooper Square Press 1999. Rat Press, 2009

Judge, Bernard. Waltzing With Brando: Planning a Paradise in Tahiti. New York: ORO Editions, 2011.ISBN 978-0-9826226-4-3

McDonough, Jimmy. Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film. New York: Crown, 2005. ISBN 978-1-4000-5044-4.

Pendergast, Tom and Sara. St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, Volume 1. Detroit, Michigan: St. James Press, 2000. ISBN 978-1-55862-405-4.

Petkovich, Anthony. "Burn, Brando, Burn!". UK: Headpress 19: World Without End (1999), pp. 91-112.

Schoell, William. The Sundance Kid: A Biography of Robert Redford. Boulder, CO: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2006. ISBN 978-1-58979-297-5.

External links

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Marlon Brando Jr. (April 3, 1924 - July 1, 2004) was an American actor and activist. Widely considered one of the greatest actors of the 20th century, he received numerous accolades throughout his career, which spanned six decades, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, one Cannes Film Festival Award, and three British Academy Film Awards.

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The first sports stadium that had a dome roof. It could hold 70,000 people and debuted in 1965.

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The skin of an animal with hair or fur still on it. Usually used for Native American clothing.

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Also found in: Thesaurus, Legal, Acronyms, Idioms, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

pelt 1
(pĕlt)
n.

1. The skin of an animal with the fur or hair still on it.

2. A stripped animal skin ready for tanning.

[Middle English, probably from Old French pelete, diminutive of pel, skin, from Latin pellis; see pel- in Indo-European roots.]

pelt 2
(pĕlt)

v. pelt·ed, pelt·ing, pelts

v. tr.
1.

a. To strike or assail repeatedly with thrown objects: pelted each other with snowballs. See Synonyms at barrage ².

b. Archaic To strike (someone) with blows, as with a club.

2. To hurl or throw (missiles): children who pelted stones at the neighbors' windows.

3. To fall upon; strike repeatedly: Hailstones pelted the tent.

v. intr.

1. To fall heavily or abundantly; beat: The rain pelted down all day.

2. To move at a vigorous gait: "A rider on a lathered horse came pelting down the Orange Plank Road" (Stephen W. Sears).

[Middle English pelten, variant of pilten, perhaps ultimately from Latin pultāre, to beat, variant of pulsāre, frequentative of pellere, to strike; see pel- in Indo-European roots.]

pelt
(pɛlt)
vb

1. ( tr) to throw (missiles) at (a person)

2. ( tr) to hurl (insults) at (a person)

3. ( intr; foll by along, over, etc ) to move rapidly; hurry

4. (often foll by: down) to rain heavily

n

6. speed (esp in the phrase at full pelt)

[C15: of uncertain origin, perhaps from pellet]

pelt
(pɛlt)
n

1. (Textiles) the skin of a fur-bearing animal, such as a mink, esp when it has been removed from the carcass

2. (Tanning) the hide of an animal, stripped of hair and ready for tanning

[C15: perhaps back formation from peltry]

pelt¹
(pɛlt)

v.t.

1. to attack with repeated blows or with missiles.

3. to assail vigorously with words, questions, etc.

4. to beat or rush against with repeated forceful blows.

v.i.

5. to beat or pound unrelentingly.

n.

9. a blow, esp. with something thrown.

[1490-1500; orig. uncertain]

pelt²
(pɛlt)

n.

the untanned hide or skin of an animal.

[1275-1325; Middle English; perhaps back formation from peltry peltry]

pelt

Past participle: pelted
Gerund: pelting

Thesaurus Antonyms Related Words Synonyms Legend:

Noun 1.
pelt - the dressed hairy coat of a mammal

bearskin - the pelt of a bear (sometimes used as a rug)

chinchilla - the expensive silvery grey fur of the chinchilla

ermine - the expensive white fur of the ermine

fox - the grey or reddish-brown fur of a fox

lambskin - the skin of a lamb with the wool still on

mink - the expensive fur of a mink

otter - the fur of an otter

raccoon - the fur of the North American racoon

sable - the expensive dark brown fur of the marten

sealskin, seal - the pelt or fur (especially the underfur) of a seal; "a coat of seal"

2.
pelt - body covering of a living animal

Verb 1.
pelt - cast, hurl, or throw repeatedly with some missile; "They pelted each other with snowballs"

lapidate - throw stones at; "Pilgrims lapidate a stone pillar in commemoration of Abraham's temptation"

throw - propel through the air; "throw a frisbee"

2.
pelt - attack and bombard with or as if with missiles; "pelt the speaker with questions"

attack, assail - launch an attack or assault on; begin hostilities or start warfare with; "Hitler attacked Poland on September 1, 1939 and started World War II"; "Serbian forces assailed Bosnian towns all week"

3.
pelt - rain heavily; "Put on your rain coat-- it's pouring outside!"

rain, rain down - precipitate as rain; "If it rains much more, we can expect some flooding"

sheet - come down as if in sheets; "The rain was sheeting down during the monsoon"

sluice, sluice down - pour as if from a sluice; "An aggressive tide sluiced across the barrier reef"

pelt
¹
pelt
²
verb

1. shower, beat, strike, pepper, batter, thrash, bombard, wallop (informal), assail, pummel, hurl at, cast at, belabour, sling at Crowds started to pelt police cars with stones.

3. rush, charge, shoot, career, speed, tear, belt (slang), dash, hurry, barrel (along) (informal, chiefly U.S. & Canad.), whizz (informal), stampede, run fast, burn rubber (informal) She pelted down the stairs in her nightgown.

full pelt or at full pelt at top speed, swiftly, very fast, at speed, very quickly, speedily, hell for leather (informal), like lightning, hotfoot, like the clappers (Brit. informal), like nobody's business (informal), with all speed, like greased lightning (informal), at or on the double Alice ran full pelt towards the emergency room.

pelt 1
noun
pelt 2
verb

To move swiftly:

bolt, bucket, bustle, dart, dash, festinate, flash, fleet, flit, fly, haste, hasten, hurry, hustle, race, rocket, run, rush, sail, scoot, scour, shoot, speed, sprint, tear, trot, whirl, whisk, whiz, wing, zip, zoom.

Idioms: get a move on, get cracking, go like lightning, go like the wind, hotfoot it, make haste, make time, make tracks, run like the wind, shake a leg, step on it.

يَرمي على، يَرْشُق يُهَرْوِل، يَرْكُض مُسْرِعا يَهْطُل المَطَر

bubnovat házet lít jako z konve uhánět

dynja, steypast yfir; hellirigna láta dynja á, kasta aî skjótast

apmėtyti apsvaidyti lėkti galvotrūkčiais mėtyti pliaupti

apmētāt drāzties vēja ātrumā grabināt, sisties pikoties

pelt

¹ [pelt]

B. VI

2. (= go fast) to go pelting off → salir como un rayo

pelt

² [pelt] N (= fur) → piel f; (= skin) → pellejo m

pelt

[ˈpɛlt]

il vi
it's pelting with rain (= raining heavily) → tombe des cordes

pelt

¹

pelt

²

vt

(= throw) → to jdn/etw (mit etw) schleudern ( at nach); pelt somebody/something (with something) → bewerfen

vi (inf)

(= go fast) → pesen (inf)

pelt
(pelt) verb

1. to throw (things) at. The children pelted each other with snowballs.

2. to run very fast. He pelted down the road.

3. (of rain; sometimes also of hailstones) to fall very heavily. You can't leave now - it's pelting (down).

at full pelt

(running) as fast as possible. They set off down the road at full pelt.

Want to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, or visit the webmaster's page for free fun content.

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References in classic literature?

extending it upon the forecastle deck, he now proceeds cylindrically to remove its dark pelt, as an African hunter the pelt of a boa.

And then he strewed the table with the nuggets, stuffed ptarmigans, bead work and seal pelts of the returned Kiondiker, and began to prate to us of his millions.

And the Kiondiker threw down his pelts and nuggets as dross, and let his jaw fall half-way, and stared at her.

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Define pelt. pelt synonyms, pelt pronunciation, pelt translation, English dictionary definition of pelt. n. 1. The skin of an animal with the fur or hair still on it. 2. A stripped animal skin ready for tanning. v. pelt·ed , pelt·ing , pelts v. tr. 1. a.

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Native American woman notable for her association with the Virginia settlement Jamestown. She was daughter of Powhatan.

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Pocahontas (, ; born Amonute, also known as Matoaka, c. 1596 - March 1617) was a Native American woman belonging to the Powhatan people, notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. She was the daughter of Powhatan, the paramount chief of a network of tributary tribes in the Tsenacommacah, encompassing the Tidewater region of what is today the U.S. state Virginia.

Pocahontas was captured and held for ransom by English colonists during hostilities in 1613. During her captivity, she was encouraged to convert to Christianity and was baptized under the name Rebecca. She married the tobacco planter John Rolfe in April 1614 at the age of about 17 or 18, and she bore their son Thomas Rolfe in January 1615.

In 1616, the Rolfes travelled to London, where Pocahontas was presented to English society as an example of the "civilized savage" in hopes of stimulating investment in Jamestown. On this trip she may have met Squanto, a "Patuxet Native American" from New England. Pocahontas became a celebrity, was elegantly fêted, and attended a masque at Whitehall Palace. In 1617, the Rolfes set sail for Virginia; Pocahontas died at Gravesend, Kent, England, of unknown causes, aged 20 or 21. She was buried in St George's Church, Gravesend; her grave's exact location is unknown because the church was rebuilt after being destroyed by a fire.

Numerous places, landmarks, and products in the United States have been named after Pocahontas. Her story has been romanticized over the years, many aspects of which are fictional. Many of the stories told about her by the English explorer John Smith have been contested by her documented descendants. She is a subject of art, literature, and film. Many famous people have claimed to be among her descendants through her son, including members of the First Families of Virginia, First Lady Edith Wilson, American actor Glenn Strange, and astronomer Percival Lowell.

Pocahontas's birth year is unknown, but some historians estimate it to have been around 1596. In A True Relation of Virginia (1608), the English explorer John Smith described meeting Pocahontas in the spring of 1608 when she was "a child of ten years old". In a 1616 letter, Smith again described her as she was in 1608, but this time as "a child of twelve or thirteen years of age."

Pocahontas was the daughter of Chief Powhatan, paramount chief of Tsenacommacah, an alliance of about thirty Algonquian-speaking groups and petty chiefdoms in the Tidewater region of the present-day U.S. state of Virginia. Her mother's name and origin are unknown, but she was probably of lowly status. English adventurer Henry Spelman had lived among the Powhatan people as an interpreter, and he noted that, when one of the paramount chief's many wives gave birth, she was returned to her place of origin and supported there by the paramount chief until she found another husband. However, little is known about Pocahontas's mother, and it has been theorized that she died in childbirth. The Mattaponi Reservation people are descendants of the Powhatans, and their oral tradition claims that Pocahontas's mother was the first wife of Powhatan and that Pocahontas was named after her.

According to colonist William Strachey, "Pocahontas" was a childhood nickname meaning "little wanton." Some interpret the meaning as "playful one." In his account, Strachey describes Pocahontas as a child visiting the fort at Jamestown and playing with the young boys; she would "get the boys forth with her into the marketplace and make them wheel, falling on their hands, turning up their heels upwards, whom she would follow and wheel so herself, naked as she was, all the fort over."

Historian William Stith claimed that "her real name, it seems, was originally Matoax, which the Native Americans carefully concealed from the English and changed it to Pocahontas, out of a superstitious fear, lest they, by the knowledge of her true name, should be enabled to do her some hurt." According to anthropologist Helen C. Rountree, Pocahontas revealed her secret name to the colonists "only after she had taken another religious - baptismal - name" of Rebecca.

Title and status

Pocahontas is frequently viewed as a princess in popular culture. In 1841, William Watson Waldron of Trinity College, Dublin, published Pocahontas, American Princess: and Other Poems, calling her "the beloved and only surviving daughter of the king." She was her father's "delight and darling", according to colonist Captain Ralph Hamor, but she was not in line to inherit a position as a , sub-chief, or mamanatowick (paramount chief). Instead, Powhatan's brothers and sisters and his sisters' children all stood in line to succeed him. In his A Map of Virginia, John Smith explained how matrilineal inheritance worked among the Powhatans:

His kingdom descendeth not to his sonnes nor children: but first to his brethren, whereof he hath three namely Opitchapan, Opechanncanough, and Catataugh; and after their decease to his sisters. First to the eldest sister, then to the rest: and after them to the heires male and female of the eldest sister; but never to the heires of the males.

Interactions with the colonists

Pocahontas is most famously linked to colonist John Smith, who arrived in Virginia with 100 other settlers in April 1607. The colonists built a fort on a marshy peninsula on the James River, and had numerous encounters over the next several months with the people of Tsenacommacah - some of them friendly, some hostile.

A hunting party led by Powhatan's close relative Opechancanough captured Smith in December 1607 while he was exploring on the Chickahominy River and brought him to Powhatan's capital at Werowocomoco. In his 1608 account, Smith describes a great feast followed by a long talk with Powhatan. He does not mention Pocahontas in relation to his capture, and claims that they first met some months later. Margaret Huber suggests that Powhatan was attempting to bring Smith and the other colonists under his own authority. He offered Smith rule of the town of Capahosic, which was close to his capital at Werowocomoco, as he hoped to keep Smith and his men "nearby and better under control."

In 1616, Smith wrote a letter to Queen Anne of Denmark, the wife of King James, in anticipation of Pocahontas' visit to England. In this new account, his capture included the threat of his own death: "at the minute of my execution, she hazarded the beating out of her own brains to save mine; and not only that but so prevailed with her father, that I was safely conducted to Jamestown." He expanded on this in his 1624 Generall Historie, published long after the death of Pocahontas. He explained that he was captured and taken to the paramount chief where "two great stones were brought before Powhatan: then as many as could layd hands on him [Smith], dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs, to beate out his braines, Pocahontas the Kings dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death."

Karen Ordahl Kupperman suggests that Smith used such details to embroider his first account, thus producing a more dramatic second account of his encounter with Pocahontas as a heroine worthy of Queen Anne's audience. She argues that its later revision and publication was Smith's attempt to raise his own stock and reputation, as he had fallen from favor with the London Company which had funded the Jamestown enterprise. Anthropologist Frederic W. Gleach suggests that Smith's second account was substantially accurate but represents his misunderstanding of a three-stage ritual intended to adopt him into the confederacy, but not all writers are convinced, some suggesting the absence of certain corroborating evidence.

Early histories did establish that Pocahontas befriended Smith and the colonists. She often went to the settlement and played games with the boys there. When the colonists were starving, "every once in four or five days, Pocahontas with her attendants brought [Smith] so much provision that saved many of their lives that else for all this had starved with hunger." As the colonists expanded their settlement, the Powhatans felt that their lands were threatened, and conflicts arose again. In late 1609, an injury from a gunpowder explosion forced Smith to return to England for medical care and the colonists told the Powhatans that he was dead. Pocahontas believed that account and stopped visiting Jamestown but learned that Smith was living in England when she traveled there with her husband John Rolfe.

Pocahontas' capture occurred in the context of the First Anglo-Powhatan War, a conflict between the Jamestown settlers and the Natives which began late in the summer of 1609. In the first years of war, the colonists took control of the James River, both at its mouth and at the falls. In the meantime, Captain Samuel Argall pursued contacts with Native tribes in the northern portion of Powhatan's paramount chiefdom. The Patawomecks lived on the Potomac River and were not always loyal to Powhatan, and living with them was Henry Spelman, a young English interpreter. In March 1613, Argall learned that Pocahontas was visiting the Patawomeck village of Passapatanzy and living under the protection of the weroance Iopassus (also known as Japazaws).

With Spelman's help translating, Argall pressured Iopassus to assist in Pocahontas' capture by promising an alliance with the colonists against the Powhatans. Iopassus, with the help of his wives, tricked Pocahontas into boarding Argall's ship and held her for ransom, demanding the release of colonial prisoners held by her father and the return of various stolen weapons and tools. Powhatan returned the prisoners but failed to satisfy the colonists with the number of weapons and tools that he returned. A long standoff ensued, during which the colonists kept Pocahontas captive.[citation needed ]

During the year-long wait, Pocahantas was held at the English settlement of Henricus in present-day Chesterfield County, Virginia. Little is known about her life there, although colonist Ralph Hamor wrote that she received "extraordinary courteous usage." Linwood "Little Bear" Custalow refers to an oral tradition which claims that Pocahontas was raped; Helen Rountree counters that "other historians have disputed that such oral tradition survived and instead argue that any mistreatment of Pocahontas would have gone against the interests of the English in their negotiations with Powhatan. A truce had been called, the Indians still far outnumbered the English, and the colonists feared retaliation." At this time, Henricus minister Alexander Whitaker taught Pocahontas about Christianity and helped her improve her English. Upon her baptism, she took the Christian name "Rebecca."

In March 1614, the stand-off escalated to a violent confrontation between hundreds of colonists and Powhatan men on the Pamunkey River, and the colonists encountered a group of senior Native leaders at Powhatan's capital of Matchcot. The colonists allowed Pocahontas to talk to her tribe when Powhatan arrived, and she reportedly rebuked him for valuing her "less than old swords, pieces, or axes." She said that she preferred to live with the colonists "who loved her."

Possible first marriage

Mattaponi tradition holds that Pocahontas' first husband was Kocoum, brother of the Patawomeck weroance Japazaws, and that Kocoum was killed by the colonists after his wife's capture in 1613. Today's Patawomecks believe that Pocahontas and Kocoum had a daughter named Ka-Okee who was raised by the Patawomecks after her father's death and her mother's abduction.

Kocoum's identity, location, and very existence have been widely debated among scholars for centuries; the only mention of a "Kocoum" in any English document is a brief statement written about 1616 by William Strachey that Pocahontas had been living married to a "private captaine called Kocoum" for two years. Pocahontas married John Rolfe in 1614, and no other records even hint at any previous husband, so some have suggested that Strachey was mistakenly referring to Rolfe himself, with the reference being later misunderstood as one of Powhatan's officers.

Marriage to John Rolfe

During her stay at Henricus, Pocahontas met John Rolfe. Rolfe's English-born wife Sarah Hacker and child Bermuda had died on the way to Virginia after the wreck of the ship Sea Venture on the Summer Isles, now known as Bermuda. He established the Virginia plantation Varina Farms, where he cultivated a new strain of tobacco. Rolfe was a pious man and agonized over the potential moral repercussions of marrying a heathen, though in fact Pocahontas had accepted the Christian faith and taken the baptismal name Rebecca. In a long letter to the governor requesting permission to wed her, he expressed his love for Pocahontas and his belief that he would be saving her soul. He wrote that he was:

motivated not by the unbridled desire of carnal affection, but for the good of this plantation, for the honor of our country, for the Glory of God, for my own salvation... namely Pocahontas, to whom my hearty and best thoughts are, and have been a long time so entangled, and enthralled in so intricate a labyrinth that I was even a-wearied to unwind myself thereout.

The couple were married on April 5, 1614, by chaplain Richard Buck, probably at Jamestown. For two years they lived at Varina Farms, across the James River from Henricus. Their son Thomas was born in January 1615.

The marriage created a climate of peace between the Jamestown colonists and Powhatan's tribes; it endured for eight years as the "Peace of Pocahontas". In 1615, Ralph Hamor wrote, "Since the wedding we have had friendly commerce and trade not only with Powhatan but also with his subjects round about us." The marriage was controversial in the British court at the time because "a commoner" had "the audacity" to marry a "princess."

One goal of the London Company was to convert Native Americans to Christianity, and they saw an opportunity to promote further investment with the conversion of Pocahontas and her marriage to Rolfe, all of which also helped end the First Anglo-Powhatan War. The company decided to bring Pocahontas to England as a symbol of the tamed New World "savage" and the success of the Virginia colony, and the Rolfes arrived at the port of Plymouth on June 12, 1616. The family journeyed to London by coach, accompanied by eleven other Powhatans including a holy man named Tomocomo. John Smith was living in London at the time while Pocahontas was in Plymouth, and she learned that he was still alive. Smith did not meet Pocahontas, but he wrote to Queen Anne urging that Pocahontas be treated with respect as a royal visitor. He suggested that, if she were treated badly, her "present love to us and Christianity might turn to... scorn and fury", and England might lose the chance to "rightly have a Kingdom by her means."

Pocahontas was entertained at various social gatherings. On January 5, 1617, she and Tomocomo were brought before King James at the old Banqueting House in the Palace of Whitehall at a performance of Ben Jonson's masque The Vision of Delight. According to Smith, the king was so unprepossessing that neither Pocahontas nor Tomocomo realized whom they had met until it was explained to them afterward.

Pocahontas was not a princess in Powhatan culture, but the London Company presented her as one to the English public because she was the daughter of an important chief. The inscription on a 1616 engraving of Pocahontas reads "MATOAKA ALS REBECCA FILIA POTENTISS : PRINC : POWHATANI IMP:VIRGINIÆ", meaning "Matoaka, alias Rebecca, daughter of the most powerful prince of the Powhatan Empire of Virginia." Many English at this time recognized Powhatan as the ruler of an empire, and presumably accorded to his daughter what they considered appropriate status. Smith's letter to Queen Anne refers to "Powhatan their chief King." Cleric and travel writer Samuel Purchas recalled meeting Pocahontas in London, noting that she impressed those whom she met because she "carried her selfe as the daughter of a king." When he met her again in London, Smith referred to her deferentially as a "King's daughter."

Pocahontas was apparently treated well in London. At the masque, her seats were described as "well placed" and, according to Purchas, London's Bishop John King "entertained her with festival state and pomp beyond what I have seen in his greate hospitalitie afforded to other ladies."

Not all the English were so impressed, however. Helen C. Rountree claims that there is no contemporaneous evidence to suggest that Pocahontas was regarded in England "as anything like royalty," despite the writings of John Smith. Rather, she was considered to be something of a curiosity, according to Rountree, who suggests that she was merely "the Virginian woman" to most Englishmen.

Pocahontas and Rolfe lived in the suburb of Brentford, Middlesex, for some time, as well as at Rolfe's family home at Heacham, Norfolk. In early 1617, Smith met the couple at a social gathering and wrote that, when Pocahontas saw him, "without any words, she turned about, obscured her face, as not seeming well contented," and was left alone for two or three hours. Later, they spoke more; Smith's record of what she said to him is fragmentary and enigmatic. She reminded him of the "courtesies she had done," saying, "you did promise Powhatan what was yours would be his, and he the like to you." She then discomfited him by calling him "father," explaining that Smith had called Powhatan "father" when he was a stranger in Virginia, "and by the same reason so must I do you". Smith did not accept this form of address because, he wrote, Pocahontas outranked him as "a King's daughter." Pocahontas then said, "with a well-set countenance":

Were you not afraid to come into my father's country and caused fear in him and all his people (but me) and fear you here I should call you "father"? I tell you then I will, and you shall call me child, and so I will be for ever and ever your countryman.

Finally, Pocahontas told Smith that she and her tribe had thought him dead, but her father had told Tomocomo to seek him "because your countrymen will lie much."

In March 1617, Rolfe and Pocahontas boarded a ship to return to Virginia, but they had sailed only as far as Gravesend on the River Thames when Pocahontas became gravely ill. She was taken ashore, where she died from unknown causes, aged approximately 21 and "much lamented." According to Rolfe, she declared that "all must die"; for her, it was enough that her child lived. Speculated causes of her death include pneumonia, smallpox, tuberculosis, hemorrhagic dysentery ("the Bloody flux") and poisoning.

Pocahontas's funeral took place on March 21, 1617, in the parish of St George's Church, Gravesend. Her grave is thought to be underneath the church's chancel, though that church was destroyed in a fire in 1727 and its exact site is unknown. Since 1958 she has been commemorated by a life-sized bronze statue in St. George's churchyard, a replica of the 1907 Jamestown sculpture by the American sculptor William Ordway Partridge.

Pocahontas and John Rolfe had a son, Thomas Rolfe, born in January 1615. Thomas and his wife, Jane Poythress, had a daughter, Jane Rolfe, who was born in Varina, in present-day Henrico County, Virginia, on October 10, 1650. Jane married Robert Bolling of present-day Prince George County, Virginia. Their son, John Bolling, was born in 1676. John Bolling married Mary Kennon and had six surviving children, each of whom married and had surviving children.

In 1907, Pocahontas was the first Native American to be honored on a U.S. stamp. She was a member of the inaugural class of Virginia Women in History in 2000. In July 2015, the Pamunkey Native tribe became the first federally recognized tribe in the state of Virginia; they are descendants of the Powhatan chiefdom of which Pocahontas was a member. Pocahontas is the twelfth great-grandmother of the American actor Edward Norton.

Image gallery

Cultural representations

After her death, increasingly fanciful and romanticized representations were produced about Pocahontas, in which she and Smith are frequently portrayed as romantically involved. Contemporaneous sources substantiate claims of their friendship but not romance. The first claim of their romantic involvement was in John Davis' Travels in the United States of America (1803).

Rayna Green has discussed the similar fetishization that Native and Asian women experience. Both groups are viewed as "exotic" and "submissive," which aids their dehumanization. Also, Green touches on how Native women had to either "keep their exotic distance or die," which is associated with the widespread image of Pocahontas trying to sacrifice her life for John Smith.

Cornel Pewewardy writes, "In Pocahontas, Indian [sic] characters such as Grandmother Willow, Meeko, and Flit belong to the Disney tradition of familiar animals. In so doing, they are rendered as cartoons, certainly less realistic than Pocahontas and John Smith; In this way, Indians remain marginal and invisible, thereby ironically being 'strangers in their own lands' - the shadow Indians. They fight desperately on the silver screen in defense of their asserted rights, but die trying to kill the white hero or save the Indian woman.'"

Pocahontas: Schauspiel mit Gesang, in fünf Akten (A Play with Songs, in five Acts) by Johann Wilhelm Rose, 1784

Captain Smith and the Princess Pocahontas 1806

James Nelson Barker's The Indian Princess; or, La Belle Sauvage (1808),

George Washington Parke Custis, Pocahontas; or, The Settlers of Virginia (1830)

John Brougham's production of the burlesque Po-ca-hon-tas, or The Gentle Savage (1855)

Brougham's burlesque revised for London as La Belle Sauvage, opening at St James's Theatre, November 27, 1869

Sydney Grundy's Pocahontas, a comic opera, music by Edward Solomon, which opened at the Empire Theatre in London on 26 December 1884 and ran for just 24 performances with Lillian Russell in the title role and C. Hayden Coffin in his stage debut in the piece, taking the role of Captain Smith for the final six nights

Miss Pocahontas (Broadway musical), Lyric Theatre, New York City, October 28, 1907

Pocahontas ballet by Elliot Carter, Jr., Martin Beck Theatre, New York City, May 24, 1939

Pocahontas musical by Kermit Goell, Lyric Theatre, West End, London, November 14, 1963

The Jamestown Exposition was held in Norfolk, Virginia from April 26 to December 1, 1907, to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement, and three commemorative postage stamps were issued in conjunction with it. The five-cent stamp portrays Pocahontas, modeled from Simon van de Passe's 1616 engraving. About 8 million were issued.

Films about Pocahontas include:

Pocahontas (1910), a Thanhouser Company silent short drama

Pocahontas and John Smith (1924), a silent film directed by Bryan Foy

Pocahontas (1994), a Japanese animated production from Jetlag Productions directed by Toshiyuki Hiruma Takashi

Pocahontas: The Legend (1995), a Canadian film based on her life

Pocahontas (1995), a Walt Disney Company animated feature, one of the Disney Princess films, and the most well known adaptation of the Pocahontas story. The film presents a fictional romantic affair between Pocahontas and John Smith, in which Pocahontas teaches Smith respect for nature. Irene Bedard voiced and provided the physical model for the title character.

Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World (1998), a direct-to-video Disney sequel depicting Pocahantas falling in love with John Rolfe and traveling to England

The New World (2005), film directed by Terrence Malick and starring Q'orianka Kilcher as Pocahontas

Pocahontas: Dove of Peace (2016), a docudrama produced by Christian Broadcasting Network

Literature

References

1. ^ "A Guide to Writing about Virginia Indians and Virginia Indian History" (PDF). Commonwealth of Virginia, Virginia Council on Indians. January 2012. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 24, 2012.

2. ^ Rose, E.M. (2020). "Did Squanto meet Pocahontas, and What Might they have Discussed?". The Junto.

3. Price, pp. 243-244

4. ^ Smith."John Smith's 1616 Letter to Queen Anne of Great Britain". Digital History.

5. ^ Linwood., Custalow (2007). The true story of Pocahontas : the other side of history. Daniel, Angela L. Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum Pub. ISBN 9781555916329. OCLC 560587311.

6. Waldron, William Watson. ^ Pocahontas, American Princess: and Other Poems (New York: Dean and Trevett, 1841), p. 8.

7. Lemay, J. A. Leo. ^ Did Pocahontas Save Captain John Smith? Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1992, p. 25. See also Birchfield, 'Did Pocahontas' Archived June 26, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.

8. ^ Karen Ordahl Kupperman, The Jamestown Project, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007, 51-60, 125-6

9. ^ Early Images of Virginia Indians: Invented Scenes for Narratives. Archived December 22, 2010, at the Wayback Machine Virginia Historical Society. Archived February 25, 2012, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved February 27, 2011.

10. ^ Custalow, Dr. Linwood "Little Bear"; Daniel, Angela L. "Silver Star" (2007). The True Story of Pocahontas: The Other Side of History. Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing. pp. 43, 47, 51, 89. ISBN 9781555916329.

11. ^ Deyo, William "Night Owl" (September 5, 2009). "Our Patawomeck Ancestors" (PDF). Patawomeck Tides. 12 (1): 2-7. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 6, 2017.

12. ^ "Biography: Pocahontas-Born, 1594-Died, 1617". The Family Magazine. New York: Redfield & Lindsay. 4: 90. 1837.

13. ^ Yorktown, Mailing Address: P. O. Box 210; Us, VA 23690 Phone:856-1200 Contact. "Thomas Rolfe - Historic Jamestowne Part of Colonial National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov.

14. ^ John Frederick Dorman, Adventurers of Purse and Person, 4th ed., Vol. 3, pp. 23-36.

15. Green, Rayna (1975). "The Pocahontas Perplex: The Image of Indian Women in American Culture". The Massachusetts Review. The Massachusetts Review, Inc. 16 (4): 710. JSTOR 25088595.

16. ^ Pewewardy, Cornel (1997). "The Pocahontas Paradox: A Cautionary Tale for Educators". Journal of Navajo Education. Fall/Winter 1996/97.

17. ^ Clarence, Reginald (1909). "The Stage" Cyclopaedia: A Bibliography of Plays. New York: Burt Franklin. p. 42.

18. ^ Haimann, Alexander T. "Jamestown Exposition Issue". Arago: People, postage & the post. National Postal Museum online.

19. ^ Kevin Porter (November 2016). "Thanksgiving Day Film: 'Pocahontas: Dove of Peace' Reveals Christian Life of 'Emissary Between 2 Nations'". The Christian Post.

Bibliography

Argall, Samuel. Letter to Nicholas Hawes. June 1613. Repr. in Jamestown Narratives, ed. Edward Wright Haile. Champlain, VA: Roundhouse, 1998.

Bulla, Clyde Robert. "Little Nantaquas." In "Pocahontas and The Strangers", ed Scholastic inc., 730 Broadway, New York, NY 10003. 1971.

Dale, Thomas. Letter to 'D.M.' 1614. Repr. in Jamestown Narratives, ed. Edward Wright Haile. Champlain, VA: Roundhouse, 1998.

Dale, Thomas. Letter to Sir Ralph Winwood. June 3, 1616. Repr. in Jamestown Narratives, ed. Edward Wright Haile. Champlain, VA: Roundhouse, 1998.

Fausz, J. Frederick. "An 'Abundance of Blood Shed on Both Sides': England's First Indian War, 1609-1614". The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 98:1 (January 1990), pp. 3-56.

Gleach, Frederic W. Powhatan's World and Colonial Virginia. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.

Hamor, Ralph. A True Discourse of the Present Estate of Virginia. 1615. Repr. in Jamestown Narratives, ed. Edward Wright Haile. Champlain, VA: Roundhouse, 1998.

Herford, C.H. and Percy Simpson, eds. Ben Jonson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925-1952).

Huber, Margaret Williamson (January 12, 2011). "Powhatan (d. 1618)". Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved February 18, 2011.

Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000.

Lemay, J.A. Leo. Did Pocahontas Save Captain John Smith? Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1992

Price, David A. Love and Hate in Jamestown. New York: Vintage, 2003.

Purchas, Samuel. Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes. 1625. Repr. Glasgow: James MacLehose, 1905-1907. vol. 19

Rolfe, John. Letter to Thomas Dale. 1614. Repr. in Jamestown Narratives, ed. Edward Wright Haile. Champlain, VA: Roundhouse, 1998

Rolfe, John. Letter to Edwin Sandys. June 8, 1617. Repr. in The Records of the Virginia Company of London, ed. Susan Myra Kingsbuy. Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1906-1935. Vol. 3

Rountree, Helen C. (November 3, 2010). "Divorce in Early Virginia Indian Society". Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved February 18, 2011.

Rountree, Helen C. (November 3, 2010). "Early Virginia Indian Education". Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved February 27, 2011.

Rountree, Helen C. (November 3, 2010). "Uses of Personal Names by Early Virginia Indians". Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved February 18, 2011.

Rountree, Helen C. (December 8, 2010). "Pocahontas (d. 1617)". Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved February 18, 2011.

Smith, John. A True Relation of such Occurrences and Accidents of Noate as hath Hapned in Virginia, 1608. Repr. in The Complete Works of John Smith (1580-1631). Ed. Philip L. Barbour. Chapel Hill: University Press of Virginia, 1983. Vol. 1

Smith, John. A Map of Virginia, 1612. Repr. in The Complete Works of John Smith (1580-1631), Ed. Philip L. Barbour. Chapel Hill: University Press of Virginia, 1983. Vol. 1

Smith, John. Letter to Queen Anne. 1616. Repr. as 'John Smith's Letter to Queen Anne regarding Pocahontas'. Caleb Johnson's Mayflower Web Pages 1997, Accessed April 23, 2006.

Smith, John. The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles. 1624. Repr. in Jamestown Narratives, ed. Edward Wright Haile. Champlain, VA: Roundhouse, 1998.

Spelman, Henry. A Relation of Virginia. 1609. Repr. in Jamestown Narratives, ed. Edward Wright Haile. Champlain, VA: Roundhouse, 1998.

Strachey, William. The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Brittania. c. 1612. Repr. London: Hakluyt Society, 1849.

Symonds, William. The Proceedings of the English Colonie in Virginia. 1612. Repr. in The Complete Works of Captain John Smith. Ed. Philip L. Barbour. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986. Vol. 1

Tilton, Robert S. (1994). Pocahontas: The Evolution of an American Narrative. Cambridge UP. ISBN 978-0-521-46959-3.

Waldron, William Watson. Pocahontas, American Princess: and Other Poems. New York: Dean and Trevett, 1841

Warner, Charles Dudley. Captain John Smith, 1881. Repr. in Captain John Smith Project Gutenberg Text, accessed July 4, 2006

Woodward, Grace Steele. Pocahontas. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969.

Further reading

Neill, Rev. Edward D. Pocahontas and Her Companions. Albany: Joel Munsell, 1869.

Strong, Pauline Turner. Animated Indians: Critique and Contradiction in Commodified Children's Culture. Cultural Anthology, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Aug. 1996), pp. 405-424

Sandall, Roger. 2001 The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays ISBN 0-8133-3863-8

Warner, Charles Dudley, Captain John Smith, 1881. Repr. in Captain John Smith Project Gutenberg Text, accessed July 4, 2006

Warner, Charles Dudley, The Story of Pocahontas, 1881. Repr. in The Story of Pocahontas Project Gutenberg Text, accessed July 4, 2006

Woodward, Grace Steele. Pocahontas. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969. ISBN 0-8061-0835-5 or ISBN 0-8061-1642-0

Weidemeyer, John William (1900). . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography.

Pocahontas, Alias Matoaka, and Her Descendants Through Her Marriage at Jamestown, Virginia, in April 1614, with John Rolfe, Gentleman, Wyndham Robertson, Printed by J. W. Randolph & English, Richmond, Va., 1887

External links

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Pocahontas (, ; born Amonute, also known as Matoaka, c. 1596 - March 1617) was a Native American woman belonging to the Powhatan people, notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. She was the daughter of Powhatan, the paramount chief of a network of tributary tribes in the Tsenacommacah, encompassing the Tidewater region of what is today the U.S.

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Northern lights, usually seen In northern countries.

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WHAT IS THE AURORA BOREALIS?

The Aurora is an incredible light show caused by collisions between electrically charged particles released from the sun that enter the earth's atmosphere and collide with gases such as oxygen and nitrogen. The lights are seen around the magnetic poles of the northern and southern hemispheres.

Auroras that occur in the northern hemisphere are called 'Aurora Borealis' or 'northern lights' and auroras that occur in the southern hempishere are called 'Aurora Australis' or 'southern lights'.

Both Aurora's can be seen in the northern or southern hemisphere, in an irregularly shaped oval centred over each magnetic pole. Scientists have learned that in most instances northern and southern auroras are mirror-like images that occur at the same time, with similar shapes and colours. Auroral displays can appear in many vivid colours, although green is the most common. Colours such as red, yellow, green, blue and violet are also seen occasionally. The auroras can appear in many forms, from small patches of light that appear out of nowhere to streamers, arcs, rippling curtains or shooting rays that light up the sky with an incredible glow.

WHAT CAUSES AURORAS?

Auroras are the result of collisions between gaseous particles (in the Earth's atmosphere) with charged particles (released from the sun's atmosphere). Variations in colour are due to the type of gas particles that are colliding. The most common aurora colour which is green, is produced by oxygen molecules located about 60 miles above the earth. The rarer red auroras are produced by high-altitude oxygen, at heights of up to 200 miles. Nitrogen produces blue or purple aurora.

How do charged particles from the sun get here?

Generally, it is when there is an opening in the suns atmosphere that allows electrons and protons to flow out. In terms of auroras, we need quite a lot of charged particles colliding with earth's atmosphere to create vivid displays, so this usually requires quite a large opening, such as a coronal hole, or a sunspot. The connection between Auroras and sunspot activity has been suspected since about 1880. Thanks to research conducted since the 1950′s, we now know that electrons and protons from the sun are blown towards the earth on the 'solar wind'.

When the charged particles are blown towards the earth by the solar wind, they are largely deflected by the earth's magnetic field. However, the earth's magnetic field is weaker at either pole and therefore some particles enter earth's atmosphere and collide with gas particles. These collisions emit light that we perceive as the dancing lights of Auroras.

The lights of the Aurora generally extend from 80 kilometres (50 miles) to as high as 640 kilometres (400 miles) above the earth's surface.

WHERE IS THE BEST PLACE TO WATCH AURORA?

Because the phenomena occurs near the magnetic poles, getting as close to these poles as possible will rapidly increase the chances of viewing aurora. As the magnetic south pole is in Antarctica, unless your a scientist working there, it usually leaves the northern hemisphere the most sensible option of viewing aurora. It should be mentioned however that during strong solar storms, aurora australis are quite often visible in places south from Australia. But generally speaking, the best places to watch the aurora are usually are North America or Europe.

In North America, the north western parts of Canada, particularly the Yukon, Nunavut, Northwest Territories and Alaska are favourable. In Europe, Scandinavia, particularly the Lapland areas of Norway, Sweden and Finland is very good for aurora viewing. Iceland is also a good place for auroras and Auroral displays can also be seen over the southern tip of Greenland.

In terms of what physically makes a place good to view aurora aside from the proximity to the magnetic poles. The most important point is 'light pollution', it will ruin any aurora show, so the best places to watch the auroras should be away from light pollution. In most cases in the north this usually only requires driving for 30 minutes of a city/town and you should be in light pollution free skies.

The other most important is to be on relatively high ground with an un-obscured view north (this is not necessary if you are so far North the auroras are usually directly overhead). The further away from the north pole you are, generally speaking the lower on the horizon the aurora will be. Of course this depends on a lot of factors such as aurora strength (Kp level).

Those are really the main points to successful aurora viewing, if you get them all right, then you should be in for a good show. Of course if there are clouds, then forget all the above! Auroras are not visible through most types clouds.

The following graphic shows what strength Kp is needed to view aurora where you are. For the current Kp strength, check our forecast page:

WHEN IS THE BEST TIME TO WATCH FOR AURORAL DISPLAYS?

Whenever there is a significant event on the sun and it is earth facing, it usually means a great aurora show is in the offing. There are times when the sun is very quiet and there are times when it is very active. This is known as the solar cycle. The solar cycle is 11 years. It has a solar minimum period and a solar maximum period, it is the solar maximum period when it is at it's most active. The next peak period aka solar max is late 2013.

Winter in the north is generally a good season to view lights. The long periods of darkness and the frequency of clear nights provide many good opportunities to watch the auroral displays. Usually the best time of night (on clear nights) to watch for auroral displays is between 10pm to 2am. Although they can, and quite often are, seen either side of these times.

Some great videos:

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What is the Aurora Borealis? - Aurora Service (Europe)

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The Aurora is an incredible light show caused by collisions between electrically charged particles released from the sun that enter the earth's atmosphere and collide with gases such as oxygen and nitrogen. The lights are seen around the magnetic poles of the northern and southern hemispheres.