1962 Historical adventure
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cast
crew
Lewis Milestone, [Brando, Carol Reed]
Aaron Rosenberg
Charles Lederer, Eric Ambler, William L Driscoll, John Gay, Ben Hecht, Borden Chase, from a novel by Charles Nordhoff, James Norman Hall
Robert L. Surtees
John McSweeney
Bronislau Kaper
George W. Davis, J. McMillan Johnson
(M-G-M/Arcola)
Trevor
Howard: A Personal Biography
- [ m u t i n y o n t h e b o u n t y : m o v i e r e v i e w ]
- Extract from the book:
Trevor Howard: A Personal Biography - available: amazon.co.uk
Oscars:- 1962: Nominations: Best Picture, Color Cinematography, Color Art Direction, Editing, Original Music Score, Song (Follow Me), Special Effects
Classification: 
If Mr Brando would care to tell me beforehand what he's
planning to say, then I might know when he's going to finish!
- Trevor Howard on location durinng the filming of
Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
BETWEEN The Men (1950) and The Godfather (1972) Marlon Brando
was arguably the brightest and most original star in movies. He
put method acting on the map and gave it respectability. Trevor Howard's involvement with Brando began one day when the director Carol Reed
telephoned him to ask if playing Captain Bligh in a remake of Mutiny
on the Bounty appealed to him and what changes he would make to
Charles Laughton's 1935 portrayal.
Howard, who knew Laughton well, thought that Hollywood had
ruined the story of the mutiny by trying to depict the conflict between
Bligh and Fletcher Christian, the mutineers' leader, as a simple black-and-white struggle between good and evil. Bligh had been less evil
than portrayed by Laughton, and the real-life Christian, played by
Clark Gable, had been no saint.
Howard felt that there was sufficient meat in the true story to make
fictionalization unnecessary. It could be dramatized for the screen
without jettisoning the facts. Although he and Reed had no previous
discussion of the subject, their views were similar. Howard thought
nothing more about the conversation until Reed phoned him two
months later with the news that the green light had been given, that
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer would produce it and that the role of Captain
Bligh was his. Howard was told that he was everyone's first choice for
the role, including Brando's, who would play Christian. Howard
accepted immediately, elated at the thought of working again with
Reed and for the first time with Brando. What he did not know at the
time was that, in order to attract the moody star, MGM had caved in
to several of Brando's demands which would stretch relationships
beyond breaking-point and send the production costs spiralling.
Desperate to repeat the success of its remake of Ben Hur (1959),
which scooped up eight Oscars, the studio decided to film the exteriors in Tahiti where the Bounty collected its cargo and where the sun
and the sand and the tropical vegetation would provide an authentic
backdrop. The cast and crew thus assembled on Tahiti in readiness for
the arrival of a full-size replica of the Bounty, built in Lunenburg, Nova
Scotia, at a cost of $700,000. Work began on the three-masted ship in
February 1960. It was as faithful a replica of the original as circumstances would allow, although additional space was needed for securing
and moving the cameras during filming. The total height from the
deck to the top of the mainmast was 103 feet. More than 10,000 square
feet of canvas was used for the sails. Severe weather delayed the delivery of large quantities of oak from New Jersey which were needed for
the planking.
Careful planning failed to avert costly delays and disappointments.
From the beginning, one disaster followed another. The design modifications and extra weight (of a diesel engine, camera mounts and so
on) seriously affected the buoyancy and steerability of the ship, which
meant that it not only took longer than planned to reach the South
Seas from Nova Scotia via the Panama Canal but that it almost capsized
several times and caught fire twice during the 7,327-mile voyage. It
finally reached Tahiti on 4 December 1960, two months after the film's
planned starting date.
Tahiti is the largest of a group of islands known as the Society Island
group, which include Moorea and Bora Bora. Scenes were filmed on
all three islands. The total population of Tahiti is around fifty thousand, more than half of whom live in the only town of any size on the island, Papeete, which became headquarters for the unit. The interior
of the island is rugged and beautiful, with lots of crags and peaks, palm
trees and plunging waterfalls, but hardly any inhabitants. The bulk of
the population hugs the coastline.
The first scene that Reed filmed was the stone fishing sequence, in
which hundreds of native women wade offshore and, beating the water
with their hands, drive the fish towards their menfolk in canoes. Almost
every inhabitant of the island appeared in the shot, each of whom was
paid $10 a day. The eight hundred who used their canoes to catch the
fish earned a further $ 10, and they were allowed to keep whatever they
caught. The scene depicting the arrival of the Bounty at Matavaii Bay was filmed with more than six thousand Tahitians milling around on
the sea and on the shoreline. These scenes were not only spectacular
to watch; they recreated the original event with uncanny accuracy.
The true story of the Bounty is well documented. It set sail from
Spithead in England on 23 December 1787 under orders to proceed
to Otaheite (later renamed Tahiti) to collect breadfruit for transport
to the West Indies. Early explorers such as Captain Cook had reported
that breadfruit, the staple diet of the South Seas, produced strong,
healthy islanders. Colonists in the British West Indies wanted an inexpensive, nourishing food for their African slaves, and they petitioned
the King, George III, to have it introduced to the colonies. The Bounty,
under Captain Bligh, was commissioned to transport a cargo of young
breadfruit samples to Jamaica, where they were to be replanted, grown
to full size and harvested.
While passing through Endeavour Strait, off the island of Torfua,
en route for Jamaica, the mutiny erupted. Its leader was Fletcher
Christian. The trigger was Bligh's curtailment of drinking water for
his crew, because the plants needed more of it than he had allowed
for. There was only so much to share around, and if the choice was
between saving the men or the cargo Bligh was under orders to safeguard the breadfruit first and foremost. Every drop of water had to
be rationed. Not surprisingly, the crew mutinied and seized control
of the ship.
Bligh and eighteen crew members who remained loyal to him were
set adrift in an open boat no more than twenty-three feet long. They
were expected not to survive. But forty-one days later, against overwhelming odds, they waded ashore at Timor in the Dutch East Indies,
having rowed a distance of 3,618 miles with the loss of only one life.
And that man had not been lost at sea. He had been killed by hostile
natives on a small island after the boat had pulled up on the beach for
an overnight rest.
In an effort to keep their whereabouts secret from the Admiralty,
Christian and his followers left Tahiti and sailed 1,300 miles southwards to the uninhabited island of Pitcairn, which is only two miles
long and a mile wide. They burned the Bounty so that it could not be
seen from a passing ship. The island became their home, and also
their prison, since they had destroyed their only means of getting away
from the island.
It was a story that lent itself to numerous interpretations. Brando
disagreed with the slant British screenwriter Eric Ambler had put on
the story. He wanted something 'more meaningful'. Ambler endured
the star's moody criticisms for several weeks and then quit. With
replacement writers the same arguments persisted, and while this was
going on filming ground to a halt. Papeete became a transit camp for
the hundred-strong disgruntled unit, although it was generally felt
that being paid regularly for taking life easy was nothing to grumble
about.
Reed was wary of upsetting Brando unnecessarily, but he wanted
the story told truthfully, and what emerged from Brando's daily tinkering with the script was a storyline that departed from the truth at
several critical points. Reed was also annoyed at the ease with which
Brando subverted the procession of screenwriters who displaced each
other with clockwork precision. Charles Lederer, for example, incorporated all Brando's impromptu mutterings into the script, whether
or not they made narrative sense. Mostly they did not. Between them
they turned Bligh into a one-dimensional bad guy, a scowling ogre
better suited to a B-movie. The real-life Bligh was bull-headed and
had a notorious bad temper, but he was not a sadistic megalomaniac,
and the sailors under his command, while treated harshly, suffered no
worse than others in naval service during the eighteenth century. When
Reed pointed this out Brando went into one of his prolonged sulks,
and the atmosphere between them which had begun so promisingly
took an abrupt nose-dive.
Howard and Richard Harris, who was playing a character called
John Mills, promptly took Reed's side, and, gradually, a split emerged.
It was not serious to begin with, but, as views became entrenched and
professional pride entered the equation, the divisions widened. One
faction comprised Brando, Lederer, the producer Aaron Rosenberg,
a front office executive called J.J. Cohn and the cinematographer Bob
Surtees. The rival group that formed behind Reed included most of
the British and Irish actors on the film. Howard promptly emerged as
their most articulate and respected spokesperson. He also had the
most to lose among the British and Irish contingent if the film turned
out to be a flop.
While genuinely in awe of Brando's talent, this group were puzzled
by his wilful conduct. He had hijacked the production and appeared
accountable to nobody. With a growing sense of helplessness Reed's
supporters retreated to their favourite bar in Papeete, Quinn's, and
briefly contemplated a mutiny of their own.
Then, suddenly, a new problem swept in from the sea: heavy rain.
Solid, unrelenting rain. In MGM's eagerness to get started, nobody
had considered how bad the weather can be in the South Seas at the
end of the year. Cloudbursts forced everyone to dash for cover, strong
winds put the small boats out of action and, at times, almost toppled
the replica of the Bounty where it rested, top-heavy, in shallow water.
Illness was another delaying factor. One by one key members of the
unit collapsed with dysentery and other debilitating tropical conditions. Finally, demoralized after four months of relative inactivity, and
with the bills mounting at the rate of $50,000 a day, the studio was
forced to switch production to Hollywood where the sound stages were
equipped and waiting.
Back in Hollywood Brando and Reed continued their disagreements. Rumours that a vast amount of money had been squandered
with barely anything to show for it caused shares in MGM to plunge
several points. Panic and gloom engulfed Culver City. The press
stopped believing it would be 'Ben Hur Part Two' and began calling
it 'Cleopatra on Water'. Brando, of course, could not be sacked, but
Reed had no safety-net. Before the director had unpacked his suitcase
the knives were out for him.
The head of production, Sol Siegel, accused Reed of mishandling
the Tahitian shoot and insisted that every effort be made to catch up
with the original schedule. The director agreed but could not give
Siegel a completion date. Siegel lost his temper at Reed's refusal to
provide the answers he wanted to hear.
Reed shook his head. 'I won't say "yes" because I know I can't do it
in that time,' he said. 'One hundred and fifty days, maybe.'
This statement fell on deafer ears than Reed's earlier plea to keep
the story factual - a request that had Siegel on his feet shouting,
'Nobody goes to the movies to watch history! We have museums for
that!' Siegel and MGM's vice-president Ray Klune decided that the
only solution was to cut their losses, and, reluctantly, they told Reed
that his services were no longer required. Honesty, bad weather and a
star actor who would not behave had cost Reed his job.
Howard and Richard Harris were angry when they heard the news.
Harris groaned, 'We're in the hands of bloody philistines.' They wanted
Siegel to reconsider.
By then Siegel was sick of all of them. He told them:
Howard later recalled, 'Carol's departure, for reasons that I quite understand, was a terrible shock. Without him, they made a different film.'
Earlier he had told Cecil Wilson of the Daily Mail:
But the
studio was not interested in historical accuracy. It was desperate for a
box-office smash hit. It really did seem to think it was making 'Ben
Hur Part Two'. It was the same basic formula. Swap the chariots for a
galleon and roll the cameras.
Reed's replacement was Lewis Milestone, a veteran director who
had made the granddaddy of all anti-war movies, All Quiet on the Western
Front (1930). Brando nodded through his appointment, because by
then it scarcely mattered to him who picked up the reins after Reed.
He would film it the way that he wanted, and a director nearing seventy
with the same recent track record as Greta Garbo - in that he hadn't
made a film for thirty years - suited his plan perfectly.
After several weeks in Hollywood, filming the departure of the
Bounty from Spithead at the start of the voyage, Bligh recounting his
misfortunes to the Admiralty and the subsequent court martial of the
captured mutineers (which was cut in the final edit because Brando
wanted the film to end with Christian's death), the unit returned to
Tahiti on 22 April 1961 to restart location work in improved, although
less than ideal weather conditions. Filming the mutiny on board the
Bounty, when Christian and Bligh have their violent confrontation,
took most of the month of June. Half of the cast and crew became
seasick as the ship was battered by strong offshore winds. Howard later
said that every evening, after he had returned to dry land, he continued to feel the ground heaving beneath his feet. 'And that was before
I'd had a fucking drink!' he joked.
Lewis Milestone was on a completely different wavelength to
Brando. While Carol Reed had been receptive to the star's constant
revisions to the script, Milestone wanted none of it. He had no patience
with method actors. He distrusted their preoccupation with meaning
and motivation. The only meaning that an actor needed was in the
script. Milestone expected them to learn it, perform it and not ask
questions about it. But Brando was too sharp for him. Within days he
had circumvented the veteran director and was giving the orders.
Milestone battled on for a while, growing more and more exasperated,
but the writing was on the wall or, in this case, on a fresh batch of script
pages which Brando distributed each morning. Before long Milestone
was pointedly omitted from the circulation list. Nobody was sure why
Brando decided to play Christian as a laughable fop; but nobody had
the authority to stop him.
Brando's bizarre performance did not go down well with Harris.
In the scene in which Christian slaps Mills, the sailor played by Harris,
to show his opposition to the idea of a mutiny, Brando merely brushed
Harris's face with the back of his hand. It was an effete, almost girlish
slap. Harris responded with a mock curtsy and waggled a limp wrist
in the air. Everybody saw the joke except Brando. They tried the scene
once more, and again Brando's blow was almost non-existent.
Everybody waited to see how Harris would react. He did not fail them.
He thrust his chin forward and said, 'Come on, big boy. Why don't you
fucking kiss me and be done with it!' Brando stared at him, white with
rage. The Irishman decided that he had had enough. He turned his
back on Brando and marched off the set.
The next day they returned to the scene, but despite further
barracking from Harris Brando would not change the way that he
landed the blow. When the shot was completed to his satisfaction he
calmly walked off the set. Harris had to be restrained from going after
him. According to Peter Manso, Harris told an American reporter
that when he returned, three days later, Brando approached him and
said:
Brando's insistence on multiple takes was a further irritation for
the British actors, who were used to working much faster. In another
scene with Harris, after a dozen or more takes Brando appeared
suddenly to lose interest and walked away muttering, 'I don't know if
it's going to work or not.' Harris was left standing with his mouth open,
without any hint of an acknowledgement from Brando. The anger
boiled up inside him again. 'Damn you! Look at me! Act! Who the hell
do you think you are?' he shouted at the retreating star.
Howard, less truculent than Harris but equally disenchanted,
griped about his co-star's demands to rewrite everything just before
a take. The rewriting, of course, was intended for everyone except
Brando, who never took the trouble to learn lines because it drained
energies which he preferred to disperse off the set. He had words
chalked on large boards from which he read whenever he felt like
it and ignored at other times. A dispassionate observer would
deduce that Brando saw other actors' lines as merely convenient
spaces for him to think up what he would say or do next. Howard
complained, 'You never know where the hell you are. You don't know
for ten minutes what you're playing because the next scene contradicts it.'
After one disagreement with him, Howard began to call him 'Mr
Brando', partly to mock the fact that Brando had taken charge but also
because of the continuous references made throughout the script to
'Mr Christian'. When Milestone tackled Howard for being slow to
respond to Brando's lines, Howard's impatient roar echoed around
the set. Milestone said:
Howard pointed a baleful finger at Brando. 'There's your
fucking problem,' he roared. 'If Mr Brando would care to tell me
beforehand what he's planning to say, then I might know when he's
going to finish!'
Most of the time, though, he managed to keep a lid on his frustration. Sometimes he paid Brando back in his own currency. One
stiflingly hot day a scene had been set up on the shoreline at Bora Bora
showing the natives' welcome for the sailors off the Bounty. It was a
massive scene, with thousands of extras spread around the beach and
waiting in the shallow water. Howard took his place in the baking
sunshine, clad in a heavy ceremonial uniform and hat. Brando could
be seen twenty or so yards along the beach, shaded by a palm tree,
chatting with three Polynesian girls.
Ridgeway ('Reggie') Callow, the assistant director, called everyone
to order through a loud-hailer. Brando made no movement. He
continued to talk to his lady friends. Once more Callow called out, 'Mr
Brando, we're ready for you.' The amplified voice carried easily to
where Brando stood, but again he pretended not to hear. Howard,
meanwhile, continued to sweat under a hat which grew hotter by the
minute. A further call to Brando got no response. Had there been
water in Howard's headgear by this time he could have brewed himself
a coffee. At the fourth invitation Brando broke off his conversation
and strolled towards Howard as if he had all the time in the world.
When he arrived at his marks, there was no sign of Howard. The British
actor had disappeared and was cooling off, in more ways than one.
Callow put the loud-hailer to his lips again and announced, wearily,
'Mr Howard, if you wouldn't mind, we're ready for you . . .'
As filming progressed, Harris learned that the most effective way
to deal with Brando was not to be drawn into a confrontation with him.
The star seemed to relish confrontation, which from his position of
absolute authority was a form of bullying. The simplest way to turn the
tables on him was to ignore him. If you didn't react, there was little he
could do. On one occasion Brando moved the marks where Harris,
an onlooker during a tense scene on deck, was supposed to be standing. Three times the cameras began turning, and three times Brando
halted them to move the Irishman to a fresh spot. But Harris had
learned his lesson well. He refused to be provoked into the angry
response Brando expected. Taking his latest position, Harris turned
to the other actors and said with a tolerant smile,
But the star ultimately got his revenge. In a scene before the mutiny
Mills accompanies another crew member to the Captain's cabin to spell
out their grievances. In his cabin Christian overhears their conversation. As written, the scene belonged to Howard and Harris. Brando
had no lines. He had nothing to do except lie back and look thoughtful.
But expecting Brando not to steal a scene is like expecting the Pope
to change the Vatican into a five-star hotel. When the camera picks
him up he is dressed in a silk night-gown and matching night-cap,
with a huge clay pipe clenched between his teeth. While the audience
wonders why suddenly he looks like a cross between Sherlock Holmes
and something out of a mail order catalogue, they miss the explanation as to why the mutiny is about to erupt. Whether Brando was
playing power politics, relieving boredom or just being plain cussed
is anybody's guess. But it demonstrated again what a power he was in
the industry. Few other actors could hijack a key scene, cynically drain
its dramatic potential and knock a hole in its narrative structure by
just lying back and looking silly.
The film was completed during October 1961. Clifton College had
taught Howard that grievances should be left behind on the playing
field, but the goings-on in Tahiti had affected him so profoundly that
for once he lowered his guard while talking to American journalist Bill
Davidson. He called Brando 'unprofessional and absolutely ridiculous'. But his criticisms were mild compared with those of Lewis Milestone, who accused Brando of costing the production at least
$6 million and months of extra work. He is quoted as having said:
The article appeared in New York's Saturday Evening Post under the
headline 'Six Million Dollars Down the Drain: The Mutiny of Marlon
Brando'. The subhead read,
It accused him of making
outrageous demands, of colossal self-indulgence, of squandering vast
sums of MGM revenue, of lacking professional judgement and of
putting on forty pounds in weight between the start and completion
of the film. Brando and Elizabeth Taylor, following the disastrously
overpriced and delayed Cleopatra (1962), were accused of jeopardizing the future of the entire industry. The article suggested that a
suitable penalty might be to send them both to Tahiti to make 'epic
pictures of each other'. If Tahiti would not tolerate them they should
try 'nearby Bora Bora, an island whose very name onomatopoeically
suggests our reaction to both stars'.
Brando was outraged. He flew to New York to confront Joseph Vogel, head of MGM, who backed down and issued a statement on 25 June to the Screen Actors' Guild as well as to the press that Brando had cost the studio no extra money and that the production problems
were not of his making. Instead, Vogel blamed the delay in receiving
the Bounty replica, the weather, the script, the clashes between directors and cast, the abrupt departure of Carol Reed - everyone and
everything, it seemed, had conspired to create the mess except Brando,
whom he said had:
Handed this giant tub of whitewash, Brando promptly filed a libel suit against the Saturday Evening Post, demanding $4 million in general and special damages
and $1 million in exemplary and punitive damages. Howard did not
escape his wrath either. Brando wrote him a personal letter describing his anger and sorrow at being labelled 'unprofessional' by someone whom he had trusted, a 'fellow-professional, of all people'. He
also claimed that for him, too, making the Bounty film had been an
exhausting and frustrating experience, although he did not expect
anyone to believe him. Howard certainly did not. 'Damn fool,' he
growled, two decades later. 'Kicks up an almighty bloody stink and
then he's the first to complain about the smell!'
Helen (Howard's wife) flew to Papeete for short holiday with Howard at the start of the production before the tempers became frayed. She told me,
'Driving from the airport I saw Hugh Griffith in a lurid-coloured shirt.
He had gone native.' She recalled the Bounty moored in a picturesque
bay and her meeting with Brando.
Brando switched on the charm for her, and it worked. 'He was very
nice to me,' she said. 'He wanted to learn about our aristocracy. He
wanted to know how the peerage in Britain was created and who were
allowed to wear coronets. He seemed fascinated by English protocol.'
Helen was aware that there was a less charming side to Brando, too.
She said:
When filming was completed, the replica ship was promptly
dispatched on a world trip to publicize the forthcoming epic and also
to allow audiences to see for themselves the craftsmanship that had
gone into its construction. It sailed from Tahiti to California, to the
port of San Pedro near Los Angeles, where thousands of spectators
lined the wharves to greet it. Then it went northwards to Vancouver
and Victoria in British Columbia where, once again, the well-wishers
turned out in their thousands. At Seattle it became the centre of attention at the 1962 World Fair, and from there the route taking it to Britain
and Europe was via San Francisco, the Panama Canal, New Orleans,
Miami, then northwards up the Atlantic Seaboard and finally across
the Atlantic itself.
When the Bounty reached London Howard was the guest of honour
at a reception hosted by MGM officials. The sight of the ship arriving between the elevated bascules of Tower Bridge dragged him back,
momentarily, to the broken promises, personal slights and tetchy arguments of the previous year, but these were easy to set aside, because
Howard had a fondness for the ship that dwarfed the bad memories.
As it sailed past their vantage point, an MGM publicity officer noticed
Howard looking a bit misty-eyed, savouring the moment. He
approached the actor and said to him:
Howard nodded. 'Yes, it is,' he said. 'And it was once mine!'
After brief stop-overs in Europe the Bounty sailed back across the
Atlantic, and its arrival in New York was scheduled to coincide with
the joint premiere of the film in New York and California. In
Hollywood the opening at the Egyptian Theater was a star-studded
occasion, with tickets nominally priced at $100, and many of the cast
and their guests and other celebrities attended, including Brando and
Howard. The New York showing, at Loew's State Theater, was comparatively low-key. Brando also put an appearance in at Loew's and
probably wished that he hadn't. The audience did not know what to
make of his performance and booed the film.
The reviews displayed puzzlement and disappointment in almost
equal measures. Critic after critic wondered what Brando was playing
at. Bosely Crowther, the New York Timers respected critic, wrote:
Crowther added that Howard's Bligh
was 'really quite a fearful and unassailable martinet'. The New Republic's
Stanley Kauffmann asked:
In the year following its release Mutiny on the Bounty earned only
about $10 million in the United States and the same amount abroad
- a disastrous take given the fact that it needed to make $60 million to
recoup the $30 million it cost. As a result, in April 1963 MGM reported
a drop of $3.39 per share on the stock market. A clean sweep of the
executive offices followed. Studio head Sol Siegel, who had fired Carol
Reed, lost his job along with Joseph Vogel, the chairman who had been
browbeaten into praising Brando's part in the fiasco. Furious stockholders cited the letter of exoneration as sufficient reason for getting
rid of him.
Richard Harris's fears proved well founded - the film did nothing
at all for his international career. But at least he had the satisfaction
of knowing that although Brando made money out of it, following
closely on the heels of two other flops - The Fugitive Kind (1959) and
One-Eyed Jacks — his damaged reputation would ensure that never again
would he have the authority, or the freedom to misuse it, that he had
enjoyed on Mutiny on the Bounty.
'You have a hundred days to
finish the job,' said Siegel flatly.
'Gentlemen,
before you say anything, I want you to understand one thing. A star is
a star. Everyone else is expendable. Reed doesn't want the job, and I
don't want him doing the job. Now what was it you wanted?'
'When Carol offered
me the part, the idea was that we should bring out the good side of
Bligh as well as the bad. We had talked this over. But the Americans
thought that the public wouldn't be interested. They
wanted as big a villain as Charles Laughton had been in the old picture.
It's wrong to show a real person like Bligh in a false light.'
'Dick, you shouldn't have done that. I'd like you to know this.
I'm the star of this picture and you're opposing me. Remember that,
please.'
'Trevor, I'm just trying to get to the root of the
problem.'
'Forget your grand
ideas, lads. We're just cabbages in this man's cabbage patch.'
'The
movie industry has come to a sorry state when a thing like this can
happen, but maybe the experience will bring the executives back to
their senses. They deserve what they get when they give a ham actor,
a petulant child, complete control over an expensive picture.'
'A petulant superstar turns paradise into
a movie maker's nightmare. How Brando broke the budget in a
marathon remake of Mutiny on the Bounty.'
'performed throughout the entire production in a professional manner and to the fullest limit of his capabilities, resulting... in the finest portrayal of his brilliant career'.
'Trevor introduced us,' she said. 'They were both in costume. I didn't recognize Brando at first. He was
a lot shorter than I'd imagined.'
'Trevor was sure that he got Carol [Reed] sacked. He
always denied it, but Trevor wasn't convinced. Brando had the power
to get rid of anybody. Even Trevor would have been sacked if Brando
decided that he didn't want him, although as time went on it would
have been more difficult to explain, after they had done a lot of scenes
together.'
'Beautiful, isn't it?'
'There
is so much in this picture that is stirring and beautiful that it is painful
to note and call attention to the fact that it also has faults. The most
obvious of them is the way that Marlon Brando makes Fletcher
Christian an eccentric . . . Brando puts tinsel and cold cream into
Christian's oddly foppish frame.'
'Is it all a talented actor's revenge on a big
studio for snaring him inside an empty, spectacular film? Only in a
few moments of fury does life touch the part and Brando burn through.
The rest is like an all-American half-back imitating Leslie Howard as
the Scarlet Pimpernel.'
