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List Price: $26.95 | | Publisher: Knopf
Salesrank: 309669
Released: November 4, 2008 |
| Our Price: $7.86 |
| Used Price: $0.60 |
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| Media: Hardcover |
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Editorial Review:
For everything we know about Brando as a man as well as an actor and artist, he remains a fascination. What are we to make of someone whose life, both personal and professional, hit such dazzling highs and such abysmal lows? Stefan Kanfer answers this question, in the process giving us the final word on one of the most astonishing talents of the twentieth century.
Born in Nebraska in 1924, Marlon grew up unaffected by the Depression but scarred by a brutal father and fatally alcoholic mother. After a turbulent childhood, Brando made his great escape to 1940s New York and fell in love with a city bristling with postwar optimism and vibrancy. Soon New York fell in love with him, too—his stunning Broadway debut as Stanley Kowalski made him an instant star at age twenty-three.
Brando then decamped for Hollywood, and Kanfer illuminates his performances in early movies like The Men, Julius Caesar, and On the Waterfront. Starting in the late fifties and continuing throughout the sixties, though, Brando transformed from bright young star into something more complicated. By looking at such films as The Young Lions, One-Eyed Jacks—the one and only movie he ever directed—and Mutiny on the Bounty, Kanfer gives us a real understanding of Brando's breathtaking talent and sexual power while also giving us a sense of the vulnerable man behind the towering image. Through assessments of his performances in critically panned movies like Reflections in a Golden Eye, Candy, and The Appaloosa, an intricately woven portrait emerges—showing not only Brando’s genius, but also his self-destructiveness, womanizing, constant dissembling, and evolving ambivalence toward his fame and his craft.
With the role of Don Corleone, Brando pulled himself out of his slump for his career’s third and perhaps most interesting act; Kanfer turns his critical eye on The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and Last Tango in Paris, the last arguably Brando’s most intimate and disturbing appearance onscreen. After these, it was once again a downhill slalom for Brando, both professionally (the movies he made in the last fifteen years of his life were hardly worthy of him) and personally, as he lived out his finale in the shadow of horrific family tragedies.
With the surest of hands, Kanfer gives us the first truly comprehensive examination, not only of a life and a career, but of how the two came together to create the icon we know as Brando.
Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando Reviews:
Measured, Entertaining, and Enlightening 
2009-09-01 - Biographies of entertainers can too often veer into total salaciousness or go inside the mind of the star in a full-blown Freudian analysis. An even-handed, realistic biography of a well-known entertainer is hard to find. Somebody, by Stefan Kanter, is such a book. The story of Marlon Brando is told with detail but it does not read like a gossip column. The inner life of Brando is explored but is never disconnected from the outward life of work and relationships. One of the interesting aspects of the book is the story of Brando's early years under the tutelage of Stella Adler. Brando found an environment in which his talent could thrive and his early work reflected his formative acting years. Kanter points out that while many people believe Brando was a study in unfulfilled promise, with a front-weighted career, there were many notable performances, if not commercial successes, between On the Waterfront (1954) and the Godfather (1972). On the other hand, Kanter does not shy away from the fact that Brando was a deeply troubled man with a seemingly unending stream of uncommitted relationships with women, deep mental anguish arising from his upbringing, a strong sense of social justice without consistent follow-through, riches without sound financial management, compulsive with regard to food and sex. I recommend this book as an interesting read for the casual movie fan.
AMAZING 
2009-06-08 - Great story of his life! It was very inspiring since I myself am an actor who looks up to the legends like Brando!
A Slimmer New Biography of Brando's Life and Times
2009-02-14 - Marlon Brando is one of those figures that will continue to be the subject of new books every couple of years. The last major book was Peter Manso's Brando: The Biography in 1995. So, for a new generation of Brando readers comes /Somebody/. About the third the size of Manso's, Kanfer's book is a concise biography, and focuses on how Brando's life and view of himself was overshadowed by his abusive father, and alcoholic mother. Brando was a highly mercurial actor, difficult to work with, and went through hundreds of relationships, with both sexes, yet couldn't maintain one for any length of time. He is also often considered one of the best actors of the 20th Century by most film critics. Kanfer does an excellent job giving perspective to Brando's life, career and relationships. Maybe the book is lighter in size, but its hard to say that it doesn't cover the same territory in fewer pages. /Somebody/ is a readable addition to the Brando books, even if it doesn't cover any new ground.
It could have been a contender... 
2009-01-19 - ...but it's not. I saw Karl Malden on some interview on TV recently and he mentioned how Marlon called him a few times in the weeks or so before he died telling Karl how he'd been falling down lately and didn't know the reason. I nearly wept when I heard this: the great, powerful Brando, falling down as his body was failing him. But you won't find this tragic bit of information in the pages of SOMEBODY. There is a helluva lot you won't find in the pages of this book. If you want details, stick with the Manso book - even though the author of this one rather dismissively (and perhas a tad jealously) refers to it as a "doorstop of a book" because of its 1,000 plus pages and weighty size. He knocks it in other ways, too.
But for a subject like Brando you need weight (even if he, himself, didn't!) - and more pages. In Kanfer's quick read we get a page or two on certain Brando films, whereas in Manso's tome we get 20 or more pages per film. About the only thing SOMEBODY has going for it is coverage (albeit quick coverage) of the years after Manso's book was published which include Brando's death and some aftermath. But the Devil is in the details, and this book is not rich in detail. It ends up seeming like a boiled down, condensed, quick-read version of the Manso work; even moreso a linear accumulation of press clippings. Not much original homework was done on this one.
So - if you want a casual knowledge of Mr. Brando, this book is for you. If you want those devilish details, Manso's book is the one to read.
One further thought, since the book is entitled SOMEBODY, a better cover photo would have been of Brando as Terry Malloy at the moment he reflects on his failings in the famous cab scene with his brother from "On the Waterfront." A closeup of his anguished face at that historic cinematic moment would have better captured the anguish and self-laceration of the real Marlon Brando, an anguish and self-laceration which is a theme of this work.
More than a biography
2009-01-03 - With "Somebody," Stefan Kanfer offers much more than a biography of America's greatest actor; it is also a tangential history of America working through one of its most artistically creative and socially challenging periods. Balancing relevant stories and astute observations that consistently avoid useless digression, this fine author gives context and clarity to the life of an extremely complex and gifted man. But as the unfolding of Brando's life reveals, time and again, talent is not necessarily synonymous with either success or peace of mind. Deeply wounded by unresolved issues involving an antagonistic father and alcoholic mother, Brando seems to have spent much of his life in a state of self-loathing. Frequent manifestations come in the forms of emotional abuse and a lack of professional cooperation, behaviors that alienated the women in his life, and producers, directors and co stars in his work. But perhaps it was Brando's love-hate relationship with his art that turned out to be his greatest obstacle of all. Again and again throughout his career he became frustrated in his attempts to find substance or satisfaction within his profession, causing him to look far beyond the boards and movie sets. He escaped to remote islands, and into relationships that only seemed to complicate his life further. Brando also tried repeatedly to immerse himself into associations with socially progressive groups supporting, among others, African-Americans, Native Americans, and fighting against their victimization by (to paraphrase Vito Corleone) those "big shots" holding the strings. Brando's inconsistent film successes, both among the critics and at the box office may leave the casual movie fan thinking that in the end his career was one of mediocrity. It wasn't, as anyone who has seen, "On the Waterfront," Streetcar Named Desire," "The Godfather" and "Last Tango in Paris" can attest. And even in the films that "failed," Brando's performances within most of them prove, in retrospect, to be better than the projects deserved. This is the first serious biography of Marlon Brando since his death in 2004. It's difficult to imagine that any of the future ones (which are sure to be written) will be as definitive.
