In life, Marlon Brando was an Oscar-winning actor and something of an eccentric.
In death, he is about to become a published author.
A pirate adventure story he co-wrote 30 years ago has been turned into a novel, and it is claimed the work offers insights into the Hollywood star’s tumultuous life.
Set in the 1920s, Fan Tan tells the story of an overweight adventurer who is seduced by a beautiful female pirate into stealing silver from a British ship, leading to extended scenes of pitched battles and pirate raids.
Publishers Weekly has already given the novel, which Brando wrote with the filmmaker Donald Cammell, a glowing review, predicting that ”enthralled readers will be swinging from the rigging along with the rest of the pirates in this rollicking high seas saga”.
The book has been edited by the film historian David Thomson, who divided it into chapters, eliminated repetition and wrote a final chapter and afterword.
The star of the novel is overweight, as was Brando in the late 1970s, when the storyline was conceived during a family holiday on his private island, Tetiaroa. Brando and Cammell, who died in 1996, apparently locked themselves away for eight months to write, with the two men acting out the dialogue.
According to Thomson there is more than a hint of the real-life Brando in the novel.
Interviewed by the New York Times, Thomson said Brando had given the male lead a woman’s name — Annie Doultry — because he liked to experiment.
He cited the fact that Brando dressed up as a woman in The Missouri Breaks, and that in one of his last public appearances he put on women’s clothes to answer questions from acting students.
According to the newspaper, the fortunes of the book echo the tempestuous relationship between Brando and Cammell, best known as co-director with Nicolas Roeg of the 1970 movie Performance, starring Mick Jagger.
In 1982 the co-authors obtained an advance of $100 000 for the book, and Cammell began writing and researching the historical details.
But Brando, apparently suffering from a mixture of depression and boredom, balked and said he did not want to proceed. In 1986 he repaid the advance, including Cammell’s part.
Thomson wrote in the afterword that Brando may have been trying to punish Cammell for having a relationship, and subsequently marrying, the teenage daughter of one of Brando’s girlfriends.
The two men had what was described as a ”weird marriage”, and although there was no evidence of a sexual relationship between them, Thomson claimed that ”there was a homosexual side to Brando, and to Cammell, too”. – Guardian Unlimited Â