*Includes Wayne's and Brando's filmographies.
*Includes pictures of Wayne, Brando and important people in their lives.
*Includes some of Wayne's and Brando's most colorful and controversial quotes.
*Discusses the controversies surrounding the lives of both actors.
"Every country in the world loved the folklore of the West -- the music, the dress, the excitement, everything that was associated with the opening of a new territory. It took everybody out of their own little world. The cowboy lasted a hundred years, created more songs and prose and poetry than any other folk figure. The closest thing was the Japanese samurai. Now, I wonder who'll continue it." - John Wayne
"He is the marker. There's 'before Brando' and 'after Brando'." - Martin Scorsese
Hollywood has produced no shortage of famous movie stars, but none have been as culturally significant as John Wayne. Marion Morrison was born in a quintessentially quaint Midwestern town, but he eventually grew up to become John Wayne, the legend of the silver screen who embodied the Western frontier. Wayne starred in so many movies (nearly 150 in all) that when asked to name his worst, he joked that 50 of them were tied, but the excessive number allowed Wayne to portray heroes of all stripes, from cowboys to soldiers, and he was invariably charming, courageous, and full of rugged, masculine swagger.
Even as Westerns have certainly waned in popularity, Wayne himself has remained immensely popular, in part because he set the prototype for the heroic character, regardless of genre. Wayne will always be associated with Westerns, John Wayne transcended the Western genre. Through the portrayal of rugged, masculine characters, Wayne came to epitomize the American spirit and the way Americans view themselves. In that sense, he is truly America's actor, and he continues to live on in both the reels of Hollywood's archives and the living rooms of middle America.
Marlon Brando. Few names in the acting profession evoke such a strong, almost visceral reaction. Over the course of his long, prolific career, he was considered perhaps the greatest actor of the 20th century as well as one of the most complicated and misunderstood. Uniquely able to be both emotionally charged and technically constrained in the same performance, he single-handedly changed the direction of not only the American style of acting, influencing successors such as Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and even Johnny Depp, but the acting profession on a global scale. His iconic interpretations of characters such as Stanley Kowalski (A Streetcar Named Desire), Terry Malloy (On the Waterfront) and Vito Corleone (The Godfather) have been forever burned into the collective memory of film and theatre aficionados, scholars and critics for their immense passion, rage, love, defiance, vulnerability, cruelty and tenderness - basically, the full spectrum of the human condition. With several Oscars and Golden Globes to his name, Brando's contributions remain the gold standard of the acting craft, and the American Film Institute has listed him as the 4th greatest screen legend in history.
Brando was one of his generation's sex idols, its most versatile actors, and a political activist, but who was the person behind the legend? What propelled a young man from the Midwest to become such a powerful, capricious and dominating force in the acting arena? How was he able to penetrate the human condition, replete with all its multilayered emotional baggage, and convey its strengths, weaknesses and delicate nuances so successfully, often while plagued by his own personal tragedies and demons?
Legends of the Silver Screen look at the lives, controversies, and legacies of both film icons. Along with filmographies, quotes, and pictures, you will learn about John Wayne and Marlon Brando like you never have before.