In his exhaustive, comprehensive biography of Marlon Brando, writer Peter Manso makes a reference to a notorious, explicit photograph taken during the early 1950s depicting the actor performing fellatio on another man.
Shortly after the publication of Manso's book, Penthouse Magazine obtained a copy of the infamous photo and published it. And a friend of mine sprang the photo on me for it's shock value. The photo can be found online, if you dig around for it long enough.
I should emphasize that Brando's personal sexual preferences and off-screen activities are none of my business. As columnist H.L. Mencken once wrote, “The great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.”
But that photo bothered me then—and bothers me now. By the time Brando was photographed in such a way, he was already celebrated around the world as an actor and a public figure, and had quite a few fans and followers.
Repulsed by newspaper columnists such as Hedda Hopper and Luella Parsons, Marlon Brando was by that time savvy enough to know that such a photo could not be long suppressed, and this was sure as hell so selfie, or even a candid shot. Plainly, this photo was posed—the actor knew it would eventually be published. That's likely the reason he did it.
That Brando was knowingly and deliberately photographed in such an explicit manner while participating in an act of intimate sexuality seemed to me to be a gesture of cardinal disrespect and even contempt for the public, the movie studios, the gossip columnists, the combined media and press, and his devoted fan base.
And that disturbs me.
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