This young woman. …
Sophia Loren, who made but a single feature with Marlon Brando, film flop The Countess from Kong Kong, Charlie Chaplin’s final motion picture.
They weren’t friends prior to the Countess’s London shoot: The story goes that Brando had made disparaging remarks about her taste in art when she was working in Hollywood. Co-starring with each other didn’t improve the relationship. Brando patted Sophia on the back for a scene, Sophia told him to stop. Marlon chose to continue with the patting. Loren remembered:
All of a sudden he put his hands on me. I turned in all tranquillity and blew his face, like a cat stroked the wrong way and said, “Don’t you ever dare to do that again. Never again!”
As I pulverised him with my eyes he seemed small, defenceless, almost a victim of his own notoriety. He never did it again, but it was very difficult working with him after that.
But work they did. During a clinch, Marlon told her he could see black hairs in her nasal passages. This also ticked off Sophia.
Mr. Brando ended up loathing director Chaplin (seen above) because Charlie was nasty and condescending to his actor son Sydney during production; also too, Charlie Chaplin chewed Marlon out in front of cast and crew for being late to the set. (Marlon forced Charlie to apologize, which Charlie did.)
Sophia, by contrast, got along famously with Mr. Chaplin
Lastly, a Brando biographer says that Marlon turned down sexy time with Ms. Loren because (per Marlon) she had “breath like a dinosaur”, though I tend to think … based on evidence … that no sexual invitations were ever extended by Ms. Loren.
Mr. Brando, of course, has departed the acting and interview businesses, so his lips are sealed.
Ms. Loren, however, is very much alive. But no reporter with intelligence higher than a ground squirrel’s would dare ask her about propositioning Marlon Brando. They would be pulverized with Sophia’s eyes.
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