Cinema: The Private World of Marlon Brando

(2 of 5)

Loping Stride. We walked the perimeter of the island, Marlon leading the way. From the back, he looked like a young heavyweight boxer: broad shoulders, thick, sinewy arms and rock-hard legs. The loping stride is strong. Only the white hair, cut short, betrayed his age. Suddenly Brando turned toward me and the illusion of youth vanished. That famous face with its jutting forehead and broken nose is a face that has seen and experienced everything. His wet shirt hugged a fat belly. "Poachers," Brando whispered, looking at two young Polynesian boys lying on the sand. They smiled nervously. Brando studied them hard for a moment and slowly moved away. "They're O.K.," he said. "They're trapping lobsters." The kids were lucky not to have been egg hunting. Even at 52 and 40 Ibs. overweight, Marlon Brando could have taught a forceful lesson in honesty.

Brando bought the islands ten years ago from the widow of a Canadian dentist whose father had been doctor to a Polynesian king and had received the islands as a gift. The sale ended a ten-year search by the actor "for a place on this earth to hang my hat." He narrowed his choices to Mexico, Bali, Bangkok and finally decided on Tetiaroa, which he had first seen in 1961 while filming Mutiny on the Bounty.

Brando's methodical search was based on the grimmest of calculations: "I'm convinced the world is doomed. The end is near. I wanted a place where my family and I could be self-sufficient and survive." The abysmal state of the human condition is Brando's obsession. "I know I'm a bore on the subject of the American Indian," he said. "But people haven't become emotionally involved in the subject."

Brando now spends half the year in this retreat, where life and problems are simpler. He lives in a thatch-roofed hut, shaded by tall palm trees, at the edge of a white beach. It is one large room with lift-up frond shutters that invite the gentle sea breeze. In addition to a large bed festooned with mosquito netting, the room contains a refrigerator and gas-fed stove. In the back, separated by a wall, is a flush toilet and shower. The place is comfortable but fairly primitive, very much a man's digs.

Brando's life conforms to his surroundings. He rises shortly before sun rise (about 5 a.m.) and goes to bed early (9 p.m.). "I love to walk the beach naked at night," he said, "with just the wind caressing my body. It's an awesome sense of freedom and very sensual." Sometimes, to get away entirely, he takes his boat to one of his eleven uninhabited islands and sleeps on the beach.

Two pretty girls—Eddy, a Polynesian, and Eriko, a Japanese—attend to his needs, and three men work with him on repairs and projects. "I'm never bored or lonely," says Brando. "If there's no one to talk to, I read. Reading is conversation in a way." At the moment he is conversing with the German philosopher Nietzsche.