"He doesn't look as if he's acting at all," say most people who have seen previews of Marlon Brando playing the lead role in the forthcoming movie The Men. The realism was not come by accidentally. When Brando, after his Broadway triumph in A Streetcar Named Desire, came to Hollywood to play a paraplegic veteran, he decided he had to learn how a man so afflicted really lives and thinks. He went out to Birmingham Veterans Administration Hospital in a suburb of Los Angeles and settled down there for four weeks in a ward with 31 paraplegics.
It was hard to learn the mechanics of living with useless legs. It was harder still to earn the respect and liking of the men there, who started out resenting what they thought was only a publicity stunt. By the end of the first few days they were all on Marlon's side. One day Marlon was in his chair having a drink with the boys in a local bar when a lady crackpot came up and began a speech that both bored and annoyed them: all about their noble sacrifice and the wonders that might be workd by faith. Slowly the crackpot's attention became focused on the activities of Brando, who was clutching desperately the armrests of his chair and trying to rise. Agonizingly he pushed himself up, fell back exhausted, tried again, rose, took a couple of faltering steps and then broke into a buck and wing. The crackpot fainted dead away. It was a fine performance, thought the boys. In the movie, Brando gives an even better one.
photos and documentation: LIFE Magazine (US) | Zetu Harrys collection
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