Marlon and his women

MARLON'S relationships with women - and they were many and varied - were played out under the canopy of his original relationship with a woman, the sad, complex one with his mother.

Dorothy Pennebaker Brando was, as Marlon described her, a flower in the sterile garden of Nebraska culture.

She wanted to be an actress and talked of her hopes for a career. She appeared lovely in my mind, almost like one of the delicate women in Tennessee Williams's plays.

But more pronounced than any of her outward traits was her commitment to alcohol. Day after day in their farm house, Marlon watched his mother slip away from him and into a zone where she was oblivious to the world and to her son. Marlon grieved for her to return, and in his tender years could find no other conclusion than that she preferred to be in that remote place rather than with him.

So when Marlon rounded into young manhood, women who came toward him were silhouetted against this portrait. He knew if he became involved with any of them, no matter how attractive they appeared to be, they would sooner or later desert or betray him. Inside him the decision was made: before any such thing could happen, he would deceive, disarm, destroy. For he could not again survive the despair and tears that came when his mother left him for that other place.

So he built a defence. He was naturally, provocatively sexual and he used that as a basis. In dealing with women, as in the other areas of life, he shunned convention. He did not, at the moment of introduction to a woman, deliver the customary cheery smile and extend the usual hand of greeting.

Instead he would pause for a moment and inspect her.

"Hi, I'm Marlon," he would say, in just above a murmur. His dark eyes would wash over her and in this way he laid the first strand of his web on her. She would become interested in his off-centre behaviour, his handsome and frankly sexual body, how unusual he was and how unusually provocative.

"Nice to meet you, Marlon," she might respond. And she would be lured into the eye contact he was proposing.

"How long have you worn your hair that way?" he might ask.

"Only about three months. It used to be a lot longer, down to here. Do you like it?"

"I do. Why'd you cut it?"

"Why?"

"Yeah."

"I'd worn it long for a while and I ...

wanted to try something new."

"You have an appetite for new things?"

"I do, in music, in dancing ..."

"In sex?" His smile was enigmatic.

'What?" She'd heard, but nobody asked you about your sexual activities in the first two minutes of a conversation. She's disconcerted, faintly embarrassed, and further intrigued.

"New things in sex, have you tried any lately?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I'm interested. Can I see your hand?"

"Why do you want to see my hand?"

But, a little tentatively, she holds it out to him. He takes it and looks at it appraisingly. Carefully he puts both thumbs on top of her hand, his fingers underneath, he presses with his thumbs. She hears cellos start to play, his exploration and kneading generate erotic feelings, suggest a path she has not trod before. The way he is intimate with her hand, how he uses this contact to send a deep and personal message is disturbing. He looks up, his eyes candidly exploring to see her reaction. She is unnerved but excited, awakened inside. He sees.

"What are you feeling?"

"I don't know, I've never had anybody do " "What?"

"Do what you're doing, I mean just, 'Hi, I'm Marlon' and then you start" "Massaging your hand."

"Yes but you're not just massaging my hand, you're starting, you're being " "What?"

"Sexual."

"Right. Do you feel your sexual interest rising?"

"God, is this real, I mean what are you getting at, where are you going?"

"Think about the way I'm massaging your hand, then imagine I'm massaging the insides of your thighs the same way." She is silent. "Can you picture that?

Better still, can you feel it?"

Her voice is different. "Yes." There is a hoarseness to it.

"Is it sexual, is your breathing changing, your glands starting to expand?"

"Marlon I feel weird even calling you Marlon, it should probably still be Mr Brando, we met less than five minutes ago, this is lunatic, don't you see that?"

"I see that it's romantic, we did meet less than five minutes ago and already we've generated powerful feelings inside each other, true?" She's silent.

"Is that true?"

"Yes."

"Are you ready to be mine?"

"No." Said as if there's a yes in there somewhere.

Marlon laughs, then she laughs, they laugh together.

Marlon talks. "It is too soon but it's a promise of what it'll be like when the moment is right, you feel that?"

"Yes, Mr Brando. I'm going to start calling you Mr Brando to bring us back to civilisation. You need to be sterilised or have your tubes tied or be shoved into a cold shower."

"With you."

"See? That's all that's on your mind."

"Right again. Give me your other hand."

"No, Mr Brando, giving you my hand changes you into a rutting stoat." But she proffers the other hand. He takes it and begins to massage it as he did the first one. She shakes her head and smiles.

"You're impossible."

"Irresistible?"

A pause, she watches him. " Probably."

And their intimacy has begun again, more familiar this time, more intense.

Marlon was all about being naked.

Not just physically naked, that would come later; naked in the sense of being free of artifice, of convention, liberated from the dos and don'ts that everyone assumes have to be obeyed.

WITH all that, he was, at heart, deeply romantic. More than anyone I knew he would devote time to preparing the evening ahead. He'd adjust the lighting in the room, add candles so it was soft, reassuring, appealing; he'd set the flower arrangements just so, so they'd enhance the mood. He'd wear a cologne he liked, he thought scents were overlooked, underrated, that they added a lot in creation of a mood.

He'd put on music he liked, particularly Sinatra CDs.

There would be no rush to sexual intimacy; it would be a slow climb through the evening; they'd experience together all that he'd prepared.

And at the end, true to his unpredictability, it might be Marlon who'd suggest that sex wasn't right for this evening; they'd shared a special intimacy that might be vitiated by getting physical.

But it wasn't over. They'd go to bed and do it in the morning.

. George Englund's Marlon Brando: The Naked Actor is published on 21 July by Gibson Square (Pounds 15.99).

Readers can order a copy at the special price of Pounds 13.99 by calling Bookshop Direct on 08700 748 494, quoting Evening Standard offer.

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