Marlon Brando’s Life Story: Married three times in five years

On 3 April 1924, a little boy was born in Omaha in Nebraska in the USA. He was named Marlon Brando Jr. and grew up with older sisters Jocelyn and Frances.

The siblings had a tough upbringing as both their father Marlon and mother Dorothy were alcoholics.

The young boy was expelled from high school for bad behavior, and at the age of 16 he was sent to the Shattuck Military Academy in Minnesota. His father had gone here before, but Marlon was expelled here too, and he moved to New York where his older sisters now lived.

In the world metropolis, the youngster began studying at the Lee Strasberg Actors Studio and was taught by the famous teacher Stella Adler, who became his mentor.

At the age of 20, he made his Broadway debut with the play “I Remember Mama”, and his big breakthrough came in 1947 with “A Streetcar for Desire”.

Four years later, the same director made a film version of the same play, and Marlon reprized his role as Stanley Kowalski on the big screen. The film was his big breakthrough in Hollywood.

Three weddings in five years

He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1952 for his role in “A Streetcar for Desire”.

He also received the same nomination for his next films: “Viva Zapata!” (1953), “Julius Cæsar” (1954) and “Storbyhavnen” (1955). The fourth time he was nominated, he also won the award for Best Actor.

Throughout the 1950s, he achieved enormous success on the big screen. He became a superstar and sex symbol in Hollywood, becoming a major youth idol of his generation. Marlon Brando became a forerunner of so-called method acting.

In the 1960s, however, his career began to decline after a number of films were not well received. Private life also went up and down. In just five years, he managed to get married three times!

First he said yes to the 10-year-younger actress Anna Kashfi from India in 1957. They managed to have a son Christian together before they separated in 1959.

Already one year later, Marlon was ready for a new marriage. In 1960, he married the American actress Movita Castaneda, who was eight years his senior. They had children Miko and Rebecca together.

Two years and two children after the wedding, Marlon fell head over heels for Tarita Teriipaia in 1962. She was only 20 years old and was an actress and dancer from French Polynesia whom he met during the filming of the movie “Mutiny on the Bounty”.

They were forged in the chains of the hymen in 1962 and had the children Teihotu and Cheyenne together. The marriage lasted until 1972.

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Made Oscar scandal

In 1972, Marlon finally got a real boost in his career again, when he got the role of Don Vito Corleone in “The Godfather”. A film that was a huge success.

The following year, he was again nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor, and during the award ceremony in 1973, he was scheduled to once again lift the given statuette.

But when the British actor Roger Moore and our own star Liv Ullmann (85) were to hand out the award on stage, a scandal of great proportions arose. Marlon Brando did not appear.

On behalf of himself, he instead sent a young woman dressed in “Indian clothes” onto the stage. There, Sacheen told Littlefeather that Brando did not want to receive the award because of the way Native Americans were treated in the film and television industry. She was not allowed to read the speech he had written.

After she died in 2022, her sisters said that her name was not really Sacheen Littlefeather, nor was she of Native American descent, but that her ancestry was Mexican.

Brando allegedly hired her as an actress to do the Oscar stunt for him.

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Killed in Brando’s house

When Marlon was married to Tarita from Tahiti, he also fell head over heels for the island paradise in the South Pacific. In 1966 he bought the island of Tetiaroa. He owned the island for the rest of his life, and it was here that he retired to be at peace.

– I have never been to a place that asked me to take it easy like this particular place and these people. If I’ve ever found some kind of peace, it’s here, Brando said in the documentary film “Listen to me Marlon”, which was released in 2016.

There was not much peace and quiet in the 1990s. His health was poor and he became very overweight. In addition, the family was hit by several tragedies.

In May 1990, Brando’s daughter Cheyenne was eight months pregnant. She told her brother Christian that her boyfriend Dag Drollet physically abused her. It is not known whether this was true, because Cheyenne struggled with both substance abuse and mental health problems.

Christian confronted his sister’s boyfriend with what he had found out, and it ended with him shooting and killing Drollet in his father’s house in Los Angeles. Christian claimed that it was an accident that the gun went off.

Marlon was not in the same room, but was in the house, and it was he who called the police crying to report the death.

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More tragedies

Marlon spent many millions in legal fees on his son’s trial to reduce the sentence.

The actor was also summoned as a witness in the case, and there he explained that he thought he had failed as a father.

Christian was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the murder, but was released after only five years.

The tragedies were not over, however. In the years following the murder, Cheyenne was in and out of psychiatric clinics. In 1995, she took her own life in Tahiti after she had lost custody of the son she gave birth to just a few weeks after her boyfriend was killed in 1990. Cheyenne was only 25 years old.

After a long time as a heart patient, with diabetes and obesity, Marlon Brando died on 1 July 2004 in Los Angeles. The Hollywood actor turned 80 years old.

Half of his ashes were scattered in Death Valley in California, the rest were scattered on his favorite island of Tetiaroa.

This case was first published on 03/04 2024, and last updated on 03/04 2024.