The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando

The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando

by William J. Mann
The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando

The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando

by William J. Mann

Hardcover

$31.49  $35.00 Save 10% Current price is $31.49, Original price is $35. You Save 10%.
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
    Choose Expedited Shipping at checkout for delivery by Wednesday, April 3
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

Entertainment Weekly's BIG FALL BOOKS PREVIEW Selection

Best Book of 2019 — Publisher's Weekly

Based on new and revelatory material from Brando’s own private archives, an award-winning film biographer presents a deeply-textured, ambitious, and definitive portrait of the greatest movie actor of the twentieth century, the elusive Marlon Brando, bringing his extraordinarily complex life into view as never before.

The most influential movie actor of his era, Marlon Brando changed the way other actors perceived their craft. His approach was natural, honest, and deeply personal, resulting in performances—most notably in A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront—that are without parallel. Brando was heralded as the American Hamlet—the Yank who surpassed British stage royalty Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, and Ralph Richardson as the standard of greatness in the mid-twentieth century.

Brando’s impact on American culture matches his professional significance; he both challenged and codified our ideas of masculinity and sexuality. Brando was also one of the first stars to use his fame as a platform to address social, political, and moral issues, courageously calling out America’s deeply rooted racism.

William Mann’s brilliant biography of the Hollywood legend illuminates this culture icon for a new age. Mann astutely argues that Brando was not only a great actor but also a cultural soothsayer, a Cassandra warning us about the challenges to come. Brando’s admonitions against the monetization of nearly every aspect of the culture were prescient. His public protests against racial segregation and discrimination at the height of the Civil Rights movement—getting himself arrested at least once—were criticized as being needlessly provocative. Yet those actions of fifty years ago have become a model many actors follow today.

Psychologically astute and masterfully researched, based on new and revelatory material, The Contender explores the star and the man in full, including the childhood traumas that reverberated through his professional and personal life. It is a dazzling biography of our nation’s greatest actor that is sure to become an instant classic.

The Contender includes sixteen pages of photographs.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780062427649
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 10/15/2019
Pages: 736
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.90(d)

About the Author

William J. Mann is the New York Times bestselling author of The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando; Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn; How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood; Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand; Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines; and Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood, winner of the Edgar Allen Poe Award. He divides his time between Connecticut and Cape Cod.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Man on the Witness Stand 1

An Imaginative Young Man 21

The Hoodlum Aristocrat 149

The American Hamlet 221

The Rabble-Rouser 351

A Family Man 487

Epilogue: The Bard of the Hollywood Hills 595

Acknowledgments 623

Marlon Brando Stage and Television Credits 625

Sources 633

Notes 635

Index 695

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews