In the 1950s, the word “mumbling” got stuck to the name Marlon Brando, and there were several reasons for that.
Brando, starting with his first film, “The Men” (1950), brought a new mode of naturalistic acting to Hollywood that was so revolutionary it would change not just movies but the world.
Those who were used to hearing every actor in a movie enunciate their dialogue as if it were the King’s English couldn’t understand — literally — what Brando was saying.Beyond that, Brando played the kinds of characters who’d never been front and center in a Hollywood movie before — most famously Terry Malloy, the inarticulate working-class loser-brute of “On the Waterfront.” This wasn’t just an acting revolution; it was a who-gets-to-be-a-hero-in-America revolution.
And the everyday music of Brando’s magnetically low-key, throwaway speech was part of it.
The new heroes were people who couldn’t fully express who they were,
Read full article