Although Marlon Brando had 3 wives and at least 2 more long term female partners rumors have persisted that he was Gay or at the very least Bisexual.
Brando has been linked to fellow Hollywood bad boy James Dean. They met in 1949, while Brando was on Broadway starring in “A Streetcar Named Desire” and Dean studied Actor’s Studio. In the Dean bio (James Dean: Tomorrow Never Comes.) a wide-eyed “puppy dog” Dean worshiped Brando and the two participated in fetish sex.
In 2018, music producer Quincy Jones said that Brando and Richard Pryor were lovers.
Then there’s the story about Marlon Brando and life long friend Wally Cox. They seem like an incongruous pair, but the two knew each other since childhood. They were also roommates while struggling actors in New York City.
Brando once told a journalist:
“If Wally had been a woman, I would have married him and we would have lived happily ever after.”
And when Cox died in 1973, Brando rushed to the funeral to convince Cox’s wife to let him scatter the ashes in the Hollywood Hills. Instead, Brando kept Wally’s ashes for another 29 years. Upon Brando’s own death in 2003 the ashes of both life long friends (and lovers?) were mixed together and scattered in Tahiti and Death Valley. Various wives of both deny either were homosexual but their relationship looks to be beyond heterosexual.
(And of course there’s the infamous photo floating around the internet of Brando supposedly performing oral sex on Cox. It’s easy of find.)
And on the subject of sexual identity, Brando said his own biographer in 1976:
“Homosexuality is so much in fashion, it no longer makes news. Like a large number of men, I, too, have had homosexual experiences, and I am not ashamed. I have never paid much attention to what people think about me. But if there is someone who is convinced that Jack Nicholson and I are lovers, may they continue to do so. I find it amusing.”
“For the first production run, the supply is very limited. So limited that Ryan only has enough denim to make ten pairs of jeans.
There are two denims available, one weighing in at 13.25 oz. and a slightly weftier 16 oz. version. While the 13.25 oz. denim just came off the line, it will be a little longer before the 16 oz. one hits the market.
Ryan has test-soaked a swatch of the denim and he is blown away by the colour:
“It turns into this brilliant blue, very similar to how James Dean’s Lee 101s looked in Rebel Without a Cause. Little known fact, the costume designer overdyed those jeans to make them more vibrant on screen. Lee 101s never actually looked like that.”
The price of the Cone Denim W.H. Ranch natural indigo jeans is $425, which is actually very reasonable considering that the denim costs more than twice as much as stock Cone denim. You can choose between all W.H. Ranch’s fits (the jeans pictures are the R1911 Slim Fit). Sizes range from 31-37 and you even have a custom size made, which brings the price up to $445.”
“I spent practically all my time in the company of adults. I was very withdrawn, very shy, I did what I was told and I tried not to disappoint anybody.” – Natalie Wood, on her childhood.
James Dean, Brian Jones and Anita Pallenberg - Rebels without a cause?
The loose connection is “attitude” and American film director Nicholas Ray. He directed the famous James Dean film of 1955 and visited the shooting of Anita’s film “Mord und Totschlag / A Degree of Murder” 1966 in Munich.
He arrived late for the first rehearsal, roaring in on his motorcycle, dressed in jeans, a dirty T-shirt, and a large safety pin holding his fly together. “He was exactly what I expected. A junior version of Marlon Brando. He mumbled so you could hardly hear what he was saying, and he seemed very exotic and eccentric and attractive.” Natalie Wood by Suzanne Finstad.
