Brando Bucks The Kicket
Um, so the guy who said,
Hollywood is run by Jews; it is owned by Jews, and they should have a greater sensitivity about the issue of — of people who are suffering. Because they’ve exploited — we have seen the — we have seen the Nigger and Greaseball, we’ve seen the Chink, we’ve seen the slit-eyed dangerous Jap, we have seen the wily Filipino, we’ve seen everything but we never saw the Kike. Because they knew perfectly well, that that is where you draw the wagons around.
Yeah, well um, he’s dead.
Good riddance loser.
Knew someone would bring that up. See http://www.ajhs.org/publications/chapters/chapter.cfm?documentID=268 . Brando put up for the Jews when it was important.
by playing a role in a movie?
Learn your history.
i’m sorry, by playing a role in a broaday play. that he did something respectable in 1946 doesn’t clear him of what he did 50 years later, does it?
Eh, I hate to sound ignorant, but I don’t really get what he’s saying. I understand “Hollywood is run by the Jews” and the “greater sensitivity” stuff. But what is he saying with all the epitaphs. That Jews aren’t in movies? That Jews are the only minority group not portrayed negitively in movies? And what the hell is he talking about with the wagons.
I definitely agree that the 40s thing doesn’t make up for this. It was a job, and from what I know of aspiring Broadway actors, they’ll take just about any job.
What he’s saying is, for years the “Jews who run Hollywood” have made films that reinforce negative stereotypes against ethnic minorities, but they never make films which negatively portray Jews. On that issue they “cirlce the wagons” which is an old term referring to the way American pioneers on their way out west would create a circle with their wagons as a wall of defense against attacks by Native Americans.
is that untrue or something?
I met him when I worked in a guitar center in Sherman Oaks, Ca. He was a shadow of his former self, whatever that means.
He came into the store to buy his daughter a guitar. He’s near 80 and his kid was like 5 or 6. When he came in he was so big he couldn’t fit thorugh the turn style. Here’s Marlon-Fucking-Brando trying to squeeze his large ass through the turn style. My jaw dropped at how big he was. He was wearing a bright blue, velvet, adidas jump suit and it was like 100 degrees outside. Crazy maybe?
We had to open up the gate to get him in. He seemed miserable if it’s any consolation. He wouldn’t give me an autograph, which would’ve been worth $700.00 due to the fact that he never gives them out. Bastid. Decent actor though.
brando may have been an asshole and 12 times an anti-semite, but lets separate the art from the artist. lets not forget that hemingway, shakespeare, dostoyevsky, pushkin and voltaire were no less great in their contribution to the world for having held anti-semitic views. colonel kurtz and vito corleone shouldnt be held accountable for brando’s personal failings.
I assume the reference to Shakespeare’s anti-semitism is made with “Merchant of Venice” and its stereotypically grasping moneylender Shylock in mind. Given Shylock’s passionate speech about his humanity — “If you prick me, do I not bleed?” — I have always understood Shakespeare to be taking an ironic poke at the prejudices of his time. The same could be seen 250 years later in less subtle form in Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn,” still considered by many people who are not good at reading between the lines as too racist to be taught in the public schools.
actually, i wasnt referring so much to the merchant of venice, which without a doubt has some anti-semitic passages, as George Orwell discussed far more eloquently and thoroughly than i can hope to do here. the works that spring to mind though are “the two gentlemen of verona” and “macbeth” which feature such gems as “if not, thou art an Hebrew, a Jew, and not worth the name of a Christian” and “Liver of blaspheming Jew,” respectively.
also, what does twain have to do with anything? he if anyone, was vocal in his admiration for jews.
My point being that Shakespeare is to Jews what Twain is to blacks: having characters say anti-semitic/racist things as a way of holding a mirror up to the prejudices of their respective audiences. In Twain it’s less subtle; you have to be pretty dense not to see that “Huckleberry Finn” is profoundly anti-racist; the continuing debate over whether or not to include it in American school curricula is proof that there are a lot of pretty dense people out there. In Shakespeare, I grant, it is not crystal clear, but I am persuaded of this view by the speech of Shylock where he says that he is nothing that the Christian world is not. By making him so ugly, yet suggesting that Christendom has just as much to answer for, Shakespeare says, oversimplifying a bit, we are all one under the skin.
But reasonable minds may differ on this interpretation, I grant.
that’s a good call. whatever shakespeare’s personal views on jews and christians may have been, they probably are overshadowed by the humanity that is so central to all his works and by extnention- his characters.