• Home
• /
• Entertainment

The Don who loved me

Playing Mafia boss Don Corleone in The Godfather rescued his career and once again established him as one of Hollywood’s best and most influential actors. But without me, he would never have taken the part.

It was 1972 and I had been working as Marlon’s personal secretary for 15 years. During this time Marlon used to receive many unsolicited books and scripts, and one such work to arrive at his home was Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. I had heard good things about it and so I took it to Marlon. He dismissed it immediately. ‘I’m not going to glorify the Mafia,’ he muttered.

I wasn’t going to let this stop me, especially as I knew that executives at Paramount Studios were searching for someone to play Don Corleone. However, every time I mentioned it to Marlon, he ignored me.

In frustration, I remarked casually that Laurence Olivier was auditioning for the part. ‘Laurence Olivier!’ he sneered. ‘He can’t play a Mafia Don.’ I had finally caught his attention.

A little later, Marlon came into my office asking if there was any black shoe polish in the house. After a few minutes, he summoned me to his room. He had darkened his eyebrows and lined his eyes, and the polish glistened on his slicked-back hair. I wasn’t sure whether he was meant to look like Rudolph Valentino or a gigolo. Nevertheless, he went to audition for the role of Don Corleone and the rest is history.

Close encounters

If I had any misconceptions about what life working for Marlon Brando would be like, he quickly put me straight. ‘I’m crazy,’ he told me in all seriousness. ‘You should also know that I’m addicted to sex.’

It was 1957 and Marlon was already an international star, having made his name in films such as A Streetcar Named Desire and The Wild One. He had also won an Oscar for his iconic role in 1954’s On The Waterfront.

Not that I was impressed. As he tried to persuade me to become his assistant, I thought him uncouth and self-centred. I also knew that two of his previous secretaries had suffered nervous breakdowns.

Despite my doubts, I took the job. When I got to know him, he assured me, I would think better of him. I was to stay with him, on and off, for almost 50 years.

Very soon after I began working for him, Marlon, then aged 33, summoned me to his Hollywood house. He came bounding down the stairs wearing just a pair of briefs, and called to me as he went through to the kitchen. In between stuffing himself with a pastry and swilling it down with milk, he said: ‘I want you to keep what I’m going to tell you a secret.’ He paused. ‘I’m getting married.’

Thinking he was kidding, I scoffed: ‘Who’d have you?’ ‘Anna Kashfi.’ Although Marlon had been dating the actress on and off, the news rather took me by surprise.

‘I thought you told me you weren’t seeing her any more,’ I said. ‘She’s pregnant. So I’m going to marry her.’ ‘When?’

‘Today.’ Just as nonchalantly, Marlon added: ‘There’s a girl upstairs getting dressed. Stay out of sight until you hear the door close. She doesn’t want you to see her.’

Marlon married Anna but they split up soon afterwards. However, they were reconciled after their son Christian was born in May 1958, and the family moved into a rented house on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles. But Marlon was not ready to give up his bachelor lifestyle. It wasn’t long before Anna moved out again, and the couple divorced in 1959. Christian became the focus of a punishing custody battle, events that would take a significant toll on him in later years.

When I was first hired by Marlon, I worked from a studio, answering the phone and correspondence, and forwarding fan mail to an agency. Marlon wasn’t concerned with ‘piddling things’ - his term for almost everything. His interest lay elsewhere: mainly women.

Marlon remarked that when I joined him I had two expressions: eyes popping out or mouth popping open. Was it any wonder? There were many occasions when a taxi arrived at his house with one girl and I would pay the fare knowing that another girl had just left - in fact they had probably passed each other on the driveway.

Trying to maintain a business like demeanour while working for Marlon was a major challenge. As Hollywood’s biggest male star, he could choose practically any woman he wanted - and sometimes he would set his sights on me. Once he seriously offered me a million dollars if I would have an affair with him. I laughed it off, asking him if he was trying to get me to establish a price. I reminded him he was broke and didn’t have a million dollars. He said he could get it at the snap of his fingers - he just had to go to work.

He would also leave me love notes or send me flowers signed: ‘Your secret admirer’.

On a drunken stopover in Jamaica, Marlon took his romancing to extremes. He walked me round the tropical grounds of a restaurant, stopping next to a wishing well. I made the mistake of asking what he would wish for. He replied that he wished I would love him enough to let him make love to me.

Peeping Tom

In 1960 Marlon directed his first and only film, a western called One-Eyed Jacks. We stayed at the Tickle Pink motel in Carmel, California. One morning a notice appeared warning that a Peeping Tom had been seen on the premises. The following night a colleague of mine saw the stalker tilting the louvred window in her bathroom as she stepped out of the shower. Marlon assured us that he would arrange a security guard.

A few nights later, the Peeping Tom struck again. My colleague screamed and I ran out of my room, catching sight of the stalker. ‘Hello, Peeping Tom,’ I said to Marlon.

‘It was a crazy thing to do,’ he admitted later, ‘but I warned you I was crazy.’

While I continued to ignore Marlon’s sex life, his cruelty was more difficult to dismiss. During the filming of One-Eyed Jacks, he had an affair with one of the actresses. One evening, Marlon invited the woman to his house. Unbeknown to her, he phoned her husband before she arrived, telling him he had been sleeping with his wife for months.

When the husband refused to believe it, Marlon asked him to come over - he would leave the door open. When the husband arrived, he found Marlon and his wife naked in bed. That was the end of the couple’s marriage, though Marlon regarded the incident as nothing more than a joke.

Some Hollywood-watchers have speculated that Marlon’s callous treatment of women may have had its roots in the breakdown of his own parents’ tempestuous relationship. His mother Dodie was an alcoholic who was frequently hauled out of Chicago bars by her husband, Marlon Snr.

‘The anguish that her drinking produced was that she preferred getting drunk to caring for us,’ Marlon would reveal later in his autobiography.

Meanwhile, Marlon’s attention towards me intensified. After one late-night shoot, I stepped outside alone and was aware of someone emerging from the shadows. An arm snaked out to grab me. I spun away but recognised the scent of the perpetrator. It was, of course, Marlon. I was ready to quit - only Brando’s father persuaded me to continue.

After he finished filming One-Eyed Jacks, Marlon set up an office for me in his home. I soon found myself organising his furniture and food, which led to the discovery that Marlon Snr, who was in charge of his superstar son’s business affairs, was giving him a weekly allowance of just $50.In 1960, Marlon married Mexican actress Movita Castaneda. There was the same nonchalance about the announcement as there was with Anna Kashfi: ‘She just had a baby and she said it was mine.’

But soon he was confiding his doubts about Movita to me - with good reason. His lawyers later discovered Movita was already married to a prize-fighter. Marlon and Movita’s marriage ended acrimoniously in 1962. He now had two families to support and no money.

If one film changed Marlon’s life it was Mutiny On The Bounty, which was released in 1962. It wasn’t really the script that excited him but the Tahitian girls, including his co-star Tarita Teriipia.

Back in Hollywood, he was back to his old ways: a different girl or two every day. Around the time of the premiere of Mutiny, Tarita announced she was pregnant and wanted $750,000 for an abortion. Marlon refused and laughed. He would have loved to have had $750,000 at the time.

Tarita gave birth to their son Teihotu in May 1963, giving Marlon a third family to support. And he was living with none of them. Indeed, in the early Sixties, Marlon was besieged by calls from girls claiming they were pregnant. One woman from San Francisco wanted $100,000 to have a termination, but a blood test proved Marlon wasn’t the father of her child.

‘They think because they got pregnant and had a child, I’m going to take care of them,’ Marlon told me. ‘They don’t love me. They wouldn’t get pregnant if I wasn’t a movie star. They’re not getting a dime.’

By the mid-Sixties, Marlon was the world’s highest-paid actor, the first to receive $1million for a film. But he was broke. Marlon’s life was spinning out of control. He appeared to have a busy life - women, children, buying the Tahitian island of Tetiaroa, marching for political causes, movie-making - but there was a great deal of pretending everything was normal.

When Marlon confided he was crazy and a sex addict, he neglected to mention bulimia.

One habit that he could not control was his love of ice cream. He would eat a cone at a shop while the staff were filling a large carton with ice cream which Marlon would claim was for his children. He would then take the carton to his car and finish it all.

A life squandered

Over the years, people have asked me why I stayed with Marlon. It was clear that he was ill - and I was one of the few people from whom he would accept advice and help. As I understood him better, his ingrained sense of abandonment shone through. I promised I would not abandon him too - and I kept my word.

As well as the tumultuous times, there were some enjoyable periods. As Marlon’s film career faded, we spent less time together. I moved out of his Mulholland Drive home and reduced my workload to three days a week. Eventually we went our separate ways, though I remained his consultant and adviser.

His weight had ballooned and his health was failing. Marlon had always been reclusive, but until now it had been by choice. His breath was shallow, his steps slow.

His bed was now his refuge instead of his playground. But his mind was unfettered and on one visit, he introduced me to a girl he had met on the Internet. He may have been in his late 70s, but he was still working the old Brando charm, though he no longer awoke each day alongside somebody he did not know. The sheets had turned from hot to cold. He was still lonely.

Marlon’s was a life squandered - a life unfinished. His fame was all-encompassing and, as the years passed, he could not escape it. I believe part of him enjoyed the recognition and power his talent brought. But another part hated the self that delighted in this acknowledgement.

There came a time not long before his death in 2004 when friends suggested I might visit him again, but Marlon refused, saying: ‘The man she knew doesn’t live here anymore.’ After this we spoke only on the telephone, where he could still be Marlon Brando, the star whose light had not dimmed. In our last call, he asked whether he was as bad as people said he was. I almost said: ‘No, you were worse,’ but instead I made light of the question. He was happy. I phoned again the day before he died in July 2004, but I was unable to reach him. Despite all that happened between us, it saddens me still.

Adapted from Marlon And Me by Alice Marchak which is available from amazon.co.uk.