Blood Moon £17.99 pp621

Satyriasis is defined in the dictionary as an uncontrollable desire in and behaviour by a man. This seems an apt description of Marlon Brando, based on the evidence of this lurid, raunchy though perceptive biography. Various individuals attest to his fleeting passions, his lack of emotional commitment and cruel treatment of lovers, both male and female. When asked by an impertinent interviewer, “What about your love life, Brando?”, he gave the flippant but true response: “I can’t talk about something that doesn’t exist.”

Brando was an earthy individual who delighted in shocking with his carefree and liberated manners. His first Hollywood screen tests were a disaster because he appeared with a runny nose; he would scratch his genitals during interviews; he liked to intersperse high-flown conversation with profanities and dirty talk; he referred to his manhood as “my noble tool”; he was preternaturally given to public urination; and he acquired the ability to fart on cue. At the same time, he was the “ultimate wet-dream fantasy” of gay intellectuals such as Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote, and in his classic performances his raw, animal magnetism was tempered by a poetic vulnerability.

When he starred in Ben Hecht’s pro-Zionist Broadway play A Flag is Born, in 1946, he “must have f***ed half the Jewish gals in New York,” said the actress Stella Adler. “They flocked backstage to meet him, and he took his pick”. The effect was similar, though amplified by celebrity, when he played the brutish Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire.

With an oedipal complex as big as his monstrous ego (indeed, Brando claimed to one lover that his alcoholic mother had molested him as a child), he was a sexual outlaw who used sex as a means of control as much as a means of self-expression. Directed at some male and female actors, it was his way of slaying, or at the very least taming, the professional competition. This was his approach with Montgomery Clift, James Dean and even Burt Lancaster. At the same time, he had to indulge his appetite. One girlfriend, the actress Geraldine Page, compared him to a dog in a park: “He pisses on the elm tree. He pisses on the birch. Then, for a change of pace, he pisses on a fire hydrant or a patch of grass. His actual address shifted from day to day, depending on who — in his case, what — he was seducing. His ass du jour, so to speak.”

Apart from his relationships with high-profile men and women, from Marilyn, Rita and Ava to Montgomery, Rock and James Dean, relationships that are studiously catalogued here by Darwin Porter, Brando also engaged in liaisons with minor male actors. According to Elia Kazan, the director, Brando was briefly “smitten” in 1947 by Sandy Campbell, the young actor he stole from the playwright Donald Wyndham. On the set of The Wild One, it was a 23-year-old Latino biker. In the summer of 1953, it was William Redfield, a young stage actor, who took his fancy. And there was always Wally Cox, Brando’s childhood friend, who played the TV sitcom character Mr Peepers. Cox was Brando’s soulmate and lover. In 1965, Brando used his influence to have Cox and Redfield cast in The Saboteur: Code Named Morituri. “Marlon shared a two-bedroom villa with both Wally Cox and Redfield,” recalled Sam Gilman, Brando’s Boy Friday, a dialogue coach on the film. “One night he’d share Wally’s bed. On another night he’d sleep with Redfield. Personally, I think Wally was his favourite.”

In Fred Zinnemann’s 1949 film The Men, in which Brando played a wheelchair-bound veteran, he prepared for the role by spending time with paraplegics. He befriended one homosexual quadriplegic vet (“not even able to light a cigarette”), who harboured suicidal thoughts, and allowed him to perform fellatio on his “noble tool”. When they were caught by an attendant, Zinnemann excused Brando’s behaviour as charitable.

What makes Brando even more of a puzzle is that he enjoyed being, in gay parlance, both pitcher and catcher. He would sometimes be a classic “top”; on other occasions he was happy to submit. He was a narcissist one minute, a tender lover the next. Not so much sexual outlaw, perhaps, as existential hero of the bedroom.

Porter is not big on analysis or evaluation, preferring to let the witnesses speak, nor is he much interested in the second half of his subject’s life. He deals with it in a final chapter that takes up about 40 pages consisting of picture captions and gobbets. After 1961, Brando’s career slowed down (with the exception of his role in The Godfather), while his private life became increasingly bizarre.

Brando Unzipped deserves to stand alongside Peter Manso’s 1993 doorstopper of a biography, because it explores a dimension of Brando’s personality that Manso felt constrained to underplay, either through lack of access to certain sources or through undue delicacy. The occasional misspelling and flaws in page design can be forgiven because the contents are for the most part compelling. Indeed, the samizdat quality of the text reflects the underground flavour of much of the information, and there is an astounding revelation on almost every page. If you enjoy gossip and are not too precious about presentation, this book is certainly worth reading. Of course, if you enjoy salacious gossip and tales of sexual abandon, you will find yourself in hog heaven.

POOL COOL

During the filming of A Streetcar Named Desire, Brando had affairs with both his co-star, Vivien Leigh, and her husband, Laurence Olivier. One witness was David Niven, who remembered walking into the garden of the house where the Oliviers were staying: “Brando and Larry swimming naked in the pool. Larry was kissing Brando. Or maybe it was the other way around. I turned my back on them and went back inside to join Vivien. I’m sure she knew what was going on, but she made no mention of it. Nor did I. One must be sophisticated about such matters in life.”

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