Marlon Brando, 1924 - 2004

Illinois youth full of anger, family strife

July 03, 2004|By Robert K. Elder, Tribune staff reporter.

Before Brando was Brando, he was Bud.

Marlon "Bud" Brando Jr., farm boy and renegade student, lived in Evanston and Libertyville during his childhood, a tumultuous period for the future actor and his two sisters, Jocelyn and Frances. Their parents' alcoholism and father's serial infidelity led to constant household tension.

"My parents seldom fought in front of us, but there was a constant, grinding, unseen miasma of anger," Brando wrote in his autobiography, "Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me." "After we moved to Evanston, the tension and unspoken hostility became more acute."

Brando recounts searching with his siblings and father in 1930 through "Chicago's Skid Row on a sunny afternoon," trying to spot his mother perched on a neighborhood barstool.

As Marlon Brando Sr. ran his own company in Evanston--Calcium Carbonate Corp.--his namesake, nicknamed "Bud," developed a stammer but was successfully treated at Northwestern University.

The volatile family climate resulted in a marital separation, during which Dorothy Brando moved to California with her children. There would be reconciliation two years later, however, and Brando moved with his reunited family to Libertyville, renting the "old Waller Place" on Bradley Road.

It was during this time, 1938 to 1940, that Brando cared for the family's Jersey milk cow, Violet, and attended Libertyville Township High School.

"I was one of the bad boys of the school," Brando wrote, noting that his status as a farmer further made him an outcast.

Former classmate Joe Sprey told biographer Peter Manso in his 1994 book "Brando: The Biography," that "as a freshman, Bud was as mature as many seniors, and by this I mean he was able to understand human frailties, bullyism, values. Many of the kids in our class had an agricultural background, and they were unsophisticated. So they talked about him as crazy."

Of that time, Brando wrote: "I always had friends, boys as well as girls, but I was anathema to many of my teachers and the parents of many of my friends, some of whom treated me as if I were poison . . . I was a bad student, chronic truant and all-around incorrigible. I was forever being sent to the principal's office to be disciplined."

Because of his roguish behavior, Brando's father sent him to Shattuck Military Academy in Faribault, Minn.--until he was expelled. Soon after, in 1943, he moved to New York to act.

Even after his super-stardom in "A Streetcar Named Desire" and Oscar-winning turn in "The Godfather," Brando often returned to Libertyville, said Diana Dretske, collections coordinator at the Lake County Discovery Museum.

"He always came back here to visit his sister Fran," said Dretske. "They were often seen having lunch at Quig's orchard. He was seen in the area quite a bit, up until his sister's death" in 1994.

In 1953, Frances "Frannie" Brando moved from New York to the family's Penny Poke Farm, located west of Libertyville on Hawley Street near Route 60/83, and fought for years with her brother over the 40-acre farm. According to a story in the Tribune in 1974, Brando included the land on a list of property holdings the actor wanted to give back to the Native Americans, in whose name he rejected an Oscar for his role in 1972's "The Godfather."

Later reports indicate that Frances eventually agreed to her younger sibling's wishes, but never moved from the property. Developer Timothy Towne bought the land after Frances' death.

Bob Quig, owner of the 57-year-old Quig's Family Restaurant and orchard, remembers Brando as "a very nice, perfectly ordinary guy . . . no different than any other customer who comes in."

"He always liked our baked goods," Quig said.