How a houseplant convinced Marlon Brando to accept a role he’d already rejected
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(Credits: Far Out / Paramount Pictures)
There’s no point in even trying to deny that Marlon Brando is one of the greatest actors of all time, and he may well be the single most important and influential to have ever trodden the boards or graced the silver screen.
His shadow looms over the profession to this day, with countless legends being indebted to a legend who came before. What also can’t be denied is that Brando was a very strange guy, and one who had an increasingly unique way of approaching both his personal and professional lives.
As much as his reputation proceeded him, at least there were people who knew how to turn down his bizarre requests, otherwise the voice of Jor-El in Richard Donner’s Superman may have ended up emanating from a sentient bagel. The longer Brando’s career wore on, the more selective – and unruly – he became, but it was a moment of green-fingered coincidence that convinced him to accept a part he’d already rejected.
When director Joshua Logan was putting the pieces together for what would eventually become 1957’s romantic drama Sayonara, it was Brando who was the first choice to play the male lead, Lloyd Gruver. He turned it down, and after replacement Rock Hudson was also ruled out due to scheduling conflicts, the producers were given an ultimatum.
The story finds an Air Force major falling in love with a Japanese actress, where he faces pressures and prejudices from his countrymen over a romance with a local at the height of the Korean War. The film was supposed to end with Gruver leaving the country, but Brando pushed for a happier ending where the star-crossed lovers ended up getting married.
Per the Saturday Evening Post, the actor wanted “to get a message across about tolerance,” which was admirable. That being said, he still hadn’t signed on the dotted line until he witnessed director Logan surrounded by potted plant life. When the filmmaker asked him why he’d suddenly changed his mind, Brando had a typically eccentric response.
The Academy Award winner told Logan he admired “the tender way you took the dead leaves off that plant while we were talking yesterday,” which was apparently reason enough to abandon his hesitance and commit to Sayonara. Strange, but perfectly on-brand for the wayward maverick.
If it was that easy in this instance, then it would have been entirely forgivable for prospective creative partners to make a point of hosting their meetings with Brando in greenhouses or plant nurseries. That way, they could make unbroken eye contact with the intended target while lovingly tending to their seeds, stalks, and shrubs, with that display of emotion towards a smattering of dead leaves turning out to be a deal-maker and not a deal-breaker for Logan and Sayonara.
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