Picture this: a warm, balmy night in Los Angeles. Marlon Brando, the iconic Hollywood legend, pulls his motorcycle into a rest stop. But instead of a moment of peace, he’s met by three men armed with a gun. They force him into the back seat of a car, threatening his life—or worse, his manhood. Miraculously, they let him go unharmed. But the incident left a mark. Carlo Fiore, a close friend of Brando’s, later claimed that Marlon was convinced Frank Sinatra was behind the whole ordeal. Crazy, right?
The Roots of the Rivalry
Let’s rewind to the mid-1950s. Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra, two titans of the entertainment world, starred together in the 1955 film Guys and Dolls. But their working relationship was far from harmonious. The tension actually began a year earlier when Marlon snagged the role in On the Waterfront, a part that Sinatra desperately wanted. “Sinatra felt that role was his,” explains James Kaplan, author of Sinatra: The Chairman. Frank carried that bitterness into their collaboration on Guys and Dolls, making the set a powder keg of resentment. “It was really one-sided,” Kaplan adds. “Frank detested everything about Brando.”
But it wasn’t just about one lost role. The clash between Brando and Sinatra was also a clash of eras. Sinatra was a product of Hollywood’s golden age of the 1940s, embodying its glamour and charm. On the other hand, Brando was the new kid on the block, representing a more rebellious and edgy generation. “Sinatra came out of the glamour of Hollywood in the ’40s, while Brando was the new breed, who had open disdain for Hollywood,” says Ben Mankiewicz, host of Turner Classic Movies. To make matters worse, Sinatra started calling Brando “Mumbles” on set—a nickname that stuck and fueled the animosity. “I don’t think Brando came in hating Sinatra, but he grew to,” Mankiewicz explains.
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And let’s not forget, Brando had a bit of a mischievous streak. During one scene in Guys and Dolls, where Sinatra’s character, Nathan Detroit, enjoys a slice of cheesecake, Brando kept intentionally flubbing his lines. This forced Sinatra to repeatedly eat the cheesecake, take after take. “He definitely did it on purpose,” Mankiewicz says. “It was Brando’s way of punishing Sinatra for his disruptive behavior.” The tension was palpable, and it only added fuel to the fire of their rivalry.
The Final Straw
According to Brando Unzipped, a biography by Darwin Porter, things came to a head when Ava Gardner, Sinatra’s estranged wife, visited Marlon in his dressing room. Fiore recalls the moment, saying, “I feared Sinatra was going to order his goons to beat up Marlon.” After the abduction incident, Brando took precautions, hiring a bodyguard and steering clear of Sinatra until filming wrapped. Despite the tension, Guys and Dolls became a box office hit. However, the two stars never worked together again.
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