Christian Brando

Christian Brando (Mugshot 1990)

Christian Devi Brando (born May 11, 1958 in Los Angeles , California , † January 26, 2008 in Hollywood , ibid) was an American actor . He was the eldest son of Marlon Brando and his first wife Anna Kashfi . Beginning in childhood, he appeared as an actor - at times under the pseudonym Gary Brown - in a few feature films. He made international headlines in 1990 when he killed his half-sister Cheyenne's friend .

Life

Childhood and youth

Christian Brando was born in Los Angeles in 1958. His mother was Anna Kashfi , a young actress and the daughter of a factory worker from Cardiff , his father was the then world-famous actor and Oscar winner Marlon Brando . Brando initially considered the exotic beauty to be the daughter of a wealthy family from Calcutta , Kashfi later relativized it and stated that she was a half-Indian because her birth father came from the South Asian country. Brando named his son Christian Marquand after one of his closest friends , with whom his wife said he was having an affair. She therefore refused to use this nickname and addressed the boy by his middle name Devi ( Sanskrit for "goddess"). After only one and a half years of marriage, Brando and Kashfi divorced and from then on they fought a bitter struggle for custody of their son.

Christian then grew up alternately in his father's house on Mulholland Drive and his mother's bungalow in Los Angeles. At the age of three he entered a Montessori school , but was removed again in the second year. Kashfi was not interested in Brando's suggestion to move to Tahiti with the child . While she suffered increasingly from mental health problems and developed a dependence on barbiturates , Marlon Brando had little time for his son and had him looked after by various nannies . At times Christian grew up with his three years younger half-brother Miko, the son of Brando and his second wife Maria "Movita" Castaneda . After an overdose of Kashfi, Brando was temporarily given full custody in 1964. In 1965, Christian lived with his aunt Fran for six months in order to calm down the parental conflict.

Kidnapping to Mexico

Christian Brando was described as a nervous and insecure child and couldn't find a constant in his life due to his parents' custody dispute. "The family kept changing shape (...) I sat down at the breakfast table and asked, 'Who are you?'" He later explained, referring to his father's bustle. During his time at Ojai Valley School, he began drinking and using drugs.

In March 1972, the boarding school management informed both parents that the boy had been arson in his bedroom, which he allegedly carried out based on an anecdote from his father. Anna Kashfi then picked her son up from school and had him brought to northern Mexico . Marlon Brando was at the filming location of The Last Tango in Paris , France , and commissioned the private detective Jay J. Armes to search for Christian when he learned of his kidnapping . The detective tracked the 13-year-old with a group of hippies who hid him in a tent and said that Kashfi had promised them a $ 10,000 reward . According to a friend, Christian was so traumatized by the experience that he later began to buy weapons for fear of being kidnapped again. The police told Marlon Brando that his son was sexually abused by one of the kidnappers . Kashfi denied any involvement in the story, but testimony in court has proven wrong.

Christian Brando left high school at the age of 16 and lived most of the time in Kalama , Washington , under the care of JoAnn Corrales, a longtime employee of his father . The small town on the Columbia River became a retreat for the prominent son, which he would visit again and again for the rest of his life. He loved the forests and fishing and started working as a welder and in the timber industry. In this branch he founded his own company, which took him to Tetiaroa , a South Sea atoll north of Tahiti leased from his father . At 22, he married his longtime girlfriend, Mary McKenna. Six years later, the marriage ended in divorce after McKenna complained of physical abuse and death threats.

Killing of Dag Drollet

While in Los Angeles, he shuttled between the property on Mulholland Drive and his own house on Wonderland Avenue that his father had bought for him. He used the latter primarily as a “crash site” and let homeless people and friends from the drug milieu spend the night there. His relationship with Marlon Brando, who continued to withdraw from the public eye, has been described as extremely complicated and troubled. According to companions, the young Brando suffered from the burden of his famous name.

On May 16, 1990, Christian was once again a guest at his father's house, where his Tahitian half-sister, Cheyenne Brando , who was eight months pregnant, and his father, Dag Drollet, were staying. The two had recently separated, but Drollet agreed to assist Cheyenne with psychiatric treatment after a car accident. Around 10:40 p.m. local time there was a dispute between Brando and Drollet, in which the Tahitian was killed with a .45 caliber pistol . Marlon, who was also present, tried to revive the 26-year-old by means of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but was unsuccessful. The following day, Christian Brando was charged with murder and illegal gun possession and arrested.

The following process was promoted to a media sensation by the Hollywood press and also attracted international attention. Christian Brando testified that his half-sister confided in him during dinner that Drollet had hit her. Thereupon there was a scuffle between the two, in which a shot from the pistol was released. Brando, who was very drunk at the time of the crime, had scared his opponent with a gun, but did not want to shoot him. The public prosecutor's office did not believe this information and held on to the murder charge, especially since no traces of a fight could be found on the scene. In fact, Drollet was found dead in front of the television with a gunshot wound to his face. Marlon Brando played an important role in the process; he made a passionate plea for his firstborn in which, among other things, he addressed his own failure as a father. The Hollywood star's statement has been described by cynical observers as the “climax” of the trial and one of “his best performances”. In the meantime, he sent his daughter Cheyenne out of the country, which the public prosecutor interpreted as "limiting her possibilities". Brando wanted to prevent Cheyenne from incriminating her half-brother as a witness. After intensive negotiations, a deal was finally reached between the prosecution and defense under Robert Shapiro and Christian Brando pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in February 1991 . The Superior Court of Santa Monica sentenced him to a prison sentence of ten years in the California Men's Colony, a state prison in San Luis Obispo .

After four and a half years, Brando was released early from prison shortly after his half-sister's suicide.

Later years

At the request of his father, Christian Brando then returned to Kalama, where he received financial support from JoAnn Corrales during his probation . Marked by the trial and the time in prison, his alcohol and drug consumption increased, he became addicted to crystal meth and got deeper and deeper into the scene. In Kalama he came into conflict with the law a few times. In 2000, he was arrested for drunk driving but failed to appear for the subsequent court hearing, earning him a $ 800 fine and two days in prison. Later that year, he was hospitalized with a broken jaw after three men beat him in the same place where he lived.

It was only after his father's death in July 2004 that Brando moved back to Los Angeles. He lived in the house on Mulholland Drive for a few months, first with other family members, then with Deborah Presley , who he claims was an illegitimate daughter of Elvis Presley , whom he married in Las Vegas in October 2004 . Marlon Brando shortly before his death - to the dismay of Christians - testamentary used executor but urged domestic sales and threw out the newly married couple. After just three months of marriage, Brando and Presley separated after she brought allegations of domestic violence against him. Brando pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years probation. In a civil case , Presley also charged Brando with beatings, threats and terrorism against her and her 11-year-old daughter, whereupon the latter agreed to make a compensation payment of $ 45,000.

Brando moved in with Donna Geon, a woman in her late forties with no permanent job, on Sunset Boulevard . Around that time he became involved in the Robert Blake criminal case, in which the actor was suspected of murdering his second wife, Bonnie Lee Bakley. Christian Brando had had a brief liaison with Bakley, known as a cheater and blackmailer of celebrities, and at times even believed she was the father of her child. Although there was a sound recording of a threat made to Bakley, Brando could not establish any connection with the death of Blake's wife. In October 2005, Marlon Brando's estate administrator had - from the auction proceeds of various memorabilia at Christie's - a one-time payment of $ 200,000, which Brando allegedly invested in his drug problem. He disliked living in the apartment and his relationship with Donna Geon was described as "stormy". When Brando failed an important welder's test in the summer of 2007, his mental state deteriorated further.

Death and afterlife

At the beginning of 2008, Brando contracted fatal double pneumonia . On January 11th, his partner Donna Geon found him barely conscious and gasping for breath in the shared apartment. He was admitted to the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, where he died on January 26th after two weeks in a coma and under artificial ventilation . After his death, a dispute broke out over the Brando inheritance, which was fought out by various parties. His mother, Anna Kashfi, and second wife, Deborah Presley, requested an autopsy , which eventually confirmed the cause of death established at the hospital. Since Christian Brando had lived on welfare at the end of his life and Kashfi and Presley could barely cover the funeral costs, the two women sold their stories on the boulevard . The childless Brando was buried at Oddfellows Cemetery in Kalama.

“Marlon and I made a picture together called The Ugly American . In it an Asian leader is talking to hundreds of followers and he says, 'There's an old saying: When two elephants fight, the grass is wounded.' That's the way I see Christian. He was the wounded grass on which two ferocious elephants fought all those years. "

“Marlon and I made a movie together called The Ugly American . In it, an Asian leader speaks to hundreds of followers and says, 'There's an old saying: When two elephants fight, the grass suffers.' That's how I see Christian. He was the suffering grass on which two wild elephants fought over the years. "

- Director George Englund on Christian Brando (2008)

Acting career

In contrast to his private life, Christian Brando's career as a film actor went largely unnoticed by the public. He had his first extra role at the age of five in the comedy In Liebe ein 1 opposite James Stewart . In 1968, under the pseudonym Gary Brown, two more appearances followed in the comedies The Secret Life of an American Wife with Walter Matthau and Let me kiss your butterfly with Peter Sellers . After a long break from acting, Barbra Streisand got him a role as a Jewish student in the musical film Yentl in 1983 . He played his only leading role five years later as a terrorist in the thriller La posta in gioco by the Italian director Sergio Nasca . After two more small roles, the 1990 murder trial put an end to his acting career.

Filmography

• 1963: In love a 1 ( Take Her, She's Mine , uncredited)
• 1968: The Secret Life of an American Wife
• 1968: Let Me Kiss Your Butterfly (I Love You, Alice B. Tokas)
• 1983: Yentl (uncredited)
• 1988: La posta in gioco
• 1989: Unmasked Part 25
• 1990: Wishful Thinking

literature

• Peter Manso: Brando. The biography. Hyperion, New York 1994, ISBN 0-7868-6063-4 .

Web links

Commons : Christian Brando  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Obituary in the Guardian (English)
• Christian Brando in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Christian Brando in the database of Find a Grave (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Ronald Bergan: Christian Brando - The troubled eldest child of Marlon Brando. The Guardian , January 30, 2008, accessed September 14, 2019 . 
2. ^ Peter Manso: Brando. The biography. Hyperion, New York 1994, ISBN 0-7868-6063-4 p. 478.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p} Christopher Goodwin: The boy Brando lost. The Observer , February 24, 2008, accessed September 14, 2019 . 
4. ↑ ^{a b} Manso, p. 589.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Manso, p. 536.
6. ↑ Manso, p. 590 f.
7. ^ Manso, p. 716.
8. ↑ ^{a b} Manso, p. 747 ff.
9. ↑ Alex Durán: Jay J. Armes Is the World's Greatest Investigator. Fusion Magazine, January 8, 2016, accessed September 22, 2019 . 
10. ↑ Christian Brando 1986 in an interview with Skip E. Lowe on his talk show Skip E. Lowe Looks at Hollywood .
11. ↑ ^{a b} Eric Malnic: Daughter of Brando Kills Herself in Tahiti. Los Angeles Times , April 8, 1995, accessed September 11, 2019 . 
12. ^ Dan Whitcomb: Son of Marlon Brando died of pneumonia: coroner. Reuters , April 11, 2008, accessed September 14, 2019 . 
13. ^ Marlon Brando's son buried in Kalama. Herald Net, February 19, 2008, accessed September 14, 2019 . 
14. ↑ Christian Brando. Internet Movie Database , accessed September 16, 2019 .