Claim: Marlon Brando was in a film.

Viva Zapata ! is a 1952 biographical film starring Marlon Brando and directed by Elia Kazan . The screenplay was written by John Steinbeck , using as a guide Edgcomb Pinchon 's book , Zapata the Unconquerable .  The cast includes Jean Peters and , in an Academy Award-winning performance , Anthony Quinn .   The movie is a fictionalized account of the life of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata from his peasant upbringing , through his rise to power in the early 1900s , to his death .   To give the film as authentic a feel as possible , Kazan and producer Darryl F. Zanuck studied the numerous photographs that were taken during the revolutionary years , the period between 1909 and 1919 when Zapata led the fight to restore land taken from the people during the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz .   Kazan was especially impressed with the Agustin Casasola collection of photographs and he attempted to duplicate their visual style in the film . Kazan also acknowledged the influence of Roberto Rossellini 's Paisan .