Brando's Smile: His Life, Thought, and Work
*Starred Review* Professor Mizruchi cleverly plays off Brando’s beefcake image in her book’s charming cover photograph and title, but note carefully the subtitle. This is no romantic tell-all but a rich look “over his shoulder” as Brando read and wrote comments in his much-loved collection of some 4,000 books. Mizruchi chased down 53 of 57 lots of Brando’s personal library, auctioned at Christie’s after his 2004 death, and she has gone through the books, newspaper and journal articles and reviews, scripts, and more, following Brando’s reading and annotating and using his acting career as the book’s frame (basically, from I Remember Mama on through The Score, with such powerhouses as On the Waterfront and The Godfather in between). It’s a brilliant strategy, a marvelous find, and an engaging, enlightening portrait of a human, a man seen in various portrayals as a sex machine, perhaps the greatest actor ever, and, toward the end, an overweight recluse. For Brando’s performance in Mutiny on the Bounty, for instance, he had more than 100 books on Polynesia alone. Mizruchi writes frankly, smartly, and wittily and quotes others as well to “explore the Brando that was not visible to the world in order to better understand the one that was.” --Eloise Kinney