Each is an icon in their very own proper: Rita Moreno, a Puerto Rican-born American performer, achieved the uncommon coveted EGOT honor, being considered one of solely a small cadre in historical past who’ve earned an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. And Marlon Brando turned a display legend for his roles in basic movies like A Streetcar Named Desire and The Godfather, incomes him the respect of American Film Institute’s fourth best male film star.
And within the early days of their burgeoning careers, destiny introduced them collectively, fueling a steamy relationship that had as a lot romance because it did drama—so harmful that at one level Moreno’s life was on the road.
Even so, their magnetism was simple, and so they saved discovering their means again collectively, leading to a tumultuous eight-year relationship that was extra marked by scandal than love. Though Brando died in 2004 of pulmonary fibrosis, Moreno — who was married to Leonard Gordon in 1965 till his 2010 dying — nonetheless considers Brando a significant drive in her life.
“He was a big love of mine in my life,” she informed People in 2017, pointing to a photograph of Brando in her bed room. “This one, it’s almost seems like a vignette out of a movie, so that’s why it’s there. He was the lust of my life,” she stated, earlier than pointing to a photograph of Gordon and calling him the “love of my life.”
There had been sparks between them from the very begin
Born Ruby Dolores Alverio, Moreno moved to the Bronx along with her household when she was 5 and was found when she was 16, shortly being signed by film producer Louis B. Mayer. By the time she was 22 in 1954, she discovered herself in a make-up room on the set of Désirée — the movie the place Brando, who was 30 on the time, was enjoying Napoleon.
“Just meeting him that first day sent my body temperature skyrocketing as though I had been dropped into a very hot bath, and I went into a full-body blush,” she wrote in her self-titled 2013 memoir, based on The New York Post. “It was the sort of rush that inspires poetry and songs.”
That was just the beginning, and Moreno was not short on details. “To say that he was a great lover — sensual, generous, delightfully inventive — would be gravely understating what he did not only to my body, but for my soul,” she revealed in her memoir. “Every aspect of being with Marlon was thrilling, because he was more engaged in the world than anyone else I’d ever known.”
She knew she was his type, telling People back in 1975: “Marlon has always liked Latin women… I don’t think he ever went out with a blonde. He has the reputation of being tough or cold, but in reality he is a very gentle, loving man.”
Moreno tried to make Brando jealous after his infidelities
But that degree of ardour got here with a darkish facet as effectively. Brando pursued different ladies, marrying Anna Kashfi in 1957 and Movita Castaneda in 1960 and fathering kids with each of them throughout his “off and on” time with Moreno.
The ache was numbing for Moreno, who wrote, “He broke my heart and came close to crushing my very spirit with his physical infidelities and, worse, with his emotional betrayals.” Though she shortly noticed his sample, she couldn’t deny the attraction. “I couldn’t stay away,” she continued. “In fact, I was becoming addicted to the challenge of winning him over and over again.”
The greatest means she may determine to get his consideration was by courting different males. First she tried with Dennis Hopper — after which, Elvis Presley. “I knew no one could possibly make Marlon Brando more jealous,” she wrote in her e-book.
However, the eagerness with Presley wasn’t even remotely on the identical degree because it was with Brando. She stated she had a second when she watched him eat a peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwich and thought he would possibly benefit from the meal greater than he did her, based on the Post. And with that, she went again to Brando once more.
Rita Moreno and Marlon Brando discuss whereas filming ‘The Night of the Following Day.’
Photo: Bettmann/Contributor
The ache of the connection started to meet up with Moreno
Not lengthy after their reconciliation, Moreno came upon she was pregnant with Brando’s baby, however the response was by no means what she anticipated. “To my shock and horror, Marlon immediately arranged for an abortion,” she wrote, recalling that he organized for another person to choose her up after the process, which was unlawful on the time.
But issues hadn’t gone easily — she quickly came upon the fetus was nonetheless inside her and needed to be eliminated surgically on the hospital. Instead of sympathy, Brando expressed anger that the one that carried out the abortion had wronged him.
Brando then took off to movie Mutiny on the Bounty, the place he fell for co-star Tarita Teriipaia. Moreno had just lately wrapped what would turn out to be her star-making function in West Side Story, however behind closed doorways, seeing him with one more girl was all an excessive amount of. When he returned house, Moreno swallowed a bunch of his sleeping tablets in a single gulp.
“I went to bed to die,” she wrote within the e-book. “This wasn’t a revenge suicide, but a consolation, an escape-from-pain death.” And if it weren’t for his assistant discovering her and dashing her to the hospital to get her abdomen pumped, her destiny could have been fully totally different.
Looking again, she informed USA Today: “It was humiliating and I was letting him step all over me… I wanted to get rid of myself because I didn’t think I deserved to live.”
A therapist requested them to not see one another once more, and the 2 agreed. Brando went on to marry Teriipaia in 1962.
They linked as soon as once more for skilled causes
About six years later in 1968, Moreno reached out to Brando once more, and he forged her as his love curiosity in The Night of the Following Day, which filmed in France.
Waking up after a reunion dinner crammed with an excessive amount of wine, Moreno discovered Brando respiratory on her neck, begging, “That’s all I want, to sleep with you.” She denied him.
Back on the set, there was a scene when she needed to slap him, and it triggered outdated reminiscences. “As the synapses of my brain reconnected, old wounds, hurts, resentment and disrespect coursed through my body,” she wrote. “The festering decay rose like pond scum to the surface, and Rita Moreno emerged as the offended lover.”
It was a flood of feelings that she had buried deep. “It opened up this well of hurt and rage, and disappointment, that had been obviously sitting there for years and years and years unexpressed,” she informed Vulture. “The pond scum just came right up to the surface. It had been sitting there all these years, and I went berserk. That was for real. I don’t even know what I was saying. It surprised the hell out of him, of course, and he kept trying to defend himself by putting his arms up and all that. The director could not have been happier, so he kept the camera rolling.”
Moreno and Brando eventually formed a friendship
Watching the scene back now, Moreno is still filled with pain. “I know what I’m experiencing, and it hurts me so much that it took me so long to express what I was feeling,” she continued to Vulture. “It breaks my heart, actually. And I feel so sorry for that girl on the screen. I really, really do.”
Yet despite the pain of it all, Moreno and Brando became permanent fixtures in each other’s lives. Brando became friendly with Moreno, as well as Gordon and their daughter Fernanda “Nandy” Gordon. “Nandy came home from school one day and found him playing the congas in our living room,” Moreno told People in 1975. “So she still calls him ‘the man with the drums.’”
She’s additionally grateful that Brando launched her to remedy, which has been so important to her life. “And at one point he said to me, ‘You need help,’ which now makes me really laugh hard because it’s one loony telling the other loony that they need help,” she informed Vulture. “It turned out he was absolutely right. It’s probably the greatest favor I ever did for myself.”
Through the tip of Brando’s life, they remained in contact, however Moreno by no means was the one to succeed in out once more. “We had a telephone friendship after that,” she continued. “He did the calling, I never called him.”
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