Songs My Mother Taught Me (Marlon Brando book)

Songs My Mother Taught Me an autobiography by Marlon Brando with Robert Lindsey as co-author,[1] published in 1994.

Songs My Mother Taught Me

The book deals with Brando's childhood, his memories of being a struggling actor and of his various relationships with his family and with other actors, producers, and directors. He also talks candidly about his sex life.[1]

The book has been translated into several languages, including a Persian version[2] translated by Niki Karimi in 1999.

Notably, little to no mention is made of his wives or children. It was said that he made this a condition of submitting the book for publication; his payment from the publisher was over a million dollars.[3]

Specific mention is made of figures such as Marilyn Monroe, Laurence Olivier, John F. Kennedy, David Niven, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, John Huston, amongst many others. His actual coverage of his films tends to be succinct, characterised more by anecdotes than step-by-step descriptions of production.

The book contains a comment on Jews in Hollywood (page 79) which caused considerable controversy:

Hollywood was always a Jewish community; it was started by Jews and to this day is run largely by Jews. But for a long time it was venomously anti-Semitic in a perverse way, especially before the war, when Jewish performers had to disguise their Jewishness if they wanted a job. These actors were frightened, and understandably so. When I was breaking into acting, I constantly heard about agents submitting an actor or actress for a part, taking them to the theater for a reading and afterward hearing the producer say, “Terrific. Thank you very much. We’ll call you.”

After the actor was gone, the agent would ask, “Well, Al, what did you think?”

“Great,” the producer would say, “He was terrific, but he’s too Jewish.”

If you “looked Jewish,” you didn’t get a part and couldn’t make a living. You had to look like Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Paul Muni or Paulette Goddard and change your name. They were Jews, but didn’t “look Jewish” and employed the camouflage of non-Jewish names. Hence Julius Garfinkle became John Garfield, Marion Levy became Paulette Goddard, Emmanuel Goldenberg became Edward G. Robinson and Muni Weisenfreund became Paul Muni. [4]

The response to Brando's comments was exacerbated by an interview he gave in 1996, in which he repeated the suggestion that Hollywood was controlled by Jews. [5]