Brando, Ava Gardner, Anita Ekberg and other A-listers are featured in a memoir about the glamour of the 1950s film industry. Marlon Brando was the original angry young man, winning an Oscar for On the Waterfront, Elia Kazan’s movie about union corruption. But anger got the better of him at the 1954 Italian premiere of the film, when he refused to watch it after discovering that his voice had been dubbed, a new book reveals.
![[Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b3d914f34a7d00c46ff239ef5c4efdab6d11643a/0_0_2042_2736/master/2042.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
“Why didn’t somebody tell me I was going to see a dubbed version?” he spluttered in fury in the darkened cinema. His embarrassed agent, who had expected the original English-language version, recalled him “staggering up from his seat as if from a heart attack”, frantically whispering: “Get me out of here!”.
Brando could not be calmed. “I’ve never seen myself dubbed,” he reportedly said. “I’m an actor, not a ventriloquist’s dummy, for Christ’s sake. Can you imagine what it’s like to hear somebody else’s voice come out of my mouth? You feel like a goddamn freak in a sideshow. Christ, why didn’t somebody prepare me? Didn’t you guys know?”.
The incident is among the revelations in a memoir by Hank Kaufman and Gene Lerner, an American couple who, having arrived in Rome from New York in 1953, became agents, friends and confidants to some of the biggest movie stars, including Anita Ekberg, Ava Gardner and Simone Signoret.
