The Crazy Story Of Marlon Brando Casting SUPERMAN And How He Proposed To Play Jor-El As A Bagel

Casting Marlon Brando in the classic 1978 Superman movie was a big deal at the time! But it was also known that working with Brando was not the easiest, as he was an extremely extravagant individual. The time came when director Richard Donner had to meet with Brando before shooting Superman she began and before meeting him, she called one of the most powerful agents and studio executives in Hollywood at the time, Jay Kanter, for some advice.

Donner said she asked him if he’d like to make any suggestions, and Kanter responded, saying, “‘He’ll want to play as a green suitcase.’ I said, ‘What does that mean?’ ‘It means he hates working and loves money, so if he can convince you that people on Krypton look like green suitcases and you only photograph green suitcases, he’ll get paid just to do the voiceover. That’s how his mind works.’ I said, ‘F—,’ and then called Francis Coppola. He said: ‘He’s brilliant. He has a brilliant mind. But he loves to talk. Get him to talk and he’ll talk himself out of any trouble.’”

I can only imagine what was going through Donner’s mind when he flew to California to meet Brando. Discussing that experience of first meeting the actor, Donner said, “So I go to California and meet Marlon F—ing Brando at his house on Mulholland Drive. Me, Tom Mankiewicz and Ilya Salkind. He and Jack Nicholson had a small compound. We rang the gate and a couple of German Shepherds came out, and there’s Marlon Brando. And it was hard to talk, because this is Marlon Brando! He lets us in and we go into his house to have a drink; it was late afternoon and we sat down and started talking, and talked and talked. It was finally getting dark and he said, ‘But listen, that’s not why you’re here. You are here to tell me about it [the role].’”

It’s at this point that the conversation took an interesting turn because Brando proposed playing Jor-El as a bagel. Donner explained how she turned out and what he said to completely convince Brando to take the role: “‘Why don’t I play it like a bagel?’ I was ready for him to say ‘a green suitcase’ and he said ‘bagels.’ He said, “How do we know what people looked like on Krypton?” He had good logic. He said, “Maybe they looked like bagels up there back then?” I said, ‘Damn Marlon, let me tell you something.’ He had just told us a story about a little boy [and how smart he was] and I said, “It’s 1939. There isn’t a kid in the world who doesn’t know what Jor-El looks like, and he looks like Marlon Brando.” And he looked at me and smiled [and said], ‘I talk too much, don’t I?’ He said, ‘Okay. Show me the wardrobe.’”

You know, after hearing many stories about Marlon Brando, I wish I could have had a day out with him! Brando was a hero to Christopher Reeve, and as you can imagine, he was extremely nervous about meeting and working with him.

The director spoke about Reeve and Brando meeting, saying, “He and Chris didn’t meet to begin with. But they had a scene, because I remember how nervous Chris was, working with Brando. But Brando was nice to him. He was kind to everyone. They supped; he was Chris’s hero. He was a doll. He was totally present, punctual. Not difficult, [though] we had to put his dialogue on other actors’ chests. She said, “I don’t want to read it like I’ve read it a bunch of times already.” The first time I read it, it will be honest. He made it work. It was the best. It was Marlon Brando. It was Marlon F-ing Brando.

And I’ll leave it at that.

Source: THR