Carlo Fiore was an actor who now is remembered only for his friendship
with Marlon Brando, the man many cineastes feel was the greatest movie actor
of all time. In New York City during the 1940s, Fiore was a fellow
student of Brando's at Erwin Piscator's acting workshop at The New
School. Fiore briefly roomed with Brando in the early, pre-fame days
and became, arguably, his closest friend other than Wally Cox. Unlike
Cox, Fiore was minimally talented and his involvement in the industry
was entirely due to his being a hanger-on of Brando's. As a hanger-on,
his presence sometimes troubled others, notably Stanley Kubrick, who had been
hired by Brando to direct a movie version of "The Authentic Death of
Hendry Jones," the novel that was the basis for the movie Der Besessene (1961).
Kubrick eventually was fired, Brando directed the film himself, and
Fiore was given the credit "assistant to the producer." Though he
manged movie gigs until the mid-1960s, it never really got any better
than that for Fiore, career-wise.
Kubrick and his partner James Harris, during the development of
Lolita (1962), hired Fiore to write a screenplay of Vladimir Nabokov's novel "Kamera
obskura," which Fiore had optioned himself. (Written in Russian in
1932, "Kamera obskura" was first translated into English circa 1938 as
"Camera Obscura" and again circa 1960 as "Laughter in the Dark.") The
book had elements in common with "Lolita," and Kubrick -- who was
worried he was being hustled when Fiore approached him with the rights
to the novel -- tied up the production of a potential rival film by
hiring Fiore. Nothing came of Fiore's foray into film development,
although Tony Richardson later made a movie of the novel with Nicol Williamson
starring.)
What Fiore essentially did was hang-out on film sets with Brando and
carouse with him after-hours. Fiore claimed credit for inspiring the
great actor in one of cinema's most famous scenes. In "Bud: The Brando
I Knew," Fiore's 1974 memoir of his friendship with America's greatest
actor, he claimed that he was on the set of "On the Waterfront" (1954)
when Brando was troubled with the "I coulda been a contender" dialog
between his character Terry Malloy, and his brother, Charley (Rod Steiger).
Brando was dissatisfied with the scene, as written by Budd Schulberg (who went
on to win the Oscar for his "On the Waterfront" screenplay), feeling
that the idea that one brother would pull a gun on another was bogus.
(Brando, one of three children, grew up in a household with two
sisters, so he allegedly did not understand the conflicts between
brothers, according to Fiore. Actually, 'Bud' Brando had been close to
Wally Cox since childhood and considered him his brother.) Fiore claims
that it was he himself who came up with the key idea behind the scene,
which is that Terry feels disbelief and disappointment with his brother
rather than fear. (That this is a natural projection of Brando's own
disbelief and disappointment with the scene is not glossed on.) No
other source, not Brando's autobiography or that by director Elia Kazan,
mentions any input by Fiore. Most likely, it was an intuition of
Brando's that Kazan helped develop.
By the time this dubious claim appeared, after Brando had rocketed back
to superstar status after 10 years as "box office poison" in the
greatest comeback in Hollywood history, Fiore and Brando had been out
of touch for over half a decade, having talked but once on the
telephone in that period. Their friendship was ended by Brando due to
his battles with his ex-wife Anna Kashfi over the custody of his son,
Christian Brando. Kashfi was one of those people who distrusted Fiore, who was a
substance abuser. Fiore was an on-and-off again heroin addict, and it
was felt by Brando's lawyers that continuing the friendship with Fiore
would give Kashfi legal grounds to bolster her ongoing attempts to
sever Brando's visitation rights to his son. Like Fiore, Kashfi's
psychic world revolved around Brando, even after the bonds holding them
together were broken.
When asked about Fiore in the late 1970s, Brando replied that his
friends don't write books about him. Brando said that Fiore probably
wrote his book because that's all he had left. Most of Fiore's stories
as recounted in "Bud: The Brando I Knew" have been ignored by
subsequent biographers, either because they are under the impression
that Fiore was an unreliable source and had juiced up his "memories"
for the sake of 30 pieces of silver, or because the stories he
recounted were just too salacious. Many of Fiore's anecdotes have a
sexual angle and some contain a homo-erotic sub-context. One is left
with the impression that Fiore operated as a procurer for Brando as
many of the women Fiore associated with were prostitutes.
The lack of decency and the preponderance of bad taste the book is
likely one reason that Fiore's memoir has never been reissued. It is
best forgotten, just as Carlo Fiore has been forgotten, by posterity
and - while he was still alive - by the man who knew him best, Marlon
Brando.
