Endless Promise, Tragic Self-Sabotage

Like so many other artists dubbed “genius,” Marlon Brando was his own worst enemy, writes Stephen Hunter. He invented an entirely new way of acting that revolutionized the film industry, and yet, his interaction with the insular Hollywood world was “rebellious, beyond [narcissistic], almost countercultural,” and would be his undoing. “Death finally found Brando at 80 and he went to it sublimely, having had much experience with the ends of things: He had murdered his own career years earlier. But in the beginning, oh, boy, was he something.”