Brando Unzipped: A Revisionist and Very Private Look at America's Greatest Actor »

Darwin Porter has been a noted entertainment columnist with The MIAMI HERALD, and is the author of at least four major biographies of movie stars of the film community's Golden Age. They include well-received biographies of Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, and Howard Hughes, with special emphasis on the aviator's involvement in the film industry. He is also a creative force and the chief writer for many of THE FROMMER GUIDES, America's leading travel guidebook series. When not traveling, which is rare, he lives in New York, with frequent excursions to London and Los Angeles.

The mysteries that enveloped the late superstar MARLON BRANDO (1924-2004) are unwrapped and exposed in a richly anecdotal "warts-and-all" biography, BRANDO UNZIPPED! by bestselling biographer, Darwin Porter.

The greatest film actor of the 20th century lives again in these pages, each meticulously researched over a period of more than 40 years.

Each of the people Porter interviewed, including many of Brando's lovers-both male and female--had a different story to tell. Many of them contradicted heretofore published accounts of how those encounters evolved. Hostile witness or loving friend, each subject added a piece to the mosaic. The result is a fully rounded view of a revolutionary actor who, like "lightning on legs," electrified the world in Streetcar Named Desire, where he played Stanley Kowalski in the Broadway version of 1947, and the film version in 1951. The book also describes his Oscar-winning turn as Terry Malloy, the boxer who could have been a contender in On the Waterfront in 1954, and his electrifying comeback as Vito Corleone in The Godfather in 1972.

The combative, moody, iconoclastic, polarizing, and enigmatic figure appears as a flesh-and-blood creation in this revelation-studded bio. It's all here: "The Rebel Without a Cause" who made rebellion hip. The suicide attempts of former girlfriends, Startling stories about "Sleeping with the Enemy" (bedding a stalker who turned out to be a cannibal in disguise). His involvement with the Black Panthers. The ill-fated marriages, bitter divorces, and child-custody battles. A son with a murder rap. Jealous actors who wanted to seduce Brando and then "become Brando" on screen.

With candor, the author unveils the details of that ongoing disaster that Brando called "my life." The charismatic personality of The Wild One is recaptured in all its brooding power that seemed forever ready to explode at any moment.

The same animalistic intensity that Brando brought to the role of Stanley Kowalski lives again within the pages of this bio. From sex symbol of the 1950s to a swollen, overweight slob who became a tabloid scandal in the 90s, Brando was one of filmdom's true originals.

Women wanted him, and certain men wanted him, and Brando was willing to share his charms with a string of lovers whose hangouts ranged from the A-list boudoirs of New York and Hollywood to the back alleys of a string of cities from New York to the slums of the South Pacific.

Throughout this biography, Brando's quirky and sometimes bizarre humor often bubbles to the top.

As an example, once, when he was asked for a summation of his life, Brando said: "I've never been circumcised, and my noble tool has performed its duties through thick and thin without fail!"

More than the story of Brando himself, the biography chronicles the loves of his life, most of which were of short duration but played out with the same kind of intensity he brought to the screen. Regardless of their origins, his affairs invariably crossed the American plains to land on the opposite coast. His lovers were as mercurial as his own personality. They included Doris Duke, the richest woman in the world, and Burt Lancaster, the actor originally targeted for the role of Stanley in Streetcar. The true story of his explosive relationships with Elizabeth Taylor and Frank Sinatra is printed for the first time, as is an array of friendships and/or feuds with such unlikely figures as Richard Burton, Charlie Chaplin, and (believe it or not), Michael Jackson.

The roles Brando lived off-screen were even more provocative and intriguing than those he created on screen. He paraded through the bedrooms of such luminaries as an aging Marlene Dietrich, and enjoyed one-night stands with both Grace Kelly and Jacqueline Kennedy.

His tortured relationships and love affairs with James Dean and Montgomery Clift are explored in depth within the pages of this widely acclaimed new biography from Blood Moon Productions.

Mega-star Marlon Brando is remembered both as a sexual outlaw and as the most radical and astonishing actor of his generation.

The subject is fascinating, historically important, and highly commercial. In fact, I'm amazed that other, larger publishing houses failed to compile biographies of their own since his death in July of 2004.

Maybe they were afraid of the controversy, or maybe they didn't have access to the wealth of previously unpublished material that the book's author, Hollywood veteran Darwin Porter, spent 45 years compiling.

Much to my amusement, during our pre-publication publicity of this title, a well-preserved and sexy, but otherwise not-particularly-flamboyant woman confronted me at a trade fair, hoping that her name--based on a short sexual interlude she cited-- had been included among Marlon's thousands of "conquests."

It was then that I fully appreciated the animal attraction Brando held for his fans, and the energy that some of them expend, even today, linking their names to his historical record.

From the Author
Within the pages of this book, the source of each individual piece of information is positioned close to the spot where the information actually appears.

Also within the pages, direct quotations have been transcribed "as they were remembered" by the people who originally heard the remarks. They're presented in the same format, using the same phraseologies, that were used when those remarks were originally transmitted to me. If the exact wording and phraseologies of any individual quotation are NOT accurately presented, the author hopes that the points being made, and the impressions being relayed, have nonetheless been rendered and repeated as accurately as possible.

To each of the sources that went into the compilation of this biography--dead or alive--and to the countless others not mentioned, I extend my heartfelt thanks for unveiling an American original, Marlon Brando Jr.

Daily Express (London)

"The tempestuous affair with James Dean is just one of dozens of homosexual relationships, flings, and one-night stands in which Brando indulged during a lifetime of sexual voraciousness, according to a shocking new book that is sparking a major reassessment of Brando's legacy as one of Hollywood's most macho lotharios."