| Hollywoodland | Feb 4 2017 |
So, here's a Pulp Intl. moment for you. We occasionally ask our girlfriends to look at an image and give us their thoughts. The whole fresh eyes thing. Get a new perspective. We showed them this shot of Marlo Brando and they had no idea who he was. But they thought he looked creepy and dangerous, which gave us a chance to explain how Brando combined a bit of sinister threat with his sex appeal, and the photo really captures that. Their response: “Well, whatever, no thanks.” But millions of women said thanks to Brando at this point in his career. If he wasn't the top male sex symbol in the U.S., he was second, surpassed—maybe—by only one other person. This shot was made as a promo for The Wild One, 1953.
| Femmes Fatales | Mar 16 2012 |
Mary Murphy, not to be confused with her many famous namesakes, was an American actress best known for co-starring with Marlon Brando in The Wild One. She played a virginal small-town girl, yin to Brando’s vagabond rebel yang. And what a pair they made. In this photo Murphy has a more mature yet still innocent look, gun accessorized. It was made for the 1955 thriller Hell's Island.
| Hollywoodland | May 4 2011 |
Promo photo of Marlon Brando seriously invading Mary Murphy’s personal space on the set of The Wild One, 1953. See two more stills from the movie here.
| Vintage Pulp | May 3 2010 |
“Pops, you pick up on this jive, man?"
“What?”
“You pick up on this jive, this crazy music here, man? Did you dig the rebop?”
“What?”
“The rebop, dad! The rebop! He’s a square, man. Don’t you get this at all?”
We’d love to have seen the subtitles, because after that the dialogue gets so crazy even we can’t transcribe it, but that’s The Wild One—a different type of cinema, and a new kind of star in rough and tumble Marlon Brando. Some people think 1955 was the zenith of the American empire. If that’s so, then The Wild One is the proverbial writing on the wall that change was in the wind. Brando and the rest of his Black Rebel Motorcycle Club roared across movie screens in Sweden for the first time today in 1954.
| Hollywoodland | Mar 2 2009 |
A few days ago we alluded to Marlon Brando's weight struggles, so we thought it would be fair to post a reminder of how he looked during that time when he was the top male sex symbol in film, and the face of American rebellion. These two stills are from his seminal biker flick The Wild One, 1953.
