Musing about Marlon
By Sara Emrie

When Marlon Brando died, I started thinking about him and me and the past. Thinking about the past usually brings up all kinds of things: “what ifs” and “if onlys,” all ego stuff to be sure. I felt okay, however, so maybe I wasn’t thinking at all. Maybe it should be called musing.

It is not unusual to muse, I muse, when a public figure dies who is respected and admired. It is not like losing a loved one, a family member or a friend. I never knew Marlon personally so I can’t feel any guilt, you know, that I didn’t call, I didn’t write … But I loved Marlon Brando and, illusion or not, I was grateful to share the planet with him.

First, there was his work. He was a powerful method actor, the technique I studied and understood. His best acting came from a place deep within his soul. He was able to touch something so real within himself – so universally human – that the characters he created are part of theatre and movie history.

Second, he cared about people. He marched with Martin Luther King and was a supporter of the American Indian Movement. He took unusual and unpopular stands. He refused an Oscar in order to publicize the plight of native Americans. In defense of human rights, Marlon made personally courageous statements.

Marlon must have loved to act in the beginning but after he became famous he seemed to reject show business and turn his back on stardom. Always a mysterious and private person, he became a virtual recluse when tragedies happened in his family (including a murder by his son and the suicide of his daughter). Like Orson Welles, he was beautiful in youth and obese in old age; unlike Orson, who always seemed to be trying to relive past successes and get back to his glory days, Marlon just seemed to want … out.

No, I muse. Marlon was a lot like me. From the time I was 10, I wanted to be an actor. Growing up in the buttoned-down ‘50s and early ‘60s, acting helped me deal with a world that discouraged spontaneity and encouraged conformity. In the theatre I could use my entire self – body, voice, mind – to be a character that said something within the structure of a play. Playing a part allowed me to be a different person – someone other than the prim, pretty, conventional girl that I appeared to be. Acting freed me. I could think.

I moved to Hollywood because my cousin Mary, who had been peripherally involved in The Biz, lived in the nearby San Fernando Valley. I lived at the Hollywood Studio Club, enrolled in acting class, was cast in a showcase and tried to get an agent. Not a bad start – but within two years I knew in my heart that although I loved acting, I didn’t have what it took to succeed in show business. I was realistic; I tried to stop. I quit trying to make it and did other things.

I worked on relationships that always failed (including a marriage); went back to school (I could never get through physics); tried to change the world through politics (that didn’t happen, did it?); and concentrated on writing (most of which I never finished). Finally I moved to New York. Broadway was certainly the more respectable place for a serious actor. Somehow I ended up joining the unions and becoming one of the hundreds of thousands of actors who did showcases, took classes, and worked day jobs to support their dream.

I muse on my turbulent emotional life then! Think of a combination of several Tennessee Williams characters (Blanche in Streetcar and Hannah in Night of the Iguana?). Or Truman Capote’s Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffanys. Or imagine someone that Capote, Williams and William Inge thought up. I, too, suffered from the Mean Reds. Like the characters I longed to play, I was a small town girl who struggled with what it was to love and be loved, cried for humanity in general, tried to find a light at the end of a very dark tunnel, and was just short of being mad as a hatter quite often. I was outrageous. But I always got up in the morning, went to work, and got to that acting class which gave my life meaning.

I first heard “The opposite of fear is love” in an acting discussion about how to overcome stage fright. I never forgot that – and then in 1985 I was guided to this Course which said exactly the same thing, but went further -- A Course in Miracles taught that the only choice is the one between love and fear. Those blue books seemed to provide what I had needed for years.

One of the last showcases I did in NYC was a well-written and sensitive play dealing with rape and the denial that it had happened. It was a memory play and I played the grown up character, with another actor playing my young self. I was doing the Workbook of A Course in Miracles© and had begun to question my entire life. I was overjoyed to find that I could act and walk away from the character when the play was over. Every feeling I needed was still there but it wasn’t me. I was something different from the role I was playing as well as the person I’d always thought I was.

After four years of studying the Course, I had a breakthrough that no words can adequately describe; like Maslow’s “peak experience,” it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with me. The Voice of Christ (or Jesus or the Holy Spirit) said “God Is. There is only One and We are all It and therefore you are also It!” I was by myself at the time but I knew that I would never be really alone again. I could not deny that Voice. My acting career just – stopped.

I had forgiveness work to do. I had to mend fences with my exes. I had to thank the living and the dead for the love they had given me and let them know that I did love them and that I knew we had both done our best. Forgiveness was a necessary part of transforming my feeling that I was a character in someone else’s play (generally playing the role of “victim”) and claiming for both of us my new understanding of who we are. Relationships never end. Although we seldom realize it, we all play equal parts in an infinite production. The company includes everyone and appreciation and applause are the only correct responses.

And it is necessary for me to teach in order to continue to learn. In true method actor fashion my experience is a visceral one which has sometimes been difficult to explain in words; I can only bear witness to the incredible change the Course has made in my life by sharing the Course with others. We are all teachers and students in an abstract universe, remembering our Identity. Jesus tells us “The way is not hard, but it is very different.” It is hard to explain to anyone how different my life is now. Maybe it isn’t even necessary. The only reason for musing about it at all is to express my gratitude.

My small ACIM study group is reading Chapter 11. The section From Darkness to Light speaks so clearly of the journey I have made. Fear and grief were my dark companions for most of my life. Now, I know miracles – the miracle of this little group, of friendship and understanding – and the companionship of my little Manuelito, age 6, who is learning to read and think but more importantly to muse. I would never have imagined, 20 years ago, that letting go of who I thought I was, would bring such gifts of joy and peace. Only God could have done this. Only God was always doing it. Realizing that there is nothing opposite to God is why this way “is very different.”

I wonder where Marlon was at the end? I feel deeply connected to him. I too struggled to keep faith with my ideals in a world that made no sense; I too wrestled with my actor’s ego. But in spite of grief, guilt and fear, God gave all of us a tiny spark that the dark companions can never extinguish. That spark was the source of Marlon’s artistry.

The actor Marlon has gone, but in Truth his spark has joined the Great Rays of God. He is resting now, peaceful and healed. He is Home.

Thank you, Marlon, for your gifts. Thank you, God, for this life that we share. Namaste.

Sara Emrie is a long time student/teacher of ACIM, an Interfaith Minister and first and foremost the mother of Manny Emrie.