Marlon Brando on Rejecting His Oscar for 'The Godfather' | The Dick Cavett Show

if you had the academy awards night to do over again would you do any of that differently well um i i don't think so no i felt that um that there was an opportunity for since the american indian hasn't been able to hear his voice heard or have his voice heard anywhere in the history of the united states i felt that it was a marvelous opportunity for an indian to be able to voice his opinion to 85 million people i guess that was the number and i felt that he had a right to in view of what hollywood has done to him and i was embarrassed for shashin she wasn't able to say what she intended to say uh i was distressed that people should have booed and whistled and stumped even though perhaps it was directed uh that myself they should have at least had the courtesy to listen to her but uh i think she did very well and i was i was i was very glad that she did have what opportunity she had to to say what she did and uh why didn't you get to read your entire entire statement as you planned it well i think that they felt that it was inappropriate and um i i actually don't know i i think they just they didn't want her there they didn't want the evening interrupted with that particular note and from their insular point of view i felt that perhaps they they had a point but i don't think that people generally realize what the motion picture industry has done to the american indian as a matter of fact all ethnic groups uh all minorities all non-whites and people just simply don't realize they just took it for granted that that's the way people are going to be presented and these cliches were just going to be perpetuated and so when someone makes a protest of some kind and said no we do please don't present the chinese this way or please i mean on this network every night well perhaps not every night but you can see silly renditions of human behavior the leering filipino house boy the wily japanese of the the kook or the and the idiot black man and the stupid indian and it just goes on and on and on and people actually don't realize how deeply these people are injured by seeing themselves represented not so much the adults because they're already inured to that kind of pain and pressure but children indian children seeing indians represented as savage as ugly as nasty vicious treacherous drunken uh they grow up only with a negative image of themselves and it's it lasts a lifetime is that an answer to your question yeah did you did you expect the uh kind of outrage that you got from people uh i believe uh well that very night raquel welch made a joke against you uh saying that i hope next person doesn't have a cause um who's the indian who's the western star uh who followed later um steve mcqueen steve uh clint eastwood yes of course i i very seldom make mistakes he uh did his version of a joke and then john wayne looked like he was about ready to get a posse together he would look so silly uh does that did that surprise you that they would be angered that you desecrated their cathedral i wasn't surprised no um there were a number of people that that felt that sashing had had not been welcomed and not been treated properly and and people that were sympathetic to what she was trying to say and uh i received an awful lot of mail in uh support of that the booing made me sore well actually i think the people were booing at me uh they were going because they thought well this is this moment is sacrosanct and you're ruining our fantasy with the intrusion of a little reality and i suppose it was perhaps unkind of man to do that but there was a larger issue and it's an issue that nobody in the motion picture industry has ever addressed themselves to unless forced to i mean the blacks have brought about changes because they were just damn angry about it and they thumped the tub and threatened and made some noise about it but if they had just been silent and thought well gradually wisdom will come to those who who are in the business of the movies and uh they will do right by us and today would never have come we you know have a lot to be grateful for that the blacks were as insistent as they were that the image of bites were changed changing but it's it's a block by block fight it's a people are very timorous now about showing blacks and an unkindly light [Music] um and uh but they would go on with the filipino house boy or the uh the indian i mean you see it every day on television not every day there's a world war two movie in which uh actually it's john wayne again i don't mean to pick on him uh in which he refers to mr tojo's little yellow-bellied rats uh there was so much racism in world war two movies you see though it's really really surprising i mean it was so crude that it's worse than you remember it the thing that bugged me too was that people said there's brando jumping on a on a social cause bandwagon now uh getting in on the indians uh forgetting that in the 50s you were i think one of the first people fishing with the pile of indians up in the west coast you must forgive me we must take a message and we'll be right back stay where you [Applause] [Music] are [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: The Dick Cavett Show

Views: 9,970,584

Keywords: The Dick Cavett Show Talk Show Musician Celebrities, 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, 1990's, United States, USA, Marlon Brando, 12th June 1973, Marlon Brando on Rejecting His Oscar for 'The Godfather', Rejecting Oscar, American Indians, marlon brando the godfather, marlon brando academy award, marlon brando oscar, the godfather, francis ford coppola, the oscars, academy awards, marlon brando interview, listen to me marlon, marlon brando documentary, marlon brando indians

Id: rcCKczj4aK4

Length: 7min 55sec (475 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 12 2018