How Marlon Brando Made Hollywood Face Its Racism—at the Oscars

In 1973, Marlon Brando turned down an Oscar, and the whole world turned on him, calling him an ingrate, a dilettante, a publicity hound, a traitor. But for Brando—as William J. Mann writes in his biography, The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando (HarperCollins)—the country under Richard Nixon was in a constitutional crisis, and systemic racism was undercutting the American dream.

Under these conditions, he believed, business as usual would be complicit with the problem. Forty-six years later, can we understand his reasons better?

March 27, 1973. The audience at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles braced themselves in their seats. Up on the stage, Roger Moore and Liv Ullmann were preparing to announce the winner of the Best Actor Award.

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