Marlon Brando, Part 3: The Final Act — The Godfather, Last Tango in Paris, Apocalypse Now, and the Death of a Legend

By 1970, Hollywood had decided Marlon Brando was finished.

He had gone more than a decade without a major hit. His films lost money. His reputation had become almost impossible to insure. He was deep in debt, increasingly isolated, and more interested in escaping to his island in Tahiti than proving anything to the industry that had once crowned him its greatest actor.

Then came The Godfather.

Part 3 of our three-part series on Marlon Brando follows one of the most extraordinary reversals in Hollywood history — from the actor Paramount refused to cast as Don Corleone to the performance that returned him, almost overnight, to the height of his power.

It traces the making and enormous success of The Godfather, before following Brando into the deeply personal and emotionally exposed Last Tango in Paris — a film built partly from his childhood, his parents, his grief, and the parts of himself he would later feel he had revealed too completely. It also examines the film's complicated legacy, Maria Schneider's experience, and the decisions made by Brando and director Bernardo Bertolucci behind the camera.

As Hollywood attempted to celebrate his return, Brando remained as resistant to the industry as ever. His refusal of the Academy Award for The Godfather, delivered through Sacheen Littlefeather in protest of Hollywood's treatment of Native Americans and the occupation at Wounded Knee, became one of the most controversial moments in Oscar history.

From there, the episode follows Brando through Superman, Apocalypse Now, retirement, his return for A Dry White Season, and the increasingly chaotic final decades of his career.

It also explores the tragedies that overtook the Brando family: the fatal shooting of Dag Drollet by Brando's eldest son, Christian Brando; Christian's manslaughter conviction and imprisonment; and the devastating final years of Brando's daughter Cheyenne. The case exposed the instability, absence, conflict, and complicated love that had shaped Brando's sprawling family for decades — and permanently severed his connection to Tahiti and Tetiaroa, the island he had imagined as his escape from Hollywood.

This is the story of Marlon Brando's return to the top — and of the long, complicated years that followed after he had nothing left to prove, but could never entirely escape the consequences of the life he had built.

Parts 1 and 2 of our Marlon Brando series are out now.

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When They Were Making It is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Rankin. Original artwork by Simone Beech and original music by Lionel Ziblat.

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