The famous feud between Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra began on the set of their 1955 film Guys and Dolls. It would be another 17 years until Brando would win (and turn down) his best actor Oscar for The Godfather, but Sinatra had already won the best supporting actor award for From Here to Eternity in 1954.
Sinatra had wanted Brando’s role, Sky, in Guys and Dolls, but settled for the other lead, Nathan. And on top of that, he had also lost Brando’s iconic role of Terry Malloy in On The Waterfront, and he was apparently still bitter when they started shooting Guys and Dolls together.
“[Sinatra] saw in Marlon a figurehead of youthful rebellion, an avatar of all that threatened his career. The wounded swagger notwithstanding, Sinatra was a deeply insecure man in the mid-fifties,” Stefan Kanfer wrote in his 2008 book, Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando.
Then, Kanfer writes, Brando dared to ask Sinatra to run lines together, since he didn’t have as much experience working in musicals as Sinatra did. This also irritated Sinatra.
“The tone for the film was set on the first day of rehearsals, when Brando was introduced to Sinatra. “Frank,” Marlon confided, sotto voce, “I’ve never done anything like this before, and I was wondering, maybe I could come to your dressing room and we could just run the dialogue together? Sinatra was succinct: “Don’t give me any of that Actors Studio s—,” Kanfer writes.
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