American noted family, the son of Marlon Brando and Anna Kashfi. At his dad’s Bel Air estate, on 5/16/1990, he shot and killed Dag Drollet of Tahiti, his sister’s lover. They were having an argument over whether Drollet was beating his pregnant sister, Tarita Cheyenne Brando, age 20. Drunk at the time, he said there was a struggle and that the gun went off by accident. With his defense attorney, William Kunstler, he pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter on 1/04/1991 and was given ten years in prison.
Brando’s mom was Irish-Indian, abusive and unstable. He was a high school dropout and a hell-raising boozer. For well over a decade, his parents fought over him, legally, physically and very publicly, so when he entered the Santa Monica courthouse, he remarked, “I’ve been coming through those doors since I was a kid.” A tempestuous kid from a tempestuous family, he was frustrated and angry, emerging as the poster-boy for all that’s wrong with the Hollywood golden ghetto. Once an inquisitive and alert child, he has been damaged emotionally and intellectually by his upbringing and chronic substance abuse.
Marlon Brando was granted permanent custody of Christian when he was 13, about the time that the boy started drinking and doing drugs, including psychedelics. He and his half-siblings were all expected to earn their keep, and he worked summers at his dad’s hotel in Tahiti. For three years, he worked in Alaska, piloting a barge for a fish processor during the summers. During the winters, he lived in a cabin near Mt. St. Helens in Washington, drawing unemployment and doing odd jobs. About 1982, he learned welding at a Downey tech school. He liked it as he had no one leaning over him telling him what to do. He was in control. Avoiding the Brando name or image, he often used the name “Gary Brown.”
Brando and his wife, actress Mary McKenna, served each other with divorce papers in June1985. She said to the press, “His infidelities are just too embarrassing. Try to tell a Brando to go to a marriage counselor and he’ll laugh in your face.”
After almost five years of his 10-year sentence, Brando was released from San Luis Obispo prison on 1/10/1996. While in prison, he joined Alcoholics Anonymous and earned his GED. Leaving Hollywood behind him, he relocated in the American northwest, working as a free-lance welder. He lives in a one-bedroom cottage on the shores of the Columbia river and drives a late ’80s pickup truck, with a newer model of Ford Ranger for errands.
His father died on July 1, 2004 of pulmonary fibrosis.
Brando wed artist Deborah Presley on October 16, 2004 in Las Vegas. The 48-year-old bride claims to be an illegitimate daughter of Elvis Presley but a Memphis judge ruled in 1988 that her claims had no merit. She says she fell in love with Brando in 1987 when she saw his picture.
Brando was implicated in the 2004-2005 trial of Robert Blake for the murder of Bonnie Lee Bakley’s murder. It seems that Blake’s lawyer suggested that Brando may have something to do with the murder of Bonnie Lee Bakley, Blake’s wife. Called to testify in the trial, Brando pleaded his fifth-amendment rights. He was not able to escape more legal woes in 2005. In January Brando pleaded guilty to charges of spousal abuse and was sentenced to a rehabilitation program for drug and alcohol abuse as well as three years of probation. Brando and his wife Deborah divorced after only a few months of marriage. The year ended on yet another low note in his life. On December 27, 2005, Brando’s ex-wife Deborah and her 13-year-old daughter filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court for “violation of their civil rights, assault, domestic violence, battery and emotional distress.” The suit for unspecified damages charged that he terrorized them by assaulting his wife and threatening to kill her daughter and their dog.
On the morning of January 26, 2008, Brando died of pneumonia in a Hollywood, CA hospital of pneumonia. He was only 49.
Link to Wikipedia biography