I was watching the Jack Benny Show tonight and it had a joke that got a huge laugh.
Jack is reading the Hollywood newspaper aloud
Jack) Item: Hollywood, actor Marlon Brando signs million dollar contract with the studio for the next 10 years. Movie to be announced later.
What is that about? Did Marlon take forever to make movies like Orsen Wells?
Probably a ref to Brando’s outrageous fees/demands later on in his career, no matter what the movie or the role; see Superman 2, Apocalypse Now.
Benny’s TV show ran from 1950 to 1965, so he wasn’t commenting on Brando’s later career. And Brando appeared in 17 movies in those years - not exactly setting any speedy records, but not meriting being singled out for slowness either.
If the joke was made in the '50s, then $1 million for one film would seem absurdly over the top. It wouldn’t be until 1963 that Elizabeth Taylor would get that kind of paycheck.
Not having seen the episode, I’m just guessing, but the joke might also have been playing on Benny’s love of money (there’s a running gag about him making a funny sound every time the term ‘million dollars’ is mentioned), and lack of success in the movies (another running joke). So the laugh is at Jack’s expense - the old, ordinary actor, being annoyed by the success of the young, popular star. In that case, they could have substituted any ‘young, happening thing’ for Brando.
A “million dollar contract,” meant the total value of the contract over ten years – $100,000 a year. Under the studio system, actors would be given long term contracts to stay with the studio, which assigned them roles (though a top actor had some ability to turn them down).
The joke assumes the studio system was still around. It wasn’t when the Benny show was on TV, but Benny, his writers, and his audience were familiar with it. In the 30s and 40s it was common to read that a big star had been signed to a long-term contract. Movies would be assigned afterward as a matter of course.
My guess is, this is referring to Brando’s only directing credit, One-Eyed Jacks. From the trivia section:
(emphasis added.)
The timeline would fit in with the latter days of the Benny show.
Bwhaaahaaahaaaaa! Oh man, too funny.
I know Brando’s deliberation on movie sets was seen as a point of contention on the set of Guys and Dolls. Sinatra, of course, thought every take he did was gold and he could only be bothered to do it once, print it, time to get back to the party.
Brando, conversely, apparently wanted to do each scene several dozen times.
I suppose there’s also in the joke a sense that he was so popular at this point that all that mattered was he was going to be IN the movie, not what the movie was.
I think the joke is based on the fact that Brando was a well-paid actor who made very few movies. The statement “Movie [singular] to be announced later” implies that he’s getting paid a million dollars (a ridiculous amount of money for the time) to appear in only one movie in ten years.
Sorry, but no. The ten-year contract – while long – is exactly the way Hollywood studios hired actors. They were hired hands. The studio didn’t sign them for particular films, but rather to appear in films that the studio decided they should appear in.
Movies were made differently in the 1940s. And though the studio system was phasing out about the time Jack Benny was on the air, the writers were just a little behind the times.
Ten years and a million was a big amount for a studio contract, which is probably the joke. But in the 1950s Marlon Brando was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, so it’s just a small exaggeration. It had nothing to do with Brando’s work habits and the rough equivalent today would be “The Cardinals signed Albert Pujols to a ten-year, 300-million contract.” A lot of money, perhaps, but the signing itself was routine.
As is often the case, most of the posters here don’t understand that things are different back then. They are assuming that movie studios always worked the way they did now – hiring freelancers for each particular project. That just wasn’t so.
Cite?
I might as well take this opportunity to modify my previous post. Brando had a real-life $1 million contract for “The Fugitive Kind” (1960). Although “Cleopatra” wasn’t released until 1963, she is usually credited as the first actor to be paid $1 million, so presumably her contract was signed first. Her actual pay ended up far exceeding that amount because of production delays.
Except that the line then isn’t really funny - maybe a little bit funny as an anachronism. But you can more safely assume, whenever money comes up on the Benny show - especially the ‘magic figure’ of a million dollars - that the joke is at JB’s expense, about his own disappointment that someone other than him is getting the million.
People. it’s Jack Benny! And money! Money that someone else is getting! There’s nothing special about it being Marlon Brando, the point is that it isn’t *Jack *getting the money. And he would really, really *like *getting that money
This is comedy gold.
Markxxx had the right first impression.
Brando signs a 10-year contract for a huge amount of money. For a moive. ONE movie. And they don’t even know what the movie will be. They just figure that with Brando, it will take 10 years to make.