Marlon Brando is widely regarded as the greatest film actor of all time, rivaled only by the more theatrically oriented Laurence Olivier. Brando focused his talents on movies after leaving the Broadway stage in 1949, a decision that was heavily criticized when his star began to fade in the 1960s and he was chastised for squandering his talents.
Who was Marlon Brando’s first wife Anna Kashfi?
Anna Kashfi was a British film actress who had a brief Hollywood career in the 1950s but was best known for her turbulent marriage to Marlon Brando and the controversies surrounding their son.
By the age of 22, Joan O’Callaghan had transformed herself into the exotic ethnic Indian model and actress Anna Kashfi, a name she and Glyn Mortimer, the head of a London modeling agency, had created together. According to Mortimer, for Parade magazine’s 1959 investigation into Kashfi’s past, “Kashfi was a close friend of mine’s name. Joan chose the name Anna from Joanna, which she had apparently used on occasion “.
However, a year after adopting her stage name, Kashfi married Marlon Brando and failed to list either on her marriage license, instead stating her real father was one Devi Kashfi and biological mother was Selma Ghose. A friend of the bride was quoted in a 14 October 1957 wedding day interview with The New York Times as saying that Kashfi’s purported Indian father had died six weeks before the ceremony.
