Autumn and Winter of a Director’s Career

Abstract

It is inconceivable that Reed could have done much more with the MGM remake of Mutiny on the Bounty, his next undertaking, than anyone else. The project could not have been more jinxed if a school of albatrosses had alighted on Marlon Brando’s contract in January 1960, when he signed to do the picture. Reed’s first meeting with the star in California ought to have been an ill omen of the first order. Brando, then one of the top box office attractions in Hollywood and an indispensable component of the picture, spent two hours trying to convince Reed and the producer, Aaron Rosenberg, to scrap the whole idea of doing Mutiny and develop a movie about Caryl Chessman, a recently executed rapist, instead.