Marlon Brando’s ‘First Hero’: The Actor He Called the Best He Ever Saw

Marlon Brando, one of the most celebrated actors of all time, had many heroes in the film industry. He admired legends like James Cagney, John Barrymore, Fredric March, and Spencer Tracy. But above all of them, there was one man he respected the most, Paul Muni.

Muni, best known as the original Scarface, worked with Brando in 1946 on the stage play A Flag Is Born. Brando later said that Muni’s work in the production was “the best acting I ever saw in my life.”

In an interview with actor and comedian Alan King, Brando spoke about the greatest actor he had ever seen. He said, “[Paul] Muni, my first hero. Probably because my parents had taken me to the Yiddish theatre to see him when his name was still Muni Weisenfreund. I got to know him toward the end of his life, when he was doing Inherit the Wind on Broadway.”

Paul Muni was born Frederich Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund in Chicago on September 22, 1895. He began acting in Yiddish theatre before moving to Hollywood in the late 1920s. When he signed with Fox in 1929, his name was changed to Paul Muni, taken from his childhood nickname “Moony.”

His talent was instantly noticed. His very first movie, The Valiant (1929), earned him an Oscar nomination, though the film did poorly at the box office. His second film, Seven Faces, also failed financially, and Muni decided to return to Broadway for a while.

Hollywood called him back soon after, and in 1932 he starred in two of his most famous films, Scarface and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. The latter earned him another Oscar nomination and helped secure him a long-term contract with Warner Bros., who began promoting him as “the screen’s greatest actor.” Al Pacino, a huge admirer, once said about Scarface (1932): “The film just stopped me in my tracks. All I wanted to do was imitate Paul Muni. His acting went beyond the boundaries of naturalism into another kind of expression. It was almost abstract what he did. It was almost uplifting.”

Muni’s career thrived with a string of powerful performances. In 1935, he starred in Black Fury, which won strong praise from critics. The following year, he convinced Warner Bros. to take a chance on a historical drama, The Story of Louis Pasteur. The gamble paid off, Muni won the Oscar for Best Actor, and it became one of the defining roles of his career.

He continued playing historical figures, including Émile Zola in The Life of Emile Zola (1937), a film that went on to win Best Picture. Muni received another Oscar nomination for his role, and the movie was widely seen as a bold criticism of Nazi Germany. He also portrayed the Mexican leader Benito Juárez in Juarez (1939) and played a Chinese farmer in The Good Earth (1937), a role he famously joked about by saying, “I’m about as Chinese as [President] Herbert Hoover.”

Despite his success, Muni grew tired of Hollywood life and walked away from his Warner Bros. contract. In the later years, he acted less often but still appeared in notable films like A Song to Remember (1945) and the comedy Angel on My Shoulder (1946).

Paul Muni passed away on August 25, 1967, but his influence on actors like Brando, and later Pacino, has kept his name alive in film history. Brando carried the inspiration from Muni into his own work, blending strength with vulnerability, just like the man he once called his “first hero.”

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