Marlon Brando & the Love of his life' Jill Banner

Jill Banner with Marlon and other friends.

Love of his life? I don't think so.

.......Their talks continued, although during some of her visits he spent most of his time in his bedroom speaking to her on a phone line in the guest room. She was told that she had free run of the premises, but that his bedroom was off-limits. Young Christian was often around, as was Marchak and Brando's current number one girlfriend, Jill Banner, whom he had met while making Candy.

"I thought it was unhealthy," said Littlefeather, referring to the atmosphere in the house and, specifically, to Banner. "She kept getting rejected and kept going back. It was an abusive relationship, emotionally and mentally; she seemed depressed and had all these mood swings."

Marchak frequently dropped hints to Littlefeather about the girlfriend's instability and referred to an attempted suicide from a drug overdose.

"There was an element of anger that was like an undertow," Littlefeather explained. "Jill couldn't separate herself. Marlon needed to have her around—he was like the agitator. There were storms and clouds, name-calling and constant turmoil."

Jill Banner and Christian had a more heartfelt connection than Christian had with either Marchak, Caroline Barrett, Yachiyo, or Anita Kong. Perhaps they bonded out of a shared sense of needing more than what Marlon could ever give. Christian did have one girlfriend to whom he turned for comfort and solace: Mary McKenna. They had practically grown up together and called themselves "Laurel Canyon brats" as they scrambled around the hillsides behind Marlon's house; when life had been too chaotic at either his father's or his mother's, Christian had sometimes also retreated to Mary's home, where her mother, a warm, hospitable Greek, often let him stay for dinner and even overnight

Brando's disintegrating relationship with Jill Banner. Jill was upset by the gossip about other women in Brando's life.....Onetime teen idol Bobby Sherman had been a friend of Banner for years, and he thought that Banner and Brando "were equally guilty" for perpetuating the destructive relationship. "It was just uncontrollable warfare," he said. "All of a sudden out of nowhere there would be a new manufactured problem and another fight."

During the previous year, one of the more evident problems was Banner's attitude toward Brando's AIM friends. "All she talked about was their horrible behavior, like urinating in front of people," said a friend. "She was sickened by the way they acted, and she saw it as this whole male-bonding thing. Marlon was giving them money, and she thought they were just stepping all over him."

But most of all, she felt that Brando could be cruel, manipulative, and selfish to those who loved him and those he supposedly loved. "What she always wondered about," said her friend, "was how he could be so virtuous on the outside when at the same time he was so self-centered and such a mess inside himself."

Perhaps Jill and Christian were united in their feeling that Brando gave more attention to his Indian pals than he did to them. Or perhaps they both felt wounded by his abrupt withdrawals of affection.

Whatever it was, the two eventually embarked on a clandestine love affair. "I think it was a year or two later that Christian and Jill started sleeping together," said Pat Quinn.

"She was still sleeping with Marlon, too, so it seemed a bit incestuous to me. It was also as if Marlon had been visited by the old ghost of suspecting Carlo Fiore of sleeping with Dodie."

Steve Hunio, Christian's friend, became aware of the affair, even though it wasn't discussed openly or directly. "I doubt Christian was trying to compete with his father. He didn't talk all that much to me about Jill, but I gathered he had a lot of feeling for her. And then there was a huge brouhaha when Marlon found out about it."

....after making a quick trip to New Mexico with Jocelyn, Jill Banner, and Alice Marchak to see Maureen Stapleton perform in Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Brando went into retreat. He was still alternating between Yachiyo and Jill, demanding that each give him her full attention. Neither woman could lift his depression and only rarely could either one induce him to leave Mulholland.

The few times he did go out he resorted to outlandish disguises. Bobby Sherman's wife was training Tennessee walking horses and entering them at an annual horse show. Jill persuaded Marlon to accompany her, but as they walked in to meet the Shermans, Bobby was astonished.

"Marlon had completely wrapped his head in gauze," Sherman recalled, "like Claude Rains in The Invisible Man. He had glasses on over the slits for his eyes, and he'd left only a tiny opening for his mouth. At first I didn't realize who it was, and then I recognized his height and weight, and my first reaction was, 'Oh, my God, what happened to you?"

On the surface, it was another one of Marlon's pranks. He had asked Philip Rhodes to do the bandaging, and spent the afternoon watching others' reactions to him. Claiming to yearn for the days when people hadn't stared at him, his imitation of the Invisible Man all but guaranteed that people gaped. For the most part Marlon simply stared back, anonymous behind his mask, but sometimes he could hardly control his laughter. Then, to make the disguise even more ludicrous, he bought a hot dog, but the concoction was too large to fit through the small slit in the bandage, and soon the gauze was emblazoned with large smears of mustard and relish.

"It was really disgusting," said Sherman, "which made people stare at him harder. He really seemed to enjoy grossing them out. I think he was getting off on the fact that all these people were looking at him and weren't realizing that they were actually looking at Marlon Brando. Jill was upset," he added, "and thought he was being ridiculous."

Perhaps Jill and Christian were united in their feeling that Brando gave more attention to his Indian pals than he did to them. Or perhaps they both felt wounded by his abrupt withdrawals of affection.

Whatever it was, the two eventually embarked on a clandestine love affair. "I think it was a year or two later that Christian and Jill started sleeping together," said Pat Quinn.

"She was still sleeping with Marlon, too, so it seemed a bit incestuous to me. It was also as if Marlon had been visited by the old ghost of suspecting Carlo Fiore of sleeping with Dodie."

Steve Hunio, Christian's friend, became aware of the affair, even though it wasn't discussed openly or directly. "I doubt Christian was trying to compete with his father. He didn't talk all that much to me about Jill, but I gathered he had a lot of feeling for her. And then there was a huge brouhaha when Marlon found out about it."

.......His sessions with his therapist Harrington seemed to have prompted him to think about his past, especially his grief over the loss of Jill Banner, and he now was able to express his sense of self-entrapment.

"It wasn't until Jill's death that I could begin to love," he acknowledged one night. "I could have loved her had she lived. I was beginning to be close to her. ... It was as though I was forgiving my culture, forgiving my past, forgiving my people, because she was unlike any other girl that was ever in my life because she was midwestern, born a hundred miles from where I was born. So I rejected those kind of women all my life. But then she died and now I'll never know. But I now feel much more comfortable with myself about that. . .

"What about me?"

In 1982 Brando turned fifty-eight; he was grossly overweight and recognizing his depression he returned to therapy. But his unhappiness soon deepened as he faced the loss of several close friends. That summer, Sam Gilman was diagnosed with cancer and was now undergoing chemotherapy but the prognosis for recovery was poor. Then Reiko Sato, who had returned to work as Brando's part-time assistant in Los Angeles, suffered a mysterious and fatal seizure.

In August 1982 Jill Banner's Toyota was rammed by a truck on the Ventura Freeway. Banner was thrown from the car; an ambulance rushed her unconscious to Riverside Hospital in North Hollywood, but she never regained consciousness and died at three in the morning.

Marlon was genuinely distraught. Christian, too, was very moved. After his own brief affair with her, they had remained close. "He couldn't mention her name without getting real misty-eyed and teary," recalled Christian's friend Steve Hunio. "After she died, he also told me that his dad was feeling so bad that all he could do was lie in bed, miserable with grief and crying.

R9 In the months that followed Cox's death, Philip Rhodes had the impression that Brando never came to terms with what the relationship really meant to him. "He just couldn't believe that Wally was gone," said Rhodes. "He was always reminiscing about their walks together through the woods below his house on Mulholland.

He loved Wally, but he talked about his feelings for him in the same way he sometimes talked about old girlfriends, even his ex-whores. He would say, 'I could have married her and been happy with her because we laughed a lot.' And that's how he talked about Wally. It was the same sense of mourning someone after the fact—crying about what could have been and never was."

On a shallow note, he was so fucking gorgeous in his 20s. And talented! Must have been completely irresistible.

From Marlon Brando autobiography "Songs My Mother Taught Me"

Talking about Jill Banner (He's calling her Weonna) :

"Although I let some women believe I loved them—and in some cases I may have meant it at the time—there was one woman I loved more than any other.

I was in my early forties when I met Weonna in Rome. She had a part in Candy and was with a friend of mine. He and I had the same rivalry I’d had with Carlo Fiore; we both tried to seduce each other’s girl. After he introduced me to Weonna in a hotel lobby, he went off and I put it to her succinctly.

“Why don’t we go upstairs and fuck?” She answered, “Why not? Let’s go!”

That was the beginning and the end of the seduction.

Weonna was born only about a hundred miles from my birthplace. She had written a little, done some acting, modeled for a while, made some money in real estate. She was an extraordinary piece of construction, with white skin, soft, natural blond hair, freckles, a lot of moles, green eyes, and a voice with the slightest hint of an Irish accent, a hand-me-down from her mother, who was from Ireland.

Marlon Brando himself was the greatest love of his life. He treated people like customers standing in line in a store with a number for a purchase.

She made me laugh harder than any woman I’ve ever known. She was quick to understand and laughed at me a lot, too. Like my mother and grandmother, she had a sense of the absurd, thought the outrageous and imposed no limits on her imagination.

She was amusing, witty, intelligent, eccentric. But she was also troubled. She distrusted people, drank too much and occasionally used drugs—not hard drugs, but pills.

It was spasmodic; she would use them awhile, then swear off them, be clean for a while, then start again, and I’d have to take her to a hospital because it was the only place where she could stop. Still, we had a lot of fun together, and even now I often laugh at what we laughed at then

MOST OF MY LIFE, I was a very jealous person, but I tried hard to hide it. I was afraid that if someone knew I was jealous, he or she would use it against me. I’m different now; I’ve realized that jealousy is a pointless, wasteful emotion I can’t afford, but it wasn’t easy for me to give up the emotions of a lifetime.

Weonna was as jealous and mistrustful as I was, and the other women in my life made her angry—sometimes, though not always, with justification

For several years I saw Weonna off and on and we loved a lot and fought a lot. She was a tough woman and gave as good as she got. She had an unerring sense of how to prick my insecurities and jealousies, and we had ferocious fights.

I suppose neither of us was willing or able to change our ways. At our last meeting we stood toe-to-toe and really destroyed each other emotionally.

It was a grisly collision: Weonna, to get back at me because she said I had hurt her, had seduced one of my sons. I didn’t explode. I simply realized that it was over, and that there was no possibility of anything between us again. After what she did, it was impossible to patch it up. I reassured my boy that he should not feel guilty, that what happened had been a maneuver by her to stick a dagger in my heart, and that he had no reason to feel any remorse.

For about five years, I didn’t see Weonna, though I thought about her often and from time to time heard news about her: she had moved to New Mexico, had given up acting, had done well in real estate and had entered law school. Then I heard that she had moved back to Los Angeles and that someone had seen her at a party. I suspected our paths would cross and I wondered with some excitement what would happen if they did.

When I saw her at a party at a friend’s home, my stomach jumped as if I’d been punched in the gut by a heavyweight. I screwed up my courage, went over, put my hands around her softly and said, “I’m very glad to see you, Weonna.”

She blushed, gave me her telephone number and we started talking on the phone again. She was as funny as ever, and to me there’s nothing in this world as seductive, or that gives me such a sense of life, as laughing. It’s medicinal.

Most of the women in my life have been women of color, like Ermi: Latin American, Caribbean, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Japanese. Weonna was the exception, an Irish potato, and unlike the others we had a lot in common because we grew up in the same part of the country, spoke the same cultural language, had similar histories, liked the same jokes—and fought the same way

After that party, I saw Weonna two or three more times at others, and as always she killed me with her jokes. She was sensitive but had a lot of street smarts; she was also naïve and childlike.

Finally, after we’d spoken several times on the phone and I’d bumped into her a few times, she said, “What’s going to happen now … to us?” “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just as bewildered as you are.”

I hadn’t touched her since that first party, and I too didn’t know where we were headed.

Weonna told me she wanted to see a psychiatrist because there were problems she hadn’t been able to work out, and I encouraged her. I also wrote her a letter saying that I forgave her for all the things she had done to me, and that I hoped she would forgive me for everything I had done to her. I said that I thought we had been cruel to each other out of ignorance and anguish, longing and fear, anxiety and stress, and that I realized it was important for me to forgive her. I didn’t know then why I wrote that letter, but now I realize that in doing so, by forgiving her for having put a sword in my heart, I was gaining my freedom.

Up to then I had spent my life searching for a woman who would love me unconditionally, a woman whom I could love and trust never to hurt or abandon me, a woman who would make amends for the pain inflicted on me by my mother and my nanny Ermi. But from that moment on, I started to accept all women without doubt. They were no longer my enemy, nor were they archangels whom I could count on to give me a perfect life. If I was ever going to be happy, I realized, it was up to me to achieve it and not to some woman who would enter my life with a holy grail filled with a magic elixir guaranteeing me a full and happy life.

Marlon and all his lovers - Take a ticket and I'll see you next week. Next!

I also realized that if I were ever to forgive myself for all the things that I had done, I had to forgive my mother. I didn’t know it at the time, but when I forgave Weonna she symbolized my mother, and I was forgiving her at the same time. Ever since then, I have had good relationships with women.

After I sent that letter to Weonna, we saw each other again, and while not all the wounds were healed, I think we both knew that we would be getting back together. But as we waited for fate to deal us our hand, Weonna died.

She was riding a horse she loved, which stumbled, fell and crushed her. She sustained grave head injuries and died within forty-eight hours.

At the funeral I looked down at Weonna in her coffin, put a bouquet of flowers in her hand, whispered to her that I loved her and then kissed her. I’ve missed her every day since. She gave me the gift of laughter.

Weonna had told me that when she died she wanted to be buried near her father in a Catholic cemetery in South Dakota. I told her mother about it, but she said that Weonna’s uncle, a priest, said that she didn’t deserve to be buried in a Catholic cemetery because she had left the Church.

I wanted to strangle him, but her mother followed his wishes and Weonna was buried in a nondenominational cemetery in the San Fernando Valley, where she lies today. Sometimes I drive down the hill from my home and put flowers on her grave.

Her mother is also dead now, and I’ve often thought of having Weonna’s casket moved so that she can be with her father. I know that one day I’ll do it.

From Brando the unauthorized biography book 1987:

"Marlon shuttled between this idyllic island existence and the harsher world of Hollywood. His romantic life was as complex as ever. He had dated Lucy Saroyan for a brief time; they remain friends. He also had an affair with an ill-fated woman named Jill Banner.

A tiny, appealing former actress who talked in a low-pitched, sexy, drawling comic voice like Mae West, she eternally fascinated Marlon.

According to Marlon and Wally Cox's old friend Everett Greenbaum, Marlon was fiercely possessive of this intriguing girl. "I used to take Jill for rides in my airplane," Greenbaum recalled. "Every time Jill went flying with me, Marlon got furious. They had a fight and then made up.

Marlon bought her a golden apple made of solid gold studded with emeralds, rubies, and diamonds. She wore it around her neck. Then they went to some island in Hawaii, and Marlon had an argument with her on the beach and he yanked the apple off and threw it away in the ocean.

Greenbaum added, "Jill was killed in a terrible car crash. I was at the funeral. I didn't see Marlon. But I heard afterward he was hiding in the trees next to the burial ground." Fearful of the attentions of the press, Marlon, as at Wally Cox's funeral, didn't want to be seen, even by the other mourners"..

Another account was mentioned by Alice Marchak’s (Marlon’s secretary and confided friend)

Excerpts from “Me and Marlon”:

"Marlon had asked Jill to marry him. He suggested she pick out a ring. Instead, she opted for a ruby and emerald apple, that he had made for her, which she wore on a gold chain around her neck. Jill chose the apple for sentimental reasons. Marlon affectionately called her “the apple of my eye.”

The engagement was of short duration—the wedding bells would not be ringing.

They were en route to Tahiti via Hawaii with some friends and, as Jill recounted, they were on the balcony of the hotel. There were large waves crashing over the rocks below. Marlon was in a very surly mood; he was trying to antagonize everyone. He picked on her until he got a rise out of her. She uttered something that sent him round the bend. He went for her. He missed her, but not the ruby apple, which he tore from her neck and threw over the balcony into the sea and rocks below.

As far as Jill was concerned, the engagement was broken at that moment. There was no way the jeweled apple could be retrieved from the rocks and the sea.

The attack, and loss, naturally upset her. That’s when, she confided, Marlon urged Valium on her. But she had cleaned up her act. She wasn’t going to allow him to control her ever again. And certainly not with drugs, as he had in the past.

She decided she had to save herself. She couldn’t go to Tahiti with him. She returned to California. Called me. I applauded her decision. Jill left California. She didn’t say goodbye to anyone. None of her friends would tell Marlon where she was if they knew. Her mother professed not to know where her daughter was. When I spoke to her, she said Jill was saddened by not being able to let me know where she was, but she was afraid that out of loyalty to Marlon, I might tell him. It was a year before I heard of her whereabouts, but I never told Marlon.

A friend of mine, who lived in Santa Fe, had seen her. I never tried to contact Jill directly, but periodically I would call he mother to inquire about her. I wanted her to know I cared.

Jill was away for a few years. Then one day I learned from Marlon she had returned to California. Marlon revealed that a friend had seen her and had invited her to dinner. Marlon dropped in. He didn’t tell me the reception he received, but it must have been cool, because he didn’t see her again or he would have told me. She hadn’t phoned me. I decided I’d give her space and time since it was evident after several weeks that she did not want to resume her relationship with Marlon.

Then she called. We buried the past, but the future was in doubt. She was afraid of a relationship of any kind with Marlon. She had changed, but she realized he hadn’t.

And she didn’t know if she was strong enough to withstand a Brando onslaught, or even wanted to prop him up as I had through the years. We’d stay in touch. After we terminated the call, I realized I failed to obtain her telephone number.

Marlon and I were leaving for Tahiti, Tetiaroa, for the summer. I promised myself I would call Jill upon my return. I wanted to see her again, have one of our enjoyable lunches. Vacation over, Marlon and I were on the plane en route home and Jill came to mind. It was about an eight-hour flight and during it, she came to mind several times. After the last time she flitted across my mind, I reminded myself I must contact Jill through her mother as soon as I arrived home.

The thought had no sooner crossed my mind when Marlon turned to me and just above a whisper confided, “I think I’ll marry Jill. I’m going to call her when we get home.”

It was late Friday night when I arrived home, tired from the trip and the airport. I felt Jill’s mother would be asleep; I’d call in the morning. I had thought that when Jill came to mind so many times during the trip home, she may be thinking about me, or something may be troubling her that she wanted to discuss with me. But when Marlon surprised me with his announcement about marrying Jill, I surmised he had been thinking about her and I had been picking up his thoughts.

Therefore I dismissed the strong compulsion I had to get in touch with Jill. Since Marlon slept past noon, he didn’t call Jill either. Instead, we both received a call. About Jill. Jill had been killed, mid-morning, in an automobile accident on the Ventura Freeway in the San Fernando Valley.

Marlon was inconsolable. As was I.

Marlon' longtime' secretary Alice Marchak skipped Jill Banner' affair with Christian, a way to protect her friend' memory.

Didn't he rape his daughter?

R27 Yes, his daughter Cheyenne said he molested her when she was a child.

Jill Banner dated Clint Eastwood for sometime in the 1960s, before Brando

Thought so, R28.

I believe Marlon destroyed all the women in his life.

The love of Marlon Brando's life was Marlon Brando.

Jill Banner was a classmate and best friends with Peggy Lipton, She mentioned Jill in her book.

Jill in a cult movie called "Spider Baby" 1964

I think you're correct, R32. Parts of these excerpts sound similar to Rita Moreno's story.

Rita has overcome!

R37 As Marlon' friend Carlo Fiore said in his book, There was a pattern in the women in Brando' life. Marlon wouldn't let go of his lovers (and they wouldn't either) no matter how many years went by, the lovers in his life would disappear and then pop again over and over. Rita didn't say all things in her book, First, she tried to commit suicide (over Marlon) multiple times not just once as she said, she resumed her affair with him again when they were filming "The night of the following day" 1968 while she was married. Also again in the early 1980s when Marlon was preparing a movie about American Indians, and Rita was supposed to be in it, and she would come over to his home to "discuss" the movie. but the project fell apart.

Another pattern was, almost all his lovers tried to commit suicide over him, Even if they survived, they were damaged and wasted emotionally.

I meant R36

From Marlon Biography by Peter Manso :

About Rita Moreno:

The Night of the Following Day, a low-budget thriller, had been announced in mid-September 1967 and quickly put into production four weeks later. Revolving around the kidnapping of a young heiress (played by British actress Pamela Franklin), the film features Richard Boone as a sadistic gang member, Rita Moreno as a drugged-out accomplice, and Brando, in a blond wig and black T-shirt, in the role of a kidnapper who undergoes a last-minute moral conversion and rescues the gang's victim.

......Rita Moreno inevitably brought her complicated history with Brando to the set. In his own strange way Brando had never been one to let go of his past conquests, and it was he who had insisted that Moreno be hired because she was "down on her luck."

Two years earlier, at age thirty-three, Moreno had married Dr. Leonard Gordon, a cardiologist from New York; she brought him and their baby with her. But as everyone in the company realized, she was still carrying the torch.

Marion Rosenberg, who saw the couple throughout the shoot, said, "The strain for Rita was all the greater because he was shipping in his various dusky maidens. I don't think Marlon meant to torture her, but just seeing him with all these other women . . . well, it must have opened up a lot of heartache."

"With Moreno back on the scene, things got crazy," said Rhodes. "She may have been there with Lenny and her kid, but Marlon was fucking her again. With Marlon, it isn't over until it's over."

The tension between Moreno and Brando erupted during a scene they were doing together in the third week of the shoot. The locale was a small villa in the dunes where Moreno's character was supposed to have been snorting cocaine or taking heroin, and Brando's character was to become angry at her and begin to quarrel.

"With the cameras rolling, Marlon broke off the top of a bottle and handed it to her to hit him with," recalled Rosenberg. "Suddenly their scripted fight became a real fight. Things were flying around, and she started to grab at his hair. They were hurling accusations at each other, and all her pent-up anger and frustration just came pouring out—and this with Lenny and the. child on the sidelines watching.

The room where we were shooting was so tiny that the cameraman was sort of plastered against the wall trying to get some depth to the picture. Some of it remained in the film, because even though she lost the script, she stayed in character."

.....Brando and Quinn finished a draft of Jericho in July 1987, and Brando's old friend Elliott Kastner made the project public by giving the scoop to New York gossip columnist Suzy, announcing himself as producer.

Rita Moreno also wanted to be cast. She had reappeared after many, many years, and Quinn (much to her dismay) became the go-between, identifying herself as "Rosie" on the phone to make sure Moreno's husband didn't discover the trysts they were arranging.

In fact, Brando seemed to be generously promising parts to everyone. "He wanted all his friends in the movie," recalled Quinn. "Quincy Jones was going to be a black CIA agent, and he was also writing a part for his sister Jocelyn. He then said, 'You want a part in the movie?' I said, 'What part, the daughter or the black singer? Give me a break. Let's not be funny here.'

Pretty sure it was Wally Cox.

Resurrecting this old thread I found while searching for information on Jill Banner. I wonder if OP is still around, because I have a question.

There are a bunch of excerpts from different books here, and they don't always add up. Was "Weonna" really Jill Banner? It sounds like it at first, but if so, why did he say she was blonde? More significantly, why would he write that she died from being crushed by a horse, when every other source says it was a car crash? I guess he was so self-centered that he couldn't even remember how she died. Poor girl.

Jill had a very cute tushie. Much too good for a jerk like Brando

He really was toxic.

I have the same questions r43.