Brando’s name was shorthand for great acting.

Nobody was better. Until, suddenly, a whole bunch of actors were.

MISTER ACT BY GRAHAM DASELER 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 38

A few months ago, skimming through the pages of The Atlantic Monthly, I happened upon an article by Terrence Rafferty with a rather provocative title, The Decline of the American Actor. This caught my attention. For a few years now, I’d been enthusing to friends about how screen acting (both for the big and little screen) had never been better. My case, in rough form, went like this: back in the nineteen-thirties and forties screen acting, at least for the marquee stars, revolved around playing versions of themselves. Cary Grant was always Cary Grant, with slight deviations from film to film. A few standouts—James Cagney, Bette Davis, Walter Huston—might stretch their artistic limbs a bit more than the rest, but even they tended not to wander too far from their default screen selves. Then along came Marlon Brando and the method actors in the nineteen-fifties and …