Jocelyn Brando

Jocelyn Brando (November 18, 1919 – November 27, 2005) was an American actress born in San Francisco, California, to Marlon Brando Sr. and Dorothy Pennebaker. The older sister of actor Marlon Brando and of Frances, she trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Her father worked as a traveling salesman, and her mother, Dorothy, was a stage actress who led an Omaha community theater group — the same group through which she had given Henry Fonda his start in theater in October 1925. Brando's own path to the stage grew directly from that environment, as her earliest theatrical work came under her mother's direction.

Brando made her Broadway debut on January 2, 1942, in the comedy The First Crocus at the Longacre Theatre, a production that closed after only five performances. Her second Broadway appearance came on February 18, 1948, when she took on the role of Navy nurse Lieutenant Ann Girard in Mister Roberts, which starred family friend Henry Fonda in the title role. The production ran for approximately three years, accumulating 1,157 performances, though Brando did not remain with the cast for its full run. In the fall of 1947, both she and her brother Marlon had become among the first fifty or so members of the newly formed Actors Studio in New York, where Brando studied with Elia Kazan.

Her subsequent Broadway work included the comedy The Golden State during the 1950–51 season, which lasted only 25 performances, and a 1952 revival of Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms, which ran for 46 performances. She later appeared in a Broadway revival of O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra. Her Broadway career spanned from 1942 to 1972.

Brando made her film debut in Don Siegel's war drama China Venture in 1953, and that same year appeared in her most widely recognized screen role, playing detective Glenn Ford's wife in Fritz Lang's film noir The Big Heat. She also appeared in supporting roles in two of her brother's films, The Ugly American (1963) and The Chase (1966), and her final film role came in Mommie Dearest. On television, she joined the cast of the CBS soap opera Love of Life in the late 1960s, where she originated the role of Mrs. Krakauer, and later played the recurring role of Mrs. Reeves on Dallas. Additional television credits included Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Wagon Train, Kojak, and Little House on the Prairie, among others.

In her personal life, Brando was divorced from actor Don Hanmer on April 4, 1950, and married author Eliot T. Asinof on April 13, 1950, in Tarrytown, New York. She had two sons, Gahan Hanmer and Martin Asinof. Brando died on November 27, 2005, at her home in Santa Monica from natural causes, at the age of 86.