He leans over the handlebars of his motorbike, zipped up in a black leather-based jacket, his biker cap tilted over his proper eye. His lips barely parted, his eyes inquisitive, he immediately embodies contradictions: robust and weak, fearless and scared, masculine and female.

This picture of Marlon Brando from the 1953 movie “The Wild One,” absorbed by the likes of Elvis Presley, James Dean and John Lennon, immortalized within the pop artwork of Andy Warhol, has had an nearly subliminal impression on the American psyche.

“The Wild One” is nowhere near Brando’s finest film or finest efficiency. However this singular picture, culled from an 89-minute movie, in some way plumbs the depths of our ideas and emotions on masculinity and revolt.

Burt Kearns’ new e book “Marlon Brando: Hollywood Insurgent” shouldn’t be, the creator takes pains to clarify, a Brando biography. There have been a lot of these, together with the actor’s personal “Brando: Songs My Mom Taught Me” (written with Robert Lindsey).

“Hollywood Insurgent” is, because the creator writes, “a examine of how one man’s inventive and private selections affected not solely these round him, however all of Western society and standard tradition.” However at its most incisive the e book is a biography of this particular picture from Brando’s late 20s, the biker portrait seen ’around the world, recognizable and indelible even to those that have by no means seen the film from which it was extracted.

“The Wild One” was primarily based on the Frank Rooney quick story “Cyclists’ Raid,” which in flip was primarily based on the 1947 invasion of the city of Hollister (close to Monterey) by hundreds of rowdy bikers over a turbulent Fourth of July weekend. As Kearns writes, post-World Battle II motorbike “gangs” had been usually populated by veterans set adrift in a brand new world after their service ended. “Cyclists’ Raid” caught the eye of producer Stanley Kramer, who specialised in progressive “social drawback” films, together with one he had simply made with Brando, “The Males,” during which the rising star performed a paralyzed vet.

When Brando signed on to star in “The Wild One” he was scorching off the success of the movie adaptation of “A Streetcar Named Need,” which had made him a younger Broadway legend when it premiered there in 1947. In “Streetcar” Brando performed Stanley Kowalski as a digital hearth hose of sexuality, a brute in a decent white T-shirt (and, although the movie conveys the purpose with Manufacturing Code-mandated subtlety, a rapist). This was a brand new form of display carnality, uncooked and visceral, and Brando, a mumbling powerhouse, was a brand new form of star.

However “The Wild One” was newer nonetheless. As Kearns observes, the film’s homoerotic subtext rapidly turns into homoerotic textual content. Brando’s Johnny Strabler, pouty with a slight Southern lilt, engages in a frenemy relationship with a rival biker, Chino (performed by Lee Marvin), who behaves extra like a jilted lover than a fellow highway canine (“I really like ya, Johnny!” he repeats time and again; throughout a fistfight Johnny knocks Chino by way of a retailer window, the place he lands smack in between bride and groom mannequins).

Johnny appears totally baffled by, if not afraid of, the alternative intercourse, represented by a townie (Mary Murphy) wanting to boost her small-town existence and a biker moll (Yvonne Doughty) with fond recollections of a one-night stand.

Then there’s that tight leather-based, which might make Brando-as-Johnny a kind of butch fetish object for homosexual followers, artists and filmmakers, together with Warhol, who used the well-known picture in a number of works, and Kenneth Anger, whose 1963 avant-garde quick movie “Scorpio Rising” options clips of Johnny cruising on his bike.

That Brando himself freely mentioned his sexual adventures with each women and men made the homoerotic symbolism of “The Wild One” each simpler and extra resonant.

Lest you suppose the movie influenced solely homosexual subculture, Kearns additionally particulars its impression on rock ’n’ roll, notably on a shy megastar from Memphis, who overtly proclaimed his Brando worship, and a bunch of lads from Liverpool.

In a single scene, Chino is lamenting to Johnny that “the Beetles” miss him, apparently alluding to the gang’s groupies. And sure, this was seven years earlier than a sure band started to name itself the Beatles. John Lennon was on document as an enormous Brando and “Wild One” fan. Kearns builds a compelling case for this origin story of the band’s title as he goes down one of many e book’s many rabbit holes, some extra rewarding than others.

The large image is far clearer. Brando, and particularly this Brando, has had an outsize affect on American tradition and our conception of how a insurgent behaves. “What are you rebelling towards?” Johnny is requested as his gang makes itself at residence in small-town California. His well-known response: “Whaddya acquired?” Brando-as-Johnny grew into an all-purpose image of revolt, towards norms in society, sexuality, style, music … and whaddya acquired. (Two years later got here “Insurgent With no Trigger” and one other timeless jacket, this one a purple nylon windbreaker.)

“Hollywood Insurgent” sometimes wears out its welcome. Kearns has a behavior of extensively, excessively quoting the identical handful of professional sources. He generally overstates his arguments, as when he calls the Hollister biker invasion “some of the influential public disturbances because the Boston Bloodbath” (one may think about many rivals for that listing, from the Civil Battle draft riots, to Vietnam protests, to Watts, to Ferguson, to the Jan. 6 rebel). The creator additionally appears slightly too pleased with his prolific double-entendre utilization, even for a e book that’s largely about sexual magnetism.

On steadiness, nevertheless, “Hollywood Insurgent” is a worthy addition to the Brando bookshelf, largely as a result of the creator picks an concept and by no means loses sight of it, whilst he followers throughout a number of disciplines to discover the concept. This can be a e book about how one side of 1 man captured in a single picture from one movie can ship ripples by way of the world.

Chris Vognar is a contract tradition author.