The Liberty Theater photographed in 1938 and the present. It was the site of Marlon Brando’s employment off and on-camera.
In the 1940s, Brando was an usher at the theater. A decade later, his name was lit up across the marquee as he starred in many motion pictures.

“I became an usher at a local movie theater to earn some spending money. On Saturdays most of the farmers brought their families into town to see a movie, no matter what was playing. I enjoyed directing customers to a row of seats that was already filled. To see a line of a dozen people file down a row of seats in the dark, sitting on other people, stepping on feet and causing a general ruckus, then coming out the other side, was a hoot” (Brando 31-32). “To cool off, I started taking off my shirt, but I sewed a pair of cuffs to my jacket to make it look like I was wearing one. I figured no one would know about it because I was wearing a dickey under the jacket. After one of the other ushers squealed on me and I was fired for being out of uniform, I chopped up some rotting broccoli-few things smell worse than broccoli that’s been out in the sun two or three weeks-mixed it with Limburger cheese I had ripened until it was pure bacteria, and stuffed it into the intake pipe of the air-conditioning system, flooding the theater with an odor that sent the audience out to the street. It was a great act of revenge. The guy who fired me never figured out who did it” (Brando 32).

On the right is the costume Marlon wore in Julius Caesar. It was donated to the Lake County Discovery Museum<br />
and will soon be on display. Currently, visitors can schedule a private viewing of the costume. According to the owner of the Liberty Theater, Marlon’s movies were not successful at the local box office. This may be a fallacy told out of anger over the ventilation system prank.<br />
When he was home from Hollywood, Marlon was rumored to catch a movie at the Liberty. Sometimes they were his own motion pictures. Imagine seeing his face on the screen and then looking next to you and seeing it in real life...
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