Marlon Brando’s screen test for the film Rebel Without A Cause was recently unearthed online and has gone viral.

Brando’s 1947 screen test used partial scripts that never appeared in the final version of Rebel Without A Cause. The screen test was shot eight years before the film was released.

Though iconic actor James Dean was chosen to play the lead role, some fans now wonder why the then 23-year-old Brando wasn’t chosen. The reason is that Brando was not auditioning for the film itself in that clip, but the studio Warner Brothers. At this point in his career Brando had only performed on stage, not on screen, as you can see at the beginning of the clip.

The screen test was originally released on the 2006 special edition DVD of A Streetcar Named Desire, the second film Brando acted in and the first role to earn him an Academy Award nomination.

Brando, who died in 2004, went on to win two Academy Awards in his career – one for On The Waterfront and the other for The Godfather, the second of which he refused to accept.

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