Chris Elliott as Marlon Brando Collection on Letterman, 1987-88

Here's the complete collection of Chris Elliott as Marlon Brando, from July 31, 1987, until January 7, 1988. There were 15 episodes; I added one more clip from November 18 for reasons that will hopefully be apparent. The video quality varies from episode to episode. If better sources turn up, I'll put together an upgraded version.

Comments about the character from Chris:

"Later with Bob Costas," 6/22/89:

Chris: Of that series, [The Guy Under the Seats] was my favorite character. he was the most performance-art-oriented of the stuff I did. But Marlon Brando is still my favorite weird thing.

* * *

"Later with Bob Costas," 12/23/91:

Costas: The one that I thought was really off the board was Marlon Brando.

Elliott: Yeah. I enjoyed doing him probably the most, because it was the easiest to do. The whole concept of Marlon Brando just grew out of me up in the office pretending to be me walking around the office bugging the Production Assistants, screwing up the copying machine, busting the coffee maker and so forth, and it started making people laugh in the office, but it also was really bugging people in the office.

Eventually Adam Resnick (who is co-creator of "Get a Life") and myself found a way to work it onto the show, where Marlon just walked onto Late Night a la Bob Hope and bugged Dave in the same way I was bugging the Production Assistants upstairs.

We sort of concocted the image of Brando that he was kind of nuts, because people hadn't seen him for awhile, and then —- this is funny, because —- like a year later after I stopped doing him, he started to make a comeback and we started seeing him talking to Connie Chung and so forth, and I realized we weren't that far off the mark.

* * *

1. July 31, 1987
2. August 5. 1987
3. August 7, 1987
4. August 13, 1987
5. August 19, 1987
6. August 27, 1987
7. September 17, 1987
8. September 25, 1987
9. October 2, 1987
10. October 9, 1987
11. October 30, 1987
12. November 11, 1987
13. (November 18, 1987)
14. November 25, 1987
15. December 17, 1987
16. January 7, 1988