Brando's book published ldished

LOS ANGELES -- Marlon Brando makes a posthumous appearance not in movie theaters, but in the nation's bookstores this month as co-author of "Fan-Tan," an adventure about a dashing, early 20th-century pirate.\nDue out Sept. 15, the 256-page book's jacket resembles the cover of a 1930s pulp magazine: an Asian woman in a blood-red, silk gown fills half the space; a seaman resembling Humphrey Bogart in "The African Queen" takes up the background.\nThe novel has already won praise from Publishers Weekly, which said in a review: "Throw in a typhoon, a double-cross, a scorching sex scene, hand-to-hand combat and a mad break for freedom, and enthralled readers will be swinging from the rigging along with the rest of the pirates in this rollicking high-seas saga."\nThe story is centered on pirate Annie (for Anatole) Doultry. While serving a six-month sentence in a Hong Kong jail, Doultry saves the life of a fellow prisoner. Upon release, Doultry finds his deed has won the favor of an underworld figure, the glamorous and hugely wealthy pirate, Madame Lai Choi San, who invites him to join the hijacking of a silver-laden British ship. He can't resist her charms or the adventure and he is plunged into battles, typhoons and sex.\nThe book's journey from pen to publisher was as circuitous as Doultry's voyages. It began in the late 1970s, when Brando was absurdly overweight and angry at the Hollywood system, taking occasional acting jobs with million-dollar paychecks to help support his family and his Tahitian real estate.\nNo longer inspired by acting, he turned to screenwriting and began "Fan-Tan," the title taken from the Chinese gambling game. The hero was strikingly akin to Brando: Both were middle-aged, overweight, mischievous and fond of Asian women.\nAs with many of Brando's later-life schemes, he reached an impasse and realized he needed help. Enter another enigmatic figure, Donald Cammell. Brando and Cammell had a lot in common: outrageous lifestyle, artistic temperament and a love of Asian women.\nThe handsome son of an aristocratic Scottish family, Cammell had studied painting, alcohol and drugs in Florence, Italy. He turned to film and directed 1970's over-the-top "Performance," starring James Fox and Mick Jagger, which drew mixed reviews and an X rating.\nBrando admired Cammell's film work and invited him to help write "Fan-Tan." They collaborated intensely, spending eight months on Tetiaroa, Brando's island in Tahiti. Brando was so disenchanted with the Hollywood system he refused to submit the treatment to the studios. In 1982, Sonny Mehta, then at Pan Books in London, gave the authors $100,000 to convert the treatment into a novel.\nThe pair had a falling out, and Brando returned the advance, paying Cammell's half. After Cammell's 1986 film, "The Wild Side," failed to find a distributor, he committed suicide at 62.\nFollowing Brando's death at 80 last year, Cammell's widow, China Kong, resurrected the manuscript, and it was bought by Mehta, now editor-in-chief of Alfred A. Knopf. He assigned a Knopf regular, film historian David Thomson, to edit "Fan-Tan" and write the last chapter, which had only been outlined by Brando, and an epilogue.\n"The character of Annie Doultry is plainly a self-portrait of Brando," the London-born writer said in an interview from his home in San Francisco. "There are transcripts of conferences he and Cammell had, and Brando did a lot of improvising, playing the Annie Doultry character. Plainly he saw this as a part that he might play in a movie himself."\nThomson, 64, worked from the manuscript provided by Cammell's widow, eliminating repetition and "filling in gaps of the story."\nLongtime Brando friend and associate George Englund agrees the actor saw himself as the Annie Doultry character. Englund, who directed Brando in "The Ugly American," has an original "Fan-Tan" manuscript annotated by Brando. Last year, he published a reminiscence of his years with the actor.