On what would have been Marlon Brando‘s 90th birthday. To mark the occasion, Time has raided the Life magazine vaults to showcase 15 bonus photos of the actor. The photos are from a 1949 Life shoot done in Los Angeles by Ed Clark, during the making of The Men. The best shots are the ones of Brando in Eagle Rock, in and around the bungalow owned by his aunt Betty Lindemeyer. In some of the photos, Brando is joined by his maternal grandmother and her pooch. From the text by life.com editor Ben Cosgrove:

“She [his grandmother] was quite abashed because Clark took pictures of Marlon in a bathrobe, which happens to be hers,” reported a production assistant in notes found in Life’s archives. Grandma Myers was also apologetic about the barbaric way her gandson ate: “Bud doesn’t bring the food to his face,” she told Life, using Brando’s nickname. “He brings his face to the food.” “I do hope that Bud comes through all this without too much scandal,” she confided to Life at one point. “I love him more than anything on this earth, but I never know when I’m going to hear from him in San Quentin.”

FishbowlNY thanks Life and Time for this wonderful walk down memory lane. There will never be another like Brando, or a time when one film actor could ignite such a widely felt change of the craft’s course. Click here to view the photo gallery and read from the notes of reporter Theodore Strauss, whose article was published the following year.