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Slumming Brando Settles Lawsuit
Looks like Marlon Brando's former personal assistant is safe at home. Which may be more than her ex-boss can say.
As word came Monday that a lawsuit involving a onetime Brando employee, a loan and a house had been settled, a newspaper report said the Oscar-winning icon, legendary for being able to extract millions from studios for mere days of work, was living in a "claustrophobic" one-bedroom bungalow decorated with "two shabby sofas" and "1970s-era bead curtains."
The article in London's Sunday Times says the slumming Brando complained to court officials last year that he scraped by on two pensions worth roughly $7,600 a month, while an ex-lover and maid, who also once engaged him in a court battle, lived in a bigger, better domicile than he.
To further cloud his financial outlook, the former flame, Maria Cristina Ruiz, is "threatening" to revive her $100 million breach-of-contract suit against the 80-year-old Brando, the paper said. The woman, who had three children by the star, reportedly is fuming that Brando hasn't kept up on support payments.
The payments were part of the settlement struck last year between Brando and Ruiz, the Times said.
With that legal battle reportedly flaring up again, Brando may be grateful to have doused another one.
A tentative settlement was reached Wednesday in the lawsuit brought against the Godfather don by Caroline Barrett, the actor's personal assistant for more than 25 years.
Barrett took Brando to court in February 2003, accusing the method man of trying to take control of her Los Angeles house as payback for her leaving her job in 2001.
Barrett accused Brando of using a $185,000 loan issued to her by him in the 1980s as a way of finagling the title to her Los Angeles home.
But Barrett said the loan was never really a loan, but money Brando gave her as a gift so she could buy a house in London, where, then as now, he was fighting a lawsuit, City News Service said.
The house was to be for Barrett and her daughter, whom, in yet another complication, the actor had adopted.
Apparently all was swell between Barrett and Brando until September 2002, when, according to her, Brando cried she'd defaulted on the old loan and turned his lawyers on her, with their goal being to wrest control of her longtime Los Angeles home.
Per City News Service, Wednesday's settlement calls for the deed on the L.A. digs to be returned to Barrett. (The London home was sold long ago.) Calls to attorneys for Barrett and Brando were not returned Monday.
A hearing on the settlement agreement is scheduled for Sept. 15.
Brando, meanwhile, is said to be preparing for his grand return to the big screen as the voice of an old lady in the planned animated feature Big Bug Man.
Plagued by ill health--ill health that forced him out of a $2 million cameo in Scary Movie 2--Brando last appeared in 2001's The Score.
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