Marlon Brando died notoriously indebted, with some even characterizing him as “destitute” at the time of his death, as The Guardian noted. As his daughter Rebecca told GQ magazine in 2020, her father didn’t care about money. “In the end he only made money so he could help fight injustices. [He helped] the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, the Black Panthers,” She elaborated. Still, he was reportedly $20 million in debt when he died, according to the New York Post, which needed to be addressed. To help pay for some of it, the house located at 12900 Mulholland Drive was put up for auction, United Press International reported.
According to UPI, Jack Nicholson purchased the property in the hope of passing it on Brando’s children. However, Brando’s many heirs — he is said to have had at least 11 children, according to The Guardian — apparently had no interest in it, so Nicholson decided to demolish the home and turn it into a garden of frangipani flowers in 2006. His decision came after the home was deemed to be “derelict” and taken over my mold, according toThe Times.
Brando was, as Nicholson wrote in his Rolling Stone article, a great neighbor. “In 30 years’ time, you go through many areas of life with someone, but I never had any arguments or disagreements with him over anything, the way neighbors do,” He said it.