L.A. Times reporter Robert Welkos has written an anecdotal piecemeal story about Marlon Brando’s last days and how his family intends to make money (tastefully and respectfully, of course) off his image and legacy. For some reason it was run on the front page of Wednesday’s L.A. Times print edition, and not in the more customary Calendar section. Welkos quotes a Brando friend named Joan “Toni” Petrone about the family’s intention to put out a series of DVD’s based on Brando’s “Lying for a Living” acting classes. Digital tapes of those classes (which involved improvs and drop-by’s by Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Jon Voight and others) sat around Brando’s house for two or three years without Brando or anyone else taking any kind of stab at editing them together. But now that he’s dead and gone, the family is on the case because it’s time to rake in the dough. A day or so after his death Brando’s body, dressed in a Japanese robe and his favorite red scarf, was put on view at a local mortuary, Welkos reports. A portion of Brando’s ashes (mixed with those of his longtime friend Wally Cox) were scattered in Death Valley, the story reports. The most intriguing thing I learned about Brando post-mortem was the location of a private driveway on Wonderland Avenue that Brando and neighbor Jack Nicholson used to get to and from their respective homes, because it afforded more privacy than using a fairly well-known, security-gate entrance to their estates on Mulholland Drive.