In anticipation of Universal Home Video and the Film Foundation’s forthcoming Bluray of Marlon Brando’s One-Eyed Jacks (’61), which will probably street between early summer and early fall**, here are two images — one from a lobby card, another a publicity still — of a tragic ending that was filmed but discarded. I’m speaking of the death of Luisa (Pina Pellicer) from a bullet fired by a wounded Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) after being drilled twice in the back by Brando’s Rio. In the 141-minute release version Longworth fires at Rio and Luisa as they ride out of town after a gunfight, but he misses. In the much longer but long-ago-destroyed Brando cut Luisa catches a bullet and dies. It’s odd that photos of a death scene that wasn’t meant to seen were printed, but here’s the evidence.
** I know nothing about when the One-Eyed Jacks Bluray will come out, but I know work began last summer and that the restoration work had been more or less completed by January and that only the aspect ratio cropping and duplication were yet to be done.