Horse's Mouth

You'd expect Marlon Brando's new autobiography, Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me, to have a lot to say about acting and politics. You wouldn't expect it to have a lot to say about oral hygiene:

"When my mother drank, her breath had a sweetness that I lack the vocabulary to describe ... As I got older, occasionally I would find myself with a woman whose breath had that sweetness that still defies description. I was always sexually aroused by the smell."

"I don't know its chemical composition but her ((Brando's Danish governess Ermi)) breath was sweet, like crushed and slightly fermented fruit."

" ... whenever I was onstage with ((Tallulah Bankhead)) and the moment approached when I was supposed to kiss her, I couldn't bear it. For some reason, she had a cool mouth and her tongue was especially cold ... I asked a stagehand to buy me a bottle of mouthwash, and after each time I had to kiss her I went offstage and took a swig ... "

"The photographer's teeth had cut the sheath of a tendon, and the doctor told me there were more dangerous bacteria in the mouth of a human than in almost any other animal except a monkey. This didn't surprise me; I had assumed that the mouth of a paparazzo was a cesspool of bacteria."