California - (Unbelievable Mess): Beneficiaries of Christain Brando's will are squaring up for a pitched battle for control of private diaries and letters relating to his father Marlon's troubled AC/DC lovelife.
Brando Junior, 49, died in hospital today of pneumonia after a spectacularly turbulent and toxic life punctuated by violence, drugs and family dysfunction.
But his own rollercoaster existence may be nothing in comparison to the privately recorded sordid secrets of which he was custodian.
At the core of the issue are intimate documents about Marlon Brando's seamy sex life intrigues with the likes of Laurence Olivier, Rock Hudson, Cary Grant, Stewart Grainger and - if LA SordidFagHagSlag magazine is to be believed - Elvis Presley, Bobby Kennedy and Jack Nicholson.
During her lifetime Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis fought protracted legal battles to shield herself from the Brando intrigue.
Reports claimed that she, her former brother-in-law Michael Canfield (ex-husband of her sister Caroline Lee Bouvier Canfield Radziwill) and Lyndon B Johnson had been involved in amphetamine-fuelled orgies on at least two occasions at Brando's California hideaway.
Some stories even went as far as suggesting Bobby Kennedy was assassinated after his own tryst with Brando went disastrously wrong and the actor hired an effective smokescreen in the form of Sirhan Sirhan.
As the Brando family prepares to bury yet another of its members lawyers who acted for paterfamilias Marlon are said to be anxious to trace significant missing documents relating to the Kennedy business which at one stage were believed to be hidden in a safe place to which only Christian Brando could gain access.
The 49 year old went into a very rapid decline after being admitted into hospital two weeks ago, eventually falling into a deep coma and being placed on a ventilator as doctors fought to save his life.
Medical staff believe the decline was so rapid and unexpected that Brando Jr never managed to talk to anybody about this or any other secret personal business.
And Jackie Kennedy's personal papers were sealed for a minimum of fifty years after her own death.
The funeral will take place next week.
