"You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill." ~ Col. Walter E. Kurtz, "Apocalypse Now"

It's raining. A virtual deluge pours down in this lazy Naw’lins hamlet of flophouses and broken-down tenements.

A lone and nasty jazz sax wails and cries in the horny decibel of an alley cat.

This thing, this person, part-man, part-wounded brute stands alone in that deluge, howling like a siren gone insane. Something is clearly wrong with this man. You don’t know what, but something.

He’s lonely. He’s hurt. He’s repentant. He’s frustrated. He’s experiencing some insane strain of pain and anguish and he lifts his brutish face to the rain and screams “Stellllllll-la!”

He’s a raging poem of a man, his words spoken at midnight, after too many cigarettes and belts of bourbon.

He’s crying now, like a lost and tormented child, missing and desperately searching for his mother:

“Hey, Stellllllllllla!” he tears his tee shirt and screams.

You’re afraid of him now. And maybe just a little amused by him. But suddenly you realize Stella is not his mother. Stella is his woman, and he wants out of the doghouse. He wants to be let back in— let in the door, let into her sanctuary, let in between her legs.

She appears, his angel, and the horns get real, real lewd with it now. She’s all spiteful and salty, all slow legs and silent-thigh-sweat. She’s that cinematic silent-speak, which telegraphs she’s horny as hell. Without words, only horns, eyes and spicy subtext, she glides down the stairs, and you just *know* she forgives him.

He picks her up, throws her on his beefy shoulder. He carries her seductively up those seedy stair-steps, to their sleazy little life and to both their sanctuaries.

This was my introduction to Brando. I was mesmerized.

He was authentic. He spoke volumes with his silences. His subtext alone would fill dictionaries. He spoke, he moved, he scratched, and I believed him.

He elevated the craft of American acting and raised it to an art form. Without him, it’s doubtful there would even be a Dean, Newman, Deniro, Hoffman, Pacino, Duvall, Hackman, Nicholson, Denzel or even a Penn. The list goes on.

Film critics, scholars and actors and directors have showered him with accolades for decades, and the man was worthy of them. I was a fan from that first riveting scene from “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Loved him and FELT him madly in “On The Waterfront, “Guys and Dolls, and of course, his memorable turns in “The Godfather”, “Apocalypse Now,” and “Last Tango In Paris.” He was hot like fire and cooler than ice.

I even admired parts of his off-screen life, from his visible role in the struggle for Civil Rights to his support of African-Americans, Latino, Asian, and Native-American people.

In his prime, he was a laconic hunk with a deep social conscience. Men admired him, and the women adored him. So what if the man had issues with penis discipline. Yes. He produced a mess of children with a small army of exotic women. But his greatest progeny is his film work, sparse as it was, and this should and will be his testament, cinematically speaking.

Brando’s gone. It’s doubtful we will ever see his like, again.

Funny, how I’m reminded of his character Terry Malloy from ‘Waterfront’: “I coulda been a contenduh. I coulda been somebody…”

Trust me you were, man. You were!