In 1948 my grandmother Olga, a mother of six, unexpectedly became a widow at age 40. By cutting corners and cobbling ends together, Olga and her oldest son opened a tiny luncheonette at 3rd Avenue and 27th Street in Brooklyn. The painted tin sign read "Smilin' Gus' Lunch", named after my late grandfather. They specialized in po' boy sandwiches and catered to dockworkers, truckdrivers and the 5 a.m. crowd.

Olga was 5'1" tall, spoke just enough English to get by, never drove a car, never sat in a movie theater, never remarried, and yet managed to build a small empire. She was an astute judge of character with a soft spot for what she called "poor souls". Misfits, lonely people with no family, sad sacks, invalids...Olga was a magnet to them, in turn handing them old clothes, food and whatever else she could spare.

During one exceedingly cold winter in the latter part of 1953, Elia Kazan (née Kazanjoglou), a fellow Greek, was directing a film about union corruption along the New York and New Jersey docks, with the central character being a washed-up prizefighter named Terry Malloy. That film, On the Waterfront, went on to set new standards in both acting and filmmaking.

Although most of the film was indeed shot in Hoboken, a little-known fact is that select shooting utilized the gray working class areas in and around the Brooklyn docks on the New York side of the Hudson. Smilin' Gus' Lunch was one of the few businesses nearby—this long before the days of on-site catering. At various times members of the cast and crew came by for a bite, a cup o' joe, or a pack of Chesterfields.

The fine cast (including Karl Malden, Rod Steiger, and Lee J. Cobb), the extras and bit players (many of them former boxers themselves), and Kazan (who was moved by the family-run operation and ancestral common ground)...all took refuge in Smilin' Gus'. One day, Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint stopped in and took a booth for lunch. The pair of actors stayed in character both on and off camera in their respective parts as Terry and Edie.

Olga instantly spotted Brando, not as Brando the movie star, but as the sad, puffy-faced Terry Malloy. Olga had never been to a movie theater in her life so it wasn't a matter of being starstruck—she was struck by pity for what appeared to be a world-weary "poor soul". As Marlon and Eva finished their lunch, my grandmother refused to take their money.

Brando, confused by this occurrence, tried and tried to pay his check, but Olga stubbornly waved her hands in refusal. It took a moment to sink in, but Brando finally relented, realizing all this had to do with the character he was playing rather than his own celebrity. Once he assessed the situation, he broke character, called her "Mother", and explained to her that he wasn’t a "poor soul", he was actually a fairly well-off Hollywood actor.

Olga eventually believed Brando, as did the world when On the Waterfront became a box office smash in 1954 and won 8 Oscars...one of those deservedly going to Brando for Best Actor.

Marlon Brando passed away on July 1st, 2004 at the age of 80. At his request his ashes were scattered in two of his favorite places, Tahiti and Death Valley. Brando left behind a legacy of innumerable accomplishments, defeats and tales of the unique life he led in between his forty-plus films. Of those films the obvious highlights include two of his earliest triumphs, the aforementioned On the Waterfront (1954) and its masterful predecessor, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).

Both of these stark, black-and-white gems were directed by Elia Kazan, whose use of the alleyways, cold water flats and underbelly of working class urban America gave proof of a world that did not necessarily benefit from a postwar boom. These strikingly real films (Waterfront more so than Streetcar) found Brando bringing forth characters that bore a naturalistic touch, something previously not witnessed on the silver screen. This unpolished approach might not seem unusual by today's standards, but in its time was startlingly unique.

Brando was the first in motion pictures to draw upon imperfect gestures and mannerisms which were taken from ordinary life, then set to celluloid. Note the wandering eyes, the understated facial expressions of thought or confusion, mumbled lines of various volume, fidgety nervous hands that scratch a forehead for no reason—such small, natural gestures made audience members uncomfortable because they had not been seen before. Brando from the start always prompted a reaction—women loved his sheer animalism while he also invoked their mothering instincts; men related to him, and could see bits of their frustrated, pent-up selves uncaged.

Although Hollywood had innumerable great leading men up to this point, few evoked the realism that Brando did. In that time, Hollywood films often revolved around a polished leading man who spoke with a transatlantic accent and courted the daughter of a shipping magnate. Certainly we had countless gangster films, especially after the advent of film noir with The Maltese Falcon (1941), but wonderful as they were, those films still largely convey caricatures of good versus evil, planned interaction, and surreal instead of real.

Enter Brando who—along with Montgomery Clift slightly before him —and James Dean just after him—employed Method Acting, a technique that prompted the actor to pull from his or her own experiences to become one with the character. The result was a more natural approach to the craft.

Although the troubled Montgomery Clift was the first of the trio to make motion pictures, becoming a overnight sensation with his first two 1948 films The Search and Red River, it was Brando who put Method Acting on the map, blazing a trail later used with great success by Dustin Hoffman, Robert Deniro, Al Pacino and many others. In his own life, Brando took Method Acting a step further, studying people, their gestures and reactions, and for a time, taking his craft very seriously. Brando, Clift and Dean ushered in a new type of icon for the postwar era—the vulnerable, dissatisfied rebel, living in the here and now—and just in time for the explosion of rock 'n' roll.

Suffice it to say not all of Brando's films are great—in fact, far from it—and in reality his best work is now somewhat undervalued because of an overwhelming number of tepid films. Just as his characters were drenched in disillusionment, so too was Brando with the Hollywood process and acting as a whole. Brando once stated that "If a studio offered to pay me as much to sweep the floor as it did to act, I'd sweep the floor."

The complicated and contradictory Brando hated fame, which stole from him the privacy he was never again able to regain. Brando's poor money management skills and lavish lifestyle, compounded by alimony and breach of contract lawsuits, brought great financial burden into his life as early as the 50s.

Another fact that stems from this time was Brando's growing reputation for being difficult to work with, and he was dubbed a prima donna. Brando often worked in less-than-desirable films in order to pay off his consistent debt, a practice that continued for his entire career, and he inevitably grew to despise Hollywood.

"Hollywood is ruled by fear and the love of money. But it can't rule me because I'm not afraid of anything and I don't love money." Brando may have hated money, but he certainly needed it. Money and acting became synonymous, which ultimately turned him sour to the craft. He once stated, "Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis."

While Brando's opinion may have soured, he continued to make films, and while viewing even the worst of these films, you will discover Brando is always worth watching. He never lost the gift of magnetism, being a constant and unpredictable center of attention—this even when his female co-stars were the likes of Vivien Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor, and Jean Simmons. For different reasons, the following cross-section of indispensable films highlight a dozen or so that make Brando's greatness somewhat easy to understand.

It is no mere coincidence that these "best of Brando" films are also some of the most important works of the 20th century. These include the aforementioned On the Waterfront (1954) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), which finds a raw, unchained Brando electrifying the character of Stanley Kowalski created by the pen of Tennessee Williams. Brando’s first film, The Men (1950), finds him portraying a bitter wheelchair-bound veteran.

Brando is equally compelling as the wise emperor of a crime family in The Godfather (1972), the twisted sexual being of Last Tango in Paris (1972), the shadowy personification of dementia and psychobabble that is Col. Walter E. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (1979), a repressed homosexual Army officer in Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), the vengeful outlaw in his sole directorial outing One-Eyed Jacks (1961), and the idealistic peasant leader in Viva Zapata! (1952). These films offer a few of the many astounding faces of Marlon Brando. The palette of experiences from which Brando breathed life into these roles may be traced back to the start.

Born on April 3, 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska to a cruel, indifferent father and a caring but tragically alcoholic mother, one can see that even at his beginning, Brando had a wide array of emotions from which to draw. Marlon was in trouble from the onset, disinterested in school, prone to pranks, exhibiting problems with authority and eventually expelled from school. On the other hand, the youngster had clear empathy for wounded animals and people that were less fortunate. In the combination of these traits, the vulnerable rebel was born.

In the ensuing years, Brando’s numerous eccentricites are of a brand so colorful that they simply could not be made up. In the current era, canned eccentricity is part of so many an artists' image that one must think back to the conservative "Red Scare"-world in which the maverick Brando allowed his freak flag to fly.

In Brando's early days, few celebrities ventured against the grain. Let's review—imagine, if you will, Brando in the early 50s as a huge movie star who made a habit of driving around Hollywood in a convertible wearing a fake arrow through his head! This is the same man who, years later, sent out a Native American woman to refuse his Oscar for The Godfather, attributing this to the treatment of Native Americans.

More recently Brando, in strange makeup, upon completion of a national television interview with Larry King reached over and kissed his interviewer on the lips. Or maybe think of the Marlon Brando who considered Michael Jackson one of his dearest friends, in fact making one of his final excursions from his home to go to Jackson's Neverland Ranch.

The next tale really takes the cake and is amongst the strangest of stories. Once, in the early 90s, a group of people gathered to watch a comet in the night sky above Los Angeles near Brando's home. As they stood watching, a large figure began walking towards them holding a tray. As the figure came closer, much to their surprise, the small crowd realized it was Marlon Brando, holding a tray of cookies, wearing an apron. Brando simply said something along the lines of "I just baked these and saw you folks out here. Would you like to partake of a few?" I don’t know about you, but I would have given anything to witness that!

Lastly, the memorable newspaper photograph of a rotund Brando who, while leaving the courtroom during his son's murder trial, was captured by paparazzi with arms extended giving all who watched a two-fisted middle finger with a proud, defiant face.

Of the many faces of Marlon Brando, that is how I want to remember him—saluting the world at large, with a non-PC, "this is me, take it or leave it" attitude. Through all of the unforgettable roles there was still a real person inside, one who was insatiable, talented, troubled, hypocritical, strikingly original and an inherently American creation.