MARLON BRANDO DIED FRIDAY, JULY 2ND, 2004, OF LUNG FAILURE AT A LOS ANGELES HOSPITAL. He was 80 years old.

I first caught the news of Brando’s passing on CNN around noontime. The coverage continued, uninterrupted at first, then sporadically, for the rest of the afternoon. And I was watching CNN for most of that time. I saw the words, “MARLON BRANDO, 1924-2004” in big white letters at the bottom of the screen. At some point, for a scant few seconds, an extra “G” appeared at the end of the first name, so that it read: “MARLONG BRANDO.” The extra “G” quickly faded like a ghost. I rewound the Tivo, thinking my eyes had deceived me. But there it was again. “MARLONG BRANDO.” Had it been a technical glitch, or some prankster in the CNN control booth having a little fun?

You expect a little mirth when a popular and public figure like Marlon Brando passes away. After all, he was “the greatest actor the world has ever known.” He forever changed the sport and spectacle of acting. He was a legend, and many of the roles he played have become permanently identified with him. Stanley Kowalski. Terry Malone. Vito Corleone. Colonel Kurtz. (Okay, Kurtz was already immortalized by T.S. Eliot. But when someone speaks the name of Kurtz, I automatically picture Brando.) And again, Brando was “the greatest actor the world has ever known.” Geez, that’s a pretty tall order, isn’t it? To be placed on a pedestal that high, eventually, people will want to take you down a peg. People will disagree with the assertion that you were the greatest.

Was Brando the greatest? I missed all his movies during the 60’s, so I’m probably not the one to ask. Maybe “Candy” really is an underappreciated gem. But I can’t picture the Vito Corleone role in “The Godfather,” or Colonel Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now,” as being played as well by anybody else. I never knew Brando in his prime. At best, I saw the movies of his twilight; “The Island of Dr. Moreau” (1996); “The Score.” (2001) By then, he no longer seemed involved in his acting, but I bought tickets to see those movies in the theater, anyway, and I fixed my eye on him every time he was on-screen. Because I remembered “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now,” “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “On the Waterfront”—heck, even Andrew Bergman’s “The Freshman”—and Brando was great in all of those. So I kept watching and waiting for him to pull out another exceptional Brando moment, to show that he was still “the greatest actor the world has ever known.”

Unfortunately, another legendary Brando moment never materialized. By the late 90’s, the time I was starting to get to know Brando, he had become too comfortable in presenting a screen presence, but not necessarily acting. Remembering the various biographies written about him, I recall this game he said he played with his directors. He would do a scene twice, one time simply going through the motions, the second actually investing himself in it. If a director couldn’t figure out which one was which, Brando would refuse to work with him. To the gossip-mongers on the film scene, this represented Brando at his most arrogant. But maybe he didn’t really mean it. Maybe he was just playing around, but he knew he could get away with it because he was Brando. I wonder if, deep down, that bothered him, knowing people took him so seriously, when he didn’t treat his own craft with that much reverence?

“No man is an island, though some resemble it.” That was from a zeppelin-sized, Kurtz-esque character from a long-defunct cartoon called “Duckman.” It was a Brando joke; the character followed it up with such non-sequiters as, “The money… the money…” “You have a right to kill me, but you don’t have a right to judge me. Wait. Reverse that.” And my friend Fernando’s favorite: “General Zod, Krypton will be destroyed!”

Brando jokes. Who knows how he felt about them. Still, would it surprise anyone to hear that he appreciated the jokes made at his own expense? They (biographers) say that Brando was bitter in the years leading up towards the end, angry that his children turned out so badly, upset that the women he trusted betrayed him. Maybe he was resentful that the great talent God granted him hadn’t led him to lasting happiness. It gave him gobs of money and instant bedmates. But he never ceased to be revered, never ceased being “the greatest actor the world has ever known.”

And yet, as critics all over CNN pointed out, Brando was never one to turn down a hefty paycheck. If he wanted anonymity, he could have done like Orson Welles, and expanded himself artistically at the expense of commercial appeal. But too often, Brando took the money, filmed the dreck, and became more and more disillusioned. Perhaps he is what his strongest critics assert: a spoiled man-baby who got all the toys he wanted but was still never satisfied. But even if I say I accept that, “MARLONG BRANDO” feels wrong, while “the greatest actor the world has ever known” still feels right.