EVERY time my phone rings, his very recognisable voice echoes across my office. Those calling for the first time almost always have a comment on the unique message emanating from our answering machine.

Why is Marlon Brando answering our phone? It happened quite simply, as the result of my complaining about all the unwelcome aggravation from unwanted callers . . . endlessly, selling securities, catalogue lists of unwanted products, persistently wanting to buy land not for sale, despite being told to cease and desist.

As a fellow Illinoisan (although born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1924, much of his early life was spent in northern Illinois), he was very definitely sympathetic to the plight of those subjected to unwelcome attention.

Often harassed himself by those trying to force an unwanted celebrity status on him that he despised, Brando was far more emphatic and sympathetic than ever reported. Especially if he appraised you as having eccentric characteristics, and apparently we Emersonian nonconformists passed the test.

When he died on July 1, at age 80, those to whom he made himself inaccessible were quick to attack. But movie fans and fellow stars felt very differently. James Caan who worked with him in The Godfather, Jack Nicholson, who has a home on Brando's Hollywood estate, Kim Hunter of Streetcar Named Desire and Eva Marie Saint, co-star of On The Waterfront, were genuinely profuse in their praise.

Everyone has a favourite Marlon Brando film. The Godfather is on almost all lists. It's his voice as Don Corleone that entertains and happily discourages our unwanted calls.

Although he received acclaim for A Streetcar Named Desire, On The Waterfront and the controversial Last Tango In Paris, this film fan's favourites are elsewhere. Let the film critics pontificate on their choices and criticism for each other's benefit.

Any movie that makes you want to explore the subject further is my choice, especially if it offers some great location scenery as a bonus. Mutiny On The Bounty not only took viewers to the South Pacific, but so enchanted Brando he bought his own personal island there.

The Godfather showed Sicily in a way no other film has ever achieved. Burn travelled to Cartagena, Colombia. The Formula focused on West Berlin while Missouri Breaks captured Montana's mountain scenery.

Viva Zapata had to substitute Texas for Mexico, because the government south of the border knew the message contained in the film would quite legitimately challenge the country's continuing corruption and denied permission to film there.

Brando was nominated for an Academy Award (which went to Gary Cooper for High Noon) for his role as the assassinated freedom fighter who fought to have the land stolen from peasants returned to them. Taken and given to wealthy landholders, it remains a major bone of contention there even today. Attempts by the government to do the same in Chiapas launched a revolution by Zapatistas that continues today.

Anthony Quinn won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor playing the idealistic Zapata's brother, while Brando won top honours from the British Academy, New York Film Critics and Cannes Film Festival.

Let's start with the star's most recognised role. One hardly expects the story of a New York crime syndicate family to be a travelogue. Yet it contains some of the most interesting film footage ever shot on Sicily.

Unfortunately, whenever the word Sicily is mentioned, everyone immediately thinks of it as home of the Mafia, a land of deadly vendettas and notorious gangsters . . . and there is no denying those elements exist.

But it is much, much more. Movie fans get a chance to see some of it when Don Corleone is critically injured in an assassination attempt and youngest son (Al Pacino) is forced to flee there after avenging his father's attack.

There Pacino spends his time in a remote hideaway near a village once home to his ancestors. As he roams mountainous slopes hunting with his bodyguards, cameras capture the wildly rugged mood of the scenery. Weathered villages which appear to cling precariously to cliffs are typical of those this traveller visited there.

THE son's carefully chaperoned courtship and marriage to a local Sicilian girl provides a good glimpse at local customs. But don't come to Sicily expecting to discover its wonders in a few days. The island is 225 miles wide on its longest side, with more than 600 miles of coast.

The Phoenicians, Carthagenians and Greeks have preceded you. Ruins of their ancient temples and amphitheatres are reminders of a colourful past and I barely scratched the surface while there.

In Elliott Kastner's Missouri Breaks, Brando plays a professional gunman hired by a wealthy rancher to control squatters, rustlers and assorted bad men. Jack Nicholson and his horse-stealing gang turn out to be his prime targets.

The year is 1880 and the raw frontier is a brawling, lawless place. Anyone who's entered Yellowstone National Park using the Cooke entrance my recognise the film's scenery . . . it's Red Lodge, Montana. There were still snow banks edging the highway during our late July visit . . . in fact, the Beartooth Highway is impassible much of the year.

Granite Peak at 12,799 feet along this route is Montana's highest elevation. Basque sheepherders were guiding flocks up to mountain meadows where some sequences were filmed.

"With all that scenery in the background, we had to work twice as hard to even be noticed on the screen," kidded Nicholson. "Truthfully, it was hard to keep explorer types on the set. They wanted to fish, ride, hike."

Brando proceeds to "exterminate" the troublemakers one by one using a variety of disguises. But not all the sequences are set around Red Lodge, but cover much of Montana. Locations ranged from its badlands where the Missouri River breaks, to historic Virginia City, once territorial capital. Both it and neighbouring Nevada City were used extensively and remain major attractions.

HISTORY there is indeed livelier than fiction. Six prospectors fleeing Indians struck it rich in Alder Gulch and eventually $300 million in gold was recovered. This traveller revisited there intending to bring readers up to date on those ghost towns' charms . . . stay tuned.

The Formula, released in 1980, seems even more timely today. Take an energy crisis, add Hitler's "secret" formula for synthetic fuel and Marlon Brando as a cunning oil baron determined to keep it hidden. Assorted international villains and assassins complete the mix and you have a suspenseful, complicated mystery thriller travelling from Los Angeles to Berlin and St. Moritz, Switzerland.

Meanwhile police detective George Scott tracks down some mysterious murders of some old friends and the plot really holds viewers attention.

We personally found the plot especially intriguing because an old family friend of ours, who was a coal company executive, was sent to Germany by our government after World War Two. He was part of the Truman Commission to examine the feasibility of adapting Hitler's process for the gasification of coal.

He often talked about the project, which had actually involved the construction of a pilot plant in Louisiana, Missouri. Meanwhile, he intimated oil company's on the commission bought up coal interests to control that carbon source. Standard Oil and I.G. Farben had patented it and Hitler applied it during World War Two.

Yes, Checkpoint Charlie looked exactly as shown in the film on my first visit during the bad old days. Border guards practically X-rayed you crossing into East Berlin. They'd look at you, scowling intensely, of course, then at your passport . . . then more scowling.

My level of apprehension was enhanced by the fact I knew one of the other journalists in my small press group had been in the OSS with "Wild Bill" Donovan in Burma during World War Two and now used travel as cover for intelligence work. Would they uncover him and detain all of us?

I'd gone through something similar on a press trip to Leningrad coming in from Finland during the worst of Iron Curtain days. Unknown to the rest of us, one journalist was the son of a very famous German general who was involved in the siege of Leningrad, another had been in American intelligence involving Russia during the war. We innocents didn't know, but the Russians certainly did and we were all treated like spies.

Yes, that's the Palace Hotel in St. Moritz in John Gielgud's sequences in The Formula. And the estate where Marlon Brando lives in secluded splendour as a power behind the world's oil cartel is also for real. It's actually the former Bel Air mansion of hotel man Conrad Hilton. At the time of filming, its sprawling 60 rooms, only slightly smaller than one of his hotels, were on the market for a sale price of $15 million.

In the film Burn, Marlon Brando represents the British government and is in a colony planting seeds of slave rebellion on a sugar-producing island. But rather than filming on an island, the studio chose Cartagena, Colombia, where 90 per cent of the movie was made.

That historic city has witnessed a parade of pirates as well as French, English and Dutch invaders who started an almost constant siege after the city was founded in 1533. It was always a great shipping port and the wealth of Peru and Mexico was carried here for transportation, making it a prime target for treasure seekers.

The historic Palace of the Inquisition was used as the Governor's residence in the move, with carnival sequences winding through nearby streets and out into the main plaza.

We walked many ancient cobblestone streets so narrow that it seemed the elaborate Spanish colonial balconies framing their second floors almost touched.

Probably the film that very much changed Brando's life was Mutiny On The Bounty. Already preferring a secluded life minus what he considered the phony and glitzy trappings of Hollywood, it provided the opportunity for a full scale mutiny of his own.

With parents described as both alcoholic and emotionally destructive, it had been a turbulent youth, culminating in expulsion from military school. Some of his personal angst was temporarily eased when he followed the Bounty crew's mutinous lead, and settled into the remote atoll of Tetiaroa.

Is there any sea adventure that still causes more excitement than speculation about the Bounty? A long list of motion pictures, documentaries, books and articles continue to puzzle over what really happened, analysing every more microscopically.

AND is there anyone alive who doesn't know the story? In 1787 Lt. William Bligh, a young British Naval Officer who had served as sailing master to Captain James Cook on his South Pacific voyage, was commissioned by the British Admiralty to take command of the HMS Bounty.

In the film, Trevor Howard is assigned to obtain and transport a load of breadfruit trees to the Caribbean to be planted for use as food for slaves in British colonies. After a long stay in Tahiti, on April 28, 1789 Master Mate Fletcher Christian (Brando) and 12 crew members mutiny, capture the ship, setting Bligh and his supporters adrift in the ship's small boat.

Yes, South Pacific settings are super-scenic, but real star is actually the Bounty itself. Burned and sunk when mutineers landed, their fate was unknown until 1808 when another ship, The Topaz, stopped at remote Pitcairn Island to take on water.

In 1856 Britain tried to relocate Bounty descendants to Norfolk Island. Around 1,000 are still there . . . but others resolutely returned to Pitcairn Island where they remain today.

See next week's cruise round-up article for information on an unusual cruise that actually visits there, offers passengers the opportunity to dive over Bounty remains and meet some mutineers descendants.

RECREATING the Bounty for this 1962 film was a major challenge. First came a visit to London's Admiralty Museum where its original plans still exist. Then it was off to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, which is famous for its ship building, where it was painstakingly recreated true to the original.

With 10,000 square feet of canvas, three square-rigged masts, and a crew of 62, it's slightly longer than the original because of the need for camera locations during filming.

Today it sails the world with its main function a training ship dedicated to "teaching through sailing and preserving maritime skills used on the great square riggers". You can sign on as a trainee alongside a professional crew, or tour the ship when it docks in various ports. It's all there to see, a living museum which shows how sailers lived 200 years ago.

Check its web site . . . http://www.tallshipbounty.org to learn more. I was surprised to discover it will be docked at Navy Pier in Chicago for all of September. They also offer a sail-away summer camp programme.

What happened to Bligh after he survived the mutiny? In 1805 he was appointed governor of New South Wales, Australia. Eventually colonials there mutinied, imprisoned him and sent him back to England. Wouldn't it be interesting to see a documentary sequel following up on all the loose ends of this adventure!

One last anecdote about Marlon Brando. Many self-centred stars aggressively seek the limelight, their egos revel in their self-promoted celebrity and they make a career of being seen at "in" clubs and gala parties. Marlon hated all that, loved privacy and was reclusive.

There's a unique resort where we've stayed in Palm Springs . . . private, low-key, a place where guests can find seclusion. Marlon used to enjoy sitting in his recreational vehicle in its driveway talking to truckers on the interstate on his CB radio.

Add the personal causes he championed . . . improved treatment of American Indians, Civil Rights for African-Americans and self-sufficiency for Tahitians and you have some true measure of the man.

4 Next week: Cruise time is any time