And I guess I am now, because I saw an internet post, I think they call it Facebook, where they talked about him. I was going to write a reply, cut away to look up a date, and when I came back to it, the post was gone.

I don’t know where it went or how to get it back, and Kristina was busy and I didn’t want to intrude, so I lost the opportunity, and just now remembered it and something of what I was going to say.

So, here goes.

Let me start by saying that I like him. I haven’t seen all his movies, but the ones I’ve seen are memorable, which is another way of saying they’re good.

Also, he’s a local boy, with roots in East L.A., close to where I grew up in Monterey Park, just a little farther east, like a suburb of East L.A.

So, there’s that. Notice how I talk about him as if he’s still alive. I guess, to me, he is.

He was tall (I wish I was), had a gruff strength (I can’t compare), and was that all-purpose actor who could play any background or country of origin.

I mean, in Lust for Life, when Kirk Douglas as Vincent Van Gogh, complains that Gauguin, played by Anthony Quinn, paints the sky as “flat,” Gauguin (Anthony Quinn) growls in a yell that shakes the theater, “That’s the way I see it, FLAT!”

And then in Lawrence of Arabia, he was an Arab. Of course, so was Alec Guinness, another actor you couldn’t pin down.

And in Zorba, that Mexican became Greek!

Everybody has seen those movies, and Zapata, and his prizefighter movie, but not everybody has seen La Strada.

That’s when he went to Italy to get his career going. Fellini made him the circus strongman who breaks the chain across his chest by inhaling. Zampanò.

He’s an anti-hero. But you don’t forget him.

And that’s what I wanted to say.

I hope everybody finds a way to see that movie, La Strada. People don’t seem to know Fellini either.