Sex Symbol. Anti-Hero. Superstud. Streetcar Rapist. The Ultimate Contender, The Ultimate Godfather. Marlon Brando understood sexual liberation long before the rest of us. Here, as interpreted by Darwin Porter, is a portrait of Hollywood's most seductive bad boy as you never could have dreamed.

The same animalistic intensity that Marlon Brando brought to the role of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire lives again within these pages, based on unpublished material gathered over a lifetime of research. The blue jeans made famous by Brando in Streetcar are unzipped in this richly anecdotal, "warts-and-all" biography of the greatest film actor of the 20th century.

Within its pages, veteran Hollywood reporter Darwin Porter paints an extraordinarily detailed portrait of Brando, particularly about his early years, that is as blunt, uncompromising and X-rated as the man himself.

From the male sex symbol of the 1950s to the overweight slob and tabloid scandal at his century's end, Brando was filmdom's most original star. Women wanted him, and certain men also desired him. He was willing to share his charms - he called it "my noble tool" - with his admirers.

A self-admitted bisexual, he seduced more women and the occasional man than any other actor in the history of Hollywood. His trail of conquest led from the A-list boudoirs of New York to similar padded enclaves in Hollywood and eventually to the backwaters of the South Pacific.

His secret meeting with Hollywood legends such as Greta Garbo and Cary Grant are told with frankness, as are his so-called "mercy f**ks" with such stellar lights as Joan Crawford, Bette Davis and even John Gielgud. To Brando's bedroom came not just the famous, but the unknown pickups, including "almost every Japanese woman associated with the film Sayonara"