Is it weird that Anthony Quinn isn't held in higher regard ?

I think when he was in his 50s-60s, he was considered one of the best. Maybe I'm wrong though, I wasn't even born then.

But many of his latest movies were bad, garbage even. So maybe this played its part in his legacy. Just guessing.

In my mind he was a great actor, anyway.

There may be an element involved that Quinn playing across so many ethnicities the way he did, while held up as a sign of versatility in his day, is often frowned upon by modern audiences and seen more often as being cheesy or inauthentic (actors today have to be careful how far they go in that direction for that reason). Seeing the same dude pretend to be Native American, Italian, Arab, Greek and everything else under the sun can actually come off quite gimmicky today in a way it might not have seemed in Quinn's time. In addition to his quite broad acting style, it could partially account for why critics for example haven't helped keep his reputation elevated. Tastes change.

I feel like a lot of Brando's less regarded work today is the stuff where he did attempt to play outside his ethnicity ( Viva Zapata, where he goes Mexican, isn't anywhere as highly regarded for him as Streetcar, On The Waterfront or even Julius Ceasar). No one takes Brando playing Japanese in The Teahouse Of The August Moon seriously today.

I think part of it is that Quinn (a dynamic and electric performer at his peak) didn't really have the longevity needed to sustain him as the face of the cinematic landscape changed around the 1970s. Imagine if Coppola had decided to cast Quinn as Don Vito Corleone instead of Brando. If he does that, I think you see a massive upheaval not just in Quinn's respect nowadays, but Brando (whom most people cite as being the greatest, or at least most influential, actor of the twentieth century) might be seen as someone with an amazing start who fell fallow after his Oscar success. Quinn's '50s were very successful and he was good enough to be a leading man in the '60s with some excellent performances to his name, some of which are incredibly influential (Requiem for a Heavyweight kind of built on Kirk's Champion blueprint and I think the likes of De Niro and Rourke, among dozens of others, owe a huge debt to them), but I think if he'd been able to make a dent in the '70s wave, we'd be considering him one of the greats as a matter of course.

I get what you are saying, but I still feel Quinn's run in the 50's and 60's ought to have been enough to cement him as one if the "greats", if people/critics were truly interested in doing so (not to mention he had a complete body of work in character roles in the 1940's, before he became a more prestige film actor in the 50's). Many legends from those decades faded or did not see a significant resurgence in the 70's (Kirk being an example), but their legends held up strongly based on what they'd already done 

I truly think his acting style is the bigger issue. It's very "big" and melodramatic, and feels big in almost everything. I don't think his style converts quite as comfortably to modern audiences as Douglas (who could be big, but could also utilise stillness and silence to perfection, as in many scenes in Spartacus) and Brando, who also could go big, but probably with more nuances than Quinn. I feel if modern critics truly felt passionate about Quinn's work, they wouldn't let the fact that he dropped off in the 70's stop them from still championing him.  It's one thing for modern audiences not to care, but I don't even see him talked up much by critics or cinephiles who are supposed to be familiar with his work.

Great actor and definitely very underrated. Has several fantastic performances to his name (La Strada, Viva Zapata, Zorba The Greek among others), but I think his greatest performance (and among the greatest of all time) came late in his career in Lion Of The Desert.

Well, I think you kind of answered your own question here. A lot of the actors from classic Hollywood who seem to be held in the highest esteem now are the "movie star" actors like Cary Grant or John Wayne, because that kind of acting really has not changed much. You could take Cary Grant out of a time machine and put him in a rom-com today and he'd be just as good. Dramatic acting in movies has changed immensely and I think a lot of the people who were perceived as "great actors" in the 40's or 50's can come off a little facile and hammy today, with a few exceptions obviously like Brando, Olivier, or Bette Davis. 

Speaking of Brando, whether he gets The Godfather or not I think he was always going to have the better legacy because his older work just holds up a lot better. You could show On the Waterfront or Streetcar to some "I don't watch B&W movies" normie and they'd still be able to appreciate his performances even if they don't like the rest of the movie. Calling his acting style modern isn't so much accurate as calling it timeless or classic, he'd be a good actor in any era. It's like how there have been a couple discussions about Bogart on here where it's been observed that he really wasn't as big a star as you might think in his own time and his legacy is dependent on how well his movies and performances hold up now. Which is why I've criticized this forum before for the fixation on counting wins and noms as if that decides the greatest actor. In 50 years no one will care and it will just be about the work itself. Walter Brennan is a 3x acting winner, now go on the street and see how many people walking by know who Walter Brennan is. Quinn has a very nice Oscar resume with two wins and four nods but it still a fairly obscure figure outside of movie buffs. 

I still like Quinn, but he's very much of his time, so he's not someone I would expect to come up in all time discussions that much. 

Agreed that Brando's legacy would still be better than Quinn's even without The Godfather and his 70's resurgence because much of his key his older work holds up better for modern audiences. And I know you aren't a huge fan, but I'd say pretty much the same about Kirk Douglas, which is why his legendary status has held up so strongly, despite his career going into a mostly irreversible decline in the mid-60's. Things like Champion, Out Of The Past, Ace In The Hole, Paths Of Glory and even Spartacus are effectively "timeless" performances that still work for modern audiences.

This pretty much describes Nicolas Cage, doesn't it

Cage gets a lot of (some might say ironic) love in some circles (and this forum as well) for his gonzo hamminess and willingness to star in anything that will pay him enough, but you gotta wonder if he's destined for a similar fate as Quinn.