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Born Mladen George Sekulovich on March 22, 1912 to a Serbian father and a Czech mother in Chicago, Illinois, the future Karl Malden spoke only Serbian until he entered kindergarten. The eldest of three children, his father worked in the steel mills and as a milkman in Gary, Indiana. His mother, who was twenty when he was born, worked as a seamstress. His father had a passion for music and organized a choir within the Serbian Orthodox church in which young Malden sang. He also taught drama and put on plays in which young Malden acted. It is worth noting that Maldenโ€™s hardworking father lived to be 89, dying in 1975. His equally hardworking mother lived to be 103, dying in 1995. They both lived long enough to enjoy much of their sonโ€™s extraordinarily long career as a major star.

Young Malden worked alongside his father in the steel mills after graduating high school. It wasnโ€™t until 1934 that he left Gary to seek his fame and fortune as an actor. It didnโ€™t take long. By 1937 he was on Broadway performing with the famed Group Theatre in Golden Boy. He married his wife Mona, born in 1918, in 1938. In 1940 he made his film debut in They Knew What They Wanted. Although he appeared sporadically in films throughout the 1940s, most notably in Boomerang! and Kiss of Death, he could be seen more frequently on the Broadway stage where he worked steadily, most memorably in All My Sons and A Streetcar Named Desire.

Malden did not get to reprise his role in the film version of All My Sons, but he did get to repeat his great success in the 1951 film version of A Streetcar Named Desire for which he won on Oscar on his first nomination. Outstanding in 1953โ€™s I Confess, the actor received a second Oscar nomination for 1954โ€™s On the Waterfront. He gave equally outstanding performances in 1956โ€™s Baby Doll for which he received a Golden Globe nomination, 1957โ€™s Fear Strikes Out and 1959โ€™s The Hanging Tree for which he was nominated for a Laurel Award.

The actor was a major player in such 1960s films as Pollyanna, One-Eyed Jacks, Parrish, All Fall Down, Birdman of Alcatraz, Gypsy (Golden Globe and Laurel Award nominations), How the West Was Won, The Cincinnati Kid, Hotel (his third Laurel Award nomination) and Hot Millions. In 1970 his portrayal of Gen. Omar Bradley in Patton earned him a fourth Laurel Award nomination.

From 1972 through 1977, Malden and Michael Douglas starred in the highly successful TV series, The Streets of San Francisco for which he was nominated for an Emmy four times and a Golden Globe once. He would win an Emmy for his performance in the 1984 TV mini-series, Fatal Vision.

He reached his crowning achievement in 1988 as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a position he held for five years.

Maldenโ€™s last acting role was as a priest on TVโ€™s The West Wing in 2000 at the age of 88. The lifelong workaholic died in 2009 at the age of 97, survived by his 93-year-old wife of 71 years, two daughters, three granddaughters and four great-grandchildren.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, directed by Elia Kazan (1951)

Malden had been acting on screen since 1940, giving memorable performances in small roles, but it was on stage that the Group Theatre veteran honed his craft, appearing steadily on Broadway from 1937 through 1947. Streetcar was his sixteenth Broadway play in eleven years, but the first one in which he got to repeat his stage role on screen. Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter and Malden got to reprise their stage roles opposite Vivien Leigh, who had played Blanche DuBois in London. Leigh, Hunter and Malden all won Oscars, Malden for playing Brandoโ€™s friend and Leighโ€™s far from perfect suitor.

ON THE WATERFRONT, directed by Elia Kazan (1954)

Malden and Kazan were colleagues from their Group Theatre days. Kazan even gave Malden cast credit for helping him with the casting of 1953โ€™s Tea and Sympathy even though he didnโ€™t appear in the play. On screen he directed him to an Oscar in Streetcar and another nomination as the waterfront priest in Waterfront for which Marlon Brando won his first Oscar on his third nomination for a Kazan film. Eva Marie Saint, who played Brandoโ€™s love interest, would thirty years later play Maldenโ€™s wife in TBโ€™s Fatal Vision, for which Malden won his only Emmy.

FEAR STRIKES OUT, directed by Robert Mulligan (1957)

Mulligan, who later directed To Kill a Mockingbird, received his first Directors Guild nomination for directing Anthony Perkins as Boston Red Sox player Jimmy Piersall and Malden as his control freak father in this still harrowing depiction of mental illness. Perkins, who had to be taught how to throw a baseball for the film, never gave a better performance and neither did Malden, even though both are better known for other roles. The film is referenced in Tab Hunter Confidential as the film Perkins stole from Hunter, who played the part in the 1955 TV version of Piersallโ€™s story, which ended their relationship.

THE HANGING TREE, directed by Delmer Daves (1959)

Gary Cooper gave his last great performance in this gritty western, which is at heart a richly woven character study of a doctor in a gold-mining camp who saves a small-time con man (Ben Piazza) from a hanging, and later a burnt and blinded immigrant (Maria Schell) from certain death. Cooper, Piazza and Schell discover gold in a rainstorm, and then must fend off villains Malden and George C. Scott to protect their find. Malden is even nastier here than he would be two years later in the now better-known One-Eyed Jacks. The Oscar nominated title song, sung by Marty Robbins, was a top ten hit for much of 1959.

PATTON, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner (1970)

An Oscar winner seven times over, this classic film begins memorably with George C. Scott as the famed World War II General standing before the American Flag and saying โ€œI want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.โ€ It only gets better from there, with Scott delivering one of the best performances in screen history, ably assisted by Malden as the fatherly General Omar Bradley, who was Pattonโ€™s friend until he was promoted over him, incurring the volatile Pattonโ€™s wrath. It was the last of the classic films about World War II.

KARL MALDEN AND OSCAR

  • A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) โ€“ Oscar – Best Supporting Actor
  • On the Waterfront (1954) โ€“ nominated โ€“ Best Supporting Actor

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