[Vision2020] Oscar-winning Actor Karl Malden Dies at 97

[lfalen]

Malden was one of the best. In addition to those you mentioned he was great as Frenchie in The Hanging Tree staring Gary Cooper.
Roger
-----Original message-----
From: "Tom Hansen" thansen at moscow.com
Date: Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:15:56 -0700
To: "Moscow Vision 2020" vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Oscar-winning Actor Karl Malden Dies at 97

> Courtesy of today's (July 1, 2009) Los Angeles Times at:
> 
> http://tinyurl.com/mf4a5m
> 
> --------------------------------------------
> 
> Oscar-winning actor Karl Malden dies at 97
> 
> Malden starred in TV's 'The Streets of San Francisco' and made famous the
> American Express catchphrase 'Don't leave home without it.' He appeared in
> more than 50 films over his long career.
> By Dennis McLellan
> 
> Karl Malden, one of Hollywood's strongest and most versatile supporting
> actors, who won an Oscar playing his Broadway-originated role as Mitch in
> "A Streetcar Named Desire," died today. He was 97.
> 
> Malden starred in the 1970s TV series "The Streets of San Francisco" and
> was the longtime American Express traveler's-check spokesman, warning
> travelers to not leave home without it. He died of natural causes at his
> home in Brentwood, said his daughter Mila Doerner.
> 
> With his unglamorous mug -- he broke his bulbous nose twice playing sports
> as a teenager -- the former Indiana steel-mill worker realized early on
> the course his acting career would take.
> 
> "I was so incredibly lucky," Malden once told The Times. "I knew I wasn't
> a leading man. Take a look at this face." But, he vowed as a young man, he
> wasn't going to let his looks hamper his ambition to succeed as an actor.
> 
> In a movie career that flourished in the 1950s and '60s, Malden played a
> variety of roles in more than 50 films, including the sympathetic priest
> in "On the Waterfront," the resentful husband in "Baby Doll," the warden
> in "Birdman of Alcatraz," the outlaw-turned-sheriff in "One-Eyed Jacks,"
> the pioneer patriarch in "How the West Was Won," Madame Rose's suitor in
> "Gypsy," the card dealerin "The Cincinnati Kid" and Gen. Omar Bradley in
> "Patton."
> 
> His varied performances established Malden, former Times film critic
> Charles Champlin once wrote, "as an Everyman, but one whose range moved
> easily up and down the levels of society and the IQ scale, from heroes to
> heavies and ordinary, decent guys just trying to get along."
> 
> Malden was a longtime holdout to television until he agreed to play Lt.
> Mike Stone on the ABC police drama "The Streets of San Francisco," with
> Michael Douglas. The series, which ran from 1972 to 1977, earned Malden
> four consecutive Emmy nominations as lead actor in a drama series.
> 
> When he finally won his sole Emmy, it was for outstanding supporting actor
> in a limited series or special, as a man who begins to suspect that his
> daughter was murdered by her husband in the fact-based 1984 miniseries
> "Fatal Vision."
> 
> Malden also starred in "Skag," a short-lived 1980 NBC dramatic series in
> which he played a Serbian family man and union foreman at a Pittsburgh
> steel mill.
> 
> But for all his movie and television roles, it was primarily the series of
> American Express traveler's-check commercials Malden made between 1973 and
> 1994 that gave him his greatest public recognition. (Even Johnny Carson,
> complete with fake proboscis, dark suit and short-brimmed fedora, spoofed
> Malden's sober-faced commercials on "The Tonight Show.")
> 
> "After 50 years of doing all those other things in the business, wherever
> I go, the one thing people will say to me is, 'Don't leave home without
> it,' " Malden said in 1989. "What am I going to say? It's kind of
> frustrating in a way, but at the same time, American Express has been very
> good to me, and it's given me independence. I don't have to jump at
> anything and everything that comes my way."
> 
> He was born Mladen Sekulovich in Chicago on March 22, 1912, the son of an
> immigrant mother from the nation that later became Czechoslovakia and a
> Serbian father, who delivered milk for 38 years.
> 
> Malden spoke little English until after his family moved from their
> Serbian enclave in Chicago to the steel-mill community of Gary, Ind., when
> he was 5.
> 
> Malden's father was a theater lover who staged Serbian plays in the church
> and in Serbian patriotic organizations in Gary. As a teenager, Malden
> played heavies -- usually Turks, complete with a big, black mustache -- in
> his father's productions.
> 
> --------------
> 
> A brief video on the career of Karl Malden.
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qwGPvKid_c
> 
> --------------------------------------------
> 
> Seeya round town, Moscow.
> 
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
> 
> "The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
> and the Realist adjusts his sails."
> 
> - Unknown
> 
> 
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