Background and career
Karl Malden (born Mladen George Sekulovich; March 22, 1912 – July 1, 2009) was an American stage, movie, and television actor who first achieved acclaim in the original Broadway productions of Arthur Miller's All My Sons and Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire in 1946 and 1947. Recreating the role of Mitch in the 1951 film of Streetcar, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Malden was primarily a character actor, who according to Robert Berkvist, "for more than 60 years brought an intelligent intensity and a homespun authenticity to roles in theater, film, and television", especially in such classic films as A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront (1954), for which he received a second Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He also played in high-profile Hollywood films such as I Confess (1953), Baby Doll (1956), The Hanging Tree (1959), Pollyanna (1960), One-Eyed Jacks (1961), How the West Was Won (1962), Gypsy (1962), Cheyenne Autumn (1964), Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), and Patton (1970). From 1972 to 1977, he portrayed the leading role of Lt. Mike Stone in the primetime television crime drama The Streets of San Francisco. He was later an advertising spokesman for American Express. Film and culture critic Charles Champlin described Malden 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", and at the time of his death, Malden was described as "one of the great character actors of his time" who created a number of "powerhouse performances on screen". Malden served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1989 to 1992.
Karl Malden, the eldest of three sons, was born Mladen Sekulovich (Serbian Cyrillic: Младен Секуловић) in Chicago, Illinois, on March 22, 1912, his mother's 20th birthday. He was raised in a home at 457 Connecticut Street in Gary, Indiana. His Serb father Petar Sekulović (Serbian: Петар Секуловић; 1886–1975) worked in the steel mills and as a milkman, and his mother, Minnie (née Sebera) Sekulovich (March 22, 1892 – July 15, 1995), was a Czech seamstress and actress. The Sekulovich family's roots trace back to Podosoje near Trebinje, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Malden spoke only Serbian until he was in kindergarten; he remained fluent in the language until his death. Malden's father, who had a passion for music, organized the Serbian Singing Federation, uniting immigrant choral ensembles across the United States.
As a teenager, Malden joined the Karageorge Choir and acted in church plays produced by his father. He took part in many of these plays, which included a version of Jack and the Beanstalk, but mostly centered on the community's Serbian heritage. In high school, he was a popular student and the star of the basketball team (according to his autobiography, Malden broke his nose twice while playing, taking elbows to the face and resulting in his trademark bulbous nose). He participated in the drama department and was narrowly elected senior class president. Among other roles, he played Pooh-Bah in The Mikado. After graduating from Emerson High School in 1931 with high marks, he briefly planned to leave Gary for Arkansas, where he hoped to win an athletic scholarship, but college officials did not admit him owing to his refusal to play any sport besides basketball. From 1931 until 1934, he worked in the steel mills, as had his father. He changed his name from Mladen Sekulovich to Karl Malden at age 22, something director Elia Kazan urged him to do. He anglicized his first name by swapping its letters "l" and "a" and used it as his last and taking his grandfather's first name as his own. This was because the first theatre company he was in wanted him to shorten his name for its marquee. He thought that they wanted to fire him and were using his name as an excuse; although that was not the case, he still changed his name to give them no excuse. Malden later stated that he regretted changing his name and tried to insert the name Sekulovich wherever possible in his work. For example, as General Omar Bradley in Patton, as his troops slog their way through enemy fire in Sicily, Malden says "Hand me that helmet, Sekulovich" to another soldier. In Dead Ringer, as a police detective in the squad room, Malden tells another detective: "Sekulovich, gimme my hat." In Fear Strikes Out, Malden, playing Jimmy Piersall's father John, introduces Jimmy to a baseball scout named Sekulovich. In Birdman of Alcatraz, as a prison warden touring the cell block, Malden recites a list of inmates' names, including Sekulovich (Malden's father was not pleased, as he told his son "Mladen, no Sekulovich has ever been in prison!"). In On the Waterfront, in which Malden plays the priest, among the names of the officers of Local 374 called out in the courtroom scene is Mladen Sekulovich, Delegate (played by Fred Gwynne). Perhaps the most notable usage of his real name, however, was in the television series The Streets of San Francisco, where Malden's character, Mike Stone, employed a legman (played by Art Passarella) with that name.
In September 1934, Malden left Gary, Indiana, to pursue formal dramatic training at the Goodman School (later part of DePaul University), then associated with the Goodman Theater in Chicago. Although he had worked in the steel mills in Gary for three years, he had helped support his family and was consequently unable to save enough money to pay for his schooling. Making a deal with the director of the program, he gave the institute the little money that he did have, with the director agreeing that, if Malden did well, he would be rewarded with a full scholarship. He won the scholarship. When Malden performed in the Goodman's children's theater, he wooed actress Mona Greenberg (stage name: Mona Graham), who married him in 1938. He graduated from the Chicago Art Institute in 1937. Soon after, without work or money, Malden returned to his hometown.
Malden eventually traveled to New York City, and he first appeared as an actor on Broadway in 1937. He did some radio work and then made his film debut with a small role in They Knew What They Wanted. Malden also joined the Group Theatre, where he began acting in many plays and was introduced to a young Elia Kazan, who later worked with him on A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), On the Waterfront (1954), and Baby Doll (1956). His acting career was interrupted in 1942 by the Second World War, during which he served as a noncommissioned officer in the 8th Air Force of the United States Army Air Forces . While in the service, he was given a small role in the Army Air Forces play and film Winged Victory. Malden was discharged in 1946 as a sergeant and was awarded the Army Presidential Unit Citation, the American Campaign Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal. After the war, Malden resumed his acting career on Broadway, playing yet another small supporting role in the short-lived Maxwell Anderson play Truckline Cafe (1946), with a then-unknown Marlon Brando. The next year, director Elia Kazan gave Malden a co-starring role in Arthur Miller's breakout play All My Sons. By the end of that year, he had joined the legendary original cast of Tennessee Williams's landmark drama A Streetcar Named Desire, also directed by Kazan, playing Harold "Mitch" Mitchell. With that high-profile theatre success, he then crossed over into steady film work.
Malden appeared in a small role in the film noir Kiss of Death (1947) during the run of All My Sons, but did not resume his film acting career until 1950, starting with The Gunfighter and Where the Sidewalk Ends, followed by Halls of Montezuma (1951). For Kazan's film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (also 1951), he recreated his role as Harold "Mitch" Mitchell, Stanley Kowalski's best friend, who starts a romance with Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh). For this performance, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His other films during this period included Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess (1953) with Montgomery Clift and Anne Baxter, and On the Waterfront (1954) — from which he received his second nomination for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor — playing a priest who influences Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) to testify against mobster-union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb).
