Background
Malden, Karl was born on March 22, 1912 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Son of Peter and Minnie (Sebera) Sekulovich.
Malden, Karl was born on March 22, 1912 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Son of Peter and Minnie (Sebera) Sekulovich.
Educated at Emerson School for Visual and Performing Arts and DePaul University.
Of Serbian descent, and an established Broadway character actor—in Golden Boy, Ki’ty Largo, Truckline Cafe, All My Sons, and Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire—Malden made his movie debut in They Knew What They Wanted (40, Garson Kanin). His film appearances remained isolated, in Cukor’s Winged Victory (44); Kazan’s Boomerang (47); Hathaway’s 13 rue Madeleine (47) and Kiss of Death (47); Henry King’s The Gunfighter (50); Preminger’s Where the Sidewalk Ends (50); and Milestone’s Halls of Montezuma (51), until in 1951 he won the supporting actor Oscar repeating the part he had played on the stage in Kazan’s Streetcar.
He became increasingly indispensable as a good-natured but ugly support: Decision Before Dawn (51, Anatole Litvak); Diplomatic Cornier (52, Henry Hathaway); the policeman in I Confess (52, Alfred Hitchcock); the kindly NCO in Brooks’s Take the High Ground (53); the priest in On the Waterfront (54, Kazan). But, already, in Vidor's Ruby Gentry (52), he had taken a leading part, and in 1956 Kazan cast him in his best movie part, Archie Lee Meighan in Baby Doll, a cuckold whose horns grew like pimples in front of the camera. He was also excellent as the domineering father in Mulligan’s Fear Strikes Out (57) and in the same year he directed his only film. Time Limit (57), with Richard Widmark—a taut, reasonable movie. He was also in Phantom of the Rue Morgue (54, Roy del Ruth); No Sleep Till Dawn (57, Gordon Douglas); The Great Imposter (60, Robert Mulligan); Parrish (61, Delmer Daves); Birdman of Alcat raz (62, John Frankenheimer); and All Fall Down (62, Frankenheimer).
Gradually he found himself cast in villainy—in Daves s The Hanging Tree (59); a little bemused bн Brandos One-Eyed lacks (61); and outrageous in Ford's Cheyenne Autumn (64). His parts became either overfamiliar or hopelessly exaggerated, as if his care for realism no longer had a usefulness: thus the dealer in The Cincinnati Kid (65, Norman Jewison); Murderer’s Row (66, Henry Levin); Nevada Smith (66, Hathaway); Hotel (67, Richard Quine); Billion Dollar Brain (67, Ken Russell); Blue (68, Silvio Narizzano); and Wild Rovers (71, Blake Edwards). Two performances stand out from this: as the agent/hustler in Gypsy (62, Mervyn Le Roy), cannily absorbing all Rosalind's Russell, and as Omar Bradley in Patton (69, Franklin Sehaffner), again mopping up another’s energy.
Otherwise, Malden’s 1970s were dominated by the success of his TV series, The Streets of San Francisco (1972-77), in which his widower detective looked after the character played by Michael Douglas.
It was 1980 before Malden returned to movies, often for television: very good as a steelworker in Shag (80, Frank Perry); Meteor (80, Ronald Neame); as a newspaperman in Word of Honor (81, Mel Damsld); Miracle on Ice (81, Steven Hilliard Stern); to Yugoslavia for Twilight Time (82, Goran Paskaljevic); The Sting II (83, Jeremy Paul Kagan); With Intent to Kill (84, Mike Robe); as the father in Fatal Vision (84, David Greene); Billy Galvin (86. John Grav); Nuts (87, Martin Ritt); My Father My Son (88, Jeff Bleckner); as Klinghoffer in The Hijacking of the Achille Lauro (89, Robert Collins); Call Me Anna (90, Gilbert Cates); and Absolute Strangers (91, Cates), a study of the abortion debate. In working with Cates, Malden was extending a partnership, for Cates often directed the Academy Awards show for television—and Malden had become president of the Academy.
Married Mona Graham, December 18, 1938. Children: Mila, Carla.