Karl Malden

Mladen Sekulovich – who would later adopt the simpler stage name of Karl Malden – was born in Chicago on March 22, 1912. His parents, of modest means, had emigrated from Serbia and Bohemia. In his younger years, Mladen helps his father with his job as a milk delivery man. But at the same time he took a liking to the theater, until he determined to become an actor himself. So he used all of his savings to train at the Goodman Theater. There he learned to build sets, and also met the woman in his life, Mona Greenberg, whom he married. They had two daughters, three grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren, in a marriage that has lasted 70 years, and where Mona has survived him.

An invitation from a Goodman classmate took him to New York in 1937, where he met Harold Clurman and Elia Kazan , who were auditioning for the cast of “The Golden Boy,” the Clifford Odets play that was going to represent the Group Theater. It was the beginning of a great friendship and professional collaboration between Malden and Kazan, not surprisingly the former took it upon himself to personally present the other with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1999 Oscars ceremony, challenging those who didn’t. they believed him deserving of the award, for his collaboration with the notorious Committee on Un-American Activities.

Furthering his acting training at the Group Theater, Malden starred in Arthur Miller ‘s “All My Children” and Tennessee Williams ‘ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the latter opposite Marlon Brando , Jessica Tandy and Kim Hunter . With the first two more Vivien Leigh would repeat in the 1951 film version; and A Streetcar Named Desire would win him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Mitch, Blanche DuBois’ diffident and clumsy suitor. Although he had already made inroads on the screen before, always in secondary school, in titles such as They Knew What They Wanted (1940), The Kiss of Death (1947),On the verge of danger (1950) and The Gunslinger (1950).

In The Law of Silence (1954), again opposite Kazan and Brando, he earned another Oscar nomination for his role as a priest in the midst of a gangster and labor rights fight on the docks. Curiously, a year earlier, in Alfred Hitchcock ‘s I Confess , his character went against the leading priest, by acknowledging a crime, protected by the secret of confession. In 1956, Williams and Kazan ‘again’, he achieved his first leading role in Baby Doll , where he played a guy married to a much younger woman, to whom he promised not to consummate the marriage until she was 20 years old.

The truth is that Malden’s career is enviable. She knew how to happily combine theater, cinema and television. In this last section, his composition of Lieutenant Mike Stone between 1972 and 1977, accompanied by Michael Douglas , in The streets of San Francisco, was memorable . He worked with the greatest and he did it well, like an ordinary man, but possessed by the different demons and passions that usually attack the human being. With King Vidor , Charlton Heston and Jennifer Jones he made Passion under the Fog (1952), along with Gary Cooper and Delmer Daves The Hanged Man’s Tree (1959), and Marlon Brando directed him in his only film as a director,The impenetrable face (1961). Yes, the western would be a recurring genre in his filmography, as evidenced by The Conquest of the West (1962), The Great Combat (1964), Nevada Smith (1966) and Two Men Against the West (1971).

The truth is that Malden was very versatile, and he assumed from the beginning that his physique did not help him to get leading roles, so he had to get all his juice out of those roles that end up stealing the role from the actor who plays the main role. Although, and that honors Malden, he never got into the game of nullifying his co-stars by calling attention to himself. Thus, he signed up for Disney family titles such as Pollyanna (1960), where he accompanied the girl Hayley Mills , to intrigues such as The Million Dollar Brain (1967), together with Michael Caine , to the prison cinema of The Man from Alcatraz. (1962), with Burt Lancaster , to the Patton biopic(1972), with George C. Scott , and the Meteor Catastrophist (1979).

Over the years, his dedication to acting would decrease, although we would still see him in titles of interest such as Loca (1987), along with Barbra Streisand . That did not mean that he was sitting on his laurels, because between 1989 and 1992 he took on the challenge of being President of the Hollywood Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the one in charge of awarding the Oscars. His last foray onto the screen was in the year 2000, playing a priest, which went back to his role in La ley del silencio . In an episode of The West Wing of the White House he was a priest, a great friend of President Bartlet, who attended him in confession because of his guilt for not having granted clemency in a death penalty case.