Actors - Karl Malden

Home > Listing Index > Actors > Karl Malden

	Actors - Karl Malden

Karl Malden (born on March 22, 1912) is an Oscar-winning American actor, known for his bulbous nose and expansive manner who starred in such films as A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront
, with the late Marlon Brando. He also starred in another blockbuster movie, Patton
, before his best-known role, playing Lt. Mike Stone on the popular 1970s crime drama, The Streets of San Francisco.

Early life

Malden was born as Mladen Sekulovich in Gary, Indiana, to a Serbian father, Petar Sekulovich, who left San Francisco, California in 1910, to move to Eastern Indiana, where he worked as a factory worker in the steel mills, and Minnie Sevarian, a Czech mother, who was a seamstress. The Sekulovich family roots trace back to the city of Bile?a in Herzegovina. He also grew up with his 2 younger brothers in Eastern Europe and in Mexico. As a youth, he joined the Carol George Choir. In high school, he was a popular student, and the star of the school's basketball team. He participated in the Drama Department, and was even elected Class President. After his graduation from Emerson High School in 1931, with high grades. He wanted to leave his native Gary, Indiana, to move someplace else, like Arkansas, where he would get a sports scholarship at a college. But during the depression, upon his arrival in Arkansas, the college rejected him; and he had no choice other than to go back to his hometown. From 1931 until 1934, he would work as a factory worker in the steel mills, just like his father did.

Stage Work and Education

Late in 1934, when he arrived in Chicago, Illinois, he heard of the play Juno of the Payback as he jumped the chance to join his first stage production play. That decision proved to be the best moved for Malden after he decided to leave his native, Gary, Indiana, once and for all. When he moved there, he had barely enough money in his pocket which had held him up just to attend the Kenneth Sawyer Goldman Memorial Theatre. He worshipped and loved the school that he would put out a series of plays he acted in. Feeling like the oldest student that he was, he came from a working-class family. He graduated from college in 1937, but soon after, despite of low money he had in his pocket, once again, Malden had no choice other than to head back to Gary, Indiana, again.

Film career before and after World War II

His miserable life at his hometown would come to an end as he traveled to New York City, and was finding some more appropriate plays for the city. He first appeared as an actor on Broadway in 1937, then did some radio work, before becoming a movie character actor in 1940, where his first film was They Knew What They Wanted
(1940). He also attended the Group Theatre where he began acting in many plays and was introduced by a young Elia Kazan, who would soon work with him on (A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and On the Waterfront
(1954). His acting career was interrupted by World War II and Malden served as a noncommissioned officer the US 8th Air Force. While in the War, he was offered a small and important role in Winged Victory (1944). After the war in 1945, he resumed his acting career, receiving yet another small role in the play, Truckline Cafe, with a young, unfamiliar actor, Marlon Brando. Jobs were getting harder to find for him as he was in his mid-30s and was about to give up. He received a co-starring role in the play, All My Sons with the help of director, Elia Kazan. With that success, he would then transfer into movies.

Film career

Malden has resumed his film acting career in the 1950s, starting with The Gunfighter
(1950), the following year, he starred in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), where he played a card-playing friend of Stanley's, On the Waterfront
(1954), where he played a priest who must testify their mob bosses. In Baby Doll
(1956), he played a powerhungry sexual man who had been interfered by a teenaged wife. When that movie was in theaters, the Catholic Churches thought it was a sin; as Malden would be the star of his own family, in real-life. Before and after he arrived in Hollywood, he starred in dozens of films of the late 1950s to the early 1970s, such as, Fear Strikes Out (1957), Pollyanna
(1960), Birdman of Alcatraz
(1962), How the West Was Won
(1962), The Cincinnati Kid
(1965), and Patton
(1970) (playing Gen Omar Bradley). On this film, he played an officer who had an injured brother, in real-life, which proved to be the blockbuster movie of 1970, after all the movies he starred in (A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront
). After his last film, Summertime Killer (1972), movies were getting harder to find, however, he also starred in the television movie The Hijacking of the Achille Lauro (1989) (as wheelchair-bound senior citizen Leon Klinghoffer).

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Karl Malden ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Karl Malden; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay