Stage and Screen Legend Karl Malden Dead at Age 97

Karl Malden, a versatile character actor who won an Academy Award for a role he created on the Broadway stage—Mitch in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire—died at his home in Los Angeles on July 1 of natural causes. He was 97 years old.

Malden began his career on Broadway and appeared in 21 productions, beginning with Golden Boy in 1938. He went on to have a distinguished film career and found mainstream stardom in the TV detective series The Streets of San Francisco and as the pitchman for American Express (“Don’t leave home without it”).

Born Mladen Sekulovich in Chicago on March 22, 1912, Malden was the son of a Czech mother and a Serbian milk deliveryman. At five, he and his family moved to Gary, Indiana, where he learned to speak English and later appeared in Serbian plays directed by his theater-loving dad. As a teenager he broke his nose twice playing sports; after several years working in an Indiana steel mill, he set out to become an actor, winning a scholarship to the Goodman Theater School in Chicago.

Arriving in New York in 1937, Malden joined the Group Theatre and met Elia Kazan, who would go on to direct him in the Broadway premiere of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons (1947, as George Deever), the stage and film versions of A Streetcar Named Desire (as the Kowalskis’ neighbor Mitch) and the classic film On the Waterfront (as Father Barry), which brought a second Oscar nomination in 1954. In addition to Kazan, Malden worked in Broadway productions directed by Harold Clurman (Truckline Cafe, a revival of O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms), Lee Strasberg (Peer Gynt) and Hume Cronyn (in Malden’s final Broadway outing, 1957’s The Egghead), among others. 

After his two Oscar nominations, Malden concentrated on film and found success in a variety of roles. Theater fans remember him as Herbie opposite Rosalind Russell in Gypsy; other notable films include Baby Doll, Birdman of Alcatraz, How the West Was Won, The Cincinnati Kid and Patton. On television, he received four Emmy nominations during the five-year run of The Streets of San Francisco (1972-77), in which he played Lt. Mike Stone. He later won an Emmy for the miniseries Fatal Vision and starred as a Serbian union foreman in the 1980 series Skag.

Malden served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences from 1989 to 1992 and received a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild in 2004.

The actor is survived by his wife, Mona, and daughters Carla and Mila. The Maldens celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary last December.