Karl Malden

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Karl Malden (1996)

Karl Malden (actually Mladen George Sekulovich ; born March 22, 1912 in Chicago , Illinois , † July 1, 2009 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American actor . He played important supporting roles in many film classics and was awarded an Oscar for his appearance in Endstation Sehnsucht (1951) . In the 1970s he was Lt. Mike Stone starred in the hit television series The Streets of San Francisco .

life and work

Karl Malden was born to a Czech mother and a Bosnian Serb father, Minnie and Peter Sekulovich, and grew up in Gary , Indiana . After attending Emerson High School in Gary and the Arkansas State Teachers College in Conway , he completed an acting training at the Goodman Theater Dramatic School in Chicago from 1933 to 1936 . In 1937 he played in Clifford Odets ' Golden Boy for the first time on Broadway . In 1940 he made his film debut in They Knew What They Wanted alongside Charles Laughton . During the Second World War he served in the United States Army Air Forces , where he met his future actor Brad Dexter , with whom he had a lifelong friendship. After the war he continued his extensive stage work and appeared in films on the side.

In his film career, mostly as a supporting actor , he made almost 70 feature films . These included a whole series of classics from Hollywood cinema. Especially for director Elia Kazan , with whom he had already worked successfully on Broadway in the 1940s, he was one of the most important character actors. Alongside Marlon Brando , he was already on stage as Harold Mitchell in Kazan's production of Endstation Sehnsucht in 1947 and also played this role in the 1951 film , for which he received an Oscar for best supporting actor. In 1954 he was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actor in the eight Academy Award-winning film Die Faust im Nacken .

Kazan also gave him one of his few lead roles. In 1956 he portrayed the bizarre husband of a minor ( Carroll Baker ) in Kazan's scandalous film Baby Doll - Desire not the other woman . He also played one of the leading roles in the monumental film That Was the Wild West, among many other well-known artists, shot in Cinerama in 1961 .

In Germany he was mainly recognized by his role as Detective Lt. Mike Stone known in the television series The Streets of San Francisco , which he played in 120 episodes from 1972 to 1977. Since the 1970s, he has appeared predominantly in television films. In 1992 he played Lt. again in the film Back to the Streets of San Francisco . Mike Stone, in which Michael Douglas was not involved. Malden's last appearance as an actor was in 2000 in the series The West Wing as Father Thomas Cavanaugh.

From 1989 to 1992 Malden was President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , which awards the Oscar .

Karl Malden had been married to Mona Greenberg (1917–2019), with whom he had two daughters, since December 18, 1938, and had one of the longest marriages in Hollywood, lasting over 70 years.

Malden died in July 2009 in Brentwood , a suburb of Los Angeles, at the age of 97. His grave is in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood , Los Angeles .

Advertising icon

Karl Malden's advertising appearances for the financial services provider American Express in the 1970s and 1980s, which were occasionally shown in Germany, were particularly famous in the USA . In it, he advertised the company's traveler's checks with the now legendary slogan “Don't leave home without them!” (“Don't leave home without them!”).

Filmography (selection)

Important theater work

Awards

Web links

Commons : Karl Malden  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mona Malden, Actress and Widow of Karl Malden, Dies at 102. Retrieved on March 12, 2020 .
  2. ↑ not to be confused with the city of Brentwood in the southern Contra Costa County of California.
  3. ↑ Karl Malden dies at 97, Oscar-winning actor obituary in the Los Angeles Times, July 2, 2009 (accessed July 3, 2009).
  4. ^ Knerger.de: The grave of Karl Malden
personal data
SURNAME Malden, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sekulovich, Mladen George (maiden name); Секуловић, Младен Ђорђе (Serbian); Sekulović, Mladen Đorđe (transcription)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH March 22, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago , Illinois
DATE OF DEATH July 1, 2009
Place of death Brentwood (Los Angeles) , California