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closeWednesday, Jul. 01, 2009
R.I.P. Karl Malden
Robert Philpot
Is this the continuation of the celebrity deathathon, or the beginning of a new one? The Los Angeles Times reports that veteran actor Karl Malden, of Streetcar Named Desire, Streets of San Francisco and American Express Travelers Cheques commercial fame, has died at age 97.
Which, of course, means his death is hardly a shock unless you thought that Malden had already died. So far, all I have on this is an e-mail bulletin from the Times, and a quick Google News check only reveals the not-really-weird coincidence that, like Michael Jackson, Malden was from Gary, Ind. (Update: In the time it took me to write this, an obit hit the Internet.)
Malden's character-actor looks, punctuated by a bulbous nose and a tough-guy stance, made him more supporting actor than lead actor in the movies, although he held his own against Marlon Brando -- both onstage and onscreen -- as Brando gave his powerhouse performance in A Streetcar Named Desire, of which Malden was the last surviving key cast member. (It was Malden, not Brando, who won an Oscar for the movie.) Malden worked with Brando again in another of Brando's most famous movies, On the Waterfront.
A later generation knew Malden chiefly as the star of The Streets of San Francisco, the '70s cop series that provided Michael Douglas his breakthrough performance. The most surprising thing about Malden's Internet Movie Database bio is that Malden acted in only 70 movies and TV shows; he seemed much more busy than that. It looks like his last role was in an episode of The West Wing.
And, of course, there were the American Express commercials from the '70s, which may have made Malden's face more recognizable than any of his formidable movie work did. Here's on of the commercials, followed by the opening credits of Streets of San Francisco, one of my favorite -- and one of the most underrated -- title sequences of all time. Both provide evidence of one thing: Malden may have been the last of the great fedora-wearers.
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