Actor Karl Malden, who died today at age 97, was a fine performer who stood for good principles and conveyed a sense of moral responsibility in his performances, S. T. Karnick writes.
Malden was instrumental in pushing the Motion Picture Academy to give a lifetime achievement award to writer-director Elia Kazan, who directed Malden in perhaps his best and most memorable role, that of Father Berry in On the Waterfront.
Kazan had been an outcast in Hollywood for several decades before the 1999 award, because of his opposition to communism.
A measure of Malden’s integrity is that he was married to the same woman for seventy years and was surrounded by family members when he died.
By no means handsome or dashing, Malden was seen by critics an Everyman type, but he did not settle for allowing his characters to be ordinary or dull. Having grown up in no privileged environment, he knew just how much strength it often took for ordinary people just to survive. Thus he invested his characters with real strength, regardless of whether the person was basically good or not. He succeeded purely on the strength of his acting ability and the availability of roles playing real adult human beings in real, dramatic stories.
Malden clearly made an effort to understand why his characters did what they did, and as a result his performances emphasize the characters’ freedom of moral choice and consequent moral responsibility for their actions. Thus his performances worked against the prevailing cultural notion that our actions are determined by our circumstances.
Malden had numerous memorable film roles, including Gen. Omar Bradley in Patton, the complex sheriff and former bank robber Dad Longworth in One-Eyed Jacks, the cuckolded husband in Baby Doll, the domineering father in Fear Strikes Out (an awful film), and of course as Lt. Mike Stone in the 1970s TV series The Streets of San Francisco.
—S. T. Karnick
Many thanks for your testimony on Malden’s influence, Cop Show Fan. Thanks also for the link to the SOSF episode.
For those with fond memories of the show or who are interested in it in light of what you’ve read here, it’s available on DVD at a very decent price, here.
Despite the many fine film performances which he is responsible for, I will always remember him as Detective Lt. Mike Stone, in the “Streets of San Francisco”. With Michael Douglas as his faithful sidekick, Det. Insp. Keller, they strove for truth and justice, all during my College Years in the early 1970s.
It is an impression that stuck with me all my life, and I have tried to emulate the sense of fair play that the Lt. Stone character exemplified.
Here is an episode in 9 parts which I found on YouTube. http://tinyurl.com/mq7nwg
It is called the “Thrill Killers”, and is Season: 5 Episode: 1 First Aired: 9/30/1976
RIP Karl Malden, you touched so many lives.
Great points, Jim. It seems to me that Malden combined the best of the older, English tradition of acting with the reigning American approach, Method Acting. He seemed to call up personal feelings in order to express a character’s feelings, per the Method, but to make a strong effort to understand their motivations and moderate his performances to save the big effects for the most important moments. The latter, I think, helped him avoid overacting.
There was a certain humility in his craft, which appears to reflect the man’s true character. Young actors could learn much from a study of his performances. But the integrity of his craft seems to have arisen from the goodness in his soul, cultivated by his life experiences and personal choices about how to think about things.
That seems an important lesson: to be truly great at anything in a positive way, the best approach is to start by strengthening your personal character.
I did not realize that Malden was a defender (and a too-lonely one) of Kazan. And, naturally, that he was a spirited and serious anti-communist. That only raises the esteem in which I held him.
When I was a kid, I only knew him from the American Express commercials — which he pulled off in such a memorable way. And there was something about his bulbous nose and voice that always appealed to me.
As I grew older and viewed some of his performances, though, I see my memories of him reflected in your tribute, Sam. The way he gave dignity and intelligence and depth to the “everyman” roles he was given by Hollywood.
What I will remember is the intensity that Malden poured into every role. Sometimes it was subtle, exactly when called for. Sometimes it was in our faces. But, always, there was a sense that an honorable and real intensity was boiling beneath the surface. And “intensity” doesn’t always mean anger. In the characters Malden played, it was usually not anger, or at least not unhinged anger. If his character got heated, you knew — because of the way he played it — the anger was righteous, and not childish. It was not mindless rage. And he did not over do it (as Pacino, as great as he is, often does).
RIP to a great American actor and a great, patriotic American.