Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,541

This is the grave of Karl Malden.

Born in 1912 in Chicago, Mladen Sekulovich grew up in a Serbian and Czech immigrant home. His father worked in the steel mills and delivered milk on the side. His mother was a seamstress. But she also acted a bit and his father was a big singer in the Serbian community. So the arts were there. Sekulovich grew up speaking only Serbian until he got to elementary school, when he learned English. He did remain proud of his Serbian roots his entire life and maintained his fluency in the language. They moved to Gary, Indiana shortly after his birth, where his father continued to labor in the mills, and that’s where he grew up.

Since Sekulovich grew up in the church and around his parents activities, it wasn’t surprising that he would join them. He sang in the church too. His father also directed plays in the church for the community and his son joined him as an actor. Turned out he was a pretty good actor and people noticed. He was also a big kid, a good athlete. He was recruited by the University of Arkansas to play basketball, but at this time, you needed to be a multi-sport star and Malden didn’t want to play any other sports, so the scholarship offer was pulled. So he grew up, followed his father into the steel mills, and acted on the side. Supposedly, his gigantic nose happened because he broke it a couple of times playing hoops, but that sounds a bit overdetermined to me. I’ve met plenty of people who have had a couple of broken noses, but the Karl Malden nose? I mean, that’s a thing!

Sekulovich continued to take acting seriously and worked in Chicago. He got to know Elia Kazan, then a rising director. Kazan told him to change his name. That was a good idea. A Serbian name probably would fly today in Hollywood, but in the 30s? So he became Karl Malden. Now, he actually regretted this. He probably knew he needed it for a film career in the mid-20th century, but he would have directors use the name Sekulovich for minor characters in films, such as in Patton, when he was playing Omar Bradley, and he used the line “Hand me that helmet, Sekulovich” to another soldier.

Anyway, even though he had gotten to know Kazan, it was still a slog to get any good parts. He left Gary for Chicago, did a bit of acting while he attended drama school, but went back to the mills. He married an actress he met in Chicago named Mona Greenberg. They finally went to New York in 1937, he started working in the Group Theater, and began rising in the stage world. He went into the Army Air Corps in World War II and served as a sergeant from 1942 to 1946. So by the time he was done with that, he was in his mid-30s and still a minor figure at best in the New York acting scene,

Probably a lot of actors would have given up by this time, but not Malden. Kazan became a huge mentor and that made all the difference. 1947 was the key, when Kazan cast him in both All My Sons and then the first adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire, where he played Mitch Mitchell, Stanley Kowalski’s buddy. In both parts, Malden got major accolades. So did Kazan. With the director off to Hollywood to shoot the film version of Streetcar, he cast Malden as Mitch again. Of course this was the epic film version with Marlon Brando and Vivian Leigh. Malden had acted in a couple of smaller films before this, but this was essentially his debut as far as anyone really knew and he won Best Supporting Actor for the performance. Not bad!

Kazan then cast Malden in On the Waterfront, which is both a great film and the director’s attempt to excuse himself for naming names about communists in front of HUAC. Again, Brando played the lead and Malden the key supporting figure, this time as a priest. For this, Malden was nominated for Best Supporting Actor again.

Now, Malden was never really going to be a leading man, not with that nose, not at that time. But he was THE character actor of his period and as such was in a lot of good films, though also plenty of not so great films too. Kazan cast him once more, in Baby Doll, which I have not seen. Among the better movies of his peak from the mid 50s through the early 70s includes One Eyed Jacks, Cheyenne Autumn, How the West Was Won, The Cincinnati Kid, and Patton. That’s a good run.

In 1972, Malden moved to television with The Streets of San Francisco, working with a young Michael Douglas. This was pretty high-powered stuff for a TV drama of this era. That ran from 1972-77, though the ratings bottomed out after Douglas’ star rose and he left to work strictly in the films. Malden mostly worked in TV after that, often in made for TV movies such as when he played hockey coach Herb Brooks in a film about the 1980 Olympic hockey team. He also became the voice for American Express commercials, which I most definitely remember. In the end, one wishes Malden had more first rate roles after the mid-50s. He was so, so great and the roles he got were not exactly at the On the Waterfront level, though what really is. Still, he had a great career.

Malden was also very involved in the film industry outside of acting and was in fact the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1989 until 1992. Another interesting tidbit about Malden is that in 1990, he joined the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee, which is a group of influential people selected by the U.S. Postal Service to make recommendations on people who deserve to be remembered on a stamp. He did this for the next 19 years, pushing forward various Hollywood figures (and others presumably) to be emblazoned on American postage. In 2005, for this service, Malden got a post office named for him in Los Angeles.

In 2004, Serbia gave Malden the Medal of White Angel, whatever that is. There is today a monument to Malden in Belgrade. Now I want to go.

Malden died in 2009, at the age of 97. He had just celebrated his 70th wedding anniversary.

Karl Malden is buried in Westwood Memorial Park, Los Angeles, California.

So this is a special grave for me, as today is my 50th birthday. Grave is a’callin’ for me! On top of that, the entire grave donations for the month of January is less than $15. I get that of course, but forgive me if I try to do a little grave fundraiser here. I have three trips to the South this spring, including a completely unfunded requirement that I attend a conference in New Orleans. We just get so much support for our work as historians in the academy……So brother can you spare an old grave visitor a dime to visit some evil Confederate bastards?

If you would like this series to visit other Best Supporting Actor winners, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Anthony Quinn, who won in 1952 for Viva Zapata!, is evidently in Bristol, Rhode Island on a family estate there. Not sure if I can access that, but now I kinda have to try. Frank Sinatra, who won in 1953 for From Here to Eternity, is in Cathedral City, California and Edmond O’Brien, who won in 1954 for The Barefoot Contessa, is in Culver City, California. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.