Karl Malden

American actor, commercial pitchman, writer, and president of the Motion Picture Academy. Malden made a film career playing the Everyman. The versatile actor played priests to gangsters, heroes to heavies, ordinary, decent men just trying to survive in the world. Struggling for work in the theater in the late 30s, Maldens career took off in the 40s with film roles directed by friend Elia Kazan. After playing in the original stage company of "A Streetcar Named Desire," Malden landed the role on film. He received the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the role with his co-star Vivian Leigh in 1952. He wrote his autobiography with his screenwriter daughter, Carla, "When Do I Start" published by Simon and Schuster November 1997. As president of the Motion Picture Academy, he came under heat by the motion picture community for the awarding of Elia Kazan, a controversial figure in his role in the Hollywood black-list, a lifetime Academy award in the ceremony of 1999. Maldens father, Petar Sekulovich, emigrated to America stopping at Ellis Island on 4/18/1906. The Serbian immigrant wanted to live in San Francisco but ended up in the Serbian community of Chicago. Malden was born in Chicago but his father moved the family to Gary, Indiana when he was five-years-old. His father supported the family for 38 years driving the milk wagon in town. Raised speaking no English, Malden found school in Gary frustrating and difficult. He could not understand what English words meant nor how to spell words. Maldens love for the theater stemmed from his fathers dedication to staging Serbian productions in Gary, Indiana. As a teen, Malden appeared as a pasha in many of his fathers stage plays. In high school, he excelled at basketball, winning the championship game. He played the lead in his senior class play, Shaws "Arms and the Man." He won a scholarship to Arkansas College in Batesville, Arkansas but turned the award down when he discovered that he would have to play basketball and football. He went back to Gary, Indiana and worked at a steel mill. Working beside the open hearth furnaces propelled Malden to re-evaluate his career choice. For Malden, acting could be the only possible escape from a hellish existence in a steel mill. Saving $300 dollars in three years, he arrived without references at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. The teachers allowed the young man to stay but he suffered incredible financial hardships, sleeping in the bus station and school basement and stealing sandwiches from other student lunch bags because he was so hungry. In 1936, he graduated from the theater school but could not afford the five-dollar diploma. He went back to Gary, Indiana and drove the milk wagon like his father. It seemed that his destiny was never to be an actor, when an acquaintance from the Goodman Theater called him in Gary and offered him a part in a play in New York City. Malden made his Broadway debut in "Golden Boy,"1937, under the direction of Elia Kazan and the famous Group Theater of New York. He received good notices for his role but Malden was not able to capitalize on his success. He moved back to Gary to earn money in the summer of 1937. In the fall of 1938, he returned to NYC but struggled to get theater work. He made endless rounds of casting offices between 1938-1940, acting in eight plays that fizzled on the stage. He considers this time period his most chaotic and confusing, almost giving up his acting career for th Read less