29 thoughts on “Karl Malden Movies”

1. Hi Bob, sorry for the lateness of my reply, I’m not turning into Bruce I promise. 😉

   Thanks for reviewing my Karl Malden video, the generous review, info, trivia and song lyrics are much appreciated. Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.

   Regarding that still from A Streetcar Named Désirée, could it be a still from the Broadway play? Were the same actors involved? It’s been ages since I last watched that film, all I remember is someone yelling “Stellaaaaaaaaa!” over and over. 🙂

   Jason Statham might make an interesting British Stanley Kowalski, with a Cockney accent of course, how about Margot Robbie as Blanche? Cate Blanchett as Stellaaaa!

   Three films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – Patton, Streetcar and Waterfront.

   Four more scored 9 out of 10 – How the West Was Won, The Gunfighter, Baby Doll and Pollyanna.

   Waterfront tops both IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes charts. UMR too.

   Karl Malden on Brando – “When we did the play “A Streetcar Named Desire,”, which ran for two years, we shared a dressing room together, when he came on stage nobody looked at anyone else. There was screaming, shouting, stamping of the feet. I’ve never seen that before. Marlon Brando changed the style of acting in America. Everybody said that he was a method actor. He worked through the method. Studied with people. I say his method was the Brando method and no one else could copy it. Many young people came after him and tried it, but none did it like Marlon did it. “

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   1. HI STEVE: Thanks for the feedback; it was worth waiting for and no, I never thought you were turning into Bruce; but I have often worried that someday Bruce might turn into The Master! Actually, talking about Hirsch, I have coincidentally just been watching a travel documentary about Paris and one of the historical characters mentioned is a long-dead ‘upper crust’ professional critic who the narrator said “studiously avoided everything that the public loved.” Other points:

      1/Virtually the only member of the Broadway Streetcar main cast who didn’t get into the movie was Jessica Tandy [who was replaced by Vivien]. Does that help us pin down the medium and context of the still?

      2/Great quote by Malden about Brando. I warned you that Karl and the Great M were a ‘mutual admiration society’! Thanks for sharing it. Life on this site would have been much quieter if Hirsch had said such things about Brando!!

      3/Actually Marlon [a virtual unknow generally at the time] confessed that during Streetcar’s Broadway run he almost had stage fright on one occasion, when as he was about to go on stage he was told that the great Clark Gable was in the audience.

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      1. Here’s what famous film critic Pauline Kael, writing in October way back in 1972, had to say about Brando on stage.

         “We all know that movie actors often merge with their roles in a way that stage actors don’t, quite, but Brando did it even on the stage. I was in New York when he played his famous small role in Truckline Cafe in 1946; arriving late at a performance, and seated in the centre of the second row, I looked up and saw what I thought was an actor having a seizure onstage.

         Embarrassed for him, I lowered my eyes, and it wasn’t until the young man who’d brought me grabbed my arm and said, “Watch this guy!” that I realized Brando was acting. I think a lot of people will make my old mistake when they see a Brando performance.” [Even the young Pauline knew that someday Joel would come!”]

         That was a good stab you had at casting a contemporary Streetcar; and as “many a true word is spoken in jest” adding in Jace as Stanley wasn’t as far a stretch as might be imagined. Indeed in a way you just beat me to the punch in the matter because I had been meaning to tell you that, having now seen Jason in both Parker and Wild Card, I thought his diction was very unclear in large sections of both movies and therefore I often had to guess what he was saying at times.

         So I had intended to remind you of Bruce’s page [still on this site – see index] which sought to identify the “new Brando”; and I was then going to ask you if we had, among the most unlikely people, at last made the definitive identification!!!

         Anyway you may have seen from my post to WH today that I am off for a week’s holiday; I only hope that you have something else nice for us before I go.

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2. In Wild Card and Parker I noticed that Jace’s diction was very poor much of the time so that I often had to guess what he was saying. Some time ago Bruce asked for suggestions as to who was the next Brando – the page is till there. Have we now found the next Brando in the most unlikely of places?

   Anyway good work regarding Karl’s video! As always you provide many posters that I’ve never seen before, especially among the foreign language ones, and which go some way to attracting high personal satisfaction ratings from me, on this occasion 98%

   The often unique vintage stills of course add to my pleasure and I liked all of the 13 STILLS in you’re the video, which are:

   1/Take the High Ground-my Richard and Karl were close real-life friends.
   2/Sir Maurice – any still involving him will get my approval
   3/Parrish
   4/from the Halls of Montezuma [“to the shores of Tripoli!”]
   5/One Eyed Jacks
   6/Cincinnati Kid
   7/Baby Doll
   8/How the West was Won
   9/The Gunfighter
   10/Streetcar – was that a behind the scenes photograph?
   11/Patton
   12/On the Waterfront
   13/Karl and Michael Douglas.

   I liked the latter pair in Streets of Frisco. That series made Karl a star albeit of the small screen.

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3. UNRELATED – JASON STATHAM’s “WILD CARD”
   GIRLFRIEND “Let’s get out of here. That drunk at the bar was trying to hit on me before your arrival.”
   BOYFRIEND “Who – that bald guy? Don’t worry about him!”

   BEST 20 POSTER SETS IN MALDEN VIDEO [FL=Foreign Language]
   1/two for Rue Morgue
   2/FL Murderer’s Row – saucy!
   3/2nd for Cat o Nine Tails
   4/Bombers B 52 [aka No Sleep Till Dawn]
   5/1st one for Ruby Gentry – Chuck on the brink to super stardom
   6/Dead Ringer
   7/FL for Cheyenne Autumn
   8/FL I Confess
   9/FL Halls of Montezuma
   10/Fear Strikes Out
   11/FL for One Eyed Jacks
   12/two for Baby Doll
   13/FL for How the West was Won
   14/two for Birdman of Manchester – wonderful!
   15/The Gunfighter – one of few Greg films that I didn’t like.
   16/FL for Streetcar – stunning
   17/two for Patton
   18/two FLs for On the Waterfront – very graphic.
   19/Gypsy
   20/The Hanging Tree “Only a bullet could get close to Doc Frail.”

   Now there were men who craved my gold,
   And meant to take my gold from me——
   So they took the gold and they set me free,
   And I walked away from the hanging tree;
   And my true love, she walked with me.

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