British actress Greer Garsort stands arm in arm between Oscar winners Humphrey Bogart and Malden backstage at the Academy Awards at the RKO Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles on March 20,1952. Malden said winning the award made him feel as if he belonged in the acting pro fes- sion. At least, he noted, I finally knew I'd made the right choices.”
Inherently shy Oscar. Initially, he had not planned to in real life and attend the Academy Awards. Malden’s being the peren home and professional base was still New nial loner born of York (with Broadway then being his bread childhood poverty and butter); he was in Hollywood by mere and an immigrant coincidence at the time of the Oscar cer status (growing up emony (shooting Operation Secret, 1952). in Serbian neigh But a Warner’s executive encouraged him borhoods), Malden to borrow a tuxedo from wardrobe and the crusading priest of On the Waterfront, also excelled at vulnerable antiheroic roles, attend. Given that the pretelevision Oscars or his fatherly General Omar Bradley in from Streetcars, Mitch to the cuckolded were neither the event of today, nor feeling Franklin Schaffner’s Patton (1970), which crooked dealer in Norman Jewison’s The he had a chance against fellow nominees is such a wonderful and necessary balance Cincinnati K id (1965, with McQueen). such as Peter Ustinov for Quo Vadis and to the explosive personality o f George C. However, perhaps his most multifaceted Gig Young for Come F ill the Cup (both Scott’s Oscar-winning title character. But figure was the agent/hustler in Mervyn 1951), Malden at least felt little pressure the villainy inherent to Malden’s angry LeRoy’s Gypsy (1962, with Natalie Wood), parent in Fear foreshadowed several later which allowed him to play everything threatening characters. These parts includ from musical comedy to romantic victim. ed the sadistic sheriff in Marlon Brando’s The experience was also a plug for the stu One-Eyed Jacks (1961), the warden in dio system. Malden told Wood biographer Birdman o f Alcatraz (1962, starring an Suzanne Finstad, “[Gypsy] was challenging Oscar-winning Burt Lancaster), the Nazi- for both o f us. I’m not a singer and dancer, like cavalry officer in John Ford’s Cheyenne she wasn’t a singer and a dancer, and we Autumn (1964), and the Western killer in both went at it. She wanted to do it badly, Henry Hathaway’s Nevada Smith (1966, and so did I. It was something we never opposite Steve McQueen). Consequently, would have gotten a test for if we hadn’t one could argue that Malden’s brilliance as been under contract with Warners.” a character actor was tied to parts pep The most amusingly poignant tale of pered with moral weight or entirely devoid Malden’s real-world everyman nature is, o f morality. ironically, tied to the night he won an
CONSEQUENTLY, ONE COULD ARGUE As Eh Wallach looks on from the top o f the THAT MALDEN’S BRILLIANCE AS A stairs, Malden stares down at his teenage bride Carroll Baker in the 1956 movie Baby Doll, CHARACTER ACTOR WAS TIED TO PARTS directed by Elia Kazan. One Catholic official PEPPERED WITH MORAL WEIGHT OR lambasted the film as “a contemptuous defiance o f the natural law,” and forbade members o f ENTIRELY DEVOID OF MORALITY. the faith from seeing it “under pain o f sin.”
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