TCM Schedule for Friday, July 10 -- TCM Memorial Tribute -- Karl Malden

After finishing up two more great films of 1939, we get some movies about blondes, including Mae Clarke, Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, and Shirley Temple, and an evening of the best performances of the late Karl Malden. Enjoy!


5:00am -- Each Dawn I Die (1939)
A crusading reporter becomes a hardened convict when he's framed.
Cast: James Cagney, George Raft, Jane Bryan, George Bancroft
Dir: William Keighley
BW-92 mins, TV-PG

Filmed in part at Sing Sing Prison, Ossining, New York.


6:45am -- The Roaring Twenties (1939)
Three WWI Army buddies get mixed up with the mob in peacetime.
Cast: James Cagney, Priscilla Lane, Humphrey Bogart, Gladys George
Dir: Raoul Walsh
BW-107 mins, TV-G

The character of Panama Smith (Gladys George) was partially based on actress and nightclub hostess Texas Guinan. Whoopie Goldberg's character Guinan, from Star Trek: The Next Generation, was also based on (and named after) the notorious nightclub/speakeasy hostess.


8:45am -- 1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year (2009)
This documentary focuses on 1939, considered to be Hollywood's greatest year, with film clips and insight into what made the year so special.
Narrator: Kenneth Branaugh
Dir: Constantine Nasr
BW-68 mins, TV-G

If you're not really familiar with the films of 1939, you must see this documentary. And if you already know and love the films of the greatest year, this show will only leave you wanting more!


10:00am -- The Good Bad Girl (1931)
A gangster's moll tries to go straight to marry an honest man.
Cast: Mae Clarke, James Hall, Marie Prevost, Robert Ellis
Dir: R. William Neill
BW-71 mins

Mae Clarke is best remembered as the recipient of James Cagney's classic grapefruit-in-the-face in The Public Enemy (1931), and as Dr. Frankenstein's wife Elizabeth in James Whale's Frankenstein (1931).


11:15am -- Attorney For The Defense (1932)
A ruthless attorney tries to make amends for convicting an innocent man.
Cast: Edmund Lowe, Evelyn Brent, Constance Cummings, Donald Dilloway
Dir: Irving Cummings
BW-72 mins, TV-PG

Written by Jo Swerling, author of The Pride Of The Yankees (1942), It's A Wonderful Life (1946), and Guys And Dolls (1955).


12:30pm -- Final Edition (1932)
A newswoman comes on to a mobster to solve the police commissioner's murder.
Cast: Pat O'Brien, Mae Clarke, Mary Doran, Bradley Page
Dir: Howard Higgin
BW-66 mins, TV-PG

Based on a story by Roy Chanslor, who also wrote the novel The Ballad Of Cat Ballou.


1:45pm -- Three Wise Girls (1932)
Three models try to snag husband's but the ones they find are already married.
Cast: Jean Harlow, Mae Clarke, Walter Byron, Marie Prevost
Dir: William Beaudine
BW-69 mins, TV-G

Mae Clarke was the model for Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953).


3:00pm -- Virtue (1932)
A taxi driver falls for a sassy New York con girl.
Cast: Carole Lombard, Pat O'Brien, Ward Bond, Shirley Grey
Dir: Edward Buzzell
BW-68 mins, TV-PG

Carole Lombard was posthumously awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the first woman killed in the line of duty in WWII. Roosevelt greatly admired her work for the war effort, and ironically she was returning from an engagement selling War Bonds when her plane crashed. My father was stationed near Las Vegas at the time (for training in the Army Air Corps), and was part of the troops searching for her downed plane.


4:15pm -- Miss Annie Rooney (1942)
A young girl has to overcome social prejudice when she falls for a wealthy young man.
Cast: Shirley Temple, William Gargan, Guy Kibbee, Dickie Moore
Dir: Edwin L. Marin
BW-86 mins, TV-G

Dickie Moore would recall that the much-publicized scene in Miss Annie Rooney (1942) in which he kisses Temple was extremely embarrassing for him, inasmuch as it was the first time he had ever kissed any girl; conversely, in her autobiography, Temple cheekily pointed out that it most certainly wasn't her first time, and that she breezed through the scene with her customary professional aplomb.


5:42pm -- Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Little Miss Pinkerton (1943)
BW-11 mins

This was one of eight MGM-produced Our Gang shorts to lose money during its initial release. It lost approximately $900 after print and advertising expenses were factored into the budget.


6:00pm -- The Young In Heart (1938)
A family of con artists saves the life of a wealthy old woman and plots to fleece her.
Cast: Minnie Dupree, Paulette Goddard, Richard Carlson, Henry Stephenson
Dir: Richard Wallace
BW-91 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography -- Leon Shamroy, Best Music, Original Score -- Franz Waxman, and Best Music, Scoring -- Franz Waxman

1938 Phantom Corsair: This very unusual six-passenger coupe was designed by Rust Heinz, a member of the H. J. Heinz (57 Varieties) family. The design was a joint effort of Heinz and Maurice Schwarts of the custom body firm Bohman & Schwartz in Pasadena, California. Heinz' creation, costing approximately $24,000 in 1938. Heinz planned to put the Phantom Corsair into limited production at an estimated selling price of $12,500. His death, however, shortly after the car was completed, ended those plans.


7:32pm -- Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Knight Is Young (1938)
June, refusing to leave her apartment for fear of being evicted, notices Hal painting a billboard outside her window. Hal tries to woo her and soon ends up helping her as they share their love of muisic and dancing.
Cast: June Allyson, Hal LeRoy, Billy Reed, Earlyne Schools
Dir: Roy Mack
BW-20 mins

I've always been a June Allyson fan, but I'm not sure that I can forgive her -- along with her husband Dick Powell, she persuaded future President of the United States Ronald Reagan to switch from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in 1962.


What's On Tonight: TCM MEMORIAL TRIBUTE: KARL MALDEN


8:00pm -- On The Waterfront (1954)
A young stevedore takes on the mobster who rules the docks.
Cast: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger
Dir: Elia Kazan
BW-108 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Marlon Brando, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Eva Marie Saint, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Richard Day, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Boris Kaufman, Best Director -- Elia Kazan, Best Film Editing -- Gene Milford, Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Budd Schulberg, and Best Picture

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Lee J. Cobb, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Karl Malden, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Rod Steiger, and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Leonard Bernstein

At the hearing, Slim (Fred Gwynne) gives his name as "Mladen Sekulovich", which is co-star Karl Malden's real name. Malden always deeply regretted having had to change his real, very ethnic name for the sake of his movie career, and attempted to make amends over the years by making sure his real name always showed up in his movies, one way or another.


10:00pm -- A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
A fading southern belle tries to build a new life with her sister in New Orleans.
Cast: Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden
Dir: Elia Kazan
BW-125 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Karl Malden, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Vivien Leigh (Vivien Leigh was not present at the awards ceremony. Greer Garson accepted on her behalf.), Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Kim Hunter (Kim Hunter was not present at the awards ceremony. Bette Davis accepted on her behalf.), and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Richard Day and George James Hopkins

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Marlon Brando, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Harry Stradling Sr., Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- Lucinda Ballard, Best Director -- Elia Kazan, Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Alex North, Best Sound, Recording -- Nathan Levinson(Warner Bros.), Best Writing, Screenplay -- Tennessee Williams, and Best Picture

Mickey Kuhn plays the young sailor who helps Vivien Leigh onto the streetcar at the beginning of this film. He had previously appeared with her in Gone with the Wind (1939) as Beau Wilkes (the child of Olivia de Havilland's character Melanie) toward the end of that film when the character was age 5. When Mickey Kuhn mentioned this to someone else on the set of "A Streetcar Named Desire", word got back to her, and Miss Leigh called him into her dressing room for a half-hour chat. In an interview in his seventies, Kuhn stated that Leigh was extremely kind to him and "one of the loveliest ladies he had ever met."


12:15am -- Birdman Of Alcatraz (1962)
True story of Robert Stroud, the prison lifer who became an expert on birds.
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Karl Malden, Thelma Ritter, Betty Field
Dir: John Frankenheimer
BW-149 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Burt Lancaster, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Telly Savalas, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Thelma Ritter, and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Burnett Guffey

Robert Stroud really should be known as the "Birdman of Leavenworth," since it was there that he kept his birds and did his research. He was not actually allowed any birds during his time at Alcatraz.


2:45am -- Beyond The Fog (1972)
A secluded island lighthouse proves to be a magnet for evil.
Cast: Bryant Haliday, Jill Haworth, Mark Edwards, Jack Watson
Dir: Jim O'Connolly
C-90 mins, TV-MA

Star Jill Haworth was reluctant to appear in the film. In an interview with the actress she stated, "I remember in Horror of Snape Island (Tower of Evil) my character stumbles upon five dead bodies and I had to say with a straight face, 'Oh the police aren't going to like this' and the crew just kept laughing every time I said it."


4:45am -- Short Film: Booked For Safekeeping (1960)
In this short documentary, police officers are trained in the assistance and management of mentally ill and confused persons.
Dir: George Stoney
BW-32 mins, TV-14

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health Education and Welfare, the Louisiana Association for Mental Health, and the National Institute of Mental Health.


5:30am -- Short Film: The Bottle and the Throttle (1965)
A teenager runs down a mother and child after having one too many.
Narrator: Timothy Farrell
C-10 mins, TV-PG

Featured in the video Driver's Ed Scare Films Vol. 3 (2000).

A forceful and dynamic star of stage, film and television for over six decades, Karl Malden was an Academy Award-winning actor who found fame in the 1950s and 1960s in a wide variety of character roles and the occasional lead. An exceptionally versatile performer, he could play all points on the moral compass with unwavering verisimilitude. Audiences believed him as both the lovelorn Mitch in "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) and the forthright Father Barry in "On the Waterfront" (1954) and as the lustful husband of a teenage bride in "Baby Doll" (1956) or as the tongue-in-cheek super-villain Julian Wells in "Murderers' Row" (1966). He shifted his attention to television in the 1970s and scored a sizable hit with "The Streets of San Francisco" (ABC, 1972-77) while lending his credibility to countless commercials for American Express. Well-respected by his peers in the industry, he also served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1989 to 1993.

Born Mladen Sekulovich in Gary, IN on March 22, 1913, he was the son of Serbian and Czech parents and allegedly did not speak English until he entered kindergarten. Malden's father was an actor in his native Serbia, so it was little surprise his son developed an interest in acting as a boy through plays at their church and in his high school's drama department. A popular student, he was also athletically inclined and a top basketball player, but apparently a frequent target for wayward elbows; Malden earned his trademark nose by breaking it twice during games.

After graduating from the Emerson School for Visual and Performing Arts, Malden failed to land a basketball scholarship to Arkansas, so instead worked with his father in the infamous Gary steel mills from 1931 through 1934. He departed Indiana for the Goodman Theatre Dramatic School in 1934 and graduated in 1937 at the height of the Great Depression. While there, he adopted his stage name - Karl was taken from an uncle - and met Mona Graham, whom he would marry in 1938. Their marriage was the third longest lasting in Hollywood history, behind only actor Norman Lloyd and wife Peggy and legendary comic Bob Hope and wife Dolores.

Malden headed East for New York in 1937 and landed his first role on Broadway that year in Clifford Odets' "Golden Boy," which introduced him to the Group Theatre and director Elia Kazan, with whom he would collaborate on several memorable projects. More stage work soon followed, as did his first screen role in Garson Kanin's "They Knew What They Wanted" (1940), starring Carole Lombard. Malden's career was put on hold for military service in the Army Air Force during World War II, during which he appeared in the play and film "Winged Victory" (1944). He resumed his career in 1945 and earned excellent notices for Kazan-directed productions of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons" (1947) and Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951).

His film career took off in 1951 with his reprisal of Mitch, the sad-eyed suitor of Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) opposite Marlon Brando in Kazan's film version of "A Streetcar Named Desire." His vulnerable portrayal won him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and assured him a place as one of Hollywood's most dependable character actors. His versatility allowed him to tackle a wide variety of roles - from upstanding authority figures like the dogged police inspector in Alfred Hitchcock's "I Confess" (1953) and tough "waterfront priest" Father Barry (which earned him an Oscar nod) in Kazan's "On the Waterfront" (1954), to baseball star Jimmy Piersall's demanding dad in the biopic "Fear Strikes Out" (1957) and the over-possessive husband of a sexed-up teen bride in Kazan's controversial "Baby Doll" (1954). Malden also made his directorial debut through friend Richard Widmark, who starred in and produced "Time Limit" (1957), a wartime drama about an Army major (Richard Basehart) accused of collaborating with the North Koreans. He later completed the filming of the Western drama "The Hanging Tree" (1959) for director Delmer Daves.

Malden remained busy throughout the 1960s in a array of diverse roles, including the strict warden who butts heads with convict Burt Lancaster in "The Birdman of Alcatraz" (1962) and a stern settler opposed to James Stewart romancing his daughter (Malden's "Baby Doll" co-star Carroll Baker) in the epic Western, "How The West Was Won" (1962). More nuanced characters included a former outlaw-turned-sheriff in Marlon Brando's directorial debut "One Eyed Jacks" (1961), Steve McQueen's morally uncertain pal in "The Cincinnati Kid" (1966), and as Rosalind Russell's agent and romantic partner in "Gypsy" (1962), which earned him a Golden Globe nomination. There were also a few offbeat turns during the decade, most notably in the Dean Martin spy spoof "Murderers' Row," which cast him as Matt Helm's metal-nosed nemesis, and as a Southern millionaire with designs on stewardess Lois Nettleton in "Come Fly with Me" (1963).

Malden offered strong support as WWII General Omar Bradley to George C. Scott's "Patton" (1970), and balanced his time in the early years of the decade between American projects like Blake Edwards' ill-fated "Wild Rovers" (1971) and Italian films for directors like Dario Argento in "Cat O'Nine Tails" (1971), which cast him as a blind man attempting to uncover a killer's identity. Though he had been a frequent guest star on television during the 1950s, he had not committed to a series until 1972, when he was cast as veteran detective Mike Stone in the Quinn Martin-produced "The Streets of San Francisco." Malden was nominated for four Emmys and a Golden Globe for his performance. The show itself earned critical and viewer acclaim for its location shooting, automobile chases, gritty plots, and the father-son relationship between Malden and Michael Douglas as his younger partner. Their chemistry together was so strong that the show's ratings plummeted after Douglas departed, following the success of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975), which he had produced. However, Douglas never forgot the man who mentored him, often paying tribute to him whenever given the chance. Malden would go on to borrow Detective Stone's trench coat and fedora for a series of terse TV spots for American Express, uttering the unforgettable catchphrase, "Don't leave home without it." The line quickly entered the national consciousness and became fodder for all manner of parodies, most notably by Johnny Carson on "The Tonight Show" (NBC, 1962- ). Malden would remain as the company's television spokesman for over 20 years.

Malden returned briefly to features for two dreadful disaster films - "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" (1979) and "Meteor" (1979), which cast him as a NASA chief battling a colossal runaway asteroid - before settling into a string of well-received television movies. He gave series work another shot with "Skag" (NBC, 1980), a short-lived drama based on the Emmy-nominated TV movie of the same name about a Polish steel worker (Malden) who attempts to hold his family together after suffering a stroke. Other excellent made-for-TV features included "Miracle On Ice" (1981), which cast Malden as Herb Brooks, coach of the 1980 American Olympic hockey team who ultimately beat the Russian team against all odds; "Fatal Vision" (1984), with Malden in an Emmy-winning turn as Freddy Kassab, who attempts to prove that his daughter was murdered by her husband, Green Beret doctor Jeffrey McDonald; and "The Hijacking of the Achille Lauro" (1987), for which Malden played the ill-fated Leon Klinghoffer, who was murdered by terrorists aboard an ocean liner and shoved overboard. There were also a few film roles, including an unsympathetic turn as Barbra Streisand's abusive father in "Nuts" (1987).

Malden's output slowed considerably in the 1990s. He appeared as actress Patty Duke's doctor in the biopic "Call Me Anna" (1990) and reprised Mike Stone for the inevitable TV movie revival "Back to the Streets of San Francisco" (1992). The following year, he began his five-year term as the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and penned his autobiography, Where Do I Start? in 1997. Two years later, he found himself at the center of a Hollywood controversy when he championed a special Oscar for director Elia Kazan. The award was viewed as undeserved by many in the motion picture industry because of Kazan's role in naming alleged communists working in Hollywood before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1950s. Malden remained unmoved, citing Kazan's artistic contributions to the community, and arranged for Robert De Niro to present the award after Marlon Brando refused to appear at the ceremony in protest.

Malden's last on-screen performance came in a 2000 episode of "The West Wing" (NBC, 1999-2006). He spent much of the new millennium receiving awards and accolades from a variety of organizations, including a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild in 2004. Malden also served as a member of the United States Postal Service's Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee, which reviewed recommendations for postage stamps. For his contributions in this area, a postal station in Los Angeles was named after him in 2005.