Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 25, 1992 TAG: 9201250407
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAY SHARBUTT ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
OLD PRO BACK ON THE STREET
IT'S a little odd, Karl Malden was saying the other day. You work in theater and film, do a few good shows, and still, people stomp up and say, "Excuse me, are you from Kalamazoo, Michigan?"This, despite a career that includes roles in Broadway's "All My Sons," "Golden Boy" and "A Streetcar Named Desire," work with Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront" and "One-Eyed Jacks," and a supporting-actor Oscar for the movie version of "Desire."
But "nobody really knew me," Malden said.
Then he did one TV series and one commercial.
Boom! Fame time.
Of course, it helps that the TV series was ABC's "Streets of San Francisco" and that the commercial was for American Express travelers' checks.
Malden regrets neither, he says, even though he good-naturedly sighs that people still approach him and say "Don't leave home without it." He's in his 19th year of doing those commercials.
This week, with the networks seeking Nielsen gold by going back to the future, he again will pound the streets of San Francisco as Mike Stone, having finally been promoted from detective lieutenant to captain.
"But I don't run as much as I used to, I'll tell you that," the 77-year-old actor said, laughing gently at the effects of 14 years away from crime-fighting in Frisco. "And I sure don't jump fences like I used to."
Malden's new effort, "Back to the Streets of San Francisco," will air Monday - but on NBC, not ABC (at 9 p.m. on WSLS-Channel 10 in the Roanoke viewing area).
It's not a pilot for a revival of the series. Rather, Malden said, it's a TV movie that may lead to a few such "Streets" each season in the manner of those Raymond Burr "Perry Mason" specials.
Malden's old series ran on ABC from 1972 to 1977. Until 1976, his sidekick in it was a young actor, Michael Douglas, who later progressed to film stardom in "Romancing the Stone," "Wall Street" and "Fatal Attraction."
He's not back with Malden in the "Streets" update.
"They didn't ask him," Malden said of the show's producers. "They came to me and asked if I would ask Michael Douglas. And I said no. I didn't want to embarrass him, to have to say no.
"He's a big star now. I felt it would be embarrassing him to say, `Come on, Mike, do it with me,' one of those do-me-a-favor things. And I don't want to do that."
Malden, known as both a class act and classy actor, has played a wide range of roles, from his soft-spoken Gen. Omar Bradley in "Patton" to the tough steelworker of NBC's acclaimed, short-lived "Skag."
All told, he has made more than 75 films and, in addition to his Oscar, has an Emmy for his work as the grieving father in NBC's "Fatal Vision."
"I never dreamed I'd get this far," he said. "I have been blessed, lucky. I just thought I'd be a good working actor."
Malden was born in Chicago, as Mladen Sekulovich, the son of Yugoslavian immigrants. His father was an actor in Serbia before moving to the United States, where he first worked in steel mills, then delivered milk in Gary, Ind.
Malden tries to keep the family name in show business by getting it slipped into a film or TV movie he's doing. The method is akin to the way caricaturist Al Hirschfeld works the name of his daughter, Nina, into his drawings of famous theater and film folk.
Malden isn't sure how many times he's pulled it off. It began in 1954 in "On the Waterfront," where he played a priest. "At the end of the film, you hear `Sekulovich,' " he said. "It's one of the hoodlums who has to go to trial."
In the new "Streets," he and the actress playing his daughter are leaving a hotel when business calls. He turns to the doorman and says, "Sekulovich, get her a cab."
Malden still has a cousin in Yugoslavia, but he hasn't heard from her since fighting in that country erupted after Croatia and its neighbor, Slovenia, declared their independence June 25.
Malden says he doesn't know what the fighting is about, and flatly adds: "I don't care what they're fighting about.
"What bothers me is that since the second World War, there has been an awful lot of intermarriages of Croatians and Serbs," he said. "The poor children they've had. What is going to happen to them? That's what bothers me more than anything."