Award Winning Actor Karl Malden Dies

Anet Hovhanesian — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:56:22 +0000

Mladen George Sekulovich known to the world as Karl Malden, died today in his home in Los Angles, he was 97 years old. No cause of death was immediately disclosed. The man who had a career in film and television that spanned over five decades starred in films such as Birdman of Alcatraz, How The West Was Won, and the publicly acclaimed film Baby Doll, based on two short plays by Tennessee Williams.

Before getting into film, he started with stage roles on Broadway. He made his greatest mark on Hollywood in the early 1950s as part of a group of New York theater stars, along with Marlon Brando and director Elia Kazan. On Kazan’s first impression of Malden, Kazan said:

“I hadn’t met anyone that non-actorish before, non-theater-like…The minute I saw him, I knew he came from something. It turned out to be the steel mills, and it was a thing that was very important for a director, because you feel, ‘Here’s a person who can play difficult parts, rough parts, physical parts, who doesn’t get frightened easily, who’s all there when I need him.’ “

Kazan directed Malden and Brando in the film, A Streetcar Named Desire, for which Malden won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Keeping the team together, Malden starred in the movie On the Waterfront, again with Brando as a co-star and Kazan in the director chair. For this role Malden was nominated for an Oscar as the dockside priest who rallies a punched-out prizefighter (Brando) to stand against a corrupt union.

Later on in the 70′s, Malden starred in the television series, The Streets of San Francisco alongside Michael Douglas. He won an Emmy for his performance on the show. But it was his role as American Express‘ pitchman that even the man himself joked was his most well-known part. Malden famously delivered the line “Don’t leave home without it!” in a series of U.S. television commercials for American Express Travelers Cheques in the 1970s and 1980s.

Malden was a talent that will always be remembered through his work in the movie and television world. He leaves behind his wife Mona Greenberg to whom he has been married to since 1938, one of the longest unions in Hollywood history.

What are your favorite Karl Malden memories?

5 Displays of Oscar Acceptance Speech Obnoxiousness (1)

5 Displays of Oscar Acceptance Speech Obnoxiousness

Adam Tod Brown — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 20:00:30 +0000

Winning an Academy Award must be a fantastic feeling. Just imagine, after years of hard work, one day your peers finally take note and say “you were the best this year.” Either that, or they say “sucks that you died so early, we really thought we’d get a chance to make it up to you for screwing you over in 2005. But better late than never, right?” Which ever way it happens, an Academy Award is a special moment, and everyone treats it as such. Or at least in a perfect world they would. Sometimes, they pull stunts like this instead…

Sally Field Acknowledges Her Likeability Way Too Much

Trivia time! What actress famously proclaimed “you like me, you really like me!” in her 1985 Best Actress acceptance speech?

Answer: It’s a trick question, nobody said that!

Sally Field is quite possibly the most frequently misquoted woman in pop culture history. Because of her 1985 acceptance speech, she has become synonymous with the phrase “you like me, you really like me!” despite never having even said that. The actual quote is “you like me, right now, you like me!”.

So how is it possible that for over two decades now people still get it wrong? Simple, because you can only hear the ramblings of a crazy person for so long before you tune out. By that point in her unhinged acceptance speech, it was pretty clear that the moment had rendered Sally Field temporarily insane. It’s a wonder she didn’t start ranting about Zionists.

But even more unstable than the speech itself was the sentiment behind it. After mentioning how she had longed for the respect of her fellow actors, she explains that the first time “she didn’t feel it.” This implies that in 1979, either the Academy voters were forced to vote for her, or she was an unappreciative jerk.

Adrien Brody Slips Halle Berry Some Tongue

Nobody expected Adrien Brody to take home the Best Actor award for his role in The Pianist. When his name was announced, it seemed as if he was caught off guard more than anyone else in the room. For a few seconds there, it had all the makings of a truly heartfelt Oscar moment. The crowd went wild, tears were shed, it was perfect. As Brody stood at the top of the steps that led to the stage, you could sense the collective thoughts of everyone who was watching. “What an appreciative, gracious young…um, why the hell is he sprinting towards Halle Berry like that?!?”

Faster than you could say “sexual assault” Adrien Brody transformed from appreciative award winner to the guy who would be kneed in the groin under any other circumstances by grabbing award presenter Halle Berry and jamming his tongue in her mouth. A few seconds later, he amped up the sleaziness by turning to her and saying “I bet they didn’t tell you that was in the gift bag.” When the camera caught her reaction, she looked less amused and more ready to fight.

Despite the borderline criminality of it all, this is routinely ranked as one of the greatest moments in Academy Award history. Just don’t try it with that hot girl in accounting should you stumble upon an unexpected promotion someday.

Angelina Jolie Weirds Out Everyone In the Room

In the sports world, they say a tie is like kissing your sister. What they fail to mention is that if you’re the person watching the siblings kiss, it’s not like a tie at all. It’s a loss. A brutal, devastating loss that you will never wash from your memory bank no matter how hard you try.

Who but Angelina Jolie could be trusted with the lofty task of bringing the unspeakable discomfort of overboard public displays of sibling affection into the national spotlight. On the red carpet of the 2000 Academy Awards, Jolie planted the type of kiss on her brother that would leave most dudes scrambling for a change of clothes. In case anyone missed it, the process was repeated a few more times throughout the evening.

But the uneasiness didn’t end there. During her acceptance speech for the Best Supporting Actress award that night, she took to the podium and proclaimed “I’m so in love with my brother right now!” Oh A.J., you’re so edgy. Combined with the lip-locking shenanigans, that statement was enough to set the media ablaze with speculation of an “unhealthy” brother/sister relationship and cemented Jolie’s status as a full on tabloid sensation. Unwanted attention? For some people, there is no such thing.

Vanessa Redgrave Fights the Zionists!

Film is a powerful medium, so powerful that quite often, films inspire outrage amongst various religious and political groups. It’s to be expected, and most people shrug it off pretty well. And then there is Vanessa Redgrave, who in 1977 not only starred in Julia, a film about a woman murdered by Nazis, but also financed and narrated a documentary about the plight of the Palestinians. Jews and Palestinians, they get along pretty well, right? (No.)

When you straddle a line like that, someone is bound to take some offense. Sure enough, after Redgrave was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Julia, members of the Jewish Defense League protested and picketed outside the award ceremony. They also burned effigies of Redgrave, but in a conflict like this, that sort of comes with the territory, no?

Being a professional and all around level headed lady, Redgrave responded in the only reasonable way possible…by referring to the protestors as “Zionist hoodlums” in her acceptance speech and calling their behavior “an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world.” Subtle! Her remarks were met with a mixture of applause and boos, presumably from the Palestinians and Jews in the audience, respectively.

Later, screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky scolded Redgrave while presenting another award, advising that her win was “not a pivotal moment in history” and that it did “not require a proclamation.” With that double standard securely in place, the rest of the broadcast continued with no further incident.

Marlon Brando’s Boycott Stand-In

There are people out there who say actors and singers should not share their political beliefs with the public. I disagree. This is a free country, people can say whatever the hell they want. With that said, there is a time and place for everything.

Are you accepting an award for a movie about global warming? Sure, say something about the environment in your speech. Did you win an Oscar for playing some long forgotten musician who was way more influential than people gave him credit for? By all means, talk about how much things have changed but how far we still have to go. But if you’re accepting the Best Actor award for your role as a mafia boss in The Godfather, using the moment to protest violence against Native Americans just seems a bit out of place. Really, should you be protesting violence of any sort when you’re fresh off a movie role that involved beheading horses and placing the results in your enemy’s bed?

For Marlon Brando, the answer was a resounding “yes!”. But being that this is Marlon Brando we’re talking about, a simple mention in your otherwise gracious acceptance speech wasn’t going to do it. Instead, Brando boycotted the 1973 Academy Award ceremony as a way of expressing his displeasure about… the treatment of Native Americans in South Dakota? What in the hell does that have to do with Hollywood? If you said nothing, you’re correct, so an obligatory “and to protest Hollywood’s treatment of Native Americans” was thrown in for good measure.

He then donated all of the cash he made from The Godfather to charity. Ha! Just joking! Nobody hates Hollywood that much. But he did send a woman named Sacheen Littlefeather, armed with a FIFTEEN page speech, to the ceremony to accept the award in his place. Thankfully, producers talked her out of attempting to read the diatribe on the air, although she did read it afterward to reporters backstage. Historians today credit Brando’s boycott as having directly altered the course of absolutely nothing at all.

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