I know you’ve heard it all. It’s the only thing on TV this week and it will probably continue to be the lead story for another 50 weeks. I’ve been meaning to put down my thoughts on this event since I first heard the news of Malden’s death on Monday afternoon. To read my take, check below the fold.
I watched The Streets of San Francisco on the day prior to my otherwise crappy 13th birthday. It was a on TV opposite a rerun of Hazel. Michael Douglas seemed to not make any sense to me partnered with Malden but the longer I watched the more clear it became.
Douglas was the overeager excitable young rookie and Malden was the grizzled veteran. Brilliant!
I watched that show for years, provided it was not on at the same time as Match Game or Hogan’s Heros. There were other TV shows, but that one was accorded special privileges in my life if slightly better shows were not on at the same time.
When A Streetcar Named Desire came out on TV a few years later and Malden played Mitch, Stanley Kowalski’s best friend who tries to start a romance with Blanche DuBois. If that movie was an after school special, the moral would be: “Don’t be a sucker like Karl Malden. Be a creep like Marlon Brando because then you can have sex with your wife and her sister.” Anyhow, I ate a whole bag of hard pretzels watching that one. Then in 1990 On the Waterfront came on TV but Murphy Brown was on so I still am meaning to watch that at some point.
As the years have gone by, Karl Malden has been a bit of a secret pleasure. It has been hard to be a Karl Malden fan, as it was hard to be an Elvis fan after he became a parody of himself. And like J.D. Salinger, it is hard to be a fan of a recluse for very long. Not as hard being a Michael Jackson fan though. Those people are freaks.
But the past few days have been great. Yes, we lost Karl, but through that, it has become apparent that he never lost his fan. The people that are hating on him now, hated on him in 1984.
On Thursday night, as Liberalgeek drove to Drinking Liberally, he blasted his Michael Jackson playlist on the iPod. People laughed at him. That was sad. They would laugh at me too if I was blasting The Streets of San Francisco. Except I don’t have a TV in my car, so suck it Newark losers!
Good Bye, Karl.