Barbra Streisand no favorite of Oscar-winner

Editor's note: The following is an interview conducted with actor Karl Malden, prior to his death in 2009, by author Burt Prelutsky for his new book, "Portraits of Success: Candid Conversations with 60 Over-Achievers."

Karl Malden, the veteran actor whose work included "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "On the Waterfront" as well as dozens of stage and television productions, once said he really didn't have a fond recollection of working with singer-actress Barbra Streisand.

Malden recalled his last project, a movie called "Nuts," and said, "My dear
friend Marty Ritt was the director, and I didn't like the way Barbra
Streisand dealt with him."

His comments are featured in author Burt Prelutsky's new book, "Portraits of Success: Candid Conversations with 60 Over-Achievers."

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Malden also explained how he snatched lunches from fellow students when he was trying to live and go to school without any money for food, how he won an Emmy and an Oscar, how he ended up doing westerns and what he liked best about his career.

He also described how he and his wife were married for 70 years.

"You don't make a marriage work. It works you," he cautioned.

"The first time I met Karl Malden was many years ago. We were
both the guests of Jack Kent Cooke, the man who owned the L.A. Lakers," explained Prelutsky.

"It was Cooke's practice to invite a dozen people to be his guests for dinner
and to watch the game from his box. It turns out that Mr. Malden, who had
been on his high school basketball team, loved the game. For my part, I
liked meeting the other guests and having a free meal. Some things never
change. At the time, my impression of Malden, aside from the fact that I
already knew he was a terrific actor, was that he was a nice guy and that, to
determine his age, one only had to cut his nose in half and count the rings."

Others interviewed include Joseph Farah, Pat Boone, Ambassador John Bolton, John Stossel, Carl Reiner, Pat Sajak, Ernest Borgnine, George Kennedy, Charles Krauthammer, Gary Sinise and John Zogby.

Prelutsky, a humor columnist and TV screenwriter, has written for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, "Dragnet," "M*A*S*H," "Mary Tyler Moore," "Bob Newhart" and "Dr. Quinn." He also has written or co-authored nine books.

Here is Burt Prelutsky's interview with Karl Malden:

Q. What did your dad do for a living?

A. We had moved from Chicago to Gary, Indiana, so that he could work
in the steel mills. After twelve years, he got hurt. Then he became a
milkman. He started out delivering milk with a horse and wagon.
Later, he drove a truck. I asked him which way he preferred, and he
said it was much better before because the horse knew the route better
than he did. With a truck, you had to park it, get out, drop off the
milk, go back and start the truck. But the horse would start walking
to the next house as soon as he heard you coming back with the empty
bottles. He had a very long and very tough route. He made certain that he was paid for the milk in advance because people had a habit of
running out on their milk bill.

Q. Where did he come from originally?

A. Serbia. He came here with two other boys. They were all headed to
San Francisco. None of them knew a word of English, but they had
cards tied to their jackets that said San Francisco. They were going
there because one of the boys had a brother who was working there as
a waiter. But when they got to Ellis Island, they were put in a line that
was going to Chicago. That was because it was the day of the San
Francisco earthquake and nobody was going to get to go there for
quite a while.

Q. I’ve heard that you never spoke a word of English until you went to
kindergarten. True?

A. Yes, my mother was from Bohemia. My parents spoke Serbian in the
house, and it was a Serbian community. But my mother spoke four
languages.

Q. Did you work in the steel mills, as I've heard?

A. Yes, for three years I made the wheels for trains and streetcars.

Q. How did you get into show business?

A. My dad and another man started the first Serbian singing society in
America. He always loved music. Also, it was very important to him
that Serbian culture be passed on to the children. So he would put on
plays for the youngsters to act in. He had fifty or sixty books of plays.
The Turks were always the bad guys. I still remember this one play
where a few of us brave Serbians were supposed to be asleep and one
of our leaders was supposed to wake us up so we could go fight the
Turks. But the boy came out and forgot his lines and said, "Everybody
is asleep. I better go to sleep, too." And he laid down on the stage. I
thought my father was going to have a stroke.

Q. And that's when you decided to become an actor?

A. Actually, although I did appear in "Shaw's Arms and the Man" in high
school, I was an athlete. I was a lot more interested in basketball.

Q. So when did the acting bug bite you?

A. When I was working in the steel mills, I kept asking myself if I was
going to do this for the rest of my life? Acting seemed like a possible
way out. I knew about the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, which was
just about an hour away. I went there and met the head of the place. He
told me it would cost me $900 a year to attend, and after three years in the mills I only had $300. The man said he would let me stay for
three months for the $300 and if he saw something in me at the end of
that time, he would give me a full scholarship for the three years.

Q. How did you survive with no money?

A. The first night, I slept at the train station, but then a friend, Jimmy
Russo, invited me to stay in his hotel room.

Q. What about food?

A. I used to steal lunches from the other students. I wouldn't take the
entire lunch, but if I found a bag with two sandwiches, I'd take one.
Then I'd take an apple from someone else's lunch bag.

Q. How did you happen to go to New York?

A. My dad got me a job delivering milk. It's always a matter of who you
know, not what you know. But one day I got a telegram from the
writer Robert Ardrey. He had seen me in a couple of plays in Chicago
and said he would like me to do a play of his. I met the producer. He
said I was too young for the part, but he gave me the name of a casting
agent. She also rejected me. That was two rejections in one day. But
Ardrey told me I should go to the Group Theatre. That was where I
met Harold Clurman and Elia Kazan. About a week later, I got a call
to start rehearsals for "Golden Boy."

Q. That was a nice way to start a career.

A. It was, but it's always been the work that appealed to me. Of twenty four
plays I've done, only four have been hits. But I don't care about
that. It's the same with movies. I've been in a lot of stinkers, but I
loved them all because I just love acting.

Q. How did your parents react to your pursuing an acting career?

A. When I broke the news that I was going off to the Goodman Theatre
to study, my mother just shrugged and said, "It's your money. Go if
you want to," but my dad said, "Are you crazy?"

Q. When did you get married?

A. In 1938. I knew my folks would be upset because Mona wasn't a Serbian. But I toured for twelve weeks with Paul Muni in "Key Largo,"
and when I realized we'd be playing in Chicago, I invited Mona to
come along because I wanted my folks to meet her. Naturally, she
charmed them off their feet, and all was well.

Q. Besides the plays you did together, Kazan directed you in four movies,
"Boomerang," "A Streetcar Named Desire," "On the Waterfront," and "Baby Doll."
What made him such a good director?

A. He was a very good actor. He knew how to talk to actors. He knew
what to say in a few words to spark a performance. If he was working
with someone he didn't already know, he'd go walking with him and
find out as much as he could.

Q. I believe it was Katharine Hepburn who once admitted she had been
having trouble getting a fix on the character, Rose Sayer, that she was
playing in "The African Queen," until John Huston said, "Eleanor
Roosevelt."

A. Exactly. Sometimes that's all that a director has to do.

Q. You made a lot of westerns. It's not a genre I would associate with you.

A. My agent felt the same way. But he told me I had been offered a role
in one, and I agreed to take it even though I had never ridden a horse
up until then.

Q. I know you directed "Time Limit," but then you never directed again.
Did you dislike the experience that much?

A. Actually, I did a little more directing than that. Kazan had me do some
second unit work with "On the Waterfront" when he was busy doing
something else. And when I was making "The Hanging Tree" with Gary
Cooper, the director had to go to the hospital, and they asked me to
finish up. I directed the last three weeks of the movie. Fortunately, it
was all interiors by then.

Q. Why do you say fortunately?

A. John Ford was a marvel when it came to exteriors. He would come out
an hour before everyone else, look around, and know exactly where
he wanted the camera set up. And by the time he had shot the scene,
he would know exactly how he wanted to shoot the next scene. The
reason I never directed another movie after "Time Limit" was because I
kept being offered westerns, and I was no John Ford. I just didn't
know the secret of the camera. I also didn't like telling other people
what to do.

Q. You have been nominated for Emmys and won an Emmy, and you
have been nominated for two Oscars and won once. Does winning
awards make up for not winning?

A. I really never thought about awards. It was nice to be appreciated, of
course, but when you come from the working class, you always appreciate
working.

Q. You worked several times with Marlon Brando. Was it a pleasant
experience?

A. I loved working with him. My greatest joy was when Brando was set
to direct "One-Eyed Jack" and called me. I hadn't even seen a script, but
all I said was, "When do I start?"

Q. You've acted in the theatre, the movies, and on TV. Which do you prefer?

A. The best feeling is doing a play because when the curtain goes up, you
know it's on your shoulders.

Q. Who had the greatest influence on your life?

A. Kazan, I suppose, because whenever something came along, he'd
hire me.

Q. What is your all-time favorite book?

A. I read so many, it's awfully hard to say. I just read a biography of Lew
Wasserman, who fascinated me. In general, I like biographies.

Q. What is your all-time favorite movie?

A. When I was young, I did a couple of plays with Paul Muni, and I always
liked his movies, particularly "Scarface" and "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain
Gang." I do recall one memorable occasion with Muni. We were doing
"Desperate Hours," and Maxwell Anderson was given to writing a lot of
long speeches. This invariably led to coughing in the audience. Well,
Tom Ewell and I were on stage during one of Muni's longer speeches,
and, sure enough, one guy started coughing like crazy. Muni suddenly
walked downstage, took a box of cough drops out of his jacket, and
tossed it to the guy.

Q. When people recognize you on the street, is it usually from your years
on "Streets of San Francisco" or from the American Express commercials?

A. Without question, the commercials. I did them for twenty-one years.
When people see me, they'll still say, "Don't leave home without it."

Q. Were you surprised at how controversial "Baby Doll" was when it
came out?

A. I sure was. It seems that the priest who condemned it never even saw
the movie. He only saw the big poster of Carroll Baker in the little crib
sucking her thumb, and that was enough.

Q. If you don't care about the Oscar and the Emmy, is there anything
about your career that particularly pleases you?

A. Yes, I can say that every good director I ever worked with has asked
me back. That pleases me.

Q. Is it true that you have always tried to work your actual last name into
every movie you make?

A. It's true. In "Waterfront," one of Johnny Friendly's guys was named
Sekulovich. There was a Sekulovich in Patton. It was tough in
"Birdman of Alcatraz," but it turned out that the prisoners had their
names above the cells, and I got the prop man to put Sekulovich
over a cell door.

Q. Did all this make your father proud?

A. Hard to say. After he saw "Birdman," he called me to say that no Sekulovich had ever been in prison.

Q. Do you ever think you'll act again?

A. No. I’ve been ill for quite a while. My last movie was "Nuts." My dear
friend Marty Ritt was the director, and I didn't like the way Barbra
Streisand dealt with him. These days, I look at Variety and I don't know
a single name.

Q. Besides Streisand, have there been any other performers you haven't
enjoyed working with?

A. When we made "Birdman," I found Burt Lancaster to be what I would
call a frightened actor.

Q. In what way?

A. He felt the need to make other actors look bad in order to make himself
look better. I always believed that everyone worked together in
order to service the play or the movie. But the first day I came on the
set, knowing the script, Burt came up to me and, in front of the entire
company, said he had been working on the script the night before and
handed me new pages. We didn't have time to rehearse. I barely had
time to read the changes. The next morning, he came up to me and
pulled the same shenanigan. This time I said, let's step into the trailer.
He said we didn't have time. I said we'd find the time. He finally came
with me, and we rehearsed the new pages for half an hour. He didn't
spring new pages on me again after that.

Q. You and Mona have been married for seventy years, second in Hollywood
only to your friends, Norman and Peggy Lloyd's seventy-two
years. I would be remiss if I didn't ask you how you two have made
this marriage work for such a long time.

A. You don't make a marriage work. It works you. But we have a very
close family. One daughter lives next door, the other one lives quite
nearby. We have four grandchildren.

Q. Would you describe yourself as religious?

A. I can't say I'm not religious. When I was young, I was an altar boy, and
I sang in the choir. I don't go to church every Sunday.

Q. If you could invite anyone who's ever lived to a dinner party, who
would they be?

A. I don't think that way. I've had a great life and met a lot of crazy people
and a lot of wonderful people. My mother lived to be 104, and I'd
like to keep going at least that long.

Read other interviews with Joseph Farah, Pat Boone, John Stossel, Michele Bachmann, and John Bolton.

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