Karl Malden Dies At 97 On Eve Of Massive Comeback Tour

We honestly don't know how much more of this we can take -- everyone stop dying until after the long weekend. Academy Award winner Karl Malden has passed away today in his Los Angeles home at the age of 97. A member of Lee Strasberg's Group Theater in the '30s, the bulb-nosed, Czech/Serbian actor forged a professional friendship with Elia Kazan there, who would later cast him in 1951's A Streetcar Named Desire (for which he won his Best Supporting Actor Oscar playing Stanley Kowalski's best friend, Mitch) and 1954's On the Waterfront (also nominated, but didn't win). In the '70s, he'd star with Michael Douglas in The Streets of San Francisco (best title sequence ever), and became the foreboding face of your worst European-vacation-theft nightmares as the American Express Travelers Cheques pitchman.