Malden was instrumental in pushing the Motion Picture Academy to give a lifetime achievement award to writer-director Elia Kazan, who directed Malden in perhaps his best and most memorable role, that of Father Berry in “On the Waterfront.”

Kazan had been an outcast in Hollywood for several decades before the 1999 award, because of his opposition to communism. Malden’s support of him carried a great risk of ostracism by Hollywood’s political correctness police.

A measure of Malden’s integrity is that he was married to the same woman for seventy years and was surrounded by family members when he died.

By no means handsome or dashing, Malden was seen by critics as an Everyman type, but he did not settle for allowing his characters to be ordinary or dull. Having grown up in no privileged environment, he knew just how much strength it often took for ordinary people just to survive. Thus he invested his characters with real strength, regardless of whether the person was basically good or not. He succeeded purely on the strength of his acting ability and the availability of roles playing real adult human beings in real, dramatic stories.

Malden clearly made an effort to understand why his characters did what they did, and as a result his performances emphasize the characters’ freedom of moral choice and consequent moral responsibility for their actions. Thus his performances worked against the prevailing cultural notion that our actions are determined by our circumstances.

Malden had numerous memorable film roles, including Gen. Omar Bradley in “Patton,” the complex sheriff and former bank robber Dad Longworth in “One-Eyed Jacks,” the cuckolded husband in “Baby Doll,” the domineering father in “Fear Strikes Out” (an awful film), and of course as Lt. Mike Stone in the 1970s TV series “The Streets of San Francisco.”

Knowing full well what it would mean, it was Karl Malden, a former Academy President, who proposed and publicly pushed for Kazan to receive this long overdue tribute. And that, along with a 70-year marriage, says an awful lot about the man.

The actor was just as impressive. The simple way to describe him would be as a beefy everyman, but that too easily dismisses a natural and very real screen presence that made him one of the most recognizable faces in the country. Malden worked with some of the most powerful actors of the last fifty years, Brando, McQueen, George C. Scott, Burt Lancaster, and yet he never got lost in the scene. He knew how to watch another actor, he knew how to listen and this kept our eye on him as we waited for what he’d do next.

His voice was also distinctive; one second deep and rich with authority, but on a dime unspeakably cruel towards a Blanche DuBois or hilariously needy calling after Baby Doll. Malden had the range of a character actor but could carry a film as well as any matinee idol, and in a career that lasted six decades, inevitably there were duds, but you always felt in good hands when he arrived onscreen.

Malden’s performance as the domineering, perfectionist father of real-life baseball player Jimmy Piersall in “Fear Strikes Out” (1957) is the one that most stands out in my mind. John Piersall may be something of a monster, but Malden never lets us forget he’s also a man who lacks self-awareness. Even at his most cruel, Malden allows us to pity a father who might not wake up to the effects of his behavior until it’s a too late, and when this moment does arrive, thanks to the back-filling provided by a measured, nuanced performance, it is devastating and unforgettable.

A WWII veteran, Oscar and Emmy winner, Karl Malden died yesterday at home. He was 97.