LATImes: In a movie career that flourished in the 1950s and '60s, Malden played a variety of roles in more than 50 films, including the sympathetic priest in "On the Waterfront," the resentful husband in "Baby Doll," the warden in "Birdman of Alcatraz," the pioneer patriarch in "How the West Was Won," Madame Rose's suitor in "Gypsy," the card dealerin "The Cincinnati Kid" and Gen. Omar Bradley in "Patton."

The variety of the roles established Malden, former Times film critic Charles Champlin once wrote, "as an Everyman, but one whose range moved easily up and down the levels of society and the IQ scale, from heroes to heavies and ordinary, decent guys just trying to get along."

Eva Marie Saint, who worked with him in 1954's "On the Waterfront" and became a good friend, called Malden "a consummate actor."

He "never changed, he always became the character. If you watch his work, he never falls, there's never a false move," she told The Times on Wednesday.

Malden was a longtime holdout on television roles until he agreed to play Lt. Mike Stone on the ABC police drama “The Streets of San Francisco.” It ran from 1972 to 1977 and earned him four consecutive Emmy nominations.

He won his sole Emmy for portraying a man who begins to suspect that his daughter was murdered by her husband in the fact-based 1984 miniseries "Fatal Vision." ...

He was born Mladen Sekulovich in Chicago on March 22, 1912, the son of an immigrant mother from the nation that later became Czechoslovakia and a Serbian father, who was a milkman.

Malden spoke little English until his family moved from their Serbian enclave in Chicago to the steel-mill town of Gary, Ind., when he was 5.
 

Here is a clip from One Eyed Jacks (thanks to Alan).