The Grim Reaper is still hard at work. Just a week after Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died within hours of each other, veteran actor Karl Malden died at the age of 97. He had been a familiar face to theater-goers and TV watchers for decades, always a rock-solid presence even in minor roles. A Chicagoan of European roots (a Czech mother, a Serbian father), he moved to New York to pursue acting with the Group Theater, where he caught the eye of another upstart, director Elia Kazan. Some of Malden’s best screen work was done for Kazan, of course as Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), but also as ballsy Father Barry in On the Waterfront (1954) and very funny as the horny and frustrated Archie in Baby Doll (1956). He was also excellent as the clod who marries spitfire Jennifer Jones in Ruby Gentry (1953), the bullying dad who lived his dreams through his baseball-playing son in Fear Strikes Out (1957), and, together again with Brando, as a sadistic rancher in One-Eyed Jacks (1961). And then there’s All Fall Down (1962), How the West Was Won (1962), Cheyenne Autumn (1964), Billion Dollar Brain (1967), and, in another great performance, as General Bradley in Patton (1970). I have a soft spot for his role as a blind amateur detective in Dario Argento’s Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971), but, weirdly enough, never saw an episode of The Streets of San Francisco, a long-running ‘70s TV show that gave the actor a second (or is it third?) wind with new audiences. Malden may be gone, but he will remain a welcome presence in movies.