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.
In 1985 he won an Emmy for his work in Fatal Vision, playing the real-life retiree who sought to prove his son-in-law (Gary Cole) had murdered his daughter and grandchildren. Malden is survived by his wife Mona Greenberg -- the two celebrated their 70th anniversary last year, which tied Bob and Dolores Hope's record as Hollywood's longest-married couple -- as well as his two daughters, Mila and Carla, and multiple grandchildren and great grandchildren.
R.I.P. Karl.