Oscar-winner Karl Malden dies at 97

SAN FRANCISCO — Karl Malden, the Academy Award-winning actor who played Lt. Mike Stone in the 1970s TV series "The Streets of San Francisco," died Wednesday at his Los Angeles home. He was 97.

Malden's death at his Brentwood home, surrounded by his family, was announced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The actor had served as the group's president from 1989-92.

Malden's acting career spanned more than six decades during which he won an Oscar as Blanche DuBois' milquetoast suitor in Elia Kazan's "A Streetcar Named Desire." But he was perhaps even better known for his role as widowed Lt. Mike Stone of the San Francisco Police Department in the 1970s TV series "The Streets of San Francisco." The show, which debuted as a TV film of the same title in September 1972, ran for five seasons, with Michael Douglas playing Inspector Steve Keller through most of the show's run.

Unlike many current TV shows supposedly set in San Francisco, such as "Monk," the series was actually filmed on location and it could be said that city itself was the show's third co-star. The series opened every week with quick-cut aerial shots of San Francisco, swooping over the Civic Center, through Chinatown, over the Wharf, with the immediately identifiable percussive theme playing in the background.

The ABC series was based on the book "Poor, Poor Ophelia," by Carolyn Weston and was a classic police procedural: The older, more experienced cop teaches his brash, younger partner the value of experience but grudgingly finds himself conceding that the kid has pretty good instincts as well.

To millions of TV fans, Douglas, who left the show after the second episode of the final season and was replaced by Richard Hatch, was always "buddy-boy," Stone's half-mocking but affectionate name for his younger partner. From the beginning, Malden's Mike Stone treated Douglas' Keller as a surrogate son, poking gentle fun at his bachelor-on-the-prowl lifestyle.

Virtually the entire city was the back lot for "Streets of San Francisco," but careful viewers will find a particular emphasis on Potrero Hill. In fact, one of the early episodes called "The House on Hyde Street," featuring veteran actor Lew Ayres as a reclusive old man, wasn't filmed anywhere near Hyde Street but on the hill. The white wood-frame house itself still stands at the corner of Pennsylvania and 18th streets, looking almost exactly as it did when it was supposedly on Hyde Street.