Fedora and overcoat-wearing fans around the globe poured into streets this past Wednesday at word of the unexpected death of Karl Malden, the acting great who appeared in such films as “On the Waterfront,” “One Eyed Jacks,” and “Birdman of Alcatraz,” but was perhaps best known as Lt. Mike Stone on TV’s “The Streets of San Francisco” and as a pitchman for American Express travelers checks.

Malden was 97 at the time of his death, and had not appeared in a motion picture for several years. But his eccentric behavior and opulent lifestyle at Riverside Homes Retirement Village in Boca Raton, FL - he was known to dine later than the early bird special - regularly kept him in the news.

Born in Gary, Indiana in 1912, Malden’s life changed considerably with his sudden stardom. He appeared in his first film, “They Knew What They Wanted,” in 1940, at the tender age of 28. Many pop culture observers feel that the lifelong glare of the spotlight was responsible for his increasing isolation and impenetrable conduct. Along with a penchant for collecting such animals as dogs, cats and hamsters, Malden, who fathered two daughters via sexual intercourse with a woman, had an apparently insatiable need to remodel his body through surgery.

Family members recall that Malden was admitted to an unknown hospital in 1921 for a procedure known as a “tonsillectomy,” after which he claimed it was easier to swallow. Shortly thereafter, his lifelong odyssey of surgeries began. The full extent of Malden’s obsession is not yet known, but official records reveal he entered New York City’s Roosevelt Hospital in 1962 to have his gall bladder removed, then had a root canal done by a Syracuse dentist in 1973. In recent years, he also had a cyst removed from a shoulder blade, and secured a Miami-based surgeon who agreed to lance a boil on his right buttock.