You can see Malden, center, with Lee J. Cobb, and Eva Marie Saint in On The Waterfront on the Turner Classic Movies cable channel Friday at 8 p.m.

A younger generation who knew Karl Malden for his co-starring role on the TV series The Streets of San Francisco, and later for a series of credit card commercials, may be surprised to learn that in the 1950s and ’60s he was one of Hollywood’s best and most reliable second-tier actors. Malden, who died last week at age 97, won the best supporting actor Academy Award for 1951’s A Streetcar Named Desire.

To set the record straight, Malden’s movie career will be celebrated Friday on the Turner Classic Movies cable network with three of his best screen performances.

It begins at 8 p.m. with 1952’s On the Waterfront, for which Malden received an Oscar nomination for his performance as a priest who helps prize-fighter wannabe Marlon Brando come to terms with a corrupt boss. The film co-stars Eva Marie Saint, Rod Steiger and Lee J. Cobb in a tale of corruption among longshoremen’s union officials on the New York waterfront.

At 10 p.m. it will be A Streetcar Named Desire, the Oscar-winning role for which Malden reprised his Broadway performance as the “gentleman caller” in director Elia Kazan’s adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play.

At 12:15 p.m. it will be the 1962 film The Birdman of Alcatraz, starring Burt Lancaster as convicted murder Robert Stroud, who was sentenced to life imprisonment on the island penitentiary where, from his prison cell, he went on to become a world-renowned bird expert. Thelma Ritter, Betty Field, Neville Brand and Telly Savalas co-star.