Bernard Malek

Bernard Malek heard about Black Mountain College when college faculty visited the Bronxville High School, a progressive school in New York where he was a student. The teachers there suggested Black Mountain would be a suitable college for two students, Malek and Frances Kuntz.

They both enrolled in the fall of 1939 and remained for three years. Malek also attended the 1941 summer session. His primary interest was theater although he also took courses in music and art. Malek was not happy at Black Mountain, feeling that the drama activities at the college under the direction of Robert Wunsch were not professional.

In their last year at the college Malek and Kuntz built a drama shed. She designed wigs using peanuts and other humble materials and together they designed the sets for a production of Moliere’s The Physician in Spite of Himself.

He left in 1942 and served in the war as a conscientious objector. He and Frances Kuntz married and both were active in theater life in New York. After the war he studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. He acted under the stage name John Hildebrand (also spelled Heldebrand). Roles included Kraft Theater (1947), Star in On the Waterfront (1954), and Tomasini in The Wrong Man (1956). He made his Broadway debut in Lillian Hellman’s Monserrat (1949) as Zavala and as the Duke of Albany in King Lear (1950) (In both plays he is listed as Richard Malek).

After his separation from Kuntz, he moved to California but was unable to break into the television and movie business there and had a landscaping business. He returned to New York to assist his parents who managed an apartment complex. In his later years he was interested in psychology.

Biography written by Mary Emma Harris for the Black Mountain College Project.

Relationships

Dated fellow BMC student, Frances Kuntz

Asheville Art Museum Collection

Writings about Bernard can be seen in digitized college bulletins on Asheville Art Museum's collection website: collection.ashevilleart.org. They can be found by searching these accession numbers:

2017.40.153 April 24, 1944 bulletin,

"Frances Kuntz.....Malek is off in some cold unknown lands off Alaska. He is working in a small hospital, and studies all the most frightening of the classics in free time. What the Army doesn’t do to you! I’ve just sent him, at his request, ‘The Idiot,’ to insure him some happy hours…..”"

Black Mountain College Project

Mary Emma Harris interviewed Bernard in 1998 and the transcript is available from Appalachian State University under The Mary Emma Harris and Black Mountain College Project, Inc. Oral History collection.

Topics: Background in Yonkers – attending Bronxville schools – Frances Kuntz – arrival at BMC – Robert Wunsch as theater director – participation in theater productions – conflict with Jerry Wolpert – caste systemat BMC – Windholz twins – assessments of BMC community – homosexuality and permissiveness at BMC – Robert Babcock class – post-BMC work – work program – conflict with Ted Dreier – Moliere production and costumes – “table tipping” at BMC – trips into Asheville – Conscientious Objector in World War Two – conflict with Bob Wunsch – Mendez Marks – Bill (Alex) Reed – Frances Kuntz childhood – post-BMC professional work – family background