Jack Palance

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Jack Palance

Palance during the filming of The Godchild (1974).
Birth name Volodymyr Palahnyuk
Born February 18, 1919
United StatesHazle Township, Pennsylvania
Died November 10, 2006
Montecito, California, USA
Height 6' 4" (1.93 m)
Other name(s) Jack Brazzo
Walter Palance
Walter J. Palance
Walter Jack Palance
Notable roles Jack Wilson in
Shane
Harlan 'Mountain' McClintock in
Requiem for a Heavyweight (TV)
Academy
 Awards		 Best Supporting Actor
1991 City Slickers
Spouse(s) Virginia Baker
Elaine Rogers

Jack Palance (February 18, 1919 – November 10, 2006), was an Academy Award-winning American film actor. With his rugged facial features and gravelly voice, Palance was best known to modern movie audiences as both the characters of Curly and Duke in the two City Slickers movies, but his career spanned half a century of film and television appearances.

Contents

Biography

Early life and career

Born Volodymyr Palahnyuk (Ukrainian: Володимир Палагнюк) in the Lattimer Mines section of Hazle Township, Pennsylvania, Palance was of Ukrainian descent and the son of an anthracite coal miner. He also worked in coal mines during his youth before becoming a boxer.

In the late 1930s, Palance started a professional boxing career. Fighting under the name Jack Brazzo, Palance reportedly compiled a record of 15 consecutive victories with 12 knockouts before losing a decision to the future heavyweight contender Joe Baksi.

With the outbreak of World War II, Palance's boxing career ended and his military career began. Palance's rugged face, which took many beatings in the boxing ring, was disfigured when he bailed out of his burning B-24 Liberator while on a training flight over southern Arizona, where he was a student pilot. Plastic surgeons repaired as much of the damage that they could, but he was left with a distinctive, somewhat gaunt, look. After much reconstructive surgery, he was discharged in 1944.

Palance graduated from Stanford University in 1947 with an Bachelor of Arts degree in Drama. During his university years, he also worked as a short order cook, waiter, soda jerk, lifeguard at Jones Beach State Park, and photographer's model, to make ends meet.

Career

Palance's acting break came as Marlon Brando's understudy in A Streetcar Named Desire. He eventually replaced Brando on stage as Stanley Kowalski.

In 1947, Palance made his Broadway debut, followed three years later by his screen debut in the movie Panic in the Streets (1950). He was quickly recognized for his skill as a character actor, receiving an Academy Award nomination for only his third film role, as Lester Blaine in Sudden Fear.

Jack Palance earned his second Oscar nomination playing cold-blooded gunfighter Jack Wilson in 1953's cinema classic Shane.
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Jack Palance earned his second Oscar nomination playing cold-blooded gunfighter Jack Wilson in 1953's cinema classic Shane.

The following year, Palance was Oscar-nominated again, for his role as the evil gunfighter Jack Wilson in Shane. Several other Western roles followed, but he would also play such varied roles as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, and Attila the Hun.

In 1957, Palance won an Emmy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Mountain McClintock in the Playhouse 90 production of Rod Serling's Requiem for a Heavyweight.

Jean-Luc Godard persuaded Palance to take on the role of Hollywood producer Jeremy Prokosch in the 1963 nouvelle vague movie Le Mépris, with Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli. Although the main dialogue was in French, Palance spoke only English.

While still busy making movies, in the 1980s Palance also co-hosted (with his daughter Holly Palance) the television series Ripley's Believe It or Not.

Appearing in Young Guns (1988) and Tim Burton's Batman (1989) reinvigorated Palance's career, and demand for his services kept him involved in new projects each year right up until the turn of the century.

Academy Award

Four decades after his film debut, Palance won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1992 for his performance as cowboy Curly Washburn in the 1991 comedy City Slickers. Stepping onstage to accept the award, the intimidatingly fit 6' 4" (1.93 m) actor looked down at 5' 7" (1.70 m) Oscar host Billy Crystal (who was also his co-star in the movie), and joked – duplicating one of his lines from the film: "Billy Crystal... I crap bigger than him." He then dropped to the floor and demonstrated his ability, at age 73, to perform one-handed push-ups. Crystal then turned this into a running gag. At various points in the broadcast, he announced that Palance was backstage on the Stairmaster; had "just bungee-jumped off the Hollywood sign"; had rendezvoused with the Space Shuttle in orbit; had fathered all the children in a production number; had been named People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive; and had won the New York primary election. At the end of the broadcast, Crystal told everyone he'd like to see them again "but I've just been informed Jack Palance will be hosting next year." (The following year, host Crystal arrived on stage atop a giant model of the Oscar statuette, towed with his teeth by Palance.)

Hollywood Walk of Fame

Palance has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6608 Hollywood Boulevard. In 1992, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Personal life

Palance's first wife was Virginia Baker from 1949 to 1966. They had three children; Holly Palance (born 1950), an actress, Brooke (born 1952) and Cody (1955-1998). An actor in his own right, Cody Palance appeared alongside his father in the film Young Guns, and was 42 when he died from malignant melanoma in 1998. Jack Palance had hosted The Cody Palance Memorial Golf Classic to raise awareness and funds for a cancer center in Los Angeles. Palance was married to Elaine Rogers in May 1987.

Palance painted and sold landscape art, with a poem included on the back of each picture. He is also the author of The Forest of Love, a book of poems, published in 1996 by Summerhouse Press.

True to his roots, Palance acknowledged a life-long endearment for his Pennsylvania heritage and visited there when able. Palance had recently placed his Butler Township, Pennsylvania, Holly-Brooke farm up for sale and its contents, his personal lifetime collection, up for auction.[1]

Palance died November 10, 2006 of natural causes at his home in Montecito, California in Santa Barbara County.[2]

Jack Palance Collection auction

The Jack Palance Collection 2006 seal
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The Jack Palance Collection 2006 seal

Following other recent celebrity auctions, Palance's personal lifetime collection of over 3,000 items located at his Holly-Brooke Farm (named for his two daughters), in Butler Township, Pennsylvania, went on the auction block in October 2006. Auction planners purposefully included some smaller keepsakes for people who want something belonging to the 87-year-old actor. "People can spend $5 or $50,000 at this auction", said Phil Eagle, an antique appraiser who traveled from California to painstakingly verify the items' authenticity and sort them all into manageable "lots" to be sold.[1]

"Each item will bear a special sticker featuring a picture of the actor and the words 'Jack Palance Collection' to add to the value and future collectibility", Eagle said.[1]

Academy Award and nominations

Preceded by
Joe Pesci
for Goodfellas		 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
1992
for City Slickers		 Succeeded by
Gene Hackman
for Unforgiven

Select filmography

See the complete Jack Palance filmography at IMDb
Year Title Role
1950 Panic in the Streets Blackie
1952 Sudden Fear Lester Blaine
1953 Shane Jack Wilson
1953 Man in the Attic Slade
1954 The Silver Chalice Simon Magus
1955 The Big Knife Charles Castle
1956 Playhouse 90
Requiem for a Heavyweight (TV)		 Harlan 'Mountain' McClintock
1960 Austerlitz General Weirother
1962 Barabbas Torvald
1963 Contempt Jeremy Prokosch
1966 The Professionals Jesus Raza
1968 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(TV)		 Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mr. Edward Hyde
1969 Justine Antonin
1969 Che! Fidel Castro
1979 Angels' Brigade Mike Farrell
1980 Hawk the Slayer Voltan
1987 Bagdad Café Rudi Cox
1988 Gor Xenos
1988 Young Guns Lawrence G. Murphy
1989 Batman Carl Grissom
1989 Outlaw of Gor Xenos
1989 Tango & Cash Yves Perret
1990 Solar Crisis Travis
1991 City Slickers Curly Washburn
1994 City Slickers II:
The Legend of Curly's Gold		 Duke Washburn
1994 The Swan Princess Voice of
Lord Rothbart
1997 Ebenezer Ebenezer Scrooge
1999 Treasure Island Long John Silver

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Learn-Andes, Jennifer. Jump on Jack’s stash. TimesLeader.com. Retrieved on 2006-10-08.
  2. ^ Oscar winner Jack Palance dead at 87 (CNN.com) Retrieved November 10, 2006.

External links

 Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Persondata
NAME Palance, Jack
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Walter Jack Palance, Vladimir Palaniuk, Володимир Паланюк (Ukrainian), Volodymyr Palanyuk
SHORT DESCRIPTION Actor, boxer
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Hazle Township, Pennsylvania, United States
DATE OF DEATH November 10, 2006
PLACE OF DEATH Montecito, California
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../j/a/c/Jack_Palance_2a82.html"