Jack Palance
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Jack Palance | |
 Palance during the filming of The Godchild (1974). |
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| Birth name | Volodymyr Palahnyuk |
| Born | February 18, 1919 Hazle Township, Pennsylvania |
| Died | November 10, 2006 aged 87 Montecito, California, USA |
| Other name(s) | Jack Brazzo Walter Palance Walter J. Palance Walter Jack Palance |
| Spouse(s) | Virginia Baker Elaine Rogers |
| Notable roles | Jack Wilson in Shane Harlan 'Mountain' McClintock in Requiem for a Heavyweight (TV) |
| Academy Awards | |
|---|---|
| Best Supporting Actor 1991 City Slickers |
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Jack Palance (February 18, 1919 – November 10, 2006) was an Oscar-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.
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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 the damage as best 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, to make ends meet he also worked as a short order cook, waiter, soda jerk, lifeguard at Jones Beach State Park, and photographer's model.
Career
Palance's acting break came as Marlon Brando's understudy in A Streetcar Named Desire, and he eventually replaced Brando on stage as Stanley Kowalski.
In 1947, Palance made his Broadway debut, and this was followed three years later by his screen debut in the movie Panic in the Streets (1950). The very same year, he was featured in Halls of Montezuma about the U.S. Marines in World War II, where he was credited as "Walter (Jack) Palance". Palance was quickly recognized for his skill as a character actor, receiving an Oscar nomination for only his third film role, as Lester Blaine in Sudden Fear.
The following year, Palance was again nominated for an Oscar, this time for his role as the evil gunfighter Jack Wilson in Shane. Several other Western roles followed, but he also played 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 mostly 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!.
Appearances 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 to 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 - mimicking 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 (born 1950), an actress, Brooke (born 1952) and Cody (1955-1998). An actor himself, Cody Palance appeared alongside his father in the film Young Guns, and was 42 when he died from a 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 married 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 attachment to his Pennsylvania heritage and visited there when able. Palance had recently placed his Butler Township, Pennsylvania, Holly-Brooke farm and its contents up for sale: his personal lifetime collection up for auction.[1]
Palance died on November 10, 2006 of natural causes at his home in Montecito, California in Santa Barbara County. [2]
Jack Palance collection auction
Following other recent celebrity auctions, Palance's personal lifetime collection of over 3,000 items at his Holly-Brooke Farm (named for his two daughters) in Butler Township, Pennsylvania went on the auction block in October 2006. Auction planners purposely included some smaller keepsakes for people who wanted 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 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
- 1952 – Nominated – Best Actor in a Supporting Role – Sudden Fear
- 1953 – Nominated – Best Actor in a Supporting Role – Shane
- 1992 – Won – Best Actor in a Supporting Role – City Slickers
| 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
Notes
- ^ a b c Learn-Andes, Jennifer. Jump on Jack’s stash. TimesLeader.com. Retrieved on 2006-10-08.
- ^ Oscar winner Jack Palance dead at 87 (CNN.com) Retrieved on November 10, 2006.
External links
- Jack Palance at the Internet Movie Database
- Jack Palance at the TCM Movie Database
- Jack Palance at the Internet Broadway Database
- Jack Brazzo (AKA Jack Palance) boxing record from Boxrec.com
- The Jack Palance Collection.com
- BBC News - Western Star Jack Palance dies
- CNN News - Oscar winner Jack Palance dead at 87
| 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 |
Categories: 1919 births | 2006 deaths | People from Pennsylvania | People from the Scranton--Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area | Ukrainian-Americans | Polish-Americans | American military personnel of World War II | Stanford University alumni | American stage actors | American film actors | Best Supporting Actor Academy Award winners | Hollywood Walk of Fame | Spaghetti Western actors | Western film actors
