Jack Palance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jack Palance
Palance during the filming of The Godchild (1974)
Born	Volodymyr Palahnyuk February 18, 1919(1919-02-18) Hazle Township, Pennsylvania, USA
Died	November 10, 2006 (aged 87) Montecito, California, USA
Other name(s)	Jack Brazzo Walter Palance Walter J. Palance Walter Jack Palance
Spouse(s)	Elaine Rogers (1987-2006) Virginia Baker (1949-1968)
Awards won Academy Awards Best Supporting Actor 1991 City Slickers Golden Globe Awards Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture 1991 City Slickers

Jack Palance (born Volodymyr Palahniuk; February 18, 1919 – November 10, 2006) was an Academy Award-winning American film actor. With his rugged facial features, 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.

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Palance, one of five children, was born Volodymyr Palahniuk (Ukrainian: Володимир Палагнюк) in the Lattimer Mines section of Hazle Township, Pennsylvania, the son of Anna (née Gramiak) and Ivan (John) Palahniuk, who was an anthracite coal miner.^[1] Palance's parents were Ukrainian immigrants,^[2][3] his father a native of Ivane Zolote in Southwestern Ukraine and his mother from the Lviv region.^[4] He 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 fighting the future heavyweight contender Joe Baksi in a "Pier-6" brawl. Palance lost a close decision,^[5][6] and recounted: "Then, I thought, you must be nuts to get your head beat in for $200".^[7]

With the outbreak of the Second World War, Palance's boxing career ended and his military career began as a member of the United States Army Air Forces. 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 a 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.

[edit] 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.

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

The following year, Palance was again nominated for an Oscar, this time for his role as the evil gunfighter Jack Wilson in Shane. Roger Waters' music album The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking features sound bites from that movie. Jack Palance makes a cameo in the song "5.01 A.M. (The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking)", not as Jack Wilson, but as a biker ("An angel on a Harley...") who says "How you doing, bro? Where you been? Where you going?"

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 released an album of county-Western music for Warner Bros. Records. It was released in 1969 and was recalled the Lee Hazlewood music that was popular at the time. Recorded in Nashville with the usual studio cats, the album is a playful country rock romp not unlike other late 60's Nashville recordings and featured Palance's self penned classic song 'The Meanest Guy That Ever Lived'. The album was re-released in 2003 by the Walter label in CD version.

He also 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.

In 2001, Palance returned to the recording studio as a special guest on friend Laurie Z's Heart of the Holidays album to narrate the famous classic poem The Night Before Christmas.

In 2002, he starred in the television movie Living with the Dead opposite Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen and Diane Ladd. In 2004, he starred in another television production, Back When We Were Grownups, opposite Blythe Danner, his performance as Poppy being Palance's last.

[edit] 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, being towed by Palance using his teeth.)

[edit] 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.

[edit] Ukrainian, not Russian

Palance, at the time chairman of the Hollywood Trident Foundation, walked out of a Russian Film Festival in Hollywood. After being introduced, Palance said "I feel like I walked into the wrong room by mistake. I think that Russian film is interesting, but I have nothing to do with Russia or Russian film. My parents were born in Ukraine: I'm Ukrainian. I'm not Russian. So, excuse me, but I don't belong here. It's best if we leave."^[8]

[edit] Personal life

Jack Palance (left) visiting a VA Hospital in 2005

Palance was married to his first wife, Virginia Baker, from 1949 to 1968. They had three children: Holly (born in 1950), an actress, Brooke (born in 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 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.

Beside being an actor, at one time Cody Palance was also a great music performer who did many live performances with his band before he lost his fight with cancer on July 16, 1998.^[9]

On New Year's Day 2003, his first wife Virgina Baker (July 7, 1922 - January 1, 2003) was struck by a car and killed at 80 years of age in Los Angeles.

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. He had recently placed his Butler Township, Pennsylvania, Holly-Brooke farm and its contents up for sale: his personal lifetime collection up for auction.^[10]

[edit] Death

Palance died at the age of 87, of natural causes, at his home in Montecito in Santa Barbara County.^[11] He was cremated and his ashes were retained by family and friends.^[12]

[edit] Jack Palance collection auction

The Jack Palance Collection 2006 seal

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.^[10]

"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.^[10]

[edit] Filmography table

[edit] Complete Filmography

(1950-2004) (In order of production)

[edit] Television Movies/Mini-Series

[edit] Television Shows

[edit] 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

[edit] References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Jack Palance

Wikinews has related news:

"City Slickers" actor, Jack Palance, dies

[edit] 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
• Jack Palance narrates 'The Night Before Christmas'
• A Tribute to Jack Palance
• http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=16588921 Jack Palance (info on his death)
• http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=10366819 Virgina Baker Palance (first wife)