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Bluelight Crew
Oscar-Winning Actor Jack Palance Dies
By Richard Severo
Published: November 11, 2006
Jack Palance, a coal miner’s son who spent most of a long Hollywood career playing memorable heavies in movies like “Shane” and “Sudden Fear,” only to win an Academy Award at 70 for a self-parodying comic performance in “City Slickers,” died yesterday at his home in Montecito, Calif.
His death was announced by a family spokesman, Dick Guttman, The Associated Press reported. His family said he was 87, though some biographical records indicate he was 85.
Mr. Palance (he pronounced it PAL-ance and grew annoyed when others insisted on the more pretentious pa-LANCE) first gained wide notice in 1953, when he electrified movie audiences with his serpentine portrayal of the nasty gunfighter Jack Wilson in the classic film “Shane.”
He had only 16 lines in the film, plus a few ice-cold Gothic murmurs of laughter off-screen, before he was dispatched by a heroic Alan Ladd in a barroom duel. But the performance drew an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor, and it all but sealed his fate as a perennial Hollywood bad guy for years, even though he had always thought that he would be good at comedy.
His big chance for that came nearly four decades later, when he was cast in “City Slickers,” a 1991 Western comedy about midlife crisis. Mr. Palance played Curly, a leather-tough trail boss shepherding about some urban greenhorns looking for weekend adventure. His co-stars were Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern and Bruno Kirby. Mr. Kirby died earlier this year.
It was a comedy of the sort Mr. Palance had always wanted, and sure enough, he won an Oscar, in 1992, for that supporting performance.
From the beginning of his career, Mr. Palance, an imposing presence at 6 feet 4, was recognized for his deep-set dark eyes, high cheekbones and, when the part called for it, a deliciously sinister sneer. It was put to use over and over playing crooks, murderers, maniacs, barbarians (like Attila the Hun), uncouth lovers and at least one violence-prone carrier of pneumonic plague.
When reporters asked him what he thought about most of his films, he tended to dismiss them as “garbage.” Still, his part as a homicidal husband stalking Joan Crawford in “Sudden Fear” (1952) also won him an Oscar nomination, and his role as a robber with a heart in “I Died a Thousand Times” (1955), a remake of Humphrey Bogart’s “High Sierra,” earned Mr. Palance better reviews than the movie received.
Walter Jack Palance was born Feb. 18, 1920 or 1918, in Lattimer Mines, Pa., the third child of Vladimir Palahnuik, a coal miner, and the former Anna Gramiak, both of them immigrants from Ukraine. The family lived in a rough-and-tumble company town and traded in a company store. The town, Mr. Palance said years later, was where he “learned how to hate,” even though he said he loved the Pennsylvania countryside and owned property there.
Jack Palance worked in the mines himself before he escaped into acting by way of professional boxing, modeling, short-order cooking, waiting on tables, repairing radios, selling and working as a lifeguard.
During World War II, in 1942, he joined the Army Air Corps, only to be discharged a year later after he was knocked unconscious when his B-24 bomber lost power on takeoff. After the service he used the G.I. Bill of Rights to attend the University of North Carolina and later Stanford University, where he considered becoming a journalist. But journalists’ wages were so poor then, he recalled, that he was drawn to acting, which he saw as potentially more lucrative, and joined the university drama club.
Producers and casting directors were taken with his unusual looks and rich voice, and he got parts in the Broadway productions of “The Big Two” (1947), “Temporary Island” (1948), and “The Vigil,” also 1948. That same year he also played Anthony Quinn’s understudy as Stanley Kowalski in the touring company of the Tennessee Williams play “A Streetcar Named Desire.” He later replaced Marlon Brando in the role on Broadway.
His first movie role came in 1950, playing Blackie, an anti-social carrier of pneumonic plague in “Panic in the Streets,” which starred Richard Widmark. Then came a war picture, "Halls of Montezuma," and after that, in 1952, his Oscar-nominated performance in “Sudden Fear.”
His second nomination came the following year, for his portrayal of Jack Wilson, the menacing gunslinger in "Shane."
The acclaim from those roles brought him parts in "Arrowhead" (as a renegade Apache), "Man in the Attic" (as Jack the Ripper), "Sign of the Pagan" (as Attila the Hun) and "The Silver Chalice" (a fictional challenger to Jesus).
Among his other films were "Kiss of Fire," "The Big Knife," "Attack!" "The Lonely Man," "House of Numbers" and “Oklahoma Crude.” He also made a number of movies abroad. Mr. Palance married Virginia Baker in 1949 and had two children, Brooke and Cody. Cody died of a melanoma in 1999 at the age of 43. The marriage ended in divorce in 1969; Mr. Palance’s 1987 marriage to Elaine Rogers also ended in divorce.
Mr. Palance did some television as well, winning an Emmy Award for his performance in 1956 as a prizefighter in Rod Serling’s “Requiem for a Heavyweight.” Jack Gould, reviewing it for The New York Times, said Mr. Palance gave a “brilliant interpretation” of a fighter who “projected man’s incoherence and bewilderment with a superb regard for details.”
There were other sides to Jack Palance, and it took some aging to bring them out. Late in life he wrote “Forest of Love,” a prose poem about male sexuality and fears of loneliness. It was accompanied by his own pen-and-ink drawings, inspired in part by his feelings about his farm near Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He had been drawing and painting since the late 1950’s, when he lived in Rome, but hardly anybody knew about that talent until “Forest of Love” was published.
After the success of “City Slickers,” he had several television roles and parts in commercials that exploited his droll streak.
Perhaps Mr. Palance’s most memorable television appearance came when he received his Oscar in 1992. Striding to accept his statuette, he suddenly dropped to the stage and did a series of one-arm pushups, not only showing his physical strength but also giving Billy Crystal, the host of the ceremony and his “City Slickers” co-star, a rich running joke for the rest of the evening.
NY Times
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RIP
By Richard Severo
Published: November 11, 2006
Jack Palance, a coal miner’s son who spent most of a long Hollywood career playing memorable heavies in movies like “Shane” and “Sudden Fear,” only to win an Academy Award at 70 for a self-parodying comic performance in “City Slickers,” died yesterday at his home in Montecito, Calif.
His death was announced by a family spokesman, Dick Guttman, The Associated Press reported. His family said he was 87, though some biographical records indicate he was 85.
Mr. Palance (he pronounced it PAL-ance and grew annoyed when others insisted on the more pretentious pa-LANCE) first gained wide notice in 1953, when he electrified movie audiences with his serpentine portrayal of the nasty gunfighter Jack Wilson in the classic film “Shane.”
He had only 16 lines in the film, plus a few ice-cold Gothic murmurs of laughter off-screen, before he was dispatched by a heroic Alan Ladd in a barroom duel. But the performance drew an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor, and it all but sealed his fate as a perennial Hollywood bad guy for years, even though he had always thought that he would be good at comedy.
His big chance for that came nearly four decades later, when he was cast in “City Slickers,” a 1991 Western comedy about midlife crisis. Mr. Palance played Curly, a leather-tough trail boss shepherding about some urban greenhorns looking for weekend adventure. His co-stars were Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern and Bruno Kirby. Mr. Kirby died earlier this year.
It was a comedy of the sort Mr. Palance had always wanted, and sure enough, he won an Oscar, in 1992, for that supporting performance.
From the beginning of his career, Mr. Palance, an imposing presence at 6 feet 4, was recognized for his deep-set dark eyes, high cheekbones and, when the part called for it, a deliciously sinister sneer. It was put to use over and over playing crooks, murderers, maniacs, barbarians (like Attila the Hun), uncouth lovers and at least one violence-prone carrier of pneumonic plague.
When reporters asked him what he thought about most of his films, he tended to dismiss them as “garbage.” Still, his part as a homicidal husband stalking Joan Crawford in “Sudden Fear” (1952) also won him an Oscar nomination, and his role as a robber with a heart in “I Died a Thousand Times” (1955), a remake of Humphrey Bogart’s “High Sierra,” earned Mr. Palance better reviews than the movie received.
Walter Jack Palance was born Feb. 18, 1920 or 1918, in Lattimer Mines, Pa., the third child of Vladimir Palahnuik, a coal miner, and the former Anna Gramiak, both of them immigrants from Ukraine. The family lived in a rough-and-tumble company town and traded in a company store. The town, Mr. Palance said years later, was where he “learned how to hate,” even though he said he loved the Pennsylvania countryside and owned property there.
Jack Palance worked in the mines himself before he escaped into acting by way of professional boxing, modeling, short-order cooking, waiting on tables, repairing radios, selling and working as a lifeguard.
During World War II, in 1942, he joined the Army Air Corps, only to be discharged a year later after he was knocked unconscious when his B-24 bomber lost power on takeoff. After the service he used the G.I. Bill of Rights to attend the University of North Carolina and later Stanford University, where he considered becoming a journalist. But journalists’ wages were so poor then, he recalled, that he was drawn to acting, which he saw as potentially more lucrative, and joined the university drama club.
Producers and casting directors were taken with his unusual looks and rich voice, and he got parts in the Broadway productions of “The Big Two” (1947), “Temporary Island” (1948), and “The Vigil,” also 1948. That same year he also played Anthony Quinn’s understudy as Stanley Kowalski in the touring company of the Tennessee Williams play “A Streetcar Named Desire.” He later replaced Marlon Brando in the role on Broadway.
His first movie role came in 1950, playing Blackie, an anti-social carrier of pneumonic plague in “Panic in the Streets,” which starred Richard Widmark. Then came a war picture, "Halls of Montezuma," and after that, in 1952, his Oscar-nominated performance in “Sudden Fear.”
His second nomination came the following year, for his portrayal of Jack Wilson, the menacing gunslinger in "Shane."
The acclaim from those roles brought him parts in "Arrowhead" (as a renegade Apache), "Man in the Attic" (as Jack the Ripper), "Sign of the Pagan" (as Attila the Hun) and "The Silver Chalice" (a fictional challenger to Jesus).
Among his other films were "Kiss of Fire," "The Big Knife," "Attack!" "The Lonely Man," "House of Numbers" and “Oklahoma Crude.” He also made a number of movies abroad. Mr. Palance married Virginia Baker in 1949 and had two children, Brooke and Cody. Cody died of a melanoma in 1999 at the age of 43. The marriage ended in divorce in 1969; Mr. Palance’s 1987 marriage to Elaine Rogers also ended in divorce.
Mr. Palance did some television as well, winning an Emmy Award for his performance in 1956 as a prizefighter in Rod Serling’s “Requiem for a Heavyweight.” Jack Gould, reviewing it for The New York Times, said Mr. Palance gave a “brilliant interpretation” of a fighter who “projected man’s incoherence and bewilderment with a superb regard for details.”
There were other sides to Jack Palance, and it took some aging to bring them out. Late in life he wrote “Forest of Love,” a prose poem about male sexuality and fears of loneliness. It was accompanied by his own pen-and-ink drawings, inspired in part by his feelings about his farm near Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He had been drawing and painting since the late 1950’s, when he lived in Rome, but hardly anybody knew about that talent until “Forest of Love” was published.
After the success of “City Slickers,” he had several television roles and parts in commercials that exploited his droll streak.
Perhaps Mr. Palance’s most memorable television appearance came when he received his Oscar in 1992. Striding to accept his statuette, he suddenly dropped to the stage and did a series of one-arm pushups, not only showing his physical strength but also giving Billy Crystal, the host of the ceremony and his “City Slickers” co-star, a rich running joke for the rest of the evening.
NY Times
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RIP
