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Jack Palance (born February 18, 1919) is an Academy Award-winning American actor. While he is best known to modern movie audiences as both the characters of Curly and Duke in the City Slickers movies, his career has spanned half a century of film and television appearances.

Of Ukrainian descent, Palance was born in Lattimer Mines, Pennsylvania, the son of a coal miner. In the late 1930s he 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 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. Plastic surgeons repaired the obvious damage but left him with a distinctive, somewhat gaunt look. After much reconstructive surgery, he was discharged in 1944.

Palance graduated from Stanford University in 1947 with an AB in drama; during that time he worked as a short order cook, waiter, soda jerk, lifeguard at Jones Beach, and a photographer's model.

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. The following year, the 6'3" actor was Oscar-nominated again, for his role as the evil gunfighter 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.

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

Jack Palance won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1991 for City Slickers. Stepping onstage to accept the award, he looked at awards host Billy Crystal (who was also his co-star in the movie), and joked, "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 turned this into a running gag as at various points in the broadcast he announced that Palance was backstage on the Stairmaster; had bungie-jumped from the Hollywood sign; rendezvoused with the space shuttle in orbit; fathered all the children in a production number; been named "People" magazine's Sexiest Man Alive; and 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 by Palance).

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.

Palance's first wife was Virginia Baker (1949-1966). They had three children: Holly (born 1950), 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. His father now hosts The Cody Palance Memorial Golf Classic to raise awareness, and funds, for a cancer center in Los Angeles.

Since May 1987, he has been married to Elaine Rogers.

Palance paints and sells 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 October 1, 1996, by Summerhouse Press.

Palance quotes:

On tabloid stories: "I'm amazed people read this crap about us - about me most of all.

"The only two things you can truly depend upon are gravity and greed."

He currently resides in Tehachapi, California in retirement.

Academy Award and Nominations

Filmography

Notes

In the Robert Rankin novel The Brentford Triangle, the heroes encounter a race called the Cereans, who originate from the now-destroyed fifth planet in the solar system (Its remains are now the asteroid belt), all of whom bare an uncanny resemblance to a young Jack Palance (Baring the fact that their sinuses are located between their legs and their genitalea are located in the left armpit)

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1919 births | Living people | American actors | American World War II veterans | Best Supporting Actor Oscar | Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nominees | Film actors | Hollywood Walk of Fame | People from Pennsylvania | Ukrainian-Americans | Batman actors | Spaghetti Western actors | Stanford University alumni | Western movie actors

Jack Palance | Jack Palance | ジャック・パランス | Jack Palance | Jack Palance

 

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