One of Hollywood's most enduring tough guys was born on February 18, 85 years ago. But before Jack Palance ever appeared on the silver screen, he had already shown himself to be a rough and tumble guy in real life.
Growing up in Lattimer Mines, Pennsylvania, Walter Palanyuk (his name at birth) first found work as a coal miner, like his father. He also did a stint as a professional boxer. During World War II, while still in his early 20s, the tall, well-built Ukrainian served as a bomber pilot. After a crash that left him with a seriously burned face, Jack underwent plastic surgery, which made him look even more rugged and leathery.
It wasn't until 1950 that he first gained acclaim as an actor in a theatre performance by Elia Kazan called Panic in
the Streets. Palance played a thug, and the bad-guy typecast was to stick with him his entire career, but Palance would perform it with passion, irony and even humor.
Just two years later, he'd made a name for himself in Hollywood, nominated for an Oscar as best supporting actor in the film Sudden Fear. Throughout the 1950s, Palance appeared in several foreign films, especially in Italy, where he developed a noir image.
He also tried his hand at television.
In 1956, he won an Emmy for a role he knew all too well in Rod Serling's TV drama Requiem for a Heavyweight. By the early 1960s, Palance was cast in a regular TV series, as a circus performer in The Greatest Show on Earth. Thereafter, his career started to fade. The social revolution was well under way, and more vulnerable male heroes were becoming popular on stage and screen.
But by the end of the 1980s, Palance's career had received a new lease on life. The strong, silent type again became fashionable. Palance got back in the swing of things with small appearances in films like Baghdad Cafe (1987), Young Guns (1988) and Batman (1989). Finally in 1991, he won an Oscar and Golden Globe for his performance in the comedy City Slickers, in which he played a callous but principled cowhand. At the age of 71, he accepted the award with the same masculine vigor that had become his trademark - doing a series of one-handed push-ups on the stage.
Palance's narrow eyes, raw facial features and rasping voice had set the mold for a half-century of Hollywood he-men.
Now, in the autumn of his life, Palance has revealed a sensitive side to his character, publishing a book-length poem, The Forest of Love, in which he describes male longing for female affection. He also painted the book's cover and illustrations.
Jack holds a degree in journalism and currently lives in California, where he is a member of Trident, a Ukrainian organization. Palance is proud of his Ukrainian roots and ready to show it. During a Russian film award ceremony held in Los Angeles last April that featured a film called 72 Meters, which many thought was an insult to Ukrainians, the honored guest left abruptly after being introduced.
"I feel like I walked into the wrong room by mistake," he was quoted as saying, "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."
His wife and the other people he had come with, including the local head of the Trident organization, followed him out the door.
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