65 Facts About Jack Palance

1.

Jack Palance was an American actor known for playing tough guys and villains.

2.

Jack Palance was nominated for three Academy Awards, all for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, for his roles in Sudden Fear and Shane, and winning almost 40 years later for City Slickers.

3.

Jack Palance briefly attended Stanford University before pursuing a career in the theatre.

4.

Jack Palance made his film acting debut in Panic in the Streets.

5.

Jack Palance was born Volodymyr Palahniuk on February 18,1919, in Lattimer Mines, Pennsylvania, the son of Anna and Ivan Palahniuk, an anthracite coal miner.

6.

Jack Palance's parents were Ukrainian immigrants, his father a native of Ivane-Zolote in southwestern Ukraine and his mother from the Lviv Oblast.

7.

Jack Palance won a football scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill but left after two years, disgusted by commercialization of the sport.

8.

Jack Palance's face was said to have become disfigured while bailing out of a burning B-24 Liberator bomber during a training flight over Southern Arizona.

9.

Jack Palance was honorably discharged from the United States Army Air Forces in September 1945.

10.

Jack Palance made his Broadway debut in 1947 as a Russian soldier in The Big Two, directed by Robert Montgomery.

11.

Jack 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.

12.

Jack Palance appeared in two plays in 1948 with short runs, A Temporary Island and The Vigil.

13.

Jack Palance made his big-screen debut in Panic in the Streets, directed by Elia Kazan, who had directed Streetcar on Broadway.

14.

Jack Palance played a gangster, and was credited as "Walter Palance".

15.

Jack Palance returned to Broadway for Darkness at Noon by Sidney Kingsley, which was a minor hit.

16.

Jack Palance was second-billed in just his third film, opposite Joan Crawford in the thriller Sudden Fear.

17.

Jack Palance's character is a former coal miner, as Palance's father had been.

18.

Jack Palance was nominated in the same category the following year for his role as hired gunfighter Jack Wilson in Shane.

19.

The film was a huge hit, and Jack Palance was now an established film name.

20.

Jack Palance played a villain in Second Chance opposite Robert Mitchum, and was an Indian in Arrowhead.

21.

Jack Palance got a chance to play a heroic role in Flight to Tangier, a thriller.

22.

Jack Palance played the lead in Man in the Attic, an adaptation of The Lodger.

23.

Jack Palance was Attila the Hun in Sign of the Pagan with Jeff Chandler, and Simon Magus in the Ancient World epic The Silver Chalice with Paul Newman.

24.

Jack Palance had the star part in I Died a Thousand Times, a remake of High Sierra, and was cast by Robert Aldrich in two star parts: The Big Knife, from the play by Clifford Odets, as a Hollywood star; and Attack, as a tough soldier in World War II.

25.

Jack Palance was in a Western, The Lonely Man, playing the father of Anthony Perkins, and played a double role in House of Numbers.

26.

In 1957, Jack 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.

27.

Jack Palance was reunited with Robert Aldrich and Jeff Chandler when they worked on Ten Seconds to Hell, filmed in Germany, playing a bomb disposal expert.

28.

Jack Palance made Beyond All Limits in Mexico, and Austerlitz in France, then did a series of films in Italy: Revak the Rebel, Sword of the Conqueror, The Mongols, The Last Judgment, and Barabbas, and Night Train to Milan and Warriors Five.

29.

Jean-Luc Godard persuaded Jack Palance to take on the role of Hollywood producer Jeremy Prokosch in the nouvelle vague movie Le Mepris with Brigitte Bardot.

30.

Jack Palance returned to the US to star in the TV series The Greatest Show on Earth.

31.

In 1964, his presence at a recently-integrated movie theatre in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, prompted a riot from segregationists who assumed Jack Palance was there to promote civil rights.

32.

Jack Palance played a gangster in Once a Thief with Alain Delon.

33.

Jack Palance went to England to make Torture Garden, and made Kill a Dragon in Hong Kong.

34.

Jack Palance was in the TV film The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde produced by Dan Curtis, during the making of which he fell and injured himself.

35.

In 1969, Jack Palance recorded a country music album in Nashville, released on Warner Bros.

36.

Jack Palance's films tended to be international co-productions by now: They Came to Rob Las Vegas, The Mercenary, The Desperados, and Marquis de Sade: Justine.

37.

Jack Palance went back to action films and Westerns: Battle of the Commandos, The McMasters and Companeros.

38.

Jack Palance had another role in Monte Walsh, from the author of Shane, opposite Lee Marvin, but the film was a box-office disappointment.

39.

Jack Palance supported Bud Spencer in It Can Be Done Amigo and Charles Bronson in Chato's Land, and had the lead in Sting of the West and Brothers Blue.

40.

Jack Palance went back to Hollywood for Oklahoma Crude then to England to star in Craze.

41.

Jack Palance starred in the television series Bronk between 1975 and 1976 for MGM Television, and starred in the TV films The Hatfields and the McCoys and The Four Deuces.

42.

Jack Palance supported Ursula Andress in Africa Express and L'Infermiera, Lee Van Cleef in God's Gun, and Thomas Milian in The Cop in Blue Jeans.

43.

Jack Palance was in Black Cobra Woman; Safari Express, a sequel to Africa Express; Mister Scarface; and Blood and Bullets.

44.

Jack Palance travelled to Canada to make Welcome to Blood City and the US for The One Man Jury, Portrait of a Hitman and Angels Revenge.

45.

Jack Palance later said his Italian sojourn was the most enjoyable of his career.

46.

In 1980, Jack Palance narrated the documentary The Strongest Man in the World by Canadian filmmaker Halya Kuchmij, about Mike Swistun, a circus strongman who had been a student of Houdini.

47.

Jack Palance attended the premiere of the film on June 6,1980, at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

48.

Jack Palance appeared in The Ivory Ape, Without Warning, Hawk the Slayer, and the slasher film, Alone in the Dark.

49.

Jack Palance appeared in the films Gor and Bagdad Cafe.

50.

Jack Palance performed on Roger Waters' first solo album release, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, and was in Outlaw of Gor and Solar Crisis.

51.

Jack Palance was then cast as cowboy Curly Washburn in the 1991 comedy City Slickers.

52.

Jack Palance is in control of himself, except for deciding the moment of his own death.

53.

Four decades after his film debut, Jack Palance won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor on March 30,1992, for his performance as Curly.

54.

At various points in the broadcast, Crystal announced that Jack Palance was "backstage on the StairMaster", had 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.

55.

In 1993, during the opening of the Oscars, a spoof of that Oscar highlight featured Jack Palance appearing to drag in an enormous Academy Award statuette with Crystal again hosting, riding on the rear end of it.

56.

Halfway across the stage, Jack Palance dropped to the ground as if exhausted, but then performed several one-armed push-ups before regaining his feet and dragging the giant Oscar the rest of the way across the stage.

57.

Jack Palance voiced Rothbart in the 1994 animated film The Swan Princess.

58.

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

59.

Jack Palance was married to his first wife, Virginia, from 1949 to 1968.

60.

In May 1987, Jack Palance married his second wife, Elaine Rogers.

61.

Jack Palance painted and sold landscape art, with a poem included on the back of each picture.

62.

Jack Palance was the author of The Forest of Love, a book of poems published in 1996 by Summerhouse Press.

63.

Jack Palance acknowledged a lifelong attachment to his Pennsylvania heritage, and visited there when able.

64.

Jack Palance died on November 10,2006 at his daughter Holly's home in Montecito, California, at age 87.

65.

Jack Palance has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6608 Hollywood Boulevard.