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February 18: Happy Birthday Jack Palance


https://lebeauleblog.com/2021/02/18/february-18-happy-birthday-jack-palance/

Jack Palance (1919-2006) was born to a Ukrainian immigrant family in Pennsylvania coal country. His given name was Volodymyr Palahniuk; he and novelist Chuck Palahniuk, of Fight Club fame, were reportedly distant cousins in some degree. Palance worked as a coal miner and boxed, attended the University of North Carolina on a football scholarship (but dropped out), and served in the Air Force in World War 2.

After the war, Palance decided to go into acting. He made his Broadway debut in 1947 in a play titled The Big Two. After that, Palance was selected as Marlon Brando’s understudy as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. He eventually replaced Brando in the role.

Palance made his film debut in 1950, in Elia Kazan’s noir thriller Panic in the Streets. He then costarred in the war movie Halls of Montezuma, and returned to Broadway to appear in an adaptation of Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon. He won a Theatre World Award for his performance.

Palance then received two consecutive Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor. The first was for the 1952 film noir Sudden Fear. The second was for a classic Western.

https://youtu.be/CWnDVW07_1c

After his role as Jack Wilson in Shane, Palance had a run of a few years as a Hollywood leading man. Two of his best roles were in films directed by Robert Aldrich, the film noir The Big Knife, and the World War 2 drama Attack. By the late fifties, however, he found himself heading to Europe to find starring roles.

For much of the next three decades, Palance alternated between starring in European films, and attempting returns to Hollywood. In 1963, he had a major role in Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt. A few years later, he returned to the US to appear in the Western The Professionals. And so it went.

Beginning in the late eighties, Palance experienced a bit of a career renaissance. He played villains in Young Guns and Batman (as Carl Grissom). Then he was cast as Curly Washburn in City Slickers. The film became a hit, and Palance won the Oscar and several other Best Supporting Actor honors. He continued to work in film and television until a few years before his death.

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