The Adventure Collection: Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, Gulliver's Travels, White Fang, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (The Heirloom Collection)
Thank You Music Lovers: A Bio-Discography of Spike Jones and His City Slickers, 1941-1965 (Discographies: Association for Recorded Sound Collections Discographic Reference)
Jack Palance was an American actor and singer. He was nominated for three Academy Awards, all for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, winning in 1992 for his role in City Slickers.
Background
Palance was born in Lattimer Mines, Pennsylvania, the son of Anna (née Gramiak) and Ivan Palahniuk, an anthracite coal miner. His parents were Ukrainian immigrants, his father a native of Ivane Zolote in southwestern Ukraine (modern Ternopil Oblast) and his mother from the Lviv Oblast, an ethnic Pole. One of six children, he worked in coal mines during his youth before becoming a professional boxer in the late 1930s.
Education
Fighting under the name Jack Brazzo, Palance reportedly compiled a record of 15 consecutive victories with 12 knockouts before losing a close decision to future heavyweight contender Joe Baksi in a Pier-6 brawl. Years later he recounted: "Then, I thought, you must be nuts to get your head beat in for $200."
With the outbreak of World War II, Palance's athletic career ended, and his military career began as a member of the United States Army Air Forces. Palance's face, which took many beatings in the boxing ring, was said to have become disfigured while bailing out of a burning B-24 Liberator bomber during a training flight over Southern Arizona (where Palance was a student pilot). His distinctive cheekbones and deep set eyes were said to have been the result of reconstructive surgery. The story behind Palance's face was repeated numerous times (including in respected film reference works), but upon his death, several obituaries of Palance quoted him as saying that the entire story had been contrived: "Studio press agents make up anything they want to, and reporters go along with it. One flack created the legend that I had been blown up in an air crash during the war, and my face had to be put back together by way of plastic surgery. If it is a 'bionic face', why didn't they do a better job of it?"
Palance was honorably discharged from the Army Air Corps in 1944. After the war, he attended Stanford University, leaving one credit shy of graduating to pursue a career in the theatre During his university years, he worked as a short order cook, waiter, soda jerk, lifeguard at Jones Beach State Park, and photographer's model. His last name was actually a derivative of his original name. In an episode of What's My Line?, he described how no one could pronounce his last name and it was suggested that he be called Palanski. From that he decided just to use Palance instead.
Career
Writing for radio led him to stage acting, including work on Broadway with Elia Kazan, who cast him as the plague-carrying criminal in Panic in the Streets (in which he was credited as Walter Jack Palance). After Milestone’s Halls of Montezuma), he made his best-known appearance, as Stark Wilson, the hired gun. in Shane (George Stevens). 11 is Slav looks always pointed Palance at exotic or sinister parts Sudden Fear (David Miller) and Sign of the Pagan ( Douglas Sirk) but Robert Aldrich saw that the same face might appear sensitive and nerve-racked: thus he plaved the movie star in The Big Knife. the doomed officer in Attack!, and in Ten Seconds to Hell.
His work usually carried a unique note of repressed hysteria: Second Chance (Rudolph Mate); as Jack the Ripper in Man in the Attic (Hugo Fregonese); Kiss of Fire (Joseph M. Newman); I Died a Thousand Times (Stuart Heisler), a remake of High Sierra; as twin brothers, changing places in Sing Sing in House of Numbers (Russell Rouse); as the father in The Lonely Man (Henry Levin).
But Palance was too unsettling to last as a star, and from about 1960 he worked as much in Europe as in America, giving several distinctive performances, happiest when most free to indulge in flamboyant menace: The Mongols (Andre de Toth and Riecardo Freda); Barabbas (Richard
Fleischer); in manic charge of a little red book and a snarling red Maserati as the producer in Godard’s Contempt); the Mexican in Brooks’s The Professionals); as a crazy Edgar Allan Poe enthusiast in The Torture Garden (Freddie Francis); as Castro in Fleischer’s Che!); as a lawman in They Came to Bob Las Vegas (Antonio Isasi); as the father in Frankenheimer's The Horsemen); and as the sidekick in Monte Walsh (William Fraker).
A word is in order for his TV Dr. Jekt/ll and Mr Hyde (Charles Jarrott), without obvious makeup effects, but the two personae frighteningly alike. That proved again how disturbing Palance can be when under restraint. In the movies he increasingly gave himself up to satanic laughter and teeth-baring: Justine: Le Disavventure della Virtu (Jess Franco); The Despera-does (Levin); Vamos a Malar, Companeros! (Sergio Corbucei); Si Puo Fare . . . Amigo (Maurizio Lucidi); Cliato’s Land (Michael W inner); Oklahoma Crude (Stanley Kramer); Те Deum (Enzo G. Castellani); Craze (Francis); Dracula (Dan Curtis); and The Cop in Blue Jeans (Bruno Corbucei).
Since then, he has been all over the place: Portrait of a Hitman (Allan J. Buckhantz); One-Man jury (Charles Martin); Angels' Brigade (Greydon Clark); The Shape of Things to Come (George McCowan); Cocaine Cowboys (Ulli Lommel); The Last Bide of the Dalton Gang (Dan Curtis); The Ivory Ape (SO, Tom Kotani); Hawk the Slayer (Terry Marcel); Without Warning (Clark); Alone in the Dark (Jack Sholder) in which lie costars with Donald Pleasence some films are like rainbows, best seen from a great distance; a cameo in Gor (Fritz Kiersch); suddenly reclaimed by class for Bagdad Cafe ( Percy Adlon); Young Gnus (Christopher Cain); the wicked priest amid the swords and sorcery of Outlaw of Gor (John Cardos); Batman (Tim Burton); and Tango and Cash (Andrei Konchalovsky).
He won the supporting actor Oscar in City Slickers (Ron Underwood), though he was more entertaining receixing the award than in the film. Then he xvas in Badio Flyer (Richard Donner); Sabnonberries (Adlon); Cops 6-Bob-bersons (Michael Ritchie); City Slickers II (Paul Weiland); and a whole bunch of television stuff.
(Buy Attack!: Read 286 Movies & TV Reviews - Amazon.com)
Connections
Palance lived for several years around Tehachapi, California.
Palance was married to his first wife Virginia Baker from 1949 to 1968. They had three children: Holly (born 1950), Brooke (born 1952), and Cody (1955–1998). On New Year's Day 2003, Baker was struck and killed by a car in Los Angeles.
Palance's daughter Brooke married Michael Wilding, son of Michael Wilding Sr. (1912–1979) and Elizabeth Taylor; they have three children. Cody Palance, an actor himself, appeared alongside his father in the film Young Guns.
In May 1987, Palance married his second wife Elaine Rogers.
Palance painted and sold landscape art, with a poem included on the back of each picture. He was also the author of The Forest of Love, a book of poems published in 1996 by Summerhouse Press. He was a supporter of the Republican Party.
Palance acknowledged a lifelong attachment to his Pennsylvania heritage and visited there when able. Shortly before his death, he sold his farm in Butler Township and put his personal art collection up for auction.