Jack Palance

Jack Palance, born Volodymyr Palahniuk on February 18, 1919, in Lattimer Mines, Pennsylvania, was an American actor whose career spanned stage, screen, and television across six decades. The son of Ukrainian Catholic immigrants — his father Ivan, a native of Ivane-Zolote in southwestern Ukraine, worked as an anthracite coal miner, and his mother Anna came from the Lviv Oblast — Palance was one of six children who labored in coal mines during his youth before turning to professional boxing in the late 1930s. Fighting under the name Jack Brazzo, he lost his only recorded bout to future heavyweight contender Joe Baksi in a four-round points decision, though other sources credit him with fifteen consecutive club victories including twelve knockouts. He later recalled that the prospect of taking beatings for two hundred dollars made the theater seem considerably more attractive.

Before his acting career took shape, Palance pursued higher education along an uneven path. He won a football scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill but left after two years, put off by what he viewed as the commercialization of college sports. Following his discharge from the United States Army Air Forces in 1944 — he had trained as a pilot of a B-24 Liberator bomber and underwent reconstructive surgery after sustaining head injuries and burns in a 1943 crash, which contributed to his distinctively gaunt appearance — he enrolled at Stanford University to study journalism before switching to drama. He departed one credit short of graduating to pursue a theater career. During those years he supported himself working as a short order cook, waiter, soda jerk, lifeguard at Jones Beach State Park, and photographer's model. It was around this period that he adopted the name Walter Jack Palance, deriving the surname from his birth name after concluding that most people could not pronounce Palahniuk.

Palance arrived in New York City and studied method acting under Michael Chekhov while working as a sportswriter. His Broadway debut came in 1947 in The Big Two, in which he played a Russian soldier in a production directed by Robert Montgomery. The following year he appeared in two short-running plays, A Temporary Island and The Vigil, both in 1948. His most consequential stage opportunity came when he was cast as Marlon Brando's understudy in the drama A Streetcar Named Desire, eventually replacing Brando in the role of Stanley Kowalski, while Anthony Quinn took the part on tour. Palance returned to Broadway in 1951 for Darkness at Noon, Sidney Kingsley's adaptation that proved a modest hit. His stage work during this period earned him a Theatre World Award in 1951, and his Broadway appearances ran from 1947 through 1951.

His transition to film came in 1950 with Panic in the Streets, directed by Elia Kazan — who had also directed Streetcar on Broadway — in which Palance played a gangster and was credited as "Walter (Jack) Palance." His third film role, opposite Joan Crawford in the thriller Sudden Fear (1952), brought his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor; his character was a former coal miner, a detail that echoed his own father's occupation. A second nomination in the same category followed the very next year for his portrayal of hired gunfighter Jack Wilson in the enormously successful Western Shane (1953). In 1957, he won an Emmy Award for his performance as Mountain McClintock in the Playhouse 90 production of Rod Serling's Requiem for a Heavyweight.

Beginning in the late 1950s, Palance worked extensively in Europe, appearing in productions filmed in Germany, France, Italy, and Mexico. Among the most notable of these was Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 film Le Mépris, known in English as Contempt, in which he played Hollywood producer Jeremy Prokosch opposite Brigitte Bardot, delivering most of his dialogue in English while the surrounding production was conducted primarily in French. He also played the title role in the 1973 television film Bram Stoker's Dracula, a portrayal that went on to influence subsequent depictions of the character. During the 1980s he hosted the television series Ripley's Believe It or Not! from 1982 to 1986, introducing him to a new generation of viewers. That renewed visibility contributed to high-profile villain roles in Young Guns (1988) and Tango & Cash (1989). His late-career resurgence culminated in the role of Curly in City Slickers (1991), for which he won both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor — nearly four decades after his first Oscar nomination. Off screen, Palance was involved in efforts supporting the Ukrainian American community and served as chairman of the Hollywood Trident Foundation. He died on November 10, 2006.