Jack Palance

Jack Palance was born on Feb 18, 1919 in USA. Jack Palance's big-screen debut came with Panic in the Streets directed by Elia Kazan in 1950, strarring Blackie (as Walter Jack Palance). Jack Palance is known for Living with the Dead directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal, Ted Danson stars as James Van Praagh and Mary Steenburgen as Detective Karen Condrin. Jack Palance has got 10 awards and 5 nominations so far. The most recent award Jack Palance achieved is DVD Exclusive Awards. The upcoming new movie Jack Palance plays is Back When We Were Grownups which will be released on Nov 21, 2004.

Jack Palance quite often exemplified evil incarnate on film, portraying some of the most intensely feral villains witnessed in 1950s westerns and melodrama. Enhanced by his tall, powerful build, icy voice, and piercing eyes, he earned two "Best Supporting Actor" nominations early in his career. It would take a grizzled, eccentric comic performance 40 years later, however, for him to finally grab the coveted statuette.Of Ukrainian descent, Palance was born Volodymyr Ivanovich Palahniuk (later taking Walter Jack Palance as his legal name) on February 18, 1919, in Lattimer Mines (Pennsylvania coal country), one of six children born to Anna (nee Gramiak) and Ivan Palahniuk. His father, an anthracite miner, died of black lung disease. Palance worked in the mines in his early years but averted the same fate as his father. Athletics was his ticket out of the mines when he won a football scholarship to the University of North Carolina. He subsequently dropped out to try his hand at professional boxing. Fighting under the name "Jack Brazzo", he won his first 15 fights, 12 by knockout, before losing a 4th round decision to future heavyweight contender Joe Baksi on December 17, 1940. With the outbreak of World War II, his boxing career ended and his military career began, serving in the Army Air Force as a bomber pilot. Wounded in combat and suffering severe injuries and burns, he received the Purple Heart, Good Conduct Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal. He resumed college studies as a journalist at Stanford University and became a sportswriter for the San Francisco Chronicle. He also worked for a radio station until he was bit by the acting bug.Palance made his stage debut in "The Big Two" in 1947 and immediately followed it understudying Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in the groundbreaking Broadway classic "A Streetcar Named Desire", a role he eventually took over. Following stage parts in "Temporary Island" (1948), "The Vigil" (1948), and "The Silver Tassle" (1949), Palance won a choice role in "Darkness of Noon" and a Theatre World Award for "Promising New Personality." This recognition helped him secure a 20th Century-Fox contract. The facial burns and resulting reconstructive surgery following the crash and burn of his WWII bomber plane actually worked to his advantage. Out of contention as a glossy romantic leading man, Palance instead became the archetypal villain equipped with an imposing glare, intimidating stance and killer-shark smile.He stood out among a powerhouse cast that included actors such as Richard Widmark, Zero Mostel and Paul Douglas in his movie debut in Elia Kazan's Panique dans la rue (1950), as a plague-carrying fugitive. He was soon on his way. Briefly billed as Walter Jack Palance before eliminating the first name, the actor made fine use of his former boxing skills and war experience for the film Okinawa : Le Verdun du Pacifique (1951) as a boxing Marine in Richard Widmark's platoon. He followed this with the first of his back-to-back Oscar nods. In Le masque arraché (1952), only his third film, he played rich-and-famous playwright Joan Crawford's struggling actor/husband who plots to murder her and run off with gorgeous Gloria Grahame. Finding just the right degree of intensity and menace to pretty much steal the proceedings without chewing the scenery, he followed this with arguably his finest villain of the decade, that of sadistic gunslinger Jack Wilson who takes on Alan Ladd's titular hero, played by L'Homme des vallées perdues (1953), in a classic showdown.Throughout the 1950s, Palance doled out strong leads and supports such as those in Le Tueur de Londres (1953) (his first lead), Le grand couteau (1955) and the war classic Attaque! (1956). Mixed in were a few routine to highly mediocre parts in Vol sur Tanger (1953), Le signe du païen (1954) (as Attila the Hun), and the biblical bomb Le calice d'argent (1954). In between filmmaking were a host of television roles, none better than his down-and-out boxer in link=tt0049669], a rare sympathetic role that earned him an Emmy Award.Back and forth overseas in the 1960s and 1970s, Palance would dominate foreign pictures in a number of different genres -- sandal-and-spear spectacles, biblical epics, war stories and "spaghetti westerns." Such films included Austerlitz (1960), Les Mongols (1961), Barabbas (1961), Il criminale (1962), Le mépris (1963), Le mercenaire (1968), Les infortunes de la vertu (1969), La haine des desperados (1969), Amigo!... Mon colt a deux mots à te dire (1972), Les Collines de la terreur (1972), Pour un dollar d'argent (1976), Welcome to Blood City (1977). Back home, he played Fidel Castro in Che! (1969) while also appearing in Monte Walsh (1970), L'or noir de l'Oklahoma (1973) and The Four Deuces (1975).On the made-for-television front, Jack played a number of nefarious nasties to perfection, ranging from Mr. Hyde (Dr Jekyll et Mr Hyde (1968)) to Dracula in Dracula et ses femmes vampires (1974) to Ebenezer Scrooge in a "Wild West" version of the Dickens classic Ebenezer (1998). He also played one of the Hatfields in The Hatfields and the McCoys (1975). Jack switched gears to star as a "nice guy" lieutenant in the single-season TV cop drama Bronk (1975). In later years, the actor mellowed with age, as exemplified by roles in Bagdad Café (1987), but could still display his bad side as he did as an evil rancher, crime boss or drug lord in, respectively, Young Guns (1988), Batman (1989) and Tango & Cash (1989). Into his twilight years he showed a penchant for brash, quirky comedy capped by his Oscar-winning role in La vie, l'amour... les vaches (1991) and its sequel. He ended his film career playing Long John Silver in L'île au trésor (1999).Married twice, Jack's three children by his first wife/actress Virginia Baker -- Holly Palance, Brooke Palance, and Cody Palance -- each pursued an acting career and appeared with their father at one time or another. A man of few words off the set, he owned his own cattle ranch and displayed other creative sides as a exhibited painter and published poet. His last years were marred by both failing health and the death of son Cody from cancer in 1998. He later was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died, aged 86, at the Santa Barbara County home of his daughter, Holly Palance.