Jack Palance has died. If you look at his IMDB page, and scan the dates, there isn’t a significant GAP in dates, no fallow period, no years of not working. Palance has always worked. I liked him for his sense of danger, the sense that you never knew what he was going to do, also his fearlessness about not being liked. He just didn’t care. In fact, he relished not being liked.
Just two years ago, there was an incident that should have made major headlines. Palance was invited to a Russian Film Festival held in Los Angeles, and he – along with Dustin Hoffman – were going to be given awards for their contributions to Russian culture. Palance attended the ceremony and … things didn’t go quite as planned.
For all the other things I love about him, I admire him so much for taking that stance, for not just refusing to accept the award, but for going to the awards ceremony and making a public statement. So badass. Hoffman must have felt kind of like an idiot.
Alex has written a beautiful and detailed tribute to Palance.
oh, I second that RIP. They don’t make guys like him any more.
one armed pushups. That still just slays me.
So sad. We will miss him.
I’m a yearbook guy. If I see a yearbook, any high school, any college, any time, I can lose myself for two hours. Sometimes I get cool results like when I was leafing through a late 40s Stanford yearbook and there he was in a drama photo, unmistakably Jack Palance. Stanford guy was not the vibe he gave off. Unique and playfully bizarre, more like it. My kind of guy.
I was just watching him in “Shane” recently. When he talks in that movie, he has that quiet inner intensity, like the creature in “Alien” when it prepares to thrust out it’s snapping jaws, filled with a rage that no physical action can satisfy.
Two years ago, I did 20 one armed push-ups ala Jack Palance, because somebody at a business conference called me fat and out of shape (which I was)… 3 cortisone shots and 6 months of physical therapy later my left shoulder is ALMOST back to normal…