Jack Palance RIP

The star of 'Shane', 'Panic in the Streets' and 'City Slickers' has died.

Nov 14 2006

Oscar-winning Western actor Jack Palance died on Friday of natural causes, surrounded by his family at his home in Montecito, California.

A former boxer with a square jaw, broken nose and a low menacing drawl, Jack Palance carved out a long and successful career as a Hollywood hard man. After making his acting breakthrough by replacing Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan's Broadway production of 'A Streetcar Named Desire', Jack went on to portray a series of on-screen tough guys. He played a murderer named Blackie in his debut feature film 'Panic in the Streets', Jack the Ripper in 'Man in the Attic', Attila the Hun in 'Sign of the Pagan' and went on to receive his second Academy Award nomination for his part as the gun-toting Jack Wilson in the classic western 'Shane'.

It was this typecasting - that he learnt to embrace and parody years later in 'City Slickers' - that lead him to leave Hollywood for Switzerland in the late 1950s, just when his career was really taking off. Whilst in Europe he starred alongside Brigitte Bardot in Jean-Luc Godard's classic of Nouvelle Vague cinema, 'Le Mepris', as a disgruntled US movie producer.

But Jack Parlance will probably be best remembered for his irreverence towards the Hollywood institution that made him. Spurning the Hollywood scene, Jack spent most of his time on a horse ranch north of LA. He was often outspoken about his colleagues' incompetence, saying once that 'most of the stuff I do is garbage'. Perhaps his finest hour though was at the age of 73 when he accepted an Oscar for his role in 'City Slickers'. Looking his diminutive co-star up and down, he said 'Billy Crystal.. I crap bigger than him' before dropping to the ground to perform a series of one-armed push-ups.

• 
•