• April 13, 1992
• Vol. 37
• No. 14

Palancing Act

Tough Guy Jack Palance Gets Down on All Threes for His Oscar

IN HIS 42 YEARS AS AN ACTOR, JACK Palance has essayed many remarkable performances, but none more so than his role as a curmudgeonly cutup at the 64th annual Academy Awards last week. When presenter Whoopi Goldberg announced that Palance had won the Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for his role as Curly in City Slickers, Palance, 72, bounded to the rostrum, accepted his statue, then moments later dropped to the floor to astound ceremony host and Slickers costar Billy Crystal and the audience with a swift series of one-arm push-ups. "That's nothing, really," Palance told reporters backstage—adding that he works out every day and could do 27,643 push-ups. (He placed no time frame on this feat.)

Palance could be forgiven a certain eccentric exuberance. After all, it was his first Oscar win, and this nomination had come 38 years after his last bid. Born in Hazleton, Pa., of Russian-immigrant parents, Palance had arrived in Hollywood in the late '40s with a rebuilt face (his was burned in World War II) and a voice like a whisper from the grave. He used his villainous visage and sepulchral speech to such advantage that during the filming of his first movie, 1950's Panic in the Streets, legendary director Elia Kazan said, "You're going to win an Oscar for this."

He didn't. And although the rough-hewn actor went on to record scores of powerful screen moments as boxers, soldiers and gun-fighters, and he was indeed twice nominated for an Oscar (for Sudden Fear in 1952 and Shane in 1953), he had to wait, lo, these many years for his statue.

Palance's celebratory antics placed him in the pantheon of baroque characters who have enlivened the often humdrum ceremonies. As Crystal—who proceeded to feed off Palance's act all evening—might have put it: "Jack Palance will soon be seen doing 27,643 push-ups in a Jane Fonda workout cassette."