Jack Palance.

Jack Palance was born Volodymyr Ivanovich Palahniuk in Lattimer Mines, Pennsylvania, in 1919 to Ukrainian immigrant parents. His father died of black lung disease from coal mining. Palance worked in the mines as a youth but escaped through athletics, winning a football scholarship to the University of North Carolina. He later dropped out to become a professional boxer under the name Jack Brazzo, winning his first 15 fights. His boxing career ended with WWII, where he served as a bomber pilot and suffered severe burns in a crash. After the war, he attended Stanford University and became a sportswriter before turning to acting.

Palance made his film debut in Elia Kazan’s Panic in the Streets 1950 as a plague-carrying fugitive. His breakthrough came with Sudden Fear 1952, earning his first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The following year, he delivered one of cinema’s most memorable villains as Jack Wilson in Shane 1953. In the 1950s, he played intense villains in films like The Big Knife and Attack. In 1956, he won an Emmy for Requiem for a Heavyweight. Later decades saw him in international films such as Contempt 1963 and The Mercenary 1968. He also played Fidel Castro in Che! 1969. In the 1980s and 1990s, he appeared in Batman 1989, Tango & Cash 1989, and finally won an Oscar for City Slickers 1991 at age 72, famously doing one-handed push-ups at the ceremony.

Palance was married twice: first to actress Virginia Baker from 1949 to 1968, with whom he had three children: Holly, Brooke, and Cody. His second marriage was to Elaine Rochelle Rogers in 1987, who was 27 years his junior. His son Cody died of melanoma in 1998. Palance was a man of few words off-screen, owned a cattle ranch, and was an avid painter and poet. He studied acting with Michael Chekhov.

Jack Palance defined the archetypal villain of 1950s westerns and melodramas. His role as the black-hatted gunslinger in Shane 1953 influenced later portrayals of evil characters. His one-handed push-ups at the 1992 Oscars became a legendary moment. In 1992, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He is remembered for his intense presence and his Oscar win for City Slickers.