Remembering Jack Palance by Kaye Spencer #westernfictioneers #hollywood #classicwesterns

As I develop the characters in the stories I write, I invariably attribute a Hollywood celebrity’s appearance, mannerisms, and persona related to particular roles they’ve played to my characters. I'm careful, however, to leave enough imagination wiggle room for the reader to create their own mental image of my characters...

...except for the supporting villain in my western historical romance, THE COMANCHERO’S BRIDE. I deliberately created this villainous character in the image of a well-known Hollywood villain of his time,  Jack Palance.

Jack Palance - Publicity photo for film 'Man in the Attic'

By 20th Century Fox - ebay, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27756531

 Since 2019 marks one hundred years since his birth, let’s take a brief look at his life and his acting career. I have used information from these websites: Jack Palance biography at IMDb.com | Jack Palance page at Wikipedia.com   | Jack Palance biography Website

Pertinent information

• Born: February 18, 1919
• Died: November 10, 2006
• Married twice – three children
• Birth name:Vladimir Ivanovich Palahniuk of Ukranian descent and born in Lattimer Mines, Pennsylvania, which was coal country. His father an anthracite miner, who died of black lung disease.
• received a football scholarship to the University of North Carolina
• dropped out be a professional boxer as Jack Brazzo
• served as an Army Air Force bomber pilot in WWII
• after military service, he returned to college to study journalism at Stanford University
• worked as a sportswriter for the San Francisco Chronicle

Jack Palance in The Godchild 1974

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=147085

Examples of his acting career

Stage (Broadway)

• 1947 – 1^st stage performance in “The Big Two” – his role was a Russian soldier
• 1947 – understudy for Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in Broadway's “A Streetcar Named Desire” (he eventually assumed this role)

Anecdote:  While an understudy to Marlon Brando … Brando, who was into athletics, rigged up a punching bag in the theater’s boiler room and invited Jack to work out with him. One night, Jack threw a hard punch that missed the bag and landed square on Brando’s nose. The star had to be hospitalized and understudy Palance created his own big break by going on for Brando. Jack’s reviews as Stanley Kowalski helped get him a 20th Century-Fox contract.

A few notable movies (early in his acting career, he was billed as Walter Jack Palance)

• 1950 – 1^st movie: Panic in the Streets (with Richard Widmark) – his role was as a plague-carrying fugitive  – Widmark said, “...the toughest guy I ever met. He was the only actor I've ever been physically afraid of.”
• 1951 Halls of Montezuma (again with Richard Widmark) – his role was a boxing Marine
• 1952 Sudden Fear – his role was a rich and famous playwright who plots to murder his wife (Joan Crawford) and run off with girlfriend (Gloria Grahame)
• 1953 Second Chance with Robert Mitchum
• 1953 Shane – his role was “...finest villain of the decade, that of creepy, sadistic gunslinger Jack Wilson”

Jack Palance in 'Shane'

Google Search, Google, www.google.com/search?site=imghp&tbm=isch&q=Jack Palance&tbs=sur:fc#imgrc=ID_BbZMGHHdvIM:

• 1956 Attack – his first lead role – WWII action film with Lee Marvin, Eddie Albert, Buddy Ebsen
• 1960s and early 1970s movies found him in filming in Europe with much success
• 1966 The Professionals with Burt Lancaster
• 1970 Monte Walsh with Lee Marvin
• 1972 Chato's Land with Charles Bronson
• 1988 Young Guns with the Hollywood “brat pack”
• 1989 Batman with Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton
• 1989 Tango and Cash with Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell
• 1991 City Slickers with Billy Crystal
• 1994 Cops and Robbersons
• 1999 Treasure Island as Long John Silver

Jack Palance CBS Television

CBS Television, Jack Palance 1975, marked as public domain, more details on Wikimedia Commons

Oscar Nominations and Win for Supporting Actor

• Nominated: Sudden Fear
• Nominated: Shane
• Won: City Slickers

A few of his television appearances

1950s

• Studio One in Hollywood
• The Gulf Playhouse
• The Motorola Television Hour
• Zane Grey Theater
• Playhouse 90: Rquiem for a Heavyweight as a down-and-out boxer (Emmy nomination)

1960s

• The Greatest Show on Earth
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

1970s

• Bronk – series in which he was the title character Lt. Alex Bronkov

1980s

• Host of Ripley's Believe It or Not!

General Trivia

• Owned a California cattle ranch, exhibited his landscape paintings (poem on the back of each), and was a published poet (The Forest of Love 1966)
• Fell asleep in his square during a taping of The Hollywood Squares television program (1965)
• Awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 8, 1960
• Inducted in Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum 1992
• Turned down role of General Chang (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country 1991) due to scheduling conflicts (part went to Christopher Plummer)
• Wanted the Kid Shelleen role in Cat Ballou (1965) for which Lee Marvin received an Oscar
• Played Dracula, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, and Ebenezer Scrooge
• Has been described as having ‘an imposing glare, intimidating stance, and kill-shark smile’
• Recorded a country music album in 1969, “Palance” – he wrote the song “The Meanest Guy that Ever Lived”, which is included on the album

'Blackjack County Chains' performed on the Porter Waggoner show in 1970
 

 Many of you will recall his famous one-handed push up during his Oscar acceptance speech.

Now, for the excerpt from THE COMANCHERO’S BRIDE when we meet “Jack”:

Grayson leaned back in his chair. “They need to see me as a man of action. A man who can get things done. A man who takes charge. I have to head-up the rescue crusade myself, and you’ll write about it, firsthand, emphasizing my discomfort and desperation to save her, which makes Elizabeth’s peril all the more real and heart-rending to the readers.”

“This is going to cost you more, Gray.” Doyle swirled the whiskey in his glass. “I create and destroy careers from comfortable accommodations, not from the midst of inconveniences that go hand-in-hand with chasing an outlaw from here to Mexico.”

“There’s a mighty big piece of country in between here and the Rio Grande.”

Grayson and Doyle turned as one person to stare at the man standing beside their table. Grayson sized him up in a glance and didn’t like what he saw. The stranger was tall, grizzled and unkempt, clad in weather-worn, dirty buckskins, and he sported a battered, sweat-stained hat cocked at an angle over shoulder-length gray scraggly hair. He carried a faded military haversack slung across his body. His rifle, muzzle pointed down, rested in the crook of his right arm, which lifted his right shoulder higher than the left with a rounded, misshapen hump. He had the look of a mountain man, mean, rough-hewn, and hard as granite, but his defining feature was his puckered eye that drew the left side of his face into a disturbing grin. The eye itself was canted in the socket, a milky white-blue orb that sometimes seemed to focus and other times to look right past a person.

Although the man was starkly out of place in the swank surroundings, he didn’t seem to notice, or, more importantly, didn’t care. Grayson saw the concierge watching from the doorway, his expression strained and demeanor nervous at this stranger’s presence, inappropriately attired as he was for this establishment and that he openly carried a rifle. Grayson made a mental note to slip a hefty tip to the concierge to buy his cooperation.

“Who are you?” Grayson demanded.

“I’m the tracker yer lookin’ to hire. Name’s Jack.”

“Jack…what?”

“Jack’s good enough.”

Grayson reassessed the man coolly, his initial unfavorable impression changing. This crude-cast stranger might just be the sort of man he needed.

“Have a seat.” Although Grayson nodded to the concierge that all was well and the small man visibly relaxed, although he maintained his watchful position at the doorway.

Grayson offered bourbon, and a chair across the table, but Jack declined both with a slight head shake then took a chair that put his back to the wall and beside Grayson. Grayson exchanged a quick glance with Doyle.

“What’s your price?”

“Depends on the job.”

*****

THE COMANCHERO’S BRIDE

Available on Amazon.com as a single purchase

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UNDER A WESTERN SKY

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Until next time,

Kaye Spencer

Writing through history one romance upon a time

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VILLAINS WE LOVE TO HATE by Meg Mims

A few months ago, I explored a few Western movie sidekicks. Now I'm featuring the big bad black hats, the villains we loved to hate in movies. I have my own favorites, but I also checked through a few websites to see which names other bloggers came up with for great movie villains.

Since I'm more of a young whippersnapper, I'm sticking to movies *I've* seen, not the B-movie classics (usually made and shown on the big screen and as television reruns before my time). So bear with me if your baddies aren't in my list. Add 'em to the comments below, though!

I'll start with a thriller movie starring ROBERT MITCHUM as "Reverend" Harry Powell in The Night of the Hunter. Yes, I know it isn't a western, being based on a real life killer in West Virginia. But it could be, given the river setting (try the muddy Missouri), the Midwest-style flavor of small town life, the poverty-stricken Depression, and the nightmarish sequences. Directed by Charles Laughton, (yes, the star of Ruggles of Red Gap), it's a haunting film. And Mitchum is a fabulous villain. Scared me to death as a kid, and still scares me. He's perfect "with his long face, his gravel voice, and the silky tones of a snake-oil salesman." The righteous Lillian Gish "looks nothing so much as Whistler's mother holding a shotgun." (Roger Ebert)

One of my favorite western movies is The Magnificent Seven. A small Mexican village is overrun by bandits on a regular basis, and the only heroes available are gunfighters - most of them not regular "white hats" either, like Charles Bronson and Robert Vaughn. But ELI WALLACH plays Calvera, and he truly is the baddest of the Mexican bandit band. Wallach also played Tuco, the Ugly role as a gunman in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, and the outlaw Charlie Gant in How The West Was Won. The actor played roles into his nineties, a trooper until the end.

WALTER BRENNAN, a villain? No way! I remember him fondly from The Guns of Will Sonnett, The Real McCoys and The Over-The-Hill Gang movies. But he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, his third, as 'Old Man' Clanton in the western My Darling Clementine where I rooted for Henry Fonda. He also portrayed a murderous Colonel in How the West Was Won opposite James Stewart. I already featured him as a great western sidekick, too. A man of many talents indeed. He also is only one of three actors to win three Best Supporting Actor Oscars - Jack Nicholson and Daniel Day-Lewis are the others. His career lasted from 1929 to 1971, quite an accomplishment.

Another surprise-surprise pick - good guy HENRY FONDA. Who would believe him as a villain? But I did, again in Once Upon a Time in the West, as a hired gun. He killed three little kids, for crying out loud! That's baaaad. Cast against type from his usual hero role, he made it memorable. I still prefer Fonda as the stern Mister Roberts or in the western The Ox-Bow Incident, puzzled over the injustice of it all.

Next up, let's go with BRUCE DERN. I mean, he killed the Duke, John Wayne, in The Cowboys! And while wearing a pale hat!! That made me hate him, and that movie was one of the best "coming of age" plots you can ever find. Dern had already been typecast long before as pyscho-killers in many movies, and his portrayal of an outlaw sure convinced me of that ego-centric arrogance that villains are sure to have to motivate their actions. His higher-pitched voice helped, along with his squinty eyes and buckish teeth - if I'd met him in the Old West, you can bet I'd never turn my back on a skunk like that.

I'll throw in a female villain, since there aren't many as good as BARBARA STANWYCK. Granted, she was a better villainous femme fatale in Double Indemnity with Fred MacMurray, but in the western 40 Guns, she portrays Jessica Drummond who runs a county "with an iron fist" and allows her brother and his gang to run amok. She's also the boss of a gang of thieves in The Maverick Queen. I preferred watching her in Union Pacific with Joel McCrea playing Molly Monahan, the daughter of a train engineer, but she also starred in Annie Oakley, California, Cattle Queen of Montana and was best known in The Big Valley. More fun as a strong heroine, in my opinion.

Who can forget the classic movie Shane pitting Alan Ladd against the nasty hired gun Jack Wilson as portrayed by JACK PALANCE? He earned an Oscar nod for that role. He resurrected his career later in life playing Murphy in Young Guns plus prickly cowboy Curly Washburn with Billy Crystal in City Slickers. His hilarious performance won him a "Triple Crown" - the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, a Golden Globe for the same title AND the American Comedy Award for Funniest Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture. Well-deserved, too.

Don't forget LEE MARVIN as the lawless gunfighter Liberty Valance opposite James Stewart and John Wayne in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Marvin also won the Academy Award for Best Actor playing opposite Jane Fonda in the comical Cat Ballou, and led a band of mercenaries in The Professionals. In the western musical Paint Your Wagon, Lee Marvin got top billing over Clint Eastwood. Other westerns Marvin starred in are The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday with Oliver Reed, Bad Day at Black Rock with Spencer Tracy, Monte Walsh with Jack Palance and plenty of TV spots on The Virginian, Bonanza and Wagon Train.

And who doesn't remember Liberty Valance's henchman, LEE VAN CLEEF? He polished his bad guy role in High Noon over the years in many many westerns and reached the zenith as Angel Eyes in Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. He also played heroes in Leone's spaghetti westerns that followed. "His gravelly voice... gruff, often aloof appearance and persona, became as idiosyncratic as the movies themselves." It seems a villain with a unique voice may be a running theme along with that gruff badness.

Last (for now) and not least is RICHARD BOONE who played Paladin in the TV western Have Gun, Will Travel. He also played the ruthless outlaw and kidnapper in Big Jake opposite John Wayne, Cicero Grimes the gang-leader and kidnapper in Hombre with Paul Newman, plus a man with a grudge against the gunfighter John Wayne in The Shootist. Boone also had a gravelly voice and gruff features. Seems to be a requirement to play villainous parts, and he played plenty of others in westerns.

So... who are your favorite villains? 

Meg Mims is an award-winning author with two western mysteries under her Eastern belt. She lives in Michigan, where the hills are like driveway slopes and trees block any type of prairie winds. LIKE her on Facebook, follow her on Twitter or check out her books on her website.