Jack Palance

Long-time Stallion Springs resident Jack Palance is best remembered as an award-winning film and television actor with a penchant for playing bad guys.

Palace toiled as a professional boxer until World War II. Joining the Army Air Force as a pilot, Palance was badly burned when the bomber he was flying crashed. The resulting plastic surgery helped give his face his trademark taut, leathery look.

His first acting break came as Marlon Brando’s Broadway understudy in A Streetcar Named Desire, but fame came as one of the great movie heavies of the 1950s. His debut in 1950's Panic in the Streets was followed by Oscar-nominated performances in Sudden Fear and Shane. His role as a has-been boxer in television's Requiem for a Heavyweight won him an Emmy in 1956. In the 1980s he co-hosted the television series Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

His career was resurrected in 1989 when he played a mean crime king in Batman, and his turn as the comically creepy trail boss in City Slickers earned him the Academy Award for best supporting actor in 1992. While accepting the prize he dropped to the stage to perform one-handed pushups, and the wacky moment became his public signature.

In 1992, Palance was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame. He passed away due to natural causes in 2006 at the age of 87.