Jack Palance as in the Skin Bracer aftershave commercial of the early 90s Jack Palance?
"Confidence is very sexy, don't you think?"
Never was one for 'old' movies. Shane is way before the vast majority of CBers time - maybe I should see what Jack Palance is actually known for.
His Oscar for City Slickers (as good a performance as it was) was supposedly a partial acknowledgement of his getting robbed of the supporting Oscar for his role in Shane. he was a better heel in Shane than he was a tough-guy curmudgeon in City Slickers.
He was great, but I am not sure he was robbed. I would take his performance over Frank Sinatra's in From Here to Eternity, but Sinatra was surprisingly good in the film (and how he got the role is captured in Godfather 1
). From Here to Eternity was a good film, a huge hit and, given its proximity to WW2, understandably so.
Westerns have always drawn the short straw in the Academy Awards and the kid in Shane took some votes away from Palance in the best supporting actor category (he didn't bother me, but I like kids though not 14 year old girls). The anti-Western bias is more clearly seen in none of John Ford's westerns winning or High Noon being jobbed out of Best Picture the year before Shane.
There is some inside Hollywood political controversy involved in the heavily favored High Noon's loss to the The Greatest Show on Earth, which is arguably the biggest and most perverse upset in Academy Awards history. Nobody thinks of the 1952 winner as being a good film, never mind a great one. In any case, only 3 Westerns have won Best Pictures and actors in those films like Palance suffered accordingly. Nonetheless, Jack Wilson is a great role and Palance fit it well.