Jack Palance
Every time you watch a villain humiliating and goading an innocent man into drawing his gun, an action which will surely leave him dead, you are watching an impression of Jack Palance. To some degree, we all fear we’re like Elisha Cook, Jr. in Shane, the outgunned little farmer whose pride and unwillingness to back down will be our end.
Palance’s performance as Jack Wilson, a gunman hired by cattle interests to drive out homesteaders, is so wonderfully calculated, so sadistic, that it makes you admire Alan Ladd’s Shane, who had the same background, but regained his humanity, all the more.
The actor with the high cheekbones, piercing eyes, and clipped manner of speech brought fear to audiences for decades, often in crime films, and in Westerns made in America, Spain, and Israel. Like his Monte Walsh co-star Lee Marvin, he finally earned his Oscar in a comedy making fun of his menacing image, in 1991’s City Slickers.