I saw recently the 1970 movie, Monte Walsh, starring Lee Marvin, Jack Palance and the sensuously comely Jeanne Moreau, who is still with us. It tells in its melancholy way the passing of the Old West; Monte’s prostitute girlfriend dies, his closest friend, Chet (Palance), is killed in an ugly robbery murder. His life as a cowboy is evanescing right before his eyes. Similar to Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch in that relationships between men become more significant than the usual oater plots, it is a different take on the western, the plaintive, mourning ending of a time. It got me thinking about Palance whose voice I always found entrancing, regardless of a face that was like a moon crater.
Dimly recalling the 1952 western Shane in which Palance played Jack Wilson, a vicious, menacing gunfighter, he was only in the movie for perhaps five minutes and was nominated as best supporting actor, as his tall and lethal malice lithographed itself into the screen. He was shot from below which only added to his 6’4″ height. (The only other famous cameo was Welles in The Third Man (1950.) It was one of Palance’s early performances and he made his mark. But this was not the role I would come to remember.
In 1956 Bela Lugosi died, I recall, the newspapers reporting that he was buried in his cloak from Dracula — creepy. It was Eisenhower time, and Sputnik a year away. And as I was a casual moviegoer, two or three pictures perhaps in a month, over the years that added up. Saturday was the day. I recall seeing Palance in Attack and it was a powerful, searing and agonizing performance. It went far beyond acting. In those days someone my age just went to see what was playing; there was no reading up on reviews. You paid and could stay all day, cartoons, newsreels, come in at the middle of the movie and stay to the end and watch it begin all over. That ended with Psycho (1960), when Hitchcock insisted on one showing of his film with no interruptions.
Old ladies with flashlights guided you to your row. And candy was very reasonable, not $3 or $6 a pop.The assumption was that whatever movie theaters were in your neighborhood offered something to satisfy your palate. There were no mind filters or reviewers to come between you and the movie. And that freed one, as I look back, to be accepting of what was before you in that dark space. And the impact of each movie rested upon your willingness not to carp, review or criticize but be willing to be temporarily transformed or not by the movie itself.
Aldrich’s Attack was a small, black and white film as charged as its sciatic title. A severe assault on the insanity of war, it featured Palance and Eddie Albert, who played a craven, cowardly Southern officer. Lee Marvin was in it as well, all three leads having served in War World II. Like Kubrick’s Paths of Glory. it played out the theme of us, the enemy and the officers, often combining virulently against the GI on the front lines. Palance played a GI dogface. a reflective soldier as I recall. His voice was susurrus, always was, murmuring and rustling, often language sweetly nuanced to my ear. If he had the looks of a Barrymore, he would have made a great romantic lead. Instead he was a great character actor, following in the line of Edward Arnold, Peter Lorre, and Sidney Greenstreet. Palance was good, more than good in this part — he was magnificent.(He played Dracula for a TV film and it was pathetically, often poignantly drawn; quite different. Rent it if you can. Imagine his voice as Dracula).
I sense after a while Palance realized movies were a joke and he went along for the ride. Attack was on his list of personal favorites. Many recall him memorably doing one-armed push-ups at 73 at the Oscars with Billy Crystal emceeing, his co-star, in City Slickers. And this stunt revitalized his career. Palance imprinted himself on me much earlier. When I tried to look up a good biography of him, none has apparently been written. Well-educated, he wrote poetry and painted for forty years, this actor with chiseled hard features. Palance is a vastly underrated actor. He stunned TV audiences in a live production of Playhouse 90 in the fifties with his tender and lost portrayal of Mountain McClintock in Rod Serling’s Requiem for a Heavyweight, a downtrodden boxer sold-out by his manager. And he played Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire. Range was never an issue for him.
In Attack Palance is hunted down by a sole tank, cornering him and finally riding over his left arm with its powerful tracks, almost shearing his arm off; it is horrific and blood pours through his uniform as he manages to pull away and scrambles back to the CP bunker, and in his dying dramatic soliloquy expresses his rage at a cowardly Albert, fate itself, and then dies. I have always thought of him as the Hamlet of the battlefield. At 16 I had never experienced such a wretched, existential and riveting expression of pain and dismay by an actor of this greatness. The betrayal was immense. I left the theater, on some level, stunned.
When you watch the deceit and corruption of the officer class and poor dogface, following appalling bad marching orders, the estrangement is beyond severe. Watch Palance’s performance as he does a modern Shakespearean role in plain English. It was not acting, it was being. He did not win an academy award that year. I could not get over it. Still can’t.
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