Jack Palance - Academy Award

Academy Award

Four decades after his film debut, Palance won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor on March 30, 1992, for his performance as cowboy Curly Washburn in the 1991 comedy City Slickers. Stepping onstage to accept the award, the intimidatingly fit 6' 4" (1.93 m) actor looked down at 5' 7" (1.70 m) Oscar host Billy Crystal (who was also his co-star in the movie), and joked — mimicking one of his lines from the film — "Billy Crystal... I crap bigger than him." He then dropped to the floor and demonstrated his ability, at age 73, to perform one-handed push-ups.

Crystal turned this into a running gag. At first, he quipped, "I told Jack before the ceremony, 'Decaf, Jack, decaf'". Then, at various points in the broadcast, he announced that Palance had done the following:

• was backstage on the Stairmaster;
• "...just bungee-jumped off the Hollywood sign";
• rendezvoused with the Space Shuttle in orbit;
• fathered all the children in a production number;
• been named People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive;
• had won the New York primary election.

At the end of the broadcast, Crystal told everyone he would like to see them again, "but I've just been informed Jack Palance will be hosting next year."

Years later Billy Crystal appeared on Inside the Actors Studio with James Lipton and fondly recalled that after the Oscar ceremony, Palance approached him during the reception, "stopped me and put his arms out and went, 'Billy Crystal, who thought it would be you?'. It was his really funny way of saying thank you to a little New York Jewy guy who got him the Oscars".

In a spoof of that Oscar highlight, the opening of the 1993 Oscars featured Palance appearing to drag in an enormous Academy Award statuette, with Crystal, again hosting, riding on the rear end of it.