Early Years
Palma grew up in New York City, and worked as a mortician in the Provenzano Funeral Home, owned by his parents. Eventually, Hollywood called, and Palma headed west. He joined the stock company at Columbia Pictures in 1937, and played scores of bit parts over 30 years.
With his lean build, brushed-back hair, and unassuming appearance, Joe Palma almost always played incidental roles. He was usually in the background, and at most, he would be given only a few lines of dialogue. In the 1945 Three Stooges comedy Beer Barrel Polecats, for instance, Palma plays an angry convict who dares Curly Howard to punch him in the nose.
Palma can be glimpsed in all kinds of movies, including crime dramas, musical comedies, costume epics, westerns, serials, and two-reel comedies. Several of his many roles consisted of the following:
- a railroad brakeman picking up runaway Scotty Beckett in The Jolson Story
- a plainclothes detective making a positive identification in the Jean Porter musical Little Miss Broadway
- a bandit defying authority in the Three Stooges' Guns a Poppin!
- a waiter in Sam Katzman's production Rock Around the Clock.
Palma's largest speaking role is probably in the Schilling & Lane short Training for Trouble, in which Palma attempts a Jewish dialect: "This is Goldstein, Goldberg, Goldblatt, and O'Brien, booking agents. O'Brien speaking" (a gag borrowed from the Stooges' A Pain in the Pullman).
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