DVD Tuesdays: Tribute to Jack Palance (Panic in the Streets)
I love talking about movies, but I've never been able to organize movie-night get-togethers. So this is the next best thing: On Tuesdays I'm going to spotlight a DVD and suggest some virtual-discussion starters.
In honor of the late, great
Jack Palance (born Vladimir Palahnuik in 1919), who died on November 10, age 87, my recommendation this week is
Panic in the Streets (1950).
Shot on location in New Orleans,
Elia Kazan's thriller stars
Richard Widmark as a U.S. Public Health Service investigator forced to infiltrate the city's seedy underbelly in hopes of preventing an outbreak of the plague. In an age when emerging diseases can travel across the world in 24 hours, the story is still all too timely.
Palance plays petty gangster Blackie, who's been exposed to the plague virus. It's an electrifying movie debut: Anyone who thinks of this actor only as the feisty old guy doing one-armed push-ups at the 1991 Academy Awards ceremony - when he won an Oscar for his comic supporting performance in
City Slickers - is in for a surprise. I interviewed Palance last year, when
Panic in the Streets came out on DVD, for a sidebar to my review. Only a couple of lines ever made it into print, so this seemed a good opportunity to run the rest.
Jack Palance on Panic in the Streets
Halls of Montezuma and
Panic in the Streets were both released the same year, so which was really your first feature?
JP: It was
Panic in the Streets.
And how were you cast?
JP: That was a while ago - 1949 - and to tell you the truth, I don't really remember exactly how I got it. But I worked with Elia Kazan on the play
A Streetcar Named Desire; I got to know him very well, he got to know me, and we got along very well. It all worked out.
So he offered you the role of Blackie, a pretty dreadful person by any reckoning.
JP: Well, dreadful to somebody else. I don't think
he thinks of himself as dreadful. Blackie just figures if he has to do something, he does it.
Panic in the Streets was shot on location in New Orleans....
JP: Yes, it was. I don't know whether New Orleans was a wild town or not, but I loved it.
How much of your own stunt work did you do?
JP: I did all my own stunt work. I was always in good shape, so it didn't bother me. I do remember only doing the shot where Blackie falls into the Mississippi while trying to escape. I had to swing my body over that thing that's there to stop rats [from climbing up a mooring rope onto a ship], and then I had to fall. It really was difficult, but I did it. However, I remember Kazan saying, "Do you want to give it another try?" And I said, "No sir. That's it." And that was it.
Was
Zero Mostel really doing his own stunts as well?
JP: Zero did everything himself as well - I thought he was wonderful. Zero was a little on the fatty side, but gol-darn-it, he got around beautifully! Everyone in the cast was top-notch in my book: Dick Widmark, Barbara Bel Geddes, Paul Douglas... all of them real good. I think a lot of the supporting cast were local - they had a good theater there in New Orleans, so Kazan was able to borrow actors.
The story still feels very modern: The fear that diseases spreading quickly because modern travel has made the world so small is as intense today as it was in 1950.
JP: I guess that's true. The film was in black-and-white and maybe the kids have gone beyond that, but I think some of them will appreciate it.
What do you remember most about making
Panic in the Streets?
JP: I remember loving being able to work with Elia Kazan. I thought he was terrific, and I was lucky to get the chance.
Things to discuss:
Palance became a film actor at a time when studios signed actors to multiyear contracts and used them frequently to justify their weekly salaries: Palance made well over 100 films in a five-decade career. Featured actors now work less but have more control over what they do - or do they? What are the plusses and minuses of being a contract player versus being an independent performer?
Palance alludes to the idea that many younger moviegoers don't like black-and-white: Are black-and-white movies inherently less visually compelling than color ones?
Though Palance's looks didn't entirely typecast him, he played a lot of gangsters, thugs and Old West outlaws. Does the intimacy of the close-up mean that physical appearance matters more in movies than it does on stage?
Remember: Send your movie questions to
FlickChick.
Previous DVD blogs:
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick
Also:
This Week's New DVD Releases
