Jack Palance died yesterday. Or, more likely, he chose to stop living. I doubt death held much sway over Jack Palance. He was one of my favorite actors for a few simple, if possibly odd, reasons:
- He hosted the television version of “Ripley’s”¦Believe It or Not” when I was a kid. The best part of the entire show was when he would end a segment by intoning, “Believe it! [then he’d sharply inhale] Or not!”
- As most people know, Jack, at age 114, he performed 2,439 one-arm push-ups at the Academy Awards. I’m still working on my first.
- In the mid 90s he cut a commercial for Aqua Velva that included not one, but two eminently quotable lines. “I don’t need some fancy cologne to tell me I’m a man,” and, “Confidence is so sexy, don’t you think?”
Can you argue with either of those statements? No. You can’t. And if you try, Mr. Palance’s disembodied soul will hunt you down and crush you like the Hai Karate-wearing punk you are.
Believe it. [sharp inhale] Or not.
Later,
Fox
Yeah. I give Jack (dead) Vegas odds 6-1 over Clint Eastwood (alive).
On anything.
That believe it or not sign-off line is a classic, Fox. Nice memory.
[…] Heck yeah, I think! And my apologies for earlier reporting that this was an Aqua Velva ad. Jack will undoutedly torment my soul for ever associating his name with that dreck. […]