“That’s Nothing, Really,”

"As far as two-handed push-ups, you can do that all night, and it doesn't make a difference whether she's there or not." Jack Palance made that remark at the 1992 Oscar Awards ceremony after demonstrating one-handed pushups for the audience. Sadly, news has just hit the wires that Jack Palance is dead at age 87.

LOS ANGELES - Jack Palance, the craggy-faced menace in "Shane," "Sudden Fear" and other films who turned successfully to comedy in his 70s with his Oscar-winning self-parody in "City Slickers," died Friday.

Palance died of natural causes at his home in Montecito, Calif., surrounded by family, said spokesman Dick Guttman. He was 87.

When Palance accepted his Oscar for best supporting actor he delighted viewers of the 1992 Academy Awards by dropping to the stage and performing one-armed push-ups to demonstrate his physical prowess.

"That's nothing, really," he said slyly. "As far as two-handed push-ups, you can do that all night, and it doesn't make a difference whether she's there or not."

That year's Oscar host, Billy Crystal, turned the moment into a running joke, making increasingly outlandish remarks about Palance's accomplishments throughout the show.

It was a magic moment that epitomized the actor's 40 years in films. Always the iconoclast, Palance had scorned most of his movie roles.

"Most of the stuff I do is garbage," he once told a reporter, adding that most of the directors he worked with were incompetent, too.

"Most of them shouldn't even be directing traffic," he said.

If you ever read an interview with Palance, he was a very plain-spoken man and came across as completely genuine. His film appearances were legendary. When he did menacing, you felt it. Rest in peace.