Academy Awards Acceptance Speech Database

JACK PALANCE:
Billy Crystal, [laughs] I crap bigger than him. You know, there are times when you reach a certain age plateau where the producers say, they talk about you and they say, "Well, what do you think? Can we risk it? Can we do it? Can we use him?" The other guy says, "I don't know, let's look at some younger ones. We can make them look older, but this one, you know, it's kind of difficult." They forget, they forget to ask that you go out there and you do all these…things. Like for instance, you know, [leaves podium] you go out there, you do these one-arm push-ups. [Does three one-arm push-ups on stage; returns to podium.] That's nothing, really. As far as the two-handed push-ups are concerned, you can do that all night and it doesn't make any difference whether she's there or not. And besides, it's a hell of a lot less expensive.

Wow. You know, a long time ago in 1949, first picture, 1949, first film, I'd been shooting about two weeks and the producer came to me and he said, "Jack" – my name at that time was Vladimir, but he called me Jack. He says, "Jack, you're going to win the Academy Award." Can you believe it? Forty-two years later he was right. How the son of a bitch knew?! Thank you.