Born Ana María Cazorla Vega, this Spanish dynamo brought her steely, penetrating gaze and fiery Latin passion to 17 European westerns, many of them Spanish co-productions. Originally trained in dance, flamenco, ballet and theatre, she had supporting roles in Euro-westerns such as Chino (1973), Bad Man’s River (1971), Django Shoots First (1966), and California (1977). She also appeared in two Spain-filmed Hollywood westerns, the Texican (1966), where she played the female lead opposite Audie Murphy, and Villa Rides (1968). She was a leading lady in several other lesser known Euro-westerns as well. Outside of the western genre, she is known for her roles in Spanish horror, starring in Jess Franco’s The Awful Dr. Orloff (1962) and Nightmares Come at Night (1970), Amando de Ossorio’s Malenka aka Fangs of the Living Dead (1969) and Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll aka House of Psychotic Women (1976) opposite Paul Naschy. She also appeared in the Hill and Spencer comedy swashbuckler, Blackie the Pirate (1971). Her career declined in the late seventies and she retired from film.
February 18, 1919 (Lattimer Mines PA, USA)- November 10, 2006 (Montecito CA)
In an acting career that spanned half a century and well over 100 film and television appearances, one of Hollywood’s most accomplished character actors also lent his formidable height, menacing glare, prominent cheekbones and acting talent to 7 Euro- Westerns, usually playing the lead villain. Born Volodymyr Palanyuk, this former professional boxer and decorated World War II veteran was well suited for westerns and gave two highly memorable performances in two of Sergio Corbucci’s hugely successful Zapata masterpieces, The Mercenary (1968), opposite Franco Nero and Companeros (1970), alongside Nero and Tomas Milian. He also appeared in God’s Gun (1975) and It Can Be Done, Amigo (1972) among others. His work outside the Euro-Western genre is both prolific and renowned. He gave Oscar nominated performances in Sudden Fear (1952) and Shane (1953) and also appeared in Panic in the Streets (1950), Attack (1956) and the Professionals (1966). In later decades his work included supporting appearances in films such as Batman (1989), Tango and Cash (1989) and Young Guns (1988). Perhaps his best known role was his Academy Award winning performance as Curly Washburn in City Slickers (1991). Palance continued to act in a wide variety of films and television productions, including City Slickers 2: The Legend of Curly’s Gold (1994) up until his death.
I just read a few pages of this cool idea why wouldn’t Thomas Weisser and his exhaustive work he did on writing about 558 SW “Spaghetti Westerns The Good, the Bad, and the Violent” make him the all time historian on the SW genre? I don’t agree with all of his reviews but to me his work is the Holy Bible on the subject.
I think people should consider Mannaja (1977) the last year of the genre to be the best SW that has been produced in the later 70’s. Maurizio Merli was amazing for his only contribution to the genre and director Sergio Martino was brilliant. They would both get my vote… This movie came too late for the genre and really this film can be considered a top 20.
Thank you for the links to read. I fully understand when doing such a project errors will be made and need to be fixed with a future updated version. Still it has to be a good book in the sense or has there been similar works done that are better then Weisser’s? I have been gone for 5 years now and am just getting back into the SW genre.
You’re definitely free to vote for Mr. Weisser when balloting starts in late November. I personally think he doesn’t deserve to get in but thats just me. Here is another thread in another forum. http://www.lovelockandload.net/forum/index.php?topic=244.0
Mannaja was at one time in the top 20 at one time, a few years ago during the early years of the top 20. But as more voters voted it got slowly phased out. It is one of the best 70s SWs no doubt.
Thank you for the links to read. I fully understand when doing such a project errors will be made and need to be fixed with a future updated version. Still it has to be a good book in the sense or has there been similar works done that are better then Weisser’s? I have been gone for 5 years now and am just getting back into the SW genre.[/quote]
I here ya brother. Still, just because a book happens to be the only one of its kind, doesn’t necessarily made it good. It was overall a pretty poor effort. It wasn’t a case of a few understandible and errors popping up. It was more a case of the author not taking the proper time and effort to research and maintain factual accuracy or even bother to watch the films that he was writing about. There are probably a dozen people on this forum or more who are better authorities on the SW genre than Mr. Weisser.
I just read all the pages bill sent me about Weisser and feel sick to my stomach for, I paid $65 for the book back then… Do we know exactly how many SW films were made? How many are available to view? I am sure there is quite a few lost. I really appreciate you guys opening my eyes to this man.
Yes sir! Just a little busy at the moment, starting around mid december I will get voting started and I will finally finish those bios for this year’s inductees.
I’m just wondering… how are our votes bound to have changed in one year when we are talking about a genre that is obsolete for almost 30 years? Maybe few things have changed slots in our top lists, but I don’t think we’ll see something radically different as a result.
I really think Frank Braña should be in the hall of fame. He’s been in 59 Westerns according to IMDB including all 3 of the dollar trilogy and OUTITW, La Resa Dei Conti, Faccia a Faccia and many many other classics and not so much.
Usually there aren’t alot of surprises. The more well known guys get in first followed by the lesser known guys. But because of new candidates that crop up, new members voting and perhaps people changing their minds in light of last year’s results, there might be some changes. We’ll wait and see!
That’s not how it works ION. The people already in the Hall of Fame stay there. What we do each year is vote for a couple of new inductees. So, the idea is to look at who is in the Hall and nominate some names who aren’t in there yet who you think deserve to be.
And how many votes one new inductee has to get in order to go in the Hall of Fame? Because if the ones with the most votes are simply added there, in 10 years almost everyone will have a place in the Hall of Fame.
This always a risk of course but the key is to limit each year to a small number of new inductees. And besides, there are still plenty of worthy names not there yet.
Personally, I believe that this year we should try a nomination system and then all vote to narrow it down to a couple of winners. No categories this year. Just some names considered worthy, no matter what field they were in. Interested to know what others think.
