Living in PAL land myself, but have relatives living overseas in America I've found that a fair proportion of American TVs accept and handle a PAL signal correctly. I think it has to do with the Chinese factory that made the TV, some swap out too much of the signal processing hardware or obscure it, some don't.
Remember the screens the same whether bound for regular PAL countries or non-PAL (mainly NTSC) countries, it's the tuner that's different. I find the same thing here in Oz, some TVs will take NTSC, some won't. It's a bit of a crap shoot...