Today’s episode of Sounds of Cinema looked back at the career of late actor Gene Hackman who passed away at age 95.
Gene Hackman grew up in California and left home at the age of sixteen to join the Marines. He studied journalism and television production at the University of Illinois and he enrolled in acting lessons at the Pasadena Playhouse where Dustin Hoffman was a classmate. Hoffman said that Hackman was actually expelled from the school but Hoffman also compared Gene Hackman to Marlon Brando, telling Deadline, “Gene was like Brando, in that he brought something unprecedented to our craft, something people didn’t immediately understand as genius.” Hackman began his acting career in New York working on off-Broadway shows. He also had roles in television on episodes of Tallahassee 7000 and The Defenders, His first major film role came at age 34 in the film Lilith starring Warren Beaty. That led to working with Beatty again on 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde which launched Hackman’s four decade film career.
1967’s Bonnie and Clyde was one of a handful of movies in the late 1960s that changed the tone and trajectory of American cinema. The film was extremely controversial at the time for its sexuality and violence and sympathetic portrait of outlaws. Gene Hackman starred as Buck Barrow, the brother of Clyde, and the role earned Hackman his first Academy Award nomination.
Gene Hackman established himself as one of the new leading men of the 1970s. Much like Dustin Hoffman, Hackman didn’t have a traditional movie star look but that was an asset in the 1970s. This period of time produced its share of escapist entertainment but also a lot of films that were challenging, that played with genre conventions, and focused on intimate human stories. Hackman starred in all sorts of movies at this time. He was one of the main players in 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure, one of the Irwin Allen produced disaster films popular at that time. One of the highpoints of Hackman’s career was his lead role in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, the story of a surveillance expert who has crisis of conscience. It’s one of Coppola’s best films and one of Hackman’s best performances.
Among Hackman’s lesser remembered films of this period were Prime Cut and I Never Sang for My Father. Directed by Michael Ritchie, Prime Cut is a somewhat bizarre crime story with Gene Hackman cast as a gangster in rural America. I Never Sang For My Father was directed by Gilbert Cates and Hackman plays a widowed college professor who has a complicated relationship with his father. I Never Sang For My Father earned Hackman his second Academy Award nomination.
In this same period, Hackman starred in William Friedkin’s The French Connection as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle. One of the defining movies of its era, The French Connection was a morally ambiguous police drama about detectives investigating a heroin ring. The French Connection won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Hackman won the award for Best Actor.
The French Connection had a sequel released in 1975 and Gene Hackman returned to reprise the role of Popeye Doyle. Although it wasn’t as celebrated as the first film, The French Connection II was well received and in the years since there has been growing admiration for this sequel.
The other character that Gene Hackman revisited was Lex Luthor in the Superman movies starring Christopher Reeve. Hackman downplayed the menace but played up the intelligence and megalomania and he has many great lines in 1978’s Superman. Casting Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor along with Marlon Brando as Jor El and Glenn Ford as Jonathan Kent was a deliberate choice by the producers to place name actors in the supporting roles so they could cast an unknown actor as Superman. In fact, Gene Hackman was actually billed above Christopher Reeve in the original film. Hackman reprised the role of Lex Luthor in Superman II and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.
Gene Hackman starred in Hoosiers as the coach of a smalltown basketball team. This is one of the most popular sports films ever made and it epitomized a formula that was repeated in films in which underdogs made their way to the championship. Hackman earned a lot of praise for his performance as the impassioned but sensitive coach. Hackman also played a coach in the 2000 football film The Replacements.
In addition to his role in The French Connection, Gene Hackman frequently played law enforcement characters such as 1975’s Night Moves and 1971’s Cisco Pike and 1988’s Mississippi Burning. Hackman was a military veteran, having enlisted in the Marines at age sixteen, and he frequently had roles in war-related movies. He was cast alongside Sean Connery and Michael Caine in the World War II film A Bridge Too Far and he was cast in the post-Vietnam film Uncommon Valor with Patrick Swayze and Robert Stack. He also had roles in 1988’s Bat*21, 2001’s Behind Enemy Lines and 1995’s Crimson Tide.
One of Gene Hackman’s repeat collaborators was Clint Eastwood. Hackman played the President of the United States in Eastwood’s 1997 film Absolute Power. He also starred as Sherrif Little Bill Dagget in Eastwood’s 1992 movie Unforgiven. Now considered a classic, Unforgiven was the story of an aged gunman who returns to assassin work out of desperation. It’s movie without heroes but Hackman is a villainous force and he won his second Academy Award for his performance.
A lot of Gene Hackman’s filmography consisted of serious dramatic films but he also had a gift for comedy. We can see that in his role as Lex Luthor in the Superman films but he also had roles in a few memorable comedies, among them Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein in which Hackman played the blind man. He was also cast in Carrie Fisher’s semiautobiographical story Postcards from the Edge, 1995’s Get Shorty, and 1996’s The Birdcage. His last role was in the 2004 political satire Welcome to Mooseport. Hackman also had the lead in Wes Anderson’s film The Royal Tenenbaums, in which he played the patriarch of a dysfunctional family.
Looking back at Hackman’s career, he was such an esteemed actor in part because of the consistent quality of his work but also because there was a recognizable humanity to so many of his characters. His on-screen presence mixed intelligence with an everyman quality and if many of his characters were harsh they also had an element of pathos that made them feel real. That quality of his performances, along with Hackman’s consistently excellent choice of material, made him a memorable screen presence.
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