Gene Hackman was a legend where I grew up. Granted, he was a legend practically everywhere, but in Pasadena, California, to theater kids and movie geeks, he was hope incarnate.
Pasadena is the home to the historic (and aptly titled) Pasadena Playhouse, a venerable theatrical institution and a college with a list of alumni that boggles the mind: David Niven, Tyrone Power, Martha Graham, Lee J. Cobb, Leonard Nimoy, Angela Bassett, Ernest Borgnine, Jean Arthur, William Holden, Ariana Grande, Dustin Hoffman — and of course Gene Hackman. But Hackman had something none of those other famous actors ever had: the lowest scores of any actor, by that point, in the Pasadena Playhouse’s history.
In fact, Hackman and his friend and contemporary Hoffman were voted “Least Likely to Succeed,” which is a pretty crappy category, if we’re being honest. It’s like dropping the Razzie for Worst Picture in the middle of the Oscars telecast. Plus, as drama students should no doubt have been aware, the existence of such an award left the door wide open for an ironic twist.
Hackman (and Hoffman), likelihood aside, did succeed. He succeeded to such an overwhelming degree that today, after more than 125 years of cinema history, he’s considered one of the best actors the movies ever had. I’ve often wondered who Hackman’s class voted most likely to succeed, but that particular detail seems to have been left out of the Pasadena trivia books, perhaps out of politeness. In any case, to us Pasadena kids, Hackman proved that your teachers and peers didn’t know squat. So get out there and make some art and prove them wrong if they don’t understand you.
His breakout role was in the groundbreaking and violent true crime romance “Bonnie and Clyde,” starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as the title bank-robbers. Hackman played Clyde’s brother, Buck, earning his first Oscar nomination in the process. Soon he’d be co-starring in major productions like the Robert Redford vehicle “Downhill Racer” and the Oscar-winning outer space disaster film “Marooned.” (The latter became the only Oscar winner with its own “Mystery Science Theater 3000” episode, but that’s not really Hackman’s fault).
He exploded in the 1970s with William Friedkin’s “The French Connection,” crafting an iconic character with Det. Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, a fiercely determined cop in a pork pie hat who was also a serious asshole. Hackman brought humor and aggressiveness to the film, which won him his first Oscar, won the Best Picture Oscar and spawned the actor’s first film franchise. Doyle returned in John Frankenheimer’s underrated 1975 sequel “The French Connection II,” following the loose ends of the previous film all the way back to France, where his enemies kidnapped and forcibly addicted him to heroin to discredit him. Hackman spends a significant percentage of the movie going through withdrawals in confinement, giving one of the best performances of his career.
Another of his best: Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation,” where Hackman played Harry Caul, a surveillance expert who becomes obsessed with the enigmatic conversation he records at the beginning of the film, repeatedly scrubbing it for details and clues, before learning the shocking truth and falling victim to extreme paranoia. (It also had a sequel, arguably, in the 1998 Tony Scott thriller “Enemy of the State,” where his character — whose early photographs were taken from “The Conversation” — used his wiretapping skills to help Will Smith’s man-on-the-run hero evade another government conspiracy.)
By the mid-1970s Hackman carved out a niche for himself as an intense, dramatic actor who could turn on the charm but then turn back inwards, simmering in his own beaten down juices. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so damned funny that Mel Brooks cast him in 1974’s “Young Frankenstein” as a wacky side character who befriends the Frankenstein monster but also sets him on fire. Not only was Hackman hilarious, the fact that it was Hackman at all was pure whimsy itself.
And then of course there were the Superman movies. Hackman played the dastardly Lex Luthor in “Superman,” “Superman II” and “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace,” and convinced the whole world that the title character, who was super strong and could fly so fast he turned back time, had met his match in a slimy real estate scam artist. Sure, Superman could rip the “S” off of his chest and throw it on his enemies like a cellophane net, but Lex Luthor was Gene Hackman, and that was just as good. His charisma was more powerful than a locomotive.
We could go on like this. We’ve gone in chronological order and I somehow bypassed his epic disaster movie “The Poseidon Adventure,” which is still one of the gold standards for all-star Hollywood blockbusters. Hackman kept wowing audiences for decades, waffling between serious dramas, intense thrillers and increasingly silly comedies. By the early 1990s he won another Oscar for playing William “Little Bill” Daggett in Clint Eastwood’s revisionist western “Unforgiven.” Little Bill was a lovable storyteller who tore down the audience’s expectations of the whole cowboy genre. He was also a despicable, murderous P.O.S. He probably deserved to die, in the way that only movie villains do, but his last words — his regrets that he never finished building his house — are deeply human. (And yeah, he probably did see William Munny in Hell.)
Hackman never gave up his intensity, but his later roles revealed an unexpected cuddliness. He played a hack director who charms his loan shark into becoming his producer in Barry Sonnenfeld’s classic comedy “Get Shorty.” He played a pathetic, bigoted right wing politician in Mike Nichols’ “The Birdcage” (after Nichols fired him from his supporting role in “The Graduate” 30 years earlier), but who was also able to learn the error of his ways. He also coached Keanu Reeves, Jon Favreau and Rhys Ifans to football movie history in “The Replacements,” which is perhaps the only beloved film that declares that scabs are the true heroes.
After a few more great movies (“The Royal Tenenbaums,” “Heist,” “Runaway Jury”), Hackman decided to leave the business altogether. His final film was the comedy “Welcome to Mooseport,” in which he played a retired American president who ran for mayor in a small town against Ray Romano. For Hackman fans, “Mooseport” was more than a forgettable comedy. It was a strange, arguably disappointing note for an actor who starred in a staggering number of great movies. I haven’t even mentioned “Night Moves,” “Reds,” “Hoosiers,” “The Firm” or “Crimson Tide” (but I did leave out “Loose Cannons” on purpose).
The death of a great actor like Hackman is a tragedy under any circumstances, and as of this writing we are still awaiting the full details surrounding his and wife Betsy Arakawa’s passing. But few actors can ever claim to have had Hackman’s impact, a lifetime of impressive, unforgettable film roles, whether the films were impressive and unforgettable or not. You always knew that if Hackman was in a movie, his part was going to be amazing.
Indeed, the only people Hackman seems to have ever let down were his classmates at the Pasadena Playhouse, who probably felt ridiculous every time Hackman headlined a major production, earned rave reviews or won an Academy Award. Which was literally all the time.
And for kids like me, who grew up in his shadow in Pasadena, he taught us a valuable lesson: Screw ’em. Succeed anyway.
11 Essential Gene Hackman Performances