Rest in Peace: Gene Hackman

 

A few weeks ago, the great Gene Hackman passed away.  

While there is still an investigation going on about the circumstances of his death, along with his wife and one of his dogs, I thought it was appropriate to take a few moments to reflect on his life.

Hackman seemed to live an ordinary mid-western life until his parents divorced.  Since his death, there is a viral video that has been going around of Hackman recalling when his father left him.  The young Hackman was playing ball in the street and his father drove by and "kind of waved."  Decades later, this moment of abandonment with its cruel casualness still devastated him.  He said,  "I hadn't realized how much one small gesture can mean... Maybe that's why I became an actor."

He dropped out of high school and lied about his age so he could join the military.  With the GI Bill, he went to college, but dropped out there as well to go to California to study acting.  He went to the Pasadena Playhouse where he was actively discouraged from acting.  He got the lowest scores on acting that anyone at the Playhouse had ever received.  In fact, he and his friend Dustin Hoffman were voted: "Least Likely To Succeed."

Hackman went to New York where he struggled to find jobs.  Whenever he would bump into people from the Playhouse or the military, they told him he would never amount to anything.

This is one of the things that I admire about Hackman: he used people's negativity to fuel the fire of success.  Rather than turn inward and be overcome with self-doubt, he was supremely confident in his abilities and a rage to prove his detractors wrong.  I can see that in the immense amount of work he put into every performance.

GREAT PERFORMANCES

The Royal Tenenbaums
Unforgiven
Hoosiers
Superman
Superman II
Crimson Tide
The Poseidon Adventure
Now Way Out
Young Frankenstein
The Quick and the Dead

Gene Hackman is best known for playing tough guys.  As a result, much of his career is littered with over-the-top machismo.  But the reason why he was chosen for those roles is because he had a chance to shine as a man of hulking authority, not in frame, but in screen presence.

Hackman won an Oscar for The French Connection and Unforgiven.  In both those movies, Hackman looms large, even as things begin to fall apart.  In the latter film, Little Bill is a sadist who wraps himself in the law to justify his violent tendencies.  He goes from smiling to scowling in a way that fills you with terror.  His scene where he is monologuing in front of the writer and English Bob is a master class of acting.  Every transition feels genuine and earned.

His characters always project strength as he did in Crimson Tide, where is tough-as-nails captain is in a battle of authority with his first officer.  But he doesn't play these characters as 1-dimmensional.  His performance as Herod in The Quick and the Dead has some truly wonderfully understated moments where he realizes he has to fight his son or when he begins to experience real fear for the first time in years.  You can also see that fear in his trapped performance in No Way Out as he feels the walls closing in on the cover up for the accident death of his mistress.  You get a knot in your stomach just hearing the stress in his voice.

That does not mean that he doesn't have a wide range of emotions.  His coach in Hoosiers is very stoic and understated.  But when he very simply and unguardedly says, "I love you guys," it echoes deeply because of the depth that Hackman brings.  And no performance of is more heartbreaking for me than his Rev. Scott in The Poseidon Adventure.  The movie captures in a concrete, physical way the frustration that evangelizers feel every day.  Scott is trying to save everyone, but they won't listen.  And when they don't listen, they willingly embrace destruction.  He can only bring a few on the narrow path and many of those won't make it.  I will never forget his embracing the comic-tragic Mrs. Rosen and crying.  And it all culminates with his love/hate relationship with God over all of the pain they have endured.

But he also had a strong comedic side.  Many criticize the goofy tone of Lex Luthor in the Superman movies, and rightly so.  But given that it was his job to play Luthor the way Richard Donner prescribed, Hackman did an excellent job of being a callow con-artist.  It is particularly funny how he uses all the powers of his sycophantic scurrying to not only incur favor with Zod, but avoid his wrath.  And his turn as the blind man in Young Frankenstein is hysterical.

Gene Hackman quietly retired from acting.  But he has left us a great body of work to admire.

He had two marriages.  His first ended in divorce after three decades.  As mentioned earlier, his current wife Betsy was also found dead with him.  He leaves behind three children from his first marriage.

As far as my research has gone, Hackman never spoke about his religious beliefs.  My prayer is that this extraordinary actor, who brought so much entertainment to the world, has gone to God.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and perpetual light shine upon him.  May his soul and his wife's soul, and all the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.  Amen.

Rest in Peace, Gene Hackman