THE LEGEND THAT WAS GENE HACKMAN
February 27, 2025: Theatre Yesterday and Today, by Ron Fassler.
Waking up to news of the death of Gene Hackman has been a shocking blow due to circumstances which are, at the moment, unknowable. That aside, thoughout his ninety-five years, the enormous respect he has earned among his peers and audiences alike is nearly unparalleled. He was active from his start in the late 1950s right up until his retirement in 2004 after the release of Welcome to Mooseport, in which he co-starred opposite Ray Romano, then at the height of his Everybody Loves Raymond fame. At seventy-four, Hackman decided it was time to get out of show business and he settled into a quiet existence in New Mexico with his wife, Betsy Arakawa, a classical pianist, who was thirty-two years his junior. In his twenty-one years of retirement, he painted, wrote novels, and kept mostly to himself, refusing all offers to return for one last hurrah. It’s a shame he went out with such an ordinary picture as Mooseport, but you have to respect him for his decision. He put in the time and he owed nothing to his legions of fans except to say, “It’s been fun. Thanks.”
It would take three columns to write about the number of Hackman’s films that show off his versatility, but I can’t resist mentioning some vitally important ones, especially in how different they are. His performance as Harry Caul in Francis Ford Coppola’s deeply introspective thriller The Conversation (1974) is night and day from with his Lex Luthor in Richard Donner’s Superman (1978). How did he manage to be so quiet and steely in one film and then squeeze every ounce of comedy without going over the top in the other? His ability to play an everyman might only have been eclipsed by Spencer Tracy, to whom he was often compared in terms of a similar career arc: a stage-trained film star par excellence who was hard to catch ‘acting’ in his depictions of ordinary men in extraordinary situations. Two notable examples among many are the basketball coach in David Anspaugh’s Hoosiers and the dutiful son in Gil Cates’s I Never Sang for My Father (1970), both achingly good. Interesting that it was two of his most flamboyant of roles which nabbed him his two Oscars; the hotheaded Popeye Doyle in William Friedkin’s The French Connection and the perniciously evil Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven.
The believability he brought to everything is what made him so great. Among my personal favorites are his heartbreakingly hilarious turn in Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), for which he inexplicably missed out on an Oscar nomination, and practically stealing Mike Nichols’s The Birdcage (1996) out from under Robin Williams and Nathan Lane. And speaking of hilarious turns, who can forget his unbilled cameo as the Blind Man who tortures Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein (“Where are you going? I was going to make espresso!”). Other cameos in which he excelled at playing minor parts for major directors are in Woody Allen’s underrated Another Woman (1988), opposite Gena Rowlands, and with Meryl Streep in Mike Nichols’s Postcards from the Edge (1990). And if you haven’t gathered by now from these names I’ve put forth, every great director of the second half of the 20th century wanted to work with him. And those who did were fortunate to have him.
But like a number of actors of his generation, Hackman started out on the stage. It was a difficult path which began inauspiciously studying at the Pasadena Playhouse where he was dropped because he received the lowest grades ever given to a student at that time. Undeterred, he headed for New York where he was followed a year later by his fellow student and friend, Dustin Hoffman. While dealing with similar rejection on a daily basis, Hoffman slept nightly for a time on the kitchen floor of the apartment Hackman shared with his first wife, Faye Maltese. Robert Duvall was also a part of this acting triumvirate who temporarily roomed with Hoffman in his $10 bucks a month flat (these early days in their careers was chronicled in a 2004 issue of Vanity Fair you can read by clicking the link).
In 1959, Hackman made his off-Broadway debut in a play by John Wulp titled The Saintliness of Margery Kempe (other actors in this short-lived production included George Maharis, Charles Nelson Reilly, and Frances Sternhagen). His first Broadway credit was Children From Their Games, written by the novelist Irwin Shaw and ran just four performances. Once again, Hackman found himself in good company working with Peggy Cass, Martin Gabel, John McMartin, and Brenda Vaccaro. His second Broadway play was Howard Teichman’s comedy A Rainy Day in Newark, which reunited him with John McMartin for a total of seven performances this time. The third try, however, was the charm when, on February 18, 1964, Hackman mysteriously found himself in a hit titled Any Wednesday, a sex comedy written by novice playwright Muriel Resnick. The play had a notoriously troubled out of town run, delineated in detail in Son of Any Wednesday, a marvelous book in the form of a diary that Resnick published a year later. Reading it makes it seem impossible how it ever had a shot at being so incredibly successful. Both its director and star were fired and, for weeks at a time, no one seemed to be steering the ship. Somehow though, it managed to get rave reviews and run 983 performances. Crazy.
Throughout the early 1960s, Hackman kept busy in television. The same year as Any Wednesday, he was on the big screen in in a small but pivotal part in Robert Rossen’s Lilith, which is where he first met Warren Beatty. It was Beatty who would come to Hackman’s rescue when, in 1967, he was fired by Mike Nichols from The Graduate. Cast as Mr. Robinson, it was decided he wasn’t working out and that it called for a more mature actor to play opposite Anne Bancroft’s Mrs. Robinson. He was replaced by the more seasoned Murray Hamilton (who was indeed a better fit).
It had to have been devastating for Hackman to have been let go from such a sterling company of actors as those in the cast of The Graduate. However, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it freed him up for Warren Beatty to tap him almost immediately for Bonnie and Clyde. Remembering him from Lilith, Beatty had the clout to cast him since besides being its star, he was also Bonnie and Clyde’s producer. For his role as Buck Barrow, Clyde’s brother, Hackman received the first of his five Academy Award nominations. From there, his career was off and running. There was no looking back. Gene Hackman was a star.
In all the subsequent years, Hackman only returned to Broadway once and it was for the man who fired him from The Graduate, Mike Nichols. In 1992, Hackman joined Glenn Close and Richard Dreyfuss in Arial Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden, an experience that was not a good one for almost everyone involved (despite Close winning a Best Actress Tony for it). The director and the playwright fought incessantly, to the point where Nichols barred Dorfman from the theatre. Mixed to terrible reviews had little impact since its advance sale put it almost in profit before it opened. It ran its allotted time of the six months the actors were contracted and then it closed, mourned by next to no one involved.
Interestingly, Broadway came up in a conversation Hackman had in 1986 on a rare talk show appearance on his old Late Night show. Hackman seems convivial and in good spirits promoting two films he had out in theatres, Twice in a Lifetime (mainly forgotten thought he is wonderful in it) and Power, a throw away political mystery in which he had a few scenes opposite Richard Gere). Here’s a transcription of their conversation at the end of the interview that has always fascinated me:
Letterman: “You’re looking into doing a Broadway musical now, is that true?”
Hackman: “Well (HE LAUGHS), I’m talking to some people who are interested in my doing it if I can sing. We haven’t gotten to that part yet.”
Letterman: “Oh yeah, well wait until the last minute on that, by all means.”(AUDIENCE LAUGHTER)
Hackman: (LAUGHING) “Right!”
Letterman: “Get people to put up a lot of dough and then find out.”
Hackman: “Or do the real amateur thing where I say, ‘Wait, I’ll do it opening night.’” (AUDIENCE LAUGHTER)
Letterman: “Yeah, it’ll be fine. But now this must be something you really want to do.”
Hackman: “I really do want to do it. I want to make sure I can do it though… it always looks so great when you’re in a Broadway theatre and they’re singing and it’s like, ‘What fun!’, you know? Wouldn’t it be great to show up every night and have the music kind of give you the life and all that?”
Speculate away, but we’ll never know what project Hackman was talking about or if it even got produced.
The thing is, whether or not he did a musical, Hackman did just about everything else throughout his exemplary career. He even played the voice of God (uncredited) in Two of a Kind (1983), the poorly received follow up to the box office sensation of the Grease pairing of John Travolta-Olivia Newton John. And let us not forget Hackman’s performance as General Mandible in the DreamWorks animated film Antz (1998).
Was he ever out and out bad in anything? Honestly, I don’t think so. Not many actors you say that about. Simply put, there was nothing he couldn’t do. RIP, Gene Hackman — a legend.
Ron Fassler is the author of the recently published The Show Goes On: Broadway Hirings, Firings and Replacements. For news and “Theatre Yesterday and Today” columns when they break, please follow me here on Medium.
