Any movie star worth his salt should have a distinctive manner of speaking. Jimmy Stewart charmed with his stammer, Orson Welles impressed with his baritone, and Gene Hackman elicited fear and respect with what can only be described as his bark.
Hackman died last month at age 95. On Feb. 26, the bodies of Hackman and his second wife, Betsy Arakawa, were found in the house they shared in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but as of press time, authorities have not announced the cause of either death.
In youth and old age, in drama or comedy, Hackman seemed perpetually prepared to engage in verbal combat with his co-stars: to badger, to hound, to chew up and spit out. In William Friedkin’s 1971 crime masterpiece The French Connection, Hackman won an Oscar for playing Detective Popeye Doyle, who stalked, bullied, and taunted his suspects throughout the ruins of New York. But even in far more frivolous films, Hackman preferred to tango and tussle: He was a fearsome Lex Luthor in the original set of Superman films (1978-87) and an unyielding high-school basketball coach in Hoosiers (1986).
In all cases, Hackman snapped more than he spoke, and he seemed to delight, as film critic Kent Jones once put it in describing his performance in Wes Anderson’s 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums, in “bobbing and weaving with his fellow actors, turning the screen into a sports arena.” One was always on edge when watching Hackman; one could easily imagine his costars feeling the same sense of anxiety.
During his heyday in the 1970s and ’80s, Hackman’s volcanic presence was tempered only by his altogether average appearance: He had neither the leading-man looks of his sometime co-stars Warren Beatty and Robert Redford nor the physical stamina of genuine onscreen brawlers such as John Wayne or Lee Marvin. Hackman’s bark may have been bigger than his bite, but his bark was bad enough.
Born in San Bernardino, California, in 1930, Hackman seems to have come by his recalcitrant attitude naturally. Coming of age in Danville, Illinois, he was said to have been in conflict with his father, a newspaper printing press worker who, when his son was a teenager, left his family high and dry. Perhaps out of frustration, perhaps out of sheer cussedness, Hackman joined the Marine Corps. Upon leaving the service, he drifted first to the University of Illinois and then, more profitably, to the Pasadena Playhouse, where his interest in performing was kindled.
In those days, Hackman was no one’s idea of a matinee idol, though there was always a place for rough-hewn types on the small screen: Throughout the 1960s, he logged appearances in episodes of Naked City, Route 66, The F.B.I., and countless others. By the end of the decade, Hollywood had realized Hackman’s potential, but only as a supporting actor: He was cast as Clyde Barrow’s sibling in the 1967 classic Bonnie and Clyde and helped fill out the casts of such memorable productions as The Gypsy Moths and Downhill Racer, both from 1969. If you ever wonder what made Gene Hackman mad, perhaps it was playing second banana.
Then came The French Connection. In pursuing the participants in a drug-smuggling operation, Hackman’s Popeye Doyle is forever facing off against richer, savvier, faster adversaries, but he gives as good as he gets. No actor of his generation could have looked more credible or determined when trying to outpace a suspect on foot or, in a justifiably famous sequence, by car.
Many of Hackman’s subsequent films catered to his unique personality. He was dyspeptic as a drifter in Jerry Schatzberg’s Scarecrow (1973) and surly as a surveillance expert in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974). His greatest role came in Night Moves, a superb neo-noir from 1975 directed by Arthur Penn, who had cast him in Bonnie and Clyde. Mustachioed and mean-looking, Hackman played private detective Harry Moseby, who jousts with all manner of unsavory characters, but although he can rough them up on an individual basis, he finds himself defeated by the web they have weaved en masse. Among other things, the film is a despairing reflection on the increasing expendability of men of the old school such as Harry Moseby — or Hackman himself.
Hackman was never out of work except by choice. He growled and grinned his way through the Superman series, and enlivened many fine thrillers, including No Way Out (1987), Narrow Margin (1990), and The Firm (1993). Clint Eastwood directed him to a second Oscar, in the Western Unforgiven (1992), and to his best late-career part: In Absolute Power (1997), Hackman played a recklessly philandering commander in chief whose wanton ways lead to a murder committed on his behalf. As a fictional but trenchant study of deep state-style political corruption, the film anticipated our own conspiratorial epoch.
Then Hackman opted out. He had no fewer than five terrific roles in 2001, including in The Royal Tenenbaums, but appeared onscreen only twice thereafter. He was content to write novels, and by all accounts, he savored a pleasant retirement in Santa Fe. The strangeness surrounding his death should not cloud the simple truth: We have lost one of Hollywood’s only authentic tough guys.
Peter Tonguette is a contributing writer to the Washington Examiner magazine.
