A man who comes to a place like this, either he's running away from something, or he has nowhere else to go. – Myra Fleener (Barbara Hershey) on Coach Norman Dale (Gene Hackman), Hoosiers
As iconic figures extolled and venerated by the rest of us, movie stars have the advantage of immortality. Even after departing life, they leave behind a body of work we may continue to explore. With the recent death of Gene Hackman, we have lost one of the great actors of my lifetime. I do not generally mourn the loss of famous people. After all, I don’t know them personally, and I don’t know if they were kind and decent human beings in their everyday lives. It is misguided to assume that an actor’s on-screen characters are a true reflection of their personal character. It is, after all, their job to play an assigned role and not themselves. The best actors are good because the characters they play have no relation to their personal likability or moral worth as human beings.
As I grow older, and this may be something I need to get used to, the obituary pages are more frequently filled with people I grew up with, even if I did not know them personally. With Gene Hackman, however, I feel a sense of loss because many of the roles he played so well were so relatable. Hackman was an everyman. He was the bus driver and train operator you said hello to on your daily commute, the coach or teacher you looked up to, the military commander you feared and respected, the flawed detective caught in an ethical dilemma. He could be serious, funny, authoritative, sensitive, arrogant, humble, likeable and mean, and sometimes many of these things all at once.
I have not seen all of Hackman’s movies, and I had to research his forty-year body of work as a reminder of how accomplished and varied his roles were. Three of my favorite Hackman characters were the gritty, rules-be-damned FBI agent in Mississippi Burning, the coach in need of redemption in Hoosiers, and the conflicted clergyman, devoid of faith, battling to save a handful of survivors in The Poseidon Adventure. But he had so many great roles, including as “Popeye” Doyle, the crass and relentless narcotics detective in The French Connection, for which he won an Oscar for best actor in 1971.
“There’s no identifiable quality that makes Mr. Hackman stand out,” Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times in 1988. “He simply makes himself outstandingly vital and real.” Hackman played widely diverse roles with equal skill and proficiency. From the delightfully playful villain Lex Luthor in Superman to a mean-spirited, corrupt sheriff in Unforgiven, he was semi-likeable and evil at the same time. He was surprisingly funny in several understated comedic roles, including as a morally uptight, conservative senator in The Birdcage, as a former president running for mayor of a small town in Welcome to Mooseport, and as the estranged family patriarch in The Royal Tenenbaums. And he mastered the roles of complex men internally conflicted by professional and ethical discord, such as a paranoid surveillance expert in The Conversation and a widowed college professor with an overbearing father in the 1970 film I Never Sang for My Father. His many good roles in so many good films over the years make it difficult to compose a definitive top ten or twenty list.
But for me, the film that best captures the subtle quality of Hackman’s screen presence is Hoosiers, the story of a small high school’s triumph against all odds to win the Indiana High School Championship in 1952. Hackman played Norman Dale, the coach with a tarnished past who is given one last chance at redemption. Although a small budget movie, Hoosiers is among a select list of highly memorable sports films, and it resonated with me entirely because of the understated manner of Hackman’s performance.
We learn early in Hoosiers that Coach Dale is a flawed man. He is desperate to save his career, while atoning for a past mistake. Slightly contemptuous of the small midwestern town in which he finds himself, Dale is a stubborn, uncompromising, strong-willed coach in a place that treats high school basketball as the most important thing in the world. As an outsider with a mysterious past, the townsfolk lack faith in Dale. Many of the town’s outspoken boosters want the coach fired after an underwhelming start to the season and because he stubbornly refuses to adapt to their way of doing things.
But Dale perseveres in the face of adversity and refuses to give up even when most of the town has given up on him. Dale gradually bonds with his players and helps them come together as a team and win against all odds. In time, the coach’s willingness to be vulnerable, and his ability to empathize with the complex lives of his players and the community to which he was exiled, helps him achieve quiet salvation.
As someone who played high school sports, including basketball for a less-than-mediocre team in central New Jersey, I believe that Hackman’s understated yet complex performance in Hoosiers showed what a good coach should and should not be. Like many of Hackman’s roles, his character in Hoosiers combined likability with complexity. His character evolved from a man set on his coaching ways, to a more understanding and empathetic coach who listened to his players and welcomed the contributions of others.
But it is more than Hackman’s skillful acting that saddens me most with his passing, for I can continue to watch his films and appreciate his acting skills. No, it is a combination of how he carried himself, the sensitivity he displayed, the complexity of his characters, and his general demeanor that I will miss the most. In many of his films, and especially his role in Hoosiers, Hackman reminded me of my older brother Steve, who died at 61 more than seven years ago. Hackman even looked a little bit like a younger Steve and many of Hackman’s characters displayed Steve’s similar mannerisms, a rough and slightly rugged edge combined with the vulnerability and humility of someone who makes a lot of mistakes and keeps on going.
Some of Hackman’s appeal may also be that, like my brother, life was not always easy and smooth sailing. Hackman was 13 years old when his father left the family. As the young teenage Hackman played in the street, his father merely waved at his son as he drove away. It was the last time Hackman ever saw his father. Hackman was 36 before he got his first real break in Hollywood as Warren Beatty’s sidekick in Bonnie and Clyde. Before then, he had served in the Marines and worked odd jobs in California and New York, from truck driver to doorman, until finally achieving any success as an actor. Much like my brother Steve, Hackman didn’t have the typical looks of a leading man, and yet he was appealing and relatable in ways that connected with people. He was full of grit and honesty and possessed a distinctive understanding of the many flawed, conflicted men he played.
The teenage protagonist of The Wonder Years once said, "Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose." If for no other reason than he reminds me of my older brother, I will continue to watch films starring Gene Hackman and keep him as a presence in my life through the gift of film, just as I do with Steve, through the gift of memories.
