Actor Spotlight: Gene Hackman
Plus: We discussed the highs and lows of last Sunday's Oscars on the podcast
RIP to one of the great American actors of all time, Gene Hackman. While the details of his strange passing are still getting sorted, we’d be remiss to not recognize the illustrious career of an actor that always held the screen no matter the movie or the role. Read this Hackman movie recommendation and check out his movies we’ve touched on in the past in the archive section of today’s newsletter.
Thanks to everyone that entered our Oscars Prediction Contest! The reader/listener winner was Katie Carter, who guessed 7 of the 8 categories correct. Congrats, Katie! On the podcast this week we discussed our reactions to last Sunday’s Oscars, so find the links to that below.
Drew recommends…
Night Moves
Gene Hackman was one of the great perennially middle-aged actors. He began pursuing acting at age 26, but his big screen breakthrough didn’t arrive until his late 30s into his 40s. And because Hackman retired in his early 70s, almost all of his best known work is in that middle-aged period. This makes sense for an actor and movie star that always looked about 45 no matter his real age. It just so happens that one of his best lead roles, as private investigator Harry Moseby in Night Moves, came when he was actually that age.
Hackman’s eye-catching supporting work in Bonnie and Clyde and Oscar-winning lead performance in The French Connection made him one of the unlikely premier stars of the 1970s. In the years following he tried his hand in a star-heavy disaster film (The Poseidon Adventure) and a Mel Brooks comedy (Young Frankenstein), but Hackman was more at home in paranoid thrillers, like Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece The Conversation, and gritty neo-noirs, like 1975’s Night Moves.
Hackman brings a physicality to the movie that was rare for a star with his acting chops. His Harry Moseby is a former pro football player turned Los Angeles private investigator who searches for the missing teen daughter of a former actress. This takes him to the Florida Keys where he gets mixed up in deception, murder, and sunken treasure. Night Moves is a swampy, despairing neo-noir that we don’t really get anymore, and Hackman was the perfect vessel for it. You never second-guess that this guy was a football player or an investigator.
Hackman’s appearance and presence on screen made him ideal for the cynical, hard-edged action and crime films of the 1970s. His ordinary middle-aged American look often belied frustration and fury beneath the surface. However, he was so good and so adaptable that he could effortlessly slide into more uplifting or conventional work later in his career with Superman, Hoosiers, and Crimson Tide. In so many ways, they don’t make ‘em like Gene Hackman anymore.
Available to rent on digital platforms
From the DYLA Archive
DYLA Podcast
Another Oscars season is in the books, so we broke down the highs and lows from the 97th Academy Awards, including Conan’s hosting job, the Wicked and James Bond musical numbers, and the best and worst speeches of the night. Then, we discuss some of the awards handed out, such as Anora and director Sean Baker’s big night, an Emilia Perez hypothetical, and our favorite winners of the night.
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