TCM to Honor Gene Hackman With Special Night of Programming in May

Remind Staff March 24, 4:16 pm

NIGHT MOVES, Gene Hackman, 1975 — Everett Collection

TCM has announced a special night of programming in May to honor legendary actor Gene Hackman, who passed away under tragic circumstances in late February at the age of 95. “Honoring Gene Hackman” will begin at 8pm EST on May 12, presenting five films selected from throughout the cinematic icon’s career, from his late ’60s breakthrough to his most memorable moments as a 1980s leading man.

The tribute will kick off with 1967’s Bonnie & Clyde, which got Hackman his first ever Oscar nod for playing Buck Barrow, older brother to Warren Beatty‘s Clyde. Hackman had spent his late teens as a Marine, and after a brief stint as a journalism student at the University of Illinois, began studying acting at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1956, where he and classmate Dustin Hoffman were both voted “least likely to succeed.”

He moved to New York City, nabbing small theater roles and TV guest appearances, before starring in the Broadway hit Any Wednesday in 1964, which led to his first real film credit — 1964’s Lilith, which starred Beatty. After a few more years on Broadway and small TV roles — as well as a period when he was hired play Mr. Robinson in The Graduate, before being fired for looking too young — Hackman finally, at the age of 39, landed the role that would kick off his career in earnest.

BONNIE AND CLYDE, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Michael J. Pollard, 1967

Everett Collection

Next up is the film that won Hackman his first Oscar and made him a household name: 1971’s The French Connection. Hackman plays NYPD Detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, but director William Friedkin initially tried to cast, well, basically everyone else on Earth: Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, James Caan, Robert Mitchum and even newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin were all considered for the role before it went to Hackman.

1986’s Hoosiers follows; the sports drama stars Hackman as Norman Dale, an emotionally complex high school basketball coach. He runs afoul of a small basketball-obsessed Indiana town when he brings unorthodox training methods and strict attitudes to their high school basketball team — methods that end up paying off during the state championships. Jack Nicholson was initially cast as Coach Dale, but had to pull out due to a conflict with MGM: Hackman predicted that the low-budget film would be a “career killer.” He was quite wrong — it made $28.6 million on a $6 million budget, led to an Academy Award nomination for costar Dennis Hopper and is still considered one of the greatest sports films ever made.

HOOSIERS, Kent Poole, Gene Hackman, Steve Hollar, 1986.

That will be followed by 1988’s Civil Rights Era-set crime thriller Mississippi Burning. The film, which is based on a true story, follows Hackman and Willem Dafoe as FBI agents investigating the disappearances of three civil rights activists who were registering Black voters in the fictional Jessup County, Mississippi, in 1964. In a 1988 interview with Film Comment, Hackman said of his involvement in the film, “I suppose I see myself as a serious artist, and it felt right to do something of historical import. It was an extremely intense experience, both the content of the film and the making of it in Mississippi.” The film earned Hackman another Best Actor Oscar nomination.

The evening ends with the 1975 neo-noir thriller Night Moves. Hackman plays a Los Angeles P.I. looking for an aging actress’s runaway teen daughter (Melanie Griffith, in her film debut). Hackman’s old Bonnie & Clyde costar Faye Dunaway was offered the role of Hackman’s estranged wife, but passed on it in order to star in Chinatown.