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    Gene Hackman’s Smile Could Give You Shivers

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    In “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Unforgiven,” the actor used his charm to great disarming effect, flashing a smile before abruptly shifting to a sneer.When Clint Eastwood needed a performer who could persuasively go boot-toe to boot-toe with him in his brutal 1992 western “Unforgiven,” he needed an actor who was his towering equal onscreen. Eastwood needed a performer with strange charisma, one who could at once effortlessly draw the audience to his character and repulse it without skipping a beat. This actor didn’t need the audience’s love, and would never ask for it. He instead needed to go deep and dark, playing a villain of such depravity that he inspired the viewer’s own blood lust. Eastwood needed a legend who could send shivers up spines. He needed Gene Hackman.Hackman, whose death at 95 was announced on Thursday, was one of the defining actors of New Hollywood, that roughly decadelong, feverish period of artistic ferment that began with films like “Bonnie and Clyde,” Arthur Penn’s 1967 gangster drama. The era was famously defined by directors who helped rejuvenate the industry but was also known for male stars who didn’t conform to old studio ideals. With their unfixed noses and rough edges, these were men who once would have been largely confined to character roles. The glamorous-looking Warren Beatty played the male lead in “Bonnie and Clyde,” but it was Hackman’s striking supporting turn as Clyde’s brother, Buck, that heralded something new.Hackman holds your gaze the moment that Buck jumps out of a jalopy in “Bonnie and Clyde” into his brother’s arms; Buck is soon in Clyde’s gang, too. Buck is an outsized character, given to flailing and whooping, and Hackman delivers a suitably full-bodied, demonstrative performance that instantly gives you a sense of the character without once edging into scene stealing. His slight whine thickened with a deep-fried accent, Hackman also smiles a great deal as Buck, which humanizes the character so wholly that it lulls you into brief complacency, leaving you unprepared — almost — for the violence that rapidly engulfs him.Hackman, left, and Warren Beatty as thieving brothers in “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967). Screen Archives/Getty ImagesHackman’s smiles were one of his signature moves, and he used them to great disarming effect, deploying them to put other characters (and you) at ease before he abruptly shifted gears. It’s one reason he was such an effective villain. (His restraint as a surveillance expert in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 thriller, “The Conversation,” is one reason the film is so unnerving.) Hackman used smiles to charm and seduce, but also to obfuscate. Some actors let you see the rage boiling in their characters, the throbbing veins of hate. If you made a study of Hackman’s work, you might note that when one of his characters draws you to him with an upward curve of his mouth, something bad might happen soon. You would also divine that, thanks to his superb control, you could never predict when that false front would drop.There’s something sublimely fitting then in the fact that Hackman is dressed as Santa when he appears in his star-making role in William Friedkin’s “The French Connection,” the 1971 thriller that earned him a best actor Oscar. Hackman plays Popeye Doyle, a New York detective helping to bring down a heroin-smuggling outfit. Popeye is undercover in the opener, watching a suspect while ringing Santa’s bell and charming some kids with his patter, a smile peeping out from under his ill-fitting white beard. All of a sudden, Popeye and another cop (Roy Scheider) are chasing the suspect through the city’s derelict, litter-strewn streets. As soon as the detectives tackle the runaway in an empty lot, Popeye begins hitting the guy savagely. “I wanna bust him,” he says repeatedly, blood smeared on his Santa sleeve.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow and Others Mourn Gene Hackman

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      A two-time Academy Award winner and a dogged Everyman in many of his roles, Hackman was remembered by collaborators and co-stars after his death.Tributes for the actor Gene Hackman, who was found dead on Wednesday at the age of 95 at his home in Santa Fe, N.M., with his wife and one of their dogs, streamed in from collaborators and co-stars as the news spread.Hackman, who played flawed Everymen, inflexible patriarchs and inspirational mentors, had decades of notable roles, prompting generations of mourners to remember their time working with the actor.Francis Ford CoppolaCoppola, who directed Hackman in the 1974 neo-noir “The Conversation,” in which the actor played a wiretapping expert enmeshed in paranoia, posted a photo of them on the set together.“The loss of a great artist, always cause for both mourning and celebration: Gene Hackman a great actor, inspiring and magnificent in his work and complexity,” Coppola wrote in the caption. “I mourn his loss, and celebrate his existence and contribution.”Morgan FreemanFreeman, who co-starred with Hackman in the 1992 neo-western “Unforgiven,” which won best picture and best supporting actor for Hackman at the Academy Awards, posted a picture of them from a later collaboration with Monica Bellucci. In the caption, he said working with Hackman on that movie, “Under Suspicion,” from 2000, was “one of the personal highlights of my career.”Gwyneth PaltrowPaltrow, who played the daughter to Hackman’s eccentric patriarch in Wes Anderson’s 2001 dramedy “The Royal Tenenbaums,” posted a cropped image of that movie’s cast that centered her, Luke Wilson and Hackman. She captioned it only with an emoji of a broken heart.Barry SonnenfeldSonnenfeld posted a still from “Get Shorty,” the 1995 gangster comedy he directed in which Hackman played a B-movie director with a large gambling debt who was chased down by a mobbed-up loan shark played by John Travolta.“He was brilliant, hilarious and always real,” Sonnenfeld wrote in the caption. “And always knew his lines. Couldn’t ask for more from an actor.”Nathan LaneLane, one of Hackman’s co-stars in the 1996 queer farce comedy “The Birdcage,” said in a statement that he thought he told Hackman he was his favorite actor every day during filming. He also praised Hackman’s range in both comedy and drama, saying it was a privilege to share the screen with him.“Getting to watch him up close, it was easy to see why he was one of our greatest,” Lane said in the statement, reported by Variety and People magazine. “You could never catch him acting. Simple and true, thoughtful and soulful, with just a hint of danger.”Hank AzariaAzaria, who played the Guatemalan housekeeper and aspiring drag queen Agador Spartacus in “The Birdcage,” posted stills from that movie with him and Hackman, who played an ultraconservative Republican senator meeting the gay parents of his future son-in-law.“It was an honor and an education working with Gene Hackman,” Azaria wrote. “Mike Nichols said of his genius character acting: ‘He always brought just enough of a different part of the real gene to each role he played.’” More

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      Gene Hackman’s Career Is a Tribute to the Pugnacious Nature of Surprise

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      He could be both paternal and terrifying, and had the ability to almost goad you into liking men who would otherwise be despicable.When you first see Gene Hackman in “The French Connection,” he’s wearing a Santa suit, conversing with a bunch of kids. It’s a jolly image that runs counter to what we’ll soon come to know about Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, the porkpie-hat-wearing detective that became one of Hackman’s most notable roles. The Santa disguise starts to peel off as he leaves the children behind to sprint after and brutalize a perp. Kindly Santa, this man is not.But that was the extraordinary power of Hackman, who was found dead Wednesday at his home in Santa Fe., N.M., at the age of 95. Throughout his long career — that was somehow too short, thanks to a conscious retirement — he mixed warmth with menace. He could be paternal as well as terrifying, sometimes all within the same film.Hackman often played men doggedly pursuing impossible goals despite looming threats and their superiors telling them to back off, but there was a doggedness about him, too. He had a pugnacious ability to almost goad you into liking guys who would otherwise be despicable, be they criminals, cops or just absentee fathers. Despite their often unsavory behavior, Hackman made it fun to spend time with these people, even if you might not want to encounter them in real life.Hackman never quite made sense as a movie star. When he was cast alongside Warren Beatty in Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967), the movie that would net him his first Oscar nomination, that became obvious. While Beatty as one of the eponymous robbers was smooth with a luscious mane of black hair, Hackman’s Buck Barrow, Clyde’s brother, was jittery and balding — but no less an entrancing and terrifying presence, with a livewire energy that felt genuinely unmoored.“Bonnie and Clyde” cast members, from left: Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway and Michael J. Pollard.Bettman, via GettyHackman routinely inspired the use of the term “Everyman” in articles, but that seemed like an incomplete way of capturing his appeal. In 1989, The New York Times Magazine qualified that description by calling him “Hollywood’s Uncommon Everyman.” Twelve years later, The Times described him as “Hollywood’s Every Angry Man.” He was an Everyman with an asterisk.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Cindy Williams’s 6 Best Moments Onscreen

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      Her comedic work in “Laverne & Shirley” was career-defining. But the actress had other chops, too. Here’s a look at some of her best work and where to see it.To most people, the actress Cindy Williams, who died on Wednesday at age 75, was synonymous with Shirley Feeney of the hit 1970s and ’80s sitcom “Laverne & Shirley,” a spinoff of “Happy Days” about two unattached women in the 1950s and ’60s. But Williams was much more than that character. She had serious dramatic chops, as evidenced in her early film work. And as a comic actor, she demonstrated a Lucille Ball-like ability to combine sweetness and slapstick.Still, Shirley was a career-defining role — a lively, sometimes demure, sometimes daring bottle-capper at Shotz Brewery, in Milwaukee. The show resurrected a vintage style of zany comedy that freed up Williams and her co-star, Penny Marshall, to act both more adult and more childish at the same time. Audiences ate it up, and the show ran for eight seasons.Of the two lead characters, Shirley was the more relatable, restrained of the two, which made her moments of cutting loose just that much more memorable: Watch her hungry and diving for food on the floor in “Guinea Pigs” (Season 2, Episode 14); going agro in “Tag Team Wrestling” (Season 3, Episode 2); drunk-crawling across the dinner table in “Shirley and the Older Man” (Season 4, Episode 24); or panicking while chained to a giant computer, in protest of the local power company, in “The Right to Light” (Season 5, Episode 17).Since much of her best work was steeped in nostalgia, it seems only fitting to look back at a few career highlights, with some tips on where to stream them.‘American Graffiti’ (1973)In this hit boys-coming-of-age movie from George Lucas that set off a wave of 1950s and ’60s nostalgia (see “Happy Days,” two years later), Cindy Williams pulled off the difficult trick of standing out in a stardom-bound cast that includes Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford and Ron Howard. In it, Williams plays a high-school head cheerleader who is losing her class-president boyfriend (Howard) as he heads off to college. In one great scene, he proposes that they see other people while he’s away; in an even better one, set at a school dance, she breaks the news to him that she has always been the controlling force in their relationship. You might be tempted to follow this memorable pair into adulthood in the sequel “More American Graffiti,” but don’t bother — it’s better if they stay 17 forever. (Read the original review of “American Graffiti” here.)Rent it on Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube and other major platforms.‘The Conversation’ (1974)In her earliest roles, Williams was often cast as a best friend or ingénue — a sweet slip of a girl and not much more. But in this paranoid thriller from Francis Ford Coppola, she showed us something darker. Playing one half of a young couple being covertly recorded by Gene Hackman’s security pro Harry Caul, Williams sounds at first — on audio tape — like the embodiment of innocence. But as Harry applies filters to clean up his recordings, the carefully nuanced nature of Williams’s line readings slowly becomes clear, and we’re left wondering whether her character might be the spider in this web of deceit. (Read the original review here.)Stream it on Showtime; rent it on most major platforms.‘Happy Days’ (1975)Season 3, Episode 10: ‘A Date With Fonzie’Following her dramatic turn in “The Conversation,” Williams was tapped to join her comedy-writing partner, Penny Marshall, in what was intended to be a one-time guest appearance on this popular sitcom set in the 1950s. In the episode’s story line, Fonzie (Henry Winkler) enlists Laverne (Marshall) and Shirley (Williams) to go on a double date with him and Richie (Howard), for whom Shirley was thought to be an easy conquest. Williams had a relaxed chemistry with Howard (who played her boyfriend in “American Graffiti”), but this time, her character got to enjoy herself. The Shirley persona freed Williams up: She was funny, cute and sexy, and she had a mean right hook. Naturally, Richie — and the audience — wanted to see more of her and her bestie, which in TV-world meant a spinoff featuring the twosome was in order.Stream it on Paramount+.‘Laverne & Shirley’Season 5, Episode 25 (‘The Diner’)“Laverne & Shirley” helped fine-tune a certain type of sitcom convention — the female duo, the “hangout” comedy — but if you want to do a deep dive, stick with Seasons 1 to 5. Once Laverne and Shirley move from Milwaukee to California in Season 6, the quality declines.For one of the funniest episodes, head over to “The Diner,” where the gals (briefly) take over the diner left to Lenny (Michael McKean) by his late uncle Lazlo (renamed Dead Lazlo’s Place, where you can get a Dead Lazlo Burger). It’s got the physical comedy: Laverne cooks and Shirley serves, resorting to carrying items to tables with her mouth. It’s also got some of the best lines, especially when the customers don’t even have the decency to call Shirley by her right name. You’ll want to plead, along with Laverne, “Please don’t harass Betty, please!”Stream much of Season 1 to 5 free on Pluto; bootlegs of individual episodes are easy to find online.Season 4, Episode 3: ‘Playing the Roxy’One of the best things about Season 4 is how many Shirley-centric episodes there are. In “Playing the Roxy,” the gal pals were reading a trashy story about a stripper before Shirley hits her head; suddenly, she believes she is that stripper, the best exotic dancer in North America. If Shirley’s body is a temple, Roxy’s is an amusement park — and Williams throws herself into the role with gusto, practicing bumps and grinds against a doorframe before staging an elaborate burlesque performance. If anything signaled that Williams wasn’t content to play it safe, it was this.Season 4, Episode 7: ‘A Date With Eraserhead’Granted, some of the sitcom’s plots are outlandish and require a suspension of disbelief. But then, occasionally, some are incredibly realistic. What would your best friend do if she believed your boyfriend was cheating on you? In “A Date With Eraserhead,” Laverne confronts Shirley’s beau, Carmine (Eddie Mekka), on her friend’s behalf (“I’ll hold him, you hit him”), only to learn that the couple has “an understanding” — that’s to say, an open relationship. This episode may not have the usual comic centerpiece, but it feels more true to the relationships at the core of the series, and Williams gets to show a few sides of Shirley that we might not have suspected were there, including heartbreak, jealousy and perhaps even love. More