Gene Hackman and America (split from Dead Thread)

[batmagadanleadoff]

He rarely did comedy, but the occasional times he did (like his Lex Luthor), he was dead funny.

Also, See, The Birdcage.

[Frayed Knot]

And let's not forget his great five minute scene in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN

[Benjamin Grimm]

[Cowtipper]

It is a little too obvious. (Is that the one where he played Willie Wonka? I don't know what Cowtipper was referring to.)

In the popcorn movie category, there's Superman and The Poseidon Adventure. He seemed to be having fun playing in both of those films.

It was a goof. Gene Wilder was Willy Wonka. I was hoping someone would point it out mockingly and provide chuckles for all, but unfortunately that didn't take place.

[Edgy MD]

Gene Wilder is the one who got him that gig in Young Frankenstein. The two Genes were tennis partners, and Wilder told him about the film he was doing with Mel Brooks and he thought it sounded great and begged for a tiny role.

[Benjamin Grimm]

And Gene Wilder, then pretty much an unknown, had a small part in Bonnie and Clyde.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Excerpt:

Any list of great Gene Hackman performances that doesn't include his spectacular—and uncredited—turn as the blind hermit in Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein is woefully incomplete. In it, Hackman demonstrated how brilliant he would have been in the 1930s and 1940s. (Part of this was the film's gorgeous black-and-white photography. Hackman's face looked like it came out of the great Eisenstein films Ivan the Terrible or Alexander Nevsky. He was the American Cherkasov.) And it is an incredibly funny couple of minutes in an incredibly funny film. I have missed him on the screen since his retirement, and his death this week came as a considerable shock, especially since the circumstances now seem to be quite weird. Maybe I should make an espresso?

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/p ... -argument/

[metirish]

https://abcnews.go.com/US/gene-hackman- ... itter_abcn

Cardiovascular disease for Hackman , and hantavirus for Arakawa , tragic end

[Frayed Knot]

It's brutal that he apparently died as much as a week after she did but that he may have been mentally incapable of processing it.
As my mom used to say, 'Growing old is not for wimps'

As far as Gene goes, 95 is a nice run so you can't be too sad at that, even with a bad ending.
65 (her) not so much. Take it from someone who turned 66 yesterday.