By Christopher J. Scalia
Washington Examiner
March 06, 2025
The recent news of Gene Hackman’s death was an occasion to celebrate the Oscar-winning actor’s long and remarkable career. Hackman is in some of the most memorable films of the past 50 years, from The French Connection (1971) to The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Hoosiers (1986) to the original Superman series, Mississippi Burning (1988) to Unforgiven (1992). He managed to be cool and charming without being especially handsome.
I’d seen many of Hackman’s films but didn’t know anything about his personal life, so I was particularly struck by an anecdote from the Wall Street Journal’s obituary: “Hackman sometimes spoke about his father abandoning his family when he was 13 years old. Driving away, [Hackman’s father] gave his son a casual wave while the boy played in the street. [Hackman] instantly knew his dad wasn’t coming back.”
It’s a troubling moment of abandonment that Hackman clearly never forgot, yet he believed some good came of it: “Maybe that’s why I became an actor,” Hackman told Vanity Fair in 2004. “I doubt I would have become so sensitive to human behavior if that hadn’t happened to me as a child—if I hadn’t realized how much one small gesture can mean.” This is what is known as making lemonade out of a lemon. He somehow manages to praise his father’s influence despite the clear pain of abandonment.
After I shared this passage on X, some users shared a clip from 2001 in which Hackman spoke about this moment with James Lipton on Inside the Actor’s Studio. Recounting the event in front of a live audience, Hackman held back tears before joking, “It’s only been 65 years or so.” The audience laughed and applauded before Hackman explained that an event like that “probably makes you a better actor … You get in touch with your feelings, and that’s what we’re here for. I think that the more you can draw on that kind of thing, get something out of it.” His father’s casual abandonment scarred Hackman, yet he reshaped the pain into something productive.
This moment in Hackman’s life is especially compelling because it echoes moments from one of Hackman’s best-known films, The French Connection. In one scene, Hackman’s character, a detective named Popeye Doyle, pursues a debonair heroin dealer named Alain Charnier into a subway car. But Charnier tricks Doyle into leaving the car while he stays on. When the doors close and Hackman chases the departing train, Charnier gives a smug smile, holds up his hand, and waves his fingers at the frustrated officer. The book by Robin Moore, on which the film was based, has a slightly different version of the scene, but the image holds: Charnier “was smiling at the police officers and daintily waving a gloved hand.”
The gesture gains more significance in the film’s final scene. Charnier thinks he’s home free after completing a drug deal, but Doyle and fellow officers have blocked his escape route. Hackman’s character turns the tables and gives his nemesis a casual wave. This gratifying gesture is not in Moore’s book.
Several people posted a GIF of this moment under my post of Hackman’s obituary, and it’s no wonder why. Given Hackman’s emotional recounting of his father’s wave so many years later, it’s easy to believe the moment from his childhood at least crossed his mind as he acted these scenes. He knew very well how much this small gesture could hurt and how long that pain could last. Perhaps he drew on what he imagined his father was thinking as he made the gesture himself. But he must also have known the frustration of the briefly thwarted detective didn’t compare to the pain of the lonely son.
Of course, Hackman went on to live what seems to have been a happy and, most definitely, successful life, even though he spent much of it without his father. But he never forgot the pain of that moment.
Parents, love your children and remember that they remember.