RIP Pat Hingle

One of the all-time character actors. I'll never forget him from The Grifters. Here was this guy I was used to seeing being kindly and gruff, just being ruthless. A heck of a career.



Pat Hingle, the veteran actor with more than half a century of impressive work in theater, film and television who was perhaps best known to a generation of movie fans as Commissioner James Gordon in the first four "Batman" films, has died. He was 84.

Hingle died Saturday night of myelodysplasia, a type of blood cancer, at his home in Carolina Beach, N.C., according to Lynn Heritage, a cousin who was acting as a spokesperson for the family.

He wasn't a household name, but his solid, broad, hang-dog screen face became a household image. On film, he worked with stars ranging from Clint Eastwood to the Muppets. He was Sally Field's father in "Norma Rae" and Warren Beatty's in "Splendor in the Grass." He played the bartender who needles Marlon Brando about his former prize-fight style in "On the Waterfront," and he was the sadistic crime boss who terrorizes Anjelica Huston with a bag of oranges in "The Grifters."

 

Good actor. RIP.

 

One of the better character actors. RIP.

 

Worked with Eastwood in three decades: Hang 'Em High, The Gauntlet and Sudden Impact. Great screen presence.

 

Saw him on Broadway as Ben Franklin in the revival of 1776.
Did a fine job, too.

 

Great death scene in Norma Rae

 

Good get.
Lot of good supporting performances in that one.

 

Loved him in Sudden Impact. RIP

 

Every time you saw him, big screen or small screen, he was "that guy." Nobody played bluster better. RIP.

 

Can't believe he wasn't brought up in the Best Character Actors thread.

I guess that's the mark of the truly great character actors -- you don't really even notice them or know their names, but when they pass away or otherwise make news you say, "Wow -- he was that guy who played ..."

 

Always remember him from episodes of M*A*S*H and Magnum P.I. for some reason. But the man certainly didn't have trouble finding work (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0385757/) - forgot he was in a Twlight Zone, too. R.I.P.

 

I've seen Hingle in so many things, I can't even pin down which role I remember him most in.

I'd probably have to say the most memorable to me, is his guest turn in M*A*S*H where he played
Daniel Webster Tucker, a supposedly hardass colonel who, as it turns out, was invited over by Col. Potter to play an elaborate April Fool's Prank.

He was also good as the will executor in "Brewster's Millions"