Pat Hingle

A sturdily built performer with a large square head and a rustic voice, Pat Hingle has been a solid character player on stage, screen and TV for over four decades. He began acting as a student at the University of Texas and made the move to NYC in the late 1940s. There, Hingle studied at the American Theater Wing and became a protege of director Elia Kazan at the Actor's Studio. He was soon working regularly on the NY stage, where he would appear in four Pulitzer Prize-winning plays ("Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" 1955, "J.B." 1958, "Strange Interlude" 1963 and "That Championship Season" 1973). Hingle performed initially on TV in an adaptation of "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" (1950) for CBS' "Suspense", and his feature acting debut came in a small part as a bartender in Kazan's "On the Waterfront" (1954). He shone in a breakthrough supporting role in Kazan's "Splendor in the Grass" (1961), as the brusque father of Warren Beatty, but the greatest part of his career would have been the one that got away. Offered the title role in "Elmer Gantry" (1960), Hingle nearly died from a fall down an elevator shaft, preventing him from playing the role that would win Burt Lancaster a Best Actor Oscar.

Hingle spent much of his film and TV career playing ambiguous fathers, sympathetic community leaders, veteran cops, crafty judges and other law enforcement personnel. Younger audiences may know him best as Police Commissioner Gordon in the feature "Batman" series, but some may recognize him as the conflicted police chief father of a catatonic rapist in Clint Eastwood's "Sudden Impact" (1983) or as mob boss Bobo Justice, who comes west to teach a painful lesson to Anjelica Huston about skimming mob money at the track, in "The Grifters" (1990). Equally comfortable in the Old West, he unjustly sentenced Eastwood to death in Ted Post's "Hang 'Em High" (1968), strode the prairie in such oaters as "Nevada Smith" (1966) and "Invitation to a Gunfighter" (1964) and even lent some iconic authority to his small role as a bartender in Sam Raimi's "The Quick and the Dead" (1995). In addition to his feature work, Hingle worked frequently on TV and in regional theater during the 90s, most notably as Big Daddy in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", before returning to Broadway as Benjamin Franklin in the revival of "1776" (1997).

• Also Credited As:
  Martin Patterson Hingle
• Born:
  July 19, 1924 in Miami, Florida
• Job Titles:
  Actor, Construction worker, Laborer, Sold concessions at movie house, Waiter

Education

• University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, radio broadcasting, BFA, 1949
• HB Studio, New York, New York

Milestones

• 1941 Served with the United States Naval Reserve
• 1950 Began professional acting career in a non-union stock company in Rockville Centre, NY
• 1950 TV debut in a production of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" on CBS' "Suspense"
• 1953 NYC stage debut (Off-Broadway), Harold Koble in "End as a Man"
• 1954 Feature acting debut in Elia Kazan's "On the Waterfront"
• 1955 Appeared as Gooper in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" on Broadway with Ben Gazarra and Burl Ives
• 1955 Broadway debut as Joe Foster in "Festival"
• 1958 Nominated for a Tony Award as Best Featured Actor in a Play for William Inge's "Dark at the Top of the Stairs"
• 1959 Received rave reviews in title role of Archibald MacLeish's "J.B." on Broadway
• 1960 Narrated Kazan's "Wild River"
• 1961 Breakthrough feature supporting role as Warren Beatty's father in Kazan's "Splendor in the Grass"
• 1961 Starred as "Macbeth" at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, CT
• 1964 Appeared as Parnell James in the Broadway production of James Baldwin's "Blues for Mr Charlie"
• 1965 Appeared in the first stage revival of "The Glass Menagerie"
• 1966 Played the Gentleman Caller in a CBS-TV adaptation of "The Glass Menagerie"
• 1968 First film with Clint Eastwood, "Hang 'Em High" (also appeared with Eastwood in "The Gauntlet" 1977 and "Sudden Impact" 1983)
• 1969 TV-movie debut, "The Ballad of Andy Crocker" (ABC)
• 1973 Succeeded Richard A Dysart as Coach in Jason Miller's "That Championship Season" on Broadway
• 1974 Starred as a colorful Depression-era doctor in "The Last Angry Man", an ABC TV-movie pilot for an unsold series
• 1980 Debut as a TV regular, played Chief Paulton on the short-lived ABC detective series "Stone", starring Dennis Weaver
• 1986 Gave an amusing performance as a true screen swine, one of the few redeeming elements of "Maximum Overdrive", a bomb that marked Stephen King's directorial debut; filmed on location in Carolina Beach, NC where Hingle eventually setteld permanently
• 1988 Cast as a regular in "Blue Skies", a short-lived CBS drama
• 1989 Portrayed Police Commissioner James Gordon in Tim Burton's "Batman"; took the job so his wife could see London
• 1990 As mob boss Bobo Justice in "The Grifters", traveled west to teach Lily (Anjelica Huston) a painful lesson for skimming mob money at the track
• 1991 Played J Edgar Hoover in HBO movie "Citizen Cohn"
• 1992 Reprised the role of Commissioner Gordon for Burton's "Batman Returns"
• 1995 Once again played Commissioner Gordon in Joel Schumacher's "Batman Forever"
• 1997 Acted the part of Benjamin Franklin in revival of the musical "1776", his 23rd Broadway show
• 1997 Had a fourth go as Commissioner Gordon in "Batman & Robin"
• 1997 Portrayed Officer Wylie in USA movie "The Member of the Wedding"
• 2002 Returned to series TV as regular on the ABC drama "The Court"
• 2006 Cast opposite Will Ferrell in the comedy "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby"
• 2006 Co-starred in the comedy "Waltzing Anna"
• Offered title role in "Elmer Gantry" (1960) but could not do it due to near fatal accident; caught in an elevator in his West End Avenue apartment building that had stalled between the second and third floors, he crawled out, trying to reach the second floor corridor, lost his balance and fell 54 feet down the shaft, fracturing his skull, wrist, hip and most of the ribs on his left side, breaking his left leg in three places and losing the little finger on his left hand; Burt Lancaster won a Best Actor Oscar as Elmer Gantry
• Served with the United States Naval Reserve