Actor Pat Hingle Dies at 84
Decades of Film & TV Roles
Actor Pat Hingle Dies at 84
Decades of Film & TV Roles
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 died January 3, 2009. He was 84.
Hingle died Saturday night of myelodysplasia, a type of blood cancer, at his home in Carolina Beach, N.C.
Hingle was born Martin Patterson Hingle in Miami on July 19, 1924. When World War II broke out he left the University of Texas after one semester and joined the Navy, serving on a destroyer in the Pacific. After the war, he returned to college but switched majors to study theater.
After graduating in 1949, Hingle moved to New York and studied acting with Uta Hagen at Herbert Berghof Studios. He later was accepted into the prestigious Actors Studio.
His break came in 1955 when Elia Kazan, one of the co-founders of the Actors Studio, cast him as the scheming son Gooper in the original Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Two years later, Kazan cast him in William Inge’s The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, which became a major Broadway hit and earned Hingle a Tony Award nomination. A year later, Kazan once again helped him land a role as the title character in J.B., the Archibald MacLeish play about the life of Job that won both a Tony and a Pulitzer Prize in 1958. Hingle was also in Arthur Miller’s The Price in 1968.
After glowing notices for J.B., Hingle was offered the lead role in the film Elmer Gantry. Unfortunately, several weeks into the play’s run, he became caught in a stalled elevator in his apartment building. He lost his balance while trying to crawl out and fell 54 feet down the shaft. He sustained massive injuries, including a fractured skull, wrist, hip and leg, and several broken ribs. He also lost his little finger on his left hand.
Hingle spent much of the next year relearning how to walk, and the Gantry role went to Burt Lancaster.
Over the next half century, years, Hingle worked steadily in film, television and on stage.
His television credits include Twilight Zone, The Untouchables, Route 66, Gunsmoke, The Fugitive and Mission: Impossible.
His feature films include On the Waterfront, Splendor in the Grass, Hang ’Em High, Sudden Impact, The Gauntlet, Muppets From Space, Norma Rae and The Grifters. He is perhaps best known for playing Commissioner Gordon in the first four Batman films.
Hingle is survived by his wife, five children, 11 grandchildren and two sisters.