Gene Hackman, right, and President Ronald Reagan in 1987 at the White House.
Editor’s note: The following is a feature story from the Department of Defense in a series spotlighting well-known entertainers with military experience.
By David Vergun, DOD News
Actor Gene Hackman, who starred as the captain of the USS Alabama in the film “Crimson Tide” and in films such as “The French Connection” (1971), “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972), “Get Shorty” (1995), and many other films, also served in the Marine Corps.
In director Tony Scott’s 1995 film, “Crimson Tide,” Hackman played Navy Capt. Frank Ramsey, in command of the ballistic missile submarine USS Alabama in the 1990s, shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Born on Jan. 30, 1930, in San Bernardino, California, Hackman left home at age 16 to enlist in the Marine Corps, lying about his age so he could get in, which was a fairly common practice before the advent of computer records. He served from 1947 to 1952 as a field radio operator and then as a broadcast journalist.
Gene Hackman in his Marine Corps uniform sometime between 1947 and 1951.
In the 1940s, he was stationed in Qingdao, China, and then Shanghai. Part of his duties, he said, was destroying Japanese military equipment so that the communists couldn’t obtain it.
Hackman participated in Operation Beleaguer, a major operation led by Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Keller E. Rockey. Rockey commanded 50,000 Marines of the III Marine Amphibious Corps which deployed to northeastern China between 1945 and 1949.
The main objectives of the operation were the repatriation of more than 600,000 Japanese and Koreans who remained in China after the end of World War II, as well as the protection of American lives and property in the country. Over nearly four years, American forces engaged in several skirmishes with the communists while the Americans successfully evacuated and repatriated thousands of foreign nationals.
The unit withdrew from China when the Red Army took control of the country in 1949. Hackman subsequently served in Hawaii and Japan.
Hackman used his GI Bill benefits to study journalism and television production at the University of Illinois.
Success as an actor, he said, didn’t come easy. He got a few bit roles, such as on the TV series “Route 66” in 1963 and performed in several off-Broadway plays.
“Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) earned Hackman an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor and his film career took off after that.
In director John Moore’s box office success, “Behind Enemy Lines” (2001), Hackman played Navy Rear Adm. Leslie McMahon Reigart, who led the rescue of a downed fighter pilot. The film bears a certain resemblance to the actual 1995 incident in which an Air Force pilot was shot down over Bosnia and Herzegovina and rescued by the Marines about a week later.
Hackman, 94, lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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