How time flies! It was some 62 years ago that lyricist Harold Arlen first wrote the words to the song that became Judy Garland's great highpoint in movies, the torchy, emotional musical anthem of angst, "The Man That Got Away" which Judy introduced to the world in her best knock-it-out-of-the-ballpark fashion in George Cukor's 1954 version of A Star is Born. Since then, many torchy music types have caused chills to travel up and down spines with that song while, hard as it is to admit, one of the very best actors Hollywood has ever had in it's midst has been allowed to--very quietly and with virtually no notice or flash--become the movies' great "Man That Got Away" for real. (If you have noticed that Gene Hackman hasn't made a movie in some 12 years, count yourself as one of the few).

At the time of his departure, no lofty announcement was made, no trumpets blared for emphasis, the way it has usually been done when a Hollywoodian "quietly" moves to new pastures. In 2004, Gene H. simply closed the script of a film he'd just completed (2004's Welcome to Mooseport with Ray Romano, Marcia Gay Harden and Rip Torn), packed his bags and took up permanent residence in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Now age 86 but still basically ageless, he's spent the past dozen years enjoying life away from the world of cameras, casting agents and 4:30am wakeup calls.

So, says we, who better to salute as our September star of the month than Hackman, a two-time Oscar® winner with a 60-year career and a wide variety of roles, big and small, on his credit sheet-- including such legendary films as 1967's Bonnie and Clyde, 1971's The French Connection and 1981's Reds; such shamefully underrated ones as 1970's I Never Sang for My Father, 1973's Scarecrow and 1974's The Conversation; and such surprises in the mix as 1972's The Poseidon Adventure, Richard Donner's 1978 Superman and Mike Nichols' 1996's The Bird Cage.

My own personal pick among the many gems in the Hackman career, I'd have to say, is one in which he received no billing and no Oscar® attention but was one of the true delights of 1974: Young Frankenstein-- the funniest movie made in the entire decade of the '70s, with Hackman as the blind man living in a cave and trying to have a simple, friendly cup of tea with Peter Boyle (as Herr Doctor Frankenstein's monster). And, who ever expected Hackman to show up, unannounced, in 1990's Postcards from the Edge, another Mike Nichols knockout, or the 1987 sleeper No Way Out?

With Hackman you could never quite pin him down or predict when or where he'd turn up. The one thing that was a sure thing: the excellence of his work. One of the many legends about Hackman has it that during his tenure at the Pasadena Playhouse, he and classmate Dustin Hoffman were among those voted the least likely to succeed by their Pasadena classmates. If that's true, it was an embarrassingly bad call. Hackman was the ripe-old age of 30 when he first began training as an actor at the Pasedena Playhouse, then headed to New York and the Lee Strasberg Institute. His first substantial film role came with the 1964 drama Lilith, a time when Hackman met Warren Beatty who remembered Hackman when Warren B. was casting the role of his older brother in Bonnie and Clyde (1967).

We'll be showing 22 of Hackman's films including four TCM premieres: 1966's A Covenant with Death, Eureka (1983), Under Fire (1983, a war film co-starring Ed Harris and Nick Nolte), and Bat 21 (1988). You're sure to find something to love every Friday night this September on TCM--as we blow trumpets and ring bells to salute one of the movie giants that got away from us without the attention his departure and his talent deserved.

by Robert Osborne