At a little dinner gathering last week, I asked the other people at my table what they thought about Gene Hackman’s death. It had been reported that the two-time Oscar winner had been found dead in his home at age 95, under what looked like mysterious circumstances:  his wife, 30 years younger, found dead in another room and with pills scattered about, a family dog found dead in a closet while two others were alive elsewhere, the front door ajar. 

To a person, they said, “Who’s Gene Hackman?”

Gene Hackman, star of I-couldn’t-even-tell-you-how-many movies that I’ve seen. One hundred and one film credits, two Oscars as I said, indelible performances in “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Unforgiven,” “Mississippi Burning,” “Crimson Tide” and so many others including, yes, “The Poseidon Adventure.” 

That’s who Gene Hackman is. Was. 

But being in their 20s, they didn’t know, no matter how famous Gene Hackman was or had been. They said he sounded great, that they’d have to check out a movie or two of his. When I mentioned “The Royal Tenenbaums,” which I haven’t seen, someone said, “Oh! He was the dad, right?”

Probably 20 years ago, I asked my children who Bob Hope was. For those who may not recall, Bob Hope was one of the biggest stars of the 20^th century, a star of radio, film, talk shows, USO tours, and interminably awful “comedy” specials of my youth. When he was about 147 years old, I came across him after hours in a supermarket near my house. Here’s where I should mention that Mr. Hope lived in Toluca Lake, a glitzier area that abuts Burbank, California, where I live in a house directly under the flightpath of what’s more recently known as Hollywood Burbank Airport, but which for years was known as Bob Hope Airport, and which to this day features a large bas-relief sculpture of Bob Hope on one of its towers, and which still has a sign with another bas relief of Bob greeting you as you enter the terminal. 

So of course when I asked my children, “Who was Bob Hope?” they answered seriously, “He has that airport.” 

And who was, more than any other person, the voice of the 20^th century? Bing Crosby is widely recognized as the most-recorded, and most-heard, voice. My kids don’t know who that was, either, and neither do the young people I was dining with last week, just as I struggle to learn more about Flo Rida, Megan Thee Stallion, Bad Bunny, and others, and wonder why they have cartoon names.

So the point is:  Fame is fleeting. Moreso in an age when broadcast one-size-fits-all news is dead, and we select the news we’re consuming, and it selects us through its algorithms and targeting.

I share all this as setup because there’s an element of Gene Hackman’s death that I’m not seeing anyone else writing about:  the shame of Alzheimer’s. And it’s a shame that no one is looking at it. And it’s a shame in this case compounded by fame.

The reports from the coroner’s office and the local police agree that this was the likeliest scenario:  Betsy Arakawa, who was Gene Hackman’s wife and caretaker, died in their house from hantavirus, which sadly left the addled Mr. Hackman to fend for himself as best he could for about a week, until he too died. That is a tragedy in itself. It’s made manifest by their seclusion:  They seem to have had no visitors, until finally a maintenance worker came by and discovered no one answering the door.

If you’ve ever known anyone with Alzheimer’s, you know part of what’s going on here: The person with Alzheimer’s has been hidden from others.

For about 20 years, an older gentleman named Ken was one of my closest friends. My family and friends and I really grew to love him. I’d pick him up and bring him over to our parties, or take him out to lunch, or a group of us would get together to see a movie or a play or go out for a drink. This went on through his 70s, and 80s, and into his early 90s. The last time I saw him was two years ago last month, at his 95^th birthday party, which his children announced as a sort of going-away party for Ken — who would still be living in his condo, now with his adult son, but who wouldn’t be taking visitors any longer. Ken, whose beloved wife had died unexpectedly about 10 years earlier, was starting to repeat things — not too frequently, I thought, but no doubt I wasn’t seeing him as often as his kids were — and so his children were rather clear that this was his farewell party. There’s been no contact since. I keep checking the obits to see if Ken is still on this mortal plane, and our mutual friend Bridget reached out to Ken’s daughter last year and got another reassurance that we’d be informed when Ken leaves us, but for us, he’s already left, and I miss him.

Of course, with Alzheimer’s, if it’s progressed as they feared, he’s already left.

I could see how much Ken’s children loved him, and I know what a difficult decision this sort of thing is for families. I also remember Ronald Reagan’s family shutting him away — because he was a public figure, and no one close to him wanted to see his image tarnished.

In March of last year, Gene Hackman and his wife went out for lunch to a seafood restaurant in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they lived. Of course, someone recognized him and took photos and sold them to TMZ. (I’m not going to link to them here, but the site has excitedly run them again, given the recent news of Mr. Hackman’s death.) He’s unrecognizable as the person we know — of course, because he was then a frail 94-year-old man walking with a cane and clothed in the drab attire of most elderly white men:  ball cap, saggy jeans, faded loose button-down shirt. His body language in the photos radiates confusion.

I think those photos are part of why the Hackmans had no visitors. They show a great man, a man of supreme accomplishment, diminished in a way we don’t want to see, and in a way certainly his loved ones don’t want him seen. And so he was hidden away, having learned the lesson of the previous year when a photographer cashed in on his plight.

The Stoics, most importantly Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, caution us that fame isn’t worth pursuing. It’s fleeting, yes, and costly. Fleeting because it may not even last through your lifetime; think of all the child stars abandoned by the side of fortune’s road. Costly because chasing it is beside the point:  The point should be in your work, not in gaining flimsy recognition by people you don’t know.

Given the nature of his demise, Gene Hackman’s ending will now always be part of his legacy. There’s no undoing that except through the mercy of time, as the facts of who Gene Hackman was slip further and further into the past, leaving only new discoveries from fresh faces stumbling onto one of his movies:  “Wow! Who’s he? He’s terrific!”

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 8th, 2025 at 7:17 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.