Pat Hingle Actor Who Played Commissioner Gordon Dies

Pat Hingle was a veteran actor who's career spanned six decades. In November 2007 UNCW hosted a tribute to Hingle and recognized his efforts to establish the Pat Hingle Guest Artist Fund, which allows professionals to work with students on productions.

Wikipedia on Pat Hingle

Hingle was born Martin Patterson Hingle in Denver, Colorado, the son of Marvin Louise (née Patterson), a schoolteacher and musician, and Clarence Martin Hingle, a building contractor.[1] Hingle enlisted in the U.S. Navy in December 1941, dropping out of the University of Texas. He served on the destroyer USS Marshall during World War II. He returned to the University of Texas after the war and earned a degree in radio broadcasting.

Pat Hingle had a near fatal accident in 1960.

In 1960, he had been offered the title role in Elmer Gantry, but could not do it due to a 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. He lay near death for two weeks and his recovery took more than a year.

Traditional roles portrayed by Hingle

Hingle is traditionally known for playing judges, police officers, and other authority figures. One of his notable roles is the father of the character played by Warren Beatty in Splendor in the Grass (1961). While he is probably best known in recent times for playing Commissioner Gordon in the 1989 film Batman and its three sequels, Hingle has a long list of television and movie credits to his name, going back to 1948. Among them are Hang 'Em High (1968), Sudden Impact (1983), Road To Redemption (2001), When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? (1979), Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive (1986), The Grifters (1990), Citizen Cohn (1992), Muppets from Space, and Shaft (2000). Along with Michael Gough, who played Alfred Pennyworth, he is one of only two actors to appear in all of the first four Batman films.

Other roles of Pat Hingle

In the 1997 revival of the musical 1776, Hingle played Benjamin Franklin, with Brent Spiner as John Adams. In 2002, he was a regular cast member of ABC's series The Court. He also played Horace in 1995's The Quick and the Dead.

Recently, he appeared in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, as the original owner of Dennit Racing.