Before They Were Kings: Part One

In 2004, Vanity Fair published an article titled BEFORE THEY WERE KINGS. It was a 6 page piece about Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall, chronicling their careers from infancy to ultimate Hollywood success.

It’s a fantastic read…. Filled with stories about studying in New York City in the 60’s… about little breaks… big breaks… setbacks and survival… with plenty of anecdotes about chasing girls. I keep that article nearby, always, because it’s entertaining, it’s uplifting and it’s inspiring… and it never gets old.

I would recommend it to anyone and everyone…especially actors… the only problem is…its not available anywhere online. I’m sure you could go to a library and dig it up… but c’mon…who does that anymore?

So I thought I would do my part and try to archive the article… type it out here on my site… little by little… until I’ve created a document that showcases the entire story… I’ll do that because I believe that it’s time well spent… and I think other people out there will really enjoy it… and I hope that maybe another actor… aspiring, armchair or whatever…might also find some inspiration here…

Here goes>>>>>


BEFORE THEY WERE KINGS

Living on talent and odd jobs in 60s New York, Gene Hackman. Dustin Hoffman and Robert Duvall knew what mattered: getting the break (and the girls). The stars talk to Richard Meryman about the friendship that kept them going.

The story begins in 1957 at The Pasadena Playhouse, in California. Gene Hackman – 27 years old, a married, ex-marine from Danville Illinois, rough hewn, six feet two inches tall, a self described :big lummox kind of person” – found himself surrounded by tanned, young “walking surf-boards.” He immediately latched on to a fellow misfit, 19 year old, five foot six inch Dustin Hoffman, who was burdened with a huge nose and a bad complexion and wore tattered Levi’s and a sheepskin vest over bare skin. Hackman recalls, “There was something about him that – like he had a secret. You knew he was going to do something.” An inspirational instructor, Barney Brown, sensed the same karma. He assured Dustin, “You are going to wind up being a theater person the rest of your life,” and persuaded him to go to New York against the wishes of his parents. “When Barney died,” says Hoffman, “I felt my ideal father had died.”

All three grew up in peripatetic families where fathers and discipline loomed large. Hoffman’s stickler Russian Jewish father, Harry lifted himself through sheer hard work ditch digger to Columbia Pictures prop man to set designer to founder of the Harry Hoffman furniture company, which went broke. His uneven fortunes moved the family into six Los Angeles neighborhoods, and Dustin had to find his place in six new schools. Short and acne riddled, he was mocked as “Dustbin.” “I felt ugly,” he says. “I was all nose.” He tried never to walk away from a girl in profile. When at last a pretty girl did pay a little attention to him, a boy stole up behind him and jerked down his pants, taunting, “Hit me, little Dusty.”

But his innate acting gifts saved him – sort of. He became the class clown and discovered the rush delivered by a laughing audience – though, he says “people used to say, OH, he’s a real comedian, which was like saying ‘He’s a loser.’” At home, says Hoffman “sometimes the house was as thick with tension as any house could be.” At dinners, for several days following a family fight, his father, mother, grandmother and handsome high-achieving brother would sit absolutely silent. Suddenly, eight year old Dustin would repeat the dialogue of the fight, taking all the parts. The family would look up, begin to laugh, and the tension erased. Hoffman muses, “I had never thought about acting. It was a great feeling to break the collective anger in the room. I mattered. I had an identity in the house.”

At Santa Monica City College, Hoffman studied medicine and music. To avoid flunking out, he took an acting course for a sure three credits and found that acting was “the first subject I ever felt I could concentrate on.” After a brief period at the Los Angeles Academy of Music, he enrolled in the Pasadena Playhouse, where he and his friend Gene Hackman, agreed that they detested everyone else. Gene resisted the teachers approach to acting, and at the end of the first semester he received a grade of 1.4 – the lowest grade ever given up to that point had been 3.0 – and was dismissed.

(to be continued)