Pat" Hingle died he was 84

Pat" Hingle died he was 84. Martin Patterson "Pat" Hingle was an American actor.

(July 19, 1924 – January 3, 2009)

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.


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.

Jed Cooper (Clint Eastwood) with Judge Adam Fenton (Hingle) in Hang 'Em High (1968).
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 four Batman films.

Hingle originated the role of Gooper in the original Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof . He also starred as Victor Franz in the premiere production of The Price by Arthur Miller .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.


He died at his home in Carolina Beach, North Carolina, of leukemia on January 3, 2009, having been diagnosed with myelodysplasia in November 2006.[2][3]