Pat Hingle (July 19, 1924 - January 3, 2009)

Pat Hingle, the big screen's Commissioner James Gordon leaves us. This is the first golden celebrity passing of 2009. Hingle began his film career in 1954's On the Waterfront which starred Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint. Television soon followed with appearances on such programs as "Suspense", "The Phil Silvers Show", "Kraft Television Theatre", "Studio One", "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", "The Untouchables", "The Twilight Zone", "Dr. Kildare", "Route 66", "Rawhide", "The Fugitive", "The Andy Griffith Show", "Mission:Impossible", "Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre", "Bonanza", "Ironside", "The F.B.I.", "The Six Million Dollar Man", "McCloud", "Hawaii Five-O", "Vega$", "Barnaby Jones", "Hart to Hart", "St. Elsewhere", "Magnum P.I.", "Trapper John, M.D.", "Matlock", "Murder, She Wrote", "Cheers", "Wings", "Homicide: Life on the Street", "Touched by an Angel" and "Dawson's Creek". This list is not complete though, many other television credits exist on this late actor's resume. In the 1950's he also spent sometime on the Broadway stage while being a member of the Actor's Studio. A Tony award nomination came his way in 1958. In 1971 he filled in for Milburn Stone (Dr. Galen "Doc" Adams) on the long running western "Gunsmoke" playing Dr. John Chapman while Stone was recovering from a heart attack. Hingle appeared as Dr. Chapman in six episodes. In 1989 he became beloved by all comic book fans when stepped into the shoes of Police Commissioner James W. Gordon in the Warner Brothers big screen smash hit Batman featuring Michael Keaton as Batman/Bruce Wayne, Jack Nicholson as The Joker, Kim Basinger as Vicki Vale, Michael Gough as Alfred Pennyworth, Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent, Robert Whul as Alexander Knox and Jack Palance as Carl Grissom. For me Hingle's has one of the best lines in the whole movie. At the end when Gordon, Harvey Dent and Mayor Borg (Lee Wallace) are holding a press conference to inform the citizens that the Joker's wave of terror is over Dent reads a note from Batman saying that if the forces of evil show their ugly heads again, call him. Reporter Knox asks..."How do you call him?" And that's when Gordon tears the cloak off of the Bat-Signal and says "He gave us the signal"..........FLASH on goes that magificent beacon of hope. Hingle reprised his role in 1992 for Batman Returns, 1995 for Batman Forever and in 1997 for Batman & Robin. In 2002 he returned to regular television as Chief Justice Townsend on Sally Field's "The Court." Unfortunately out of the six episodes that were produced only three actually aired. Hingle made his final film appeareance in 2008's Undoing Time. In a career that spanned more than fifty years and hundreds of roles Pat Hingle earned a place on stage, in film, television and comic book history.