The five biggest movie stars of the 1970s, according to Robert Altman
If you consider yourself a cinephile and you haven’t seen any films by Robert Altman, then you have some serious homework to do.
A leading light of the ‘New Hollywood’ movement, his genre-bending, often countercultural films featured some of the biggest stars of the day. Robin Williams, Donald Sutherland, Whoopi Goldberg, Shelley Duvall, the list goes on and on.
One actor he never had the pleasure of working with, though, was Gene Hackman. Despite both being in their primes at similar times, they never crossed over. Speaking with Playboy in 1976, Altman revealed that he didn’t see Hackman as a star, certainly not when compared to some of his contemporaries.
“Not in the terms that [Paul] Newman and Robert Redford and Steve McQueen are,” he said. “In any picture where he can be Steve McQueen, McQueen is worth his $3,000,000, because his pictures can be booked around the world and earn back the tab. Hackman is a fine actor, but I don’t believe he’s worth paying that kind of money, unless he’s in a very good picture. In a bad picture, he just goes down with the whole crew. McQueen can overcome that handicap. The same thing might be true of Redford, who’s next in line, then maybe Newman. Jack Nicholson, with an Academy Award now, is probably in their league, and certainly Marlon Brando.”
If Hackman felt put out by the fact that Altman never worked with him, he shouldn’t be too offended. He never got a chance to direct four of the five names on his list. He was offered the chance to direct Nicholson in the film The Last Detail (which weirdly went on to inspire Superbad), but Hal Ashby took charge instead.
The one name from his dream team that Altman actually managed to work with was Newman. He directed the star of The Sting in his 1979 post-apocalyptic drama Quintet, where Newman plays a man caught up in a live-action version of a board game – one of the few distractions in an otherwise bleak and frozen world. Think The Hunger Games meets Snowpiercer, only… way worse. The film tanked on pretty much every level, and even Newman had a pop at it afterwards. Maybe that’s why the rest of Altman’s dream cast steered well clear.
The great irony of Altman’s quote is that Hackman would go on to achieve legendary status. The moustachioed icon would continue to grow in star power for decades following the director’s derogatory comments. Just two years later, he would play Lex Luthor in the first ‘Superman’ movie, a role that increased his mainstream popularity no end.
While Newman and Redford would enjoy similar long-term success, McQueen would pass away in 1980, while Brando’s career fluctuated wildly as he got older. Altman was way off the money on this one.
At least he was right about his favourite fivesome. All of them represent a certain star quality that embodies this era of Hollywood perfectly. If he’d have just seen Hackman’s potential, he could have scored himself a delightful half-dozen.
