When Gene Hackman accidentally destroyed a Picasso: “The owner just about shit in his pants”
Long before he was celebrated as one of his era’s finest actors, commanding millions of dollars per picture and permanently residing at the top of casting wish lists around Hollywood, Gene Hackman was just like everybody else, with dreams of making it in a cutthroat business.
He’d always wanted to be an actor, but the hardest part for any thespian is wedging their foot into the door in the first place. Hackman began his career treading the boards in New York in the early 1960s, where he ended up making two lifelong friends who joined him in attaining legendary status.
They would have had no idea at the time that they’d combine to star in countless stone-cold classics and win a cumulative haul of five Academy Awards from 19 nominations, no matter how confident they were, with the heavyweight trio of Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, and Robert Duvall living together and working menial jobs while trawling the audition circuit in the hopes of landing their big break.
It was almost cruelly ironic that Hoffman got his in The Graduate when Hackman was hired for a role from which he was subsequently fired, but it didn’t dent their friendship. It wasn’t an easy road to the top for any of them, and it was clear the latter wasn’t suited for a regular nine-to-five when he accidentally destroyed a valuable artwork by one of the most famous artists in history.
Hackman held down jobs at a pharmacy, worked as a doorman in Times Square, sold women’s shoes, and moved furniture to keep himself afloat. He even brought Hoffman along on one occasion, meaning that one unwitting New York resident stood by and watched as two future Oscar winners hauled a refrigerator up six flights of stairs and into their home.
When dealing with one customer’s collection of rare and valuable art, Hackman made a faux pas that cost an awful lot of money. Part of the prized treasure trove was an original Picasso lithograph, and when the truck was being loaded to cart the loot off to its new residence, the actor launched an errant broom into the truck, which promptly pierced a hole right through it.
“It went right through the Picasso like a spear,” he confessed to Vanity Fair. “The owner was still standing there, and he just about shit in his pants.” It was a completely understandable reaction when the artwork would have been worth thousands if not more, even in the ’60s, and all because the removal guys had been careless in their work.
It’s a situation plenty of people who’ve moved home can appreciate, albeit not on the same financial scale. Hackman may have destroyed one Picasso, but it wouldn’t be too long before his movie career took off, and he was wealthy enough to buy as many for himself as he wanted.
