Gene Hackman's Long Island connection: He started acting at Bellport's Gateway Playhouse

Long before "The French Connection," Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman had a Long Island connection that served as a starting point for success on the stage and the screen.

Hackman, whose death was reported on Thursday at 95 along with his wife and dog at their home in New Mexico, began his acting career in the summer of 1957 with an unpaid internship at Gateway Playhouse in Bellport. After a year of study at California's prestigious Pasadena Playhouse, where he and fellow classmate Dustin Hoffman were voted least likely to succeed, Hackman headed east where he landed his gig at Gateway building sets, scavenging for props and setting up lights.

"When the theater started in 1950 it was my family and local friends," said Paul Allan, executive artistic director of The Gateway. "Then in 1952, my aunt brought in Robert Duvall and in 1955 he came back and did three more seasons. Duvall brought in Gene Hackman as a friend and he was an apprentice for that season and did three shows, all of them with Robert Duvall."

Hackman started with a small part in the comedy "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" followed by a bit as a police officer in the Agatha Christie courtroom drama "Witness for the Prosecution." Then when director Ulu Grosbard needed to fill the role of Marco, a strong, silent Italian workman, in Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge," he cast Hackman. During a 2004 interview with Vanity Fair, Hackman recalled that after one performance, Grosbard told him, “Gene, you have got to keep at it.” Grosbard also introduced Hackman to famed acting teacher George Morrison, who served as the young actor's mentor.

At the time, Hackman was focused more on a career on stage than in movies. Within a few short years of his Gateway work, he was starring on Broadway, most notably in the hit comedy "Any Wednesday" in 1964. "In the theater you can play characters totally different from your persona with the aid of makeup, costumes, and so on," he told Film Comment in 1988. "In films, you’re pretty much limited to your type. In recognizing what was exploitable about myself, what would get me a job, I chose theater."