The Hilarious Reason Gene Hackman Gave for Joining the Marine Corps

Acclaimed actor Gene Hackman retired from Hollywood in 2004, ending a prestigious career that spanned 40 years of both film and television. His love of filmmaking began as a young boy after seeing movies with Errol Flynn and James Cagney, but upon leaving the theater, he was stunned to realize he didn't have Flynn's looks. He even once described himself as a big "lummox of a person."

Hackman, of course, eventually succeeded in Hollywood despite (or because of, depending on how one might look at it) his everyman appearance, coupled with his acting ability. But when he ran away from his home in Danville, Illinois, to join the Marine Corps, his personal appearance was apparently a factor, as he related to David Letterman in 1988.

Actor Gene Hackman talking to David Letterman in 1988 on why he joined the Marines. pic.twitter.com/VgSY5mwEiG

— Jim LaPorta (@JimLaPorta) February 27, 2025

Hackman's exchange with Letterman is funny (and on-brand for the Corps; just look at the dress blues). But he revealed the real reason he joined in a 2000 interview with the U.S. Naval Institute. He told the story of his girlfriend's brother and that his motives were "obscure and complicated."

"It was probably because of Lowell Ford," said the actor, who died in February at the age of 95. "His sister was my girlfriend. This was when I was 14 or 15, at a time when young men don't quite know who they're in love with. Her brother had been killed on Guam. A year and a half or so later, when I wasn't quite 17, I thought it would be very heroic of me if I joined the Marine Corps. I wanted to show her that I was proud not only of her, but of her brother, too."

Even in 1947, the year Hackman joined the Corps, 16 was too young to serve. He had to lie about his age, desperate to get out of town and wanting to be sent to China. As he told Letterman, he would spend five years in the service, with a good deal of time spent in what was then the Republic of China, but soon became the People's Republic of China. The future actor's time there came in the middle of the Chinese Civil War.

Related: Legendary Actor and Marine Corps Veteran Gene Hackman Dead at 95

In that same Naval Institute interview, Hackman recalled a time from the Corps that could lead readers to believe his 1988 answer to Letterman may not have been a joke after all. The USNI asked him whether he still kept in touch with people from his days in uniform, and his reply was revealing.

"I run into some of them once in a while," Hackman said. "Somebody occasionally will come up behind me and say, 'Semper Fi!' A couple of years ago, I was walking down the street in New York, and I heard a voice behind me. He said, 'Have you been to Ping Kong Tung Lee's lately?' This got my attention; that was a whorehouse in Tsingtao, China."

Hackman was a field radio operator and later a broadcast journalist and announcer for Armed Forces Radio in his Marine Corps days. His duties while stationed in both Shanghai and Qingdao (formerly known as Tsingtao), included destroying Japanese military equipment from World War II to prevent it from being used by the Chinese communists. If Hackman ever visited Ping Kong Tung Lee's to make his teen dreams come true, he isn't alone. The city was once the headquarters for the U.S. Navy's Western Pacific Fleet.

As a young Marine, Hackman also participated in Operation Beleaguer, the Marine Corps' occupation of China's Hebei and Shandong provinces between 1945 and 1949. The operation protected local civilians while evacuating foreign nationals as the war between the Chinese communists and the ruling Kuomintang resumed following World War II. The communist moved into Qingdao in 1949, and Hackman continued his career in Hawaii and Japan before leaving the Marine Corps in 1952.

"I was so young, I had no idea what I was doing there," he recalled. "I didn't understand why the Marines were there. I was just looking to have a good time. I played on all the sports teams that I could try out for. And I ended up also working for the Armed Forces Radio Service in Tsingtao. I guess our mission was to guard whatever interest the United States had in that town. Exactly what that was, I had no idea."

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