Chapman College Performance : Edison Portrayer: A Household Face

Pat Hingle. Pat who?

You’ve seen him a zillion times in the movies. Two zillion times on television.

Across the decades, Pat Hingle has carved a niche in that pantheon of solid but seemingly anonymous character actors whose faces compose the collective unconscious of the Hollywood dream factory.

Remember the no-name bartender in “On the Waterfront” who needles Marlon (“I coulda been a contenda”) Brando about his former prize-fight style? That was Pat Hingle.

How about Sally Field’s father in “Norma Rae”? Diane Keaton’s would-be boss in “Baby Boom”? Adm. (Bull) Halsey in TV’s “War and Remembrance”? Sam Rayburn in “LBJ: The Early Years”? Santa Claus in “Amazing Stories”?

On Saturday in the Waltmar Theatre at Chapman College in Orange, Hingle will have unmistakable billing as the star of a one-man show about Thomas Edison--inventor of such great gizmos as the movie projector--without which there might never have been a Hollywood dream factory.

“I humanize him, warts and all, so he’s no longer just a name in the history books,” the 64-year-old actor said recently from his home in North Hollywood. “He has heartaches. He has flaws. He talks about everything that has happened in his life. And he’s quite a funny man.”

The show is entitled “An Evening with Thomas Edison: Reflections of a Genius” and is being presented as a benefit for the Discovery Museum of Orange County. Set in 1928--on the 50th anniversary of Edison’s invention of the incandescent light bulb--it starts out as a sort of civic celebration to honor that achievement.

In another way, however, it is a celebration of the actor’s first and greatest love: the stage. For Hingle once had an illustrious Broadway career, launched at no less a place than the Actors Studio in its fabled heyday.

“When I auditioned for the Actors Studio in 1952,” Hingle said, “getting admitted was the most prestigious thing that could happen to a young actor in New York--more prestigious than getting a Broadway show. My classmates were Marlon, Jimmy Dean, Eli Wallach, Karl Malden, Marty Balsam and Ben Gazzara.”

Actors Studio co-founder Elia Kazan was so high on Hingle that in 1957, Kazan cast him as the lead in William Inge’s “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs,” which became a major Broadway hit. Then Kazan directed him again in the title role of Archibald MacLeish’s “J.B.,” which won both a Tony and the Pulitzer Prize in 1958.

But a near-fatal accident 7 weeks into the run of “J.B.” knocked Hingle out of that play. “I fell 54 feet down an elevator shaft trying to climb out of a stalled elevator,” he said. “Made the front page of the New York Times.”

After his recuperation, Hingle sailed into the ‘60s with roles in such distinguished plays as Eugene O’Neill’s “Strange Interlude” and James Baldwin’s “Blues for Mr. Charlie” (both Actors Studio productions), the 25th anniversary revival of Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” and Arthur Miller’s “The Price.”

“I get more satisfaction out of performing on stage than I do in the movies or television,” said Hingle, whose favorite Broadway role was the coach in “That Championship Season.” (He stayed for 15 months. The play won both a Tony and a Pulitzer in 1973.)

“The stage is an actors medium,” he said. “When that curtain goes up, there are those crazy actors. The story comes through them. The director can pull his hair in the back of the house and the producer and the playwright can cry on each other’s shoulder. But there go those galloping actors.”

Ironically, Hingle’s one-man theater piece on Edison evolved from television. He did a series of centennial commercials for General Electric in 1976 after GE executives spotted him in still another Broadway production, Henrik Ibsen’s “The Lady from the Sea,” with Vanessa Redgrave.

“How they got from Dr. Wangel--whom I was playing with a beard--to Edison, I don’t know,” Hingle said. “But they offered me the job. I did Edison in these super commercials. Never mentioned GE. I mean they were really good. Swept the Clio awards that year.”

GE soon began flying him to the company’s centennial banquets in 30 cities from Seattle to Minneapolis. He was a hit, of course. (“You’re playing to a captive audience. Who won’t pay attention when the boss is sitting right there.”) Then HBO flew him to New York to negotiate his Edison portrayal for cable television.

“Nothing came of that because their idea of fair compensation and mine were not the same,” Hingle recalled. “But I thought to myself, if HBO is anxious to do this, it must mean Edison has wider appeal than I thought he did. So I hired some writers and put this show together myself.”

Though he has not kept count of the times he has done Edison on the stage since he began doing the show in 1982, he said he is proudest of his appearance 3 years ago at the Library of Congress in Washington.

“Ron and Nancy couldn’t come,” Hingle said, although then-Vice President George Bush and his wife attended. “The next day Mrs. Bush was the hostess of a luncheon given for me. So I have a nice feeling about her.”

In the meantime, Hingle continues to work at an unrelenting pace.

He will be seen in the 6-hour mini-series “Kennedy” (made last summer for ABC-TV but not yet scheduled) as Joseph Kennedy Sr.’s bartender father, P.J., the benevolent progenitor of the Kennedy clan.

And when the new “Batman” movie opens in June to coincide with the 50th anniversary of cartoonist Bob Kane’s comic book hero, filmgoers will see Hingle in the role of Police Commissioner Gordon.

Presumably, the commissioner will still be able to dial up the Caped Crusader on his Batphone. “I’ve been instructed not to talk about ‘Batman,’ ” Hingle said of the $30-million blockbuster. “But I can’t pretend that I wasn’t 11 weeks in London doing it. I just got back.”

Could he at least indicate why he was chosen for the commissioner’s role? “I have no idea,” he said. “I have no idea why anybody else got picked either.”

But Hingle did allow that it was watching Walter Huston and Hume Cronyn in the movies--not Batman--that inspired him to take up acting.

Pat Hingle will perform “An Evening with Thomas Edison: Reflections of a Genius” Saturday at 8 p.m. in Chapman College’s Waltmar Theatre, 333 N. Glassell St., Orange. A champagne reception will follow. Tickets: $35 ($10 for students), benefits the Discovery Museum of Orange County in Santa Ana. Information: (714) 540-0404.