Lower the Bat-Signal.
Pat Hingle, the veteran character actor best remembered by fanboys as Gotham City's Commissioner Gordon in Tim Burton's Batman movie and its three sequels, has died. He was 84.
According to his family, Hingle suffered from myelodysplasia, a type of blood cancer, and passed away at his home Saturday night.
Hingle's career in theater, television and film spanned more than 50 years, beginning with an uncredited 1954 bit part as a bartender going toe-to-toe with Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront.
He played opposite Clint Eastwood in Hang 'Em High,The Gauntlet and Sudden Impact; served as Sally Field's father in Norma Rae and Warren Beatty's dad in Splendor in the Grass; and hammed it up with Richard Pryor in Brewstser's Millions.
Broadway credits included Elia Kazan's original staging of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and a Tony-nominated turn in William Inge's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. He popped up in such TV shows as The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Fugitive, Mission: Impossible and Magnum, P.I.
But it was as Jim Gordon, Gotham's top cop, that he achieved his greatest fame, first in 1989's Batman, followed by Batman Returns, Batman Forever and Batman and Robin.