From 1993: At the Super Bowl, even Gene Hackman is a fan of the Dallas Cowboys
(Published Jan. 25, 1993.)
Michael Irvin is mugging for the TV cameras, a Channel 4 reporter is rappelling up a hotel balcony rail to get to Emmitt Smith, and — say, who’s that guy back in the crowd sipping the white wine?
Aw, nobody. That’s only actor Gene Hackman, suddenly anonymous amid the throng of people in the Loews Santa Monica Hotel to welcome the Dallas Cowboys for the Super Bowl.
“They told me the hotel would be crowded with a convention group — they didn’t tell me it was the Dallas Cowboys,” said Hackman, smiling quietly in the back of the crowd as 70 Cowboys fans formed a lobby receiving line.
In town to pick up his own trophy, a Golden Globe award, Hackman found himself surrounded by Cowboys mania and admitted: He’s a fan, too.
“I saw some games in Dallas in — 1966? Whenever we shot ‘Bonnie and Clyde,’ “ he said.
“I’m a big fan of Emmitt Smith.”
When the Cowboys paraded past, like the other fans, Hackman pointed and called out the names of football players almost one-third his 62 years.
“There’s Dave Wannstedt!” he marveled to a friend.
“There’s Mark Stepnoski. There’s [Ken] Norton.”
When Nate Newton and the last players went up the stairway and one TV camera turned his direction, Hackman vanished into the hotel bar.
If Hackman wants to avoid cameras, he’d better clear out of the Loews.
The four hometown TV stations have set up anchor desks barely 5 yards apart on the back patio overlooking the Pacific Ocean sunset. They’re so close, WFAA’s Tracy Rowlett will be able to smell KXAS’ Jane McGarry’s perfume.
The sound of crashing waves was drowned out by the roar of cheering fans last night.
“My dad in Dallas is a rabid fan and he made me go to every game,” said displaced Texan Anna Lively, 26, an actor in Los Angeles.
“Out here, it’s weird. The games aren’t on TV, so some Sundays we have to go to a bar and watch them on satellite at 10 a.m.”
Another fan would only give her name as Lisa.
She is not from Texas, she said, but came to cheer because “all my exes live in Texas.”
“I got rid of them,” she said.
“But I couldn’t get rid of being a Cowboys fan.”
The hotel welcome contrasted with the Cowboys’ guarded arrival at Los Angeles International Airport, where the only greeting came from three fans squinting and screaming from behind a barbed-wire fence 200 yards away.
“Look! Look! That’s Emmitt out there — I think it is,” shouted Lydia Gonzalez, 25, of San Bernardino.
“That’s Aikman!” shouted her husband Manuel, a construction worker.
“Or in that him in the gray tux?”
Nobody had on a gray tux.
I should have told them to come on down to the Loews.
Gene Hackman had a better view of the stars.
This story was originally published February 27, 2025 at 7:50 AM.
