American postcard by Fotofolio, NY, NY, no. MM9. Photo: Mary Ellen Mark. Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979). Caption: Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now, Philippines, 1977.
Swiss postcard by CVB Publishers / News Productions, no. 56778, 1996. Photo: Sam Shaw. Caption: Dennis Hopper, NYC, 1957.
The symbol of the sex'n'drugs'n'rock'n'pop generation
Dennis Lee Hopper was born in Dodge City, Kansas, in 1936. When he was 13, Hopper and his family moved to San Diego. Hopper was voted most likely to succeed at Helix High School, where he was active in the drama club, speech, and choir. It was there that he developed an interest in acting, studying at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego.
He attended the Actors Studio and made his first television appearance in the TV series Medic (1954). He debuted on the big screen in 1955 with a supporting role in the film that would make James Dean famous: Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955). Dean was both his friend and mentor.
They also appeared together in Giant (George Stevens, 1956), with Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor. Dean's death in a car accident in September 1955 affected the young Hopper deeply. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "After Dean's tragic death, it was often remarked that Hopper attempted to fill his friend's shoes by borrowing much of his persona, absorbing the late icon's famously defiant attitude and becoming so temperamental that his once-bright career quickly began to wane."
Hopper appeared in the Western Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (John Sturges, 1957), starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. After a run-in with director Henry Hathaway on the set of From Hell to Texas (1958), Hopper was reportedly blackballed from major Hollywood feature film roles until 1965, during which time he was working on television and small films.
In 1961, Hopper played his first lead role in the small horror film Night Tide (Curtis Harrington, 1961), an atmospheric supernatural thriller involving a mermaid in an amusement park. He returned to the major Hollywood studios in The Sons of Katie Elder (Henry Hathaway, 1965), featuring John Wayne. Hopper also acted in another John Wayne film, True Grit (Henry Hathaway, 1969), and during its production, he became well acquainted with Wayne.
He appeared in a number of psychedelic films, including The Trip (1967) and the Monkees feature Head (Bob Rafelson, 1968), but Hopper really became the symbol of the sex'n'drugs'n'rock'n'pop generation with Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969). He wrote the script together with co-star Peter Fonda and Terry Southern and it was also his directorial debut. Fonda, Hopper, and a young Jack Nicholson were the stars. They had less than half a million dollars in the budget and an idea about motorbikes, a drug deal, and an LSD trip. Besides showing drug use on film, it was one of the first films to portray the hippie lifestyle. Their long hair became a point of contention in various scenes during the film.
Initially rejected by producer Roger Corman, the film became a countercultural touchstone. As the director, Hopper won wide acclaim for his improvisational methods and innovative editing. Easy Rider earned Hopper a Cannes Film Festival Award for "Best First Work" and he shared with Fonda and Southern a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. The film grossed forty million dollars worldwide and broke open the Hollywood bastion, benefiting a new generation of filmmakers from Martin Scorsese to Steven Spielberg.
British postcard by GoCard. Dennis Hopper in Der amerikanische Freund/The American Friend (Wim Wenders, 1977).
French postcard in the Collection Image Noire by Éditions Hazan, Paris, no. 6332, 1992. Photo: Catherine Faux.
A pot-smoking, hyper-manic photojournalist
Dennis Hopper's star faded considerably after the critical and commercial failure of his second film as director, The Last Movie (Dennis Hopper, 1971). Jason Ankeny calls it at AllMovie "an excessive, self-indulgent mess that, while acclaimed by jurors at the Venice Film Festival, was otherwise savaged by critics and snubbed by audiences."
Hopper later admitted, he was seriously abusing various substances during the 1970s, both legal and illegal, which led to a downturn in the quality of his work. He acted in such interesting European films as Der Amerikanische Freund/The American Friend (Wim Wenders, 1977) opposite Bruno Ganz. He returned to the Hollywood A-list thanks to his role as a pot-smoking, hyper-manic photojournalist in the Vietnam War epic and blockbuster Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979), alongside Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen.
Hopper traveled to Canada to appear in a small film titled Out of the Blue (1980). At the outset of the production, he was also asked to take over as director, and to the surprise of many, the picture appeared on schedule and to decent reviews and honours at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1983, Hopper entered a drug rehabilitation program, and that year he played critically acclaimed roles in Rumble Fish (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983) and the spy thriller The Osterman Weekend (Sam Peckinpah, 1983).
He created a sensation as the aggressive, gas-huffing villain Frank Booth in the eerie and erotic Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986). For this role, he won critical acclaim and several awards. That same year he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role as an alcoholic assistant of basketball coach Gene Hackman in Hoosiers (David Anspaugh, 1986).
Hopper's fourth directorial outing came about through the controversial gang film Colors (1988), starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. It was followed by an Emmy-nominated lead performance in Paris Trout (Stephen Gyllenhaal, 1991). In 1990, Dennis Hopper directed The Hot Spot (Dennis Hopper, 1990), starring Don Johnson, which was not a box-office hit. Hopper had more success portraying the villain of Speed (Jan de Bont, 1994), starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock.
Hopper received a Razzie Award for his supporting role in Waterworld (Kevin Reynolds, 1997), starring Kevin Costner. In 2001, Hopper had a role in the television series 24. His life story counted five marriages, seven directions, and over 130 film and television appearances. He also collaborated on the Gorillaz song 'Fire Coming Out Of The Monkeys Head'. He recorded the lyrics for it.
In addition to his film work, Hopper was also active as a visual artist; he worked as a photographer, painter, and sculptor. Among other things, he made the cover of the album 'River Deep - Mountain High' by Ike & Tina Turner. In 2001, his work was exhibited in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
In 2009, Hopper's manager announced that Dennis Hopper had prostate cancer. He underwent several treatments. Future film plans were postponed. In January 2010, it was announced that Hopper was beyond treatment. On 26 March of the same year, Hopper was honoured with a star on the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame. Dennis Hopper died in 2010, at the age of 74, at his home in Venice, California.
Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "The odyssey of Dennis Hopper was one of Hollywood's longest, strangest trips. A onetime teen performer, he went through a series of career metamorphoses -- studio pariah, rebel filmmaker, drug casualty, and comeback kid -- before finally settling comfortably into the role of character actor par excellence, with a rogues' gallery of killers and freaks unmatched in psychotic intensity and demented glee. " In 1971, Hopper had filmed scenes for Orson Welles' The Other Side of the Wind appearing as himself. After decades of legal, financial, and technical delays, the film was finally released on Netflix in 2018.
Swiss postcard by News Productions, Baulmes, no. 55726. Photo: Laurence Sudre.
French postcard by La Cinémathèque française. Photo: Dennis Hopper. Caption: Sean Penn, 1988.
French postcard by La Cinémathèque française. Photo: Dennis Hopper. Caption: Quentin Tarantino for Robert Longo's work Bodyhammer Glock, 2006.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Wikipedia (Dutch and English), and IMDb.
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