The death of the Hollywood icon Gene Hackman saddened millions and a legendary former detective who delivered him in his most famous screen of “The French Connection” feels his loss more than most.
“We were friends for more than 50 years,” said the retired detective from the New York Police Randy Jurgen, 91.
Jurgense with the actor in a warehouse in East 125th Street with a mandate: convert it to him and his equally little known co -star, Roy Schieder, in credible -credited drug police.
The tutorial results in a 1971 Hollywood box office success that would win five academy awards, including “Best Actor” for Hackman, “Best Film” and “Best Director” for William Friedkin.
“We joined almost instantly,” Jurgenen recalled. Part of his connection was the fact that both songs about his age to join the military as 16 -year -olds.
Jurgensen received a small part of speech as a sergeant of the New York Police in the film. But he led the persecution car in the iconic nail bite scene in which Hackman, playing the hard cargo detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, rising to his possible murderer under 86 “El” Street in Bensonhurst of Brooklyn.
Hackman and Jurgensen approached Jurgen, Judy, the three children of Babysat Hackman.
Jurgensen helped transform Hackman and Schieder into credible versions of real -life NYPD detectives, Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, respectively, coining the actors to a real homicide scene, bars full of drugs and squads full of drug addicts. “
In the 1960s, Jurgensen was working as a police officer of simple clothing narcotics who consulted Harlem’s Underbelly, buying heroin of the dealership within the incomplete tents. It was assigned to help in the French connection connection of real life, an extensive investigation of an international drug counter ring.
By 1963, Egan and Grosso had seized 112 pounds of high -grade heroin. (That the cache and hundreds of pounds of other heroin and cocaine of the New York Police snacks are stolen).
Author Robin Moore would then write “the French connection: the most crucial narcotics investigation in the world”, the book that led to the script
Century Fox executives, Richard Zanuck and David Brown, summoned Egan, to the producer of Grasso Philip D’Anoni and Jurgensen Hollywood and an agreement was reached, with a condition that the film will be complete for less than $ 2 million. In October 1971 the film was released, $ 200,000 under budget.
Jurgensen Later Became The Lead Investigator in the Famed “Harlem Mosque” Case, The April 1972 Assassination of Nypt Patrolman Phillip Cardillo, A Homicide That Led Him to Co-Author, “Circle of Six: The True Story of New York and the Catked Catked Catked Catked Catked Gatked Cat Killer and Cop Killer and Cop Killer and Cop Killer and Catked Cat Killer and Gatked.
He had a parallel career in numerous Hollywood films and television programs as an actor and producer, including the 1980 film and Pacino “Cruising”, based on one of his New York police cases, and a role in the movie “Donnie Brasco” of 1997.
Egan died in 1995, Grosso in 2020, Schieder in 2008 and Hackman in February.
“Now I am,” Jurgenen said sadly, “the last detective of” French connection “Viva”.