Gibson Sr. poses with a poster of Mel Gibson's "Outlaw Love"
According to US media reports, the father of the famous Hollywood actor Mel Gibson, Hutton Gibson, died last month at the age of 101. Gibson the Elder was an overt anti-Semite during his lifetime, and many of his extreme remarks have been implicated in the hands of his son, Mel Gibson, especially after the release of the film "The Passion of the Christ," which he directed.
On May 11, Hutton Gibson died at Los Robles Hospital in Thousand Oaks, California, but for some reason, the family decided to keep the news of his death secret, and it was not until last week that the media learned of it and confirmed it through official file inquiries, but as of this writing, all the family members, including Mel Gibson, have not yet expressed their opinion on the death of the elder Gibson. And all this may also be related to his controversial life history.
Mel Gibson's father, Hutton Gibson
Hutton Gibson was born on August 26, 1918 in Peekskill, New York, to a business father and an Irish-born opera singer from Australia. When he was two years old, Hutton's mother died, and when he was fifteen years old, he lost his father and experienced the hardships of life early. As a young man, he studied at a theological seminary in Chicago, where he aspired to become a clergyman, but although his grades were excellent, he eventually chose to drop out of school halfway, supposedly dissatisfied with what was taught at the seminary. In his view, Catholicism must be treated with fundamentalism. He was a staunch traditionalist Catholic who opposed modernist theology and demanded a restoration of the traditional Mass. He slammed the vatican today as having deteriorated, harshly opposed the Roman Catholic Church after the second Vatican Council in the 1960s, considered those ecclesiastical innovations to be "Freemasonry under Jewish funding," and even criticized Pope John Paul II as a traitor to the Catholic Church.
During World War II, the elder Gibson served in the U.S. Navy and joined the Central Railroad Company of New York after retiring from the army, and his meager salary was difficult to support the whole family of more than a dozen people (the elder Gibson and his wife had ten children together, and Mel Gibson was the sixth oldest). To make matters worse, he later lost his only livelihood due to a work accident that broke his spine.
In 1968, the desperate old Gibson participated in the TV quiz "Jeopardy!" and finally got through the top spot, winning back thousands of dollars in prize money, plus compensation for a work accident, and the family finally survived. In the same year, the elder Gibson made the decision to emigrate. He led the family to his mother's hometown of Australia. Mel Gibson, who was twelve, naturally settled outside Sydney and attended the local church school.
In 1977, the elder Gibson, who had been expelled from public office by the local church in Australia for various anti-Vatican rhetoric, established his own religious organization, the Alliance for Catholic Tradition in Australia, began to systematically promote his ultra-Orthodox Catholic views, and issued a book entitled "Official War!" The Journal of The War Is Now, which also wrote "Is the Pope Catholic?" (Is the Pope Catholic?) and Here the Enemy Is! (The Enemy is Here!) and other books. But because of his connections in Australia, coupled with his too narrow-minded beliefs and too extreme speech, the elder Gibson did not attract much attention in the first few years.
Also in 1977, Mel Gibson, a graduate of the Australian National Academy of Drama, entered the film world and starred in films such as "Mad Max", which later became a classic film. Ten years later, he became a hit with "Deadly Weapon", becoming a Hollywood A-list star, and with all kinds of extreme remarks that made his father, he became the object of reporting in various gossip media.
The Passion of the Christ, directed by Mel Gibson, was criticized by Jewish rights groups for distorting historical facts and slandering the jewish image
In 2003, during the filming of Mel Gibson's new film The Passion of the Christ, his father gave an exclusive interview to a Reporter from The New York Times and talked about various political and religious topics. Gibson Sr. made no secret of the fact that the 9/11 attacks two years ago had nothing to do with al-Qaida, that there were neither terrorists nor passengers on board the airliner, and that they had simply been remotely operated and crashed into the Twin Towers in New York. He even went so far as to analyze that the number of Jews killed during world war II was not as great as propaganda from the outside world. "Just ask someone at the funeral home, ask the operators of the crematorium, and you'll know how much it takes to cremate a corpse." Hutton Gibson told reporters, "Specifically, it would take twenty litres of gasoline and it would take twenty minutes to burn." So, imagine six million Jews? ”
According to the New York Times article, "At this time, Mrs. Gibson, who was sitting at the other end of the table, suddenly became excited, changing her usual image of being silent and taciturn." There weren't that many Jews in Europe at that time. She interjected. And the total number of Jews after the war was only a little more than before the war. Hutton Gibson added. In his view, the Holocaust was purely man-made, a plan by Hitler and some financiers, 'Hitler negotiated with them, and he came to sing a white face so that the Jews would have an excuse to leave Germany and move to Israel.' Because there is a need for people to fight the Arabs. ’”
In February 2004, just a week before the release of The Passion of the Christ, Hutton Gibson was interviewed again by the media, stressing that the Holocaust was "overwhelmingly literal." Soon, ABC asked the director to criticize his father's exaggerated remarks during an interview with Mel Gibson, but Gibson flatly refused the host's request: "He is my father." Let's not talk about that. I cannot address this issue. ”
Prior to this, there had long been a period of Criticism by U.S. Jewish lawmakers and Jewish rights organizations for criticizing The Passion of the Christ for distorting historical facts and slandering the image of Jews, which was a threat to Jews around the world. Soon, some media linked the radical stance of the elder Gibson to the film directed by his son, which repeatedly pushed "The Passion of the Christ" to the forefront. However, the film eventually grossed more than $600 million worldwide and received three Oscar nominations. However, Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic ups did not end there.
In 2006, when Mel Gibson was arrested for drunk driving in California, he yelled at the officers, "Fuck the Jews, wars all over the world are caused by Jews." Are you Jewish? "Immediately become a thousand fingers. Since then, he has become a person on the Hollywood blacklist, and his film career has plummeted, until 2016's "Hacksaw Ridge" can be regarded as a return to the film industry, but it has not yet been completely forgiven.
Judging by his upbringing and learning background, it is certain that Mel Gibson's three views were more or less influenced by his father. In his later years, the elder Gibson returned from Australia to settle in the United States. In his eighties, he drives more than two hundred kilometers a week to Mass at a church that shares his ideas. But in 2006, he had another conflict with the church. Fortunately, his son had money, and The World Faith Foundation of California, under Mel Gibson's name, paid for his father to buy a ready-made Catholic church near his home, allowing him to start a new stove and continue to spread his faith.