Hutton Gibson, extremist, father of actor Mel, dies at 101

Hutton Gibson, a Roman Catholic traditionalist and outspoken critic of the modern church who gained notoriety as the father of actor Mel Gibson and for his anti-Semitic views, died on May 11 in Thousand Oaks, California. He was 101 years old.

His death, at the hospital and medical center of Los Robles, was not announced at the time. This was confirmed by a search in a database of records in California. Requests for information from several family members, including her son Mel, have gone unanswered.

Hutton Gibson belonged to a dissident group of Catholics who rejected the reforms of Vatican Council II from 1962-1965, known as Vatican II. These traditionalists seek to preserve secular orthodoxy, in particular the Tridentine Mass, the Latin Mass established in the 16th century. They run their own chapels, schools and clerics outside and against the Vatican.

But even among these strangers, Gibson, who had attended a seminar early on before giving up, was extreme in his views. He denied the legitimacy of John Paul II as pope, calling him “Quran Kisser”, and said that Vatican II had been “a Masonic plot supported by the Jews”. He called Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, a traditionalist chief until his death in 1991, a “compromiser”. Gibson has earned the nickname “Pope Gibson” for his outspoken and dogmatic opinions on faith.

After being expelled from a conservative group in Australia, where he had moved with his family from New York State in 1968, Gibson founded his own Alliance for Catholic Tradition. Beginning in 1977, he disseminated his ultra-Orthodox opinions in a newsletter, “War is Now!” And through self-published books, including “Is the Pope Catholic?” (1978) and “The enemy is here!” (1994). The Wisconsin Historical Society library and archives contain Gibson’s published works from his extensive collection of religious publications.

Gibson has never reached more than a small audience with his writings. But after his son Mel, the sixth of 11 children, became a Hollywood movie star, the father’s profile increased, largely at the expense of his son’s public image.

In 2003, when Mel Gibson was directing “The Passion of the Christ”, his film on the crucifixion, Hutton Gibson gave an interview to the New York Times with comments on conspiracy theories. The planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 had been remotely controlled, he said (without saying who). The number of Jews killed in the Holocaust has been enormously inflated, he continued.

“Go ask a funeral director or the guy who operates the crematorium what it takes to get rid of a dead body,” said Gibson. “It takes a liter of gas and 20 minutes. Now 6 million?”

In a radio interview one week before the February 2004 release of “The Passion”, Gibson went further by saying about the Holocaust: “That’s it – maybe not all fiction – but most ballast.” The comments added to an already simmering controversy that the film was anti-Semitic; the presidents of two major studios have told The Times that they will not be working with Mel Gibson in the future.

Interviewed by Diane Sawyer of ABC News, the actor was asked to repudiate his father’s statements. He stopped doing it, saying, “He’s my father. I have to leave him alone, Diane. I have to leave him alone.”

Hutton Peter Gibson (some sources give his name at birth under the name of John Hutton Gibson) was born on August 26, 1918 in Peekskill, New York, in the county of Westchester, to John Gibson, a businessman, and Eva Mylott, an opera singer born in Australia. Hutton grew up in Chicago and his two parents died before he was a teenager. A younger brother, Alexis, also died young, leaving Hutton alone.

He would compensate, after serving in the Marines during World War II, by having a large family – five daughters and six sons – with his wife, Anne (Reilly) Gibson.

Gibson was a domineering patriarch who raised his children in a morally strict household and in poverty close to Peekskill, Wensley Clarkson wrote in “Mel Gibson: Living Dangerously”, a 1998 biography. Gibson’s work as a greenhouse brake and later freight manager for the New York Central Railroad barely planned his big brood.

The family’s fortune changed, first for the worse, in the 1960s, when Gibson injured his spine at work and was unable to work. But in 1968, appearing on the game show “Jeopardy!” (then hosted by Art Fleming), he earned several thousand dollars by becoming a grand champion, money that kept his family afloat. He then won a substantial settlement in a lawsuit he had brought against the railway for his injury, according to Clarkson’s book.

Gibson used the money to move his family to Australia, his mother’s country.

He returned to the United States in his later years, settling first in Texas and then in West Virginia, and remarried after the death of his wife. This second marriage ended in a bitter divorce. Survivors include Gibson’s many children and dozens of grandchildren and great grandchildren.

In his 80s, Gibson was driving 300 miles round trip from his home in West Virginia to attend Sunday Mass at a traditionalist church in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, east of Pittsburgh. But after what The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review described as a “power struggle” between Gibson and other parishioners, he left to form a new church, installing it in a nearby ranch house.

The church, the Saint-Michel-Archange chapel, was financially supported by Mel Gibson, who practices the same traditionalist brand of Roman Catholicism as his father. The church was not recognized by the Diocese of Greensburg.