Newman was the best kind of movie star
What can you say about Paul Newman? Only good things, apparently. When he died this weekend at age 83, he may have been the most respected man in Hollywood–partly because he lived in Connecticut and never grew a Hollywood ego.
Despite ten Oscar nominations and a half century as a sex symbol, Newman never betrayed a trace of ego. His 50-year marriage to talented actress Joanne Woodward was one of the longest and most stable unions in show business. And his compassion, most visible in the revenues he generated from his Newman’s Own food products and donated wholly to charity, was genuine.
The blue-eyed Newman was such a star, it might be easy to overlook his talents as an actor. Although he attended Yale Drama School and was groomed at the Actors Studio in New York, most of his roles weren’t showy or larger than life like those of his contemporary, Marlon Brando. He screen-tested to co-star in “East of Eden” with James Dean–and lost out to someone named Richard Davalos (whose latest acting job is a movie called “Ninja Cheerleaders”). After Dean was killed in a car accident in 1955, Newman shared the mantle of Hollywood anti-hero–and a love of auto racing–with Steve McQueen (with whom he would eventually co-star in “The Towering Inferno”). But Newman was selective about his roles, and the budding heartthrob proved his artistic mettle (and earned his first Oscar nomination) as the closeted ex-athlete in Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
He was a particular kind of rebel in “The Left-Handed Gun” (a Billy the Kid bio that was originally a project for Dean), the jazz-inflected “Paris Blues,” his Oscar-nominated role as a pool shark in “The Hustler” and especially the modern Western “Hud”: a cynical charmer. Whereas Dean was brooding and Brando was volcanic, Newman was cool and magnetic. His rakish appeal and sly sense of humor made him iconic as the unbreakable jailbird in “Cool Hand Luke” and in the quintessential buddy comedies he did with kindred liberal Robert Redford: “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Sting.”
Newman finally snagged an acting Oscar in 1987, for reprising the role of hustler Eddie Felson in Martin Scorsese’s “The Color of Money.”Although Newman sometimes said his performance as an aging hockey player in “Slap Shot” was the best of his career, in the last years of his life, he reassessed his body of work. In 2002, at a Chicago press conference I attended for “The Road to Perdition,” he said finally learned that in movie acting “less is more” and he wished he could have done things differently while he still had the stamina.
For the last 25 years of his life, he subordinated his acting career to his work with Newman’s Own, the philanthropic food company he started on a lark with former St. Louisan A.E.Hotchner. One hundred percent of the money the company made from products such as popcorn and salad dressing went to helping sick kids.
When Newman himself announced he was sick last year, it gave fans and biographers a head start on assessing his legacy. Yet it’s doubtful that many of the obits we’ll read or hear in the next few days will have anything bad to say about Paul Newman. He was a fine actor–and a fine man.
For the measure of the man, who contributed more than a quarter billion dollars to charity, check out the Newman’s Own homepage. For the measure of the actor, check out the percentage of great movies on his filmography:
Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D (2005) (voice)
Road to Perdition (2002)
Where the Money Is (2000
Message in a Bottle (1999)
Twilight (1998)
Nobody’s Fool (1994)
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (1990)
Blaze (1989)
The Color of Money (1986)
Harry & Son (1984)
The Verdict (1982)
Absence of Malice (1981)
Fort Apache the Bronx (1981)
When Time Ran Out (1980)
Quintet (1979)
Slap Shot (1977)
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (1976)
The Drowning Pool (1975)
The Towering Inferno (1974)
The Sting (1973)
The MacKintosh Man (1973)
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972)
Pocket Money (1972)
Sometimes a Great Notion (1971)
WUSA (1970)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Winning (1969)
The Secret War of Harry Frigg (1968)
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
Hombre (1967)
Torn Curtain (1966)
Lady L (1965)
The Outrage (1964)
What a Way to Go! (1964)
The Prize (1963)
A New Kind of Love (1963)
Hud (1963)
Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man (1962)
Sweet Bird of Youth (1962)
Paris Blues (1961)
The Hustler (1961)
Exodus (1960)
From the Terrace (1960)
The Young Philadelphians (1959)
Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys! (1958)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
The Left Handed Gun (1958)
The Long, Hot Summer (1958)
Until They Sail (1957)
The Helen Morgan Story (1957)
The Rack (1956)
Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956)
The Silver Chalice (1954)
Why is no one talking about his first family….it’s as if they never existed. I understand he has at least two older daughters from his first marriage and a son who committed suicide years after Newman left his mother, who stood by Newman throughout his years of Drama School, to marry Joanne Woodward. I guess we all have at least one skeleton in our closet.