Paul Newman
Iconography. Biog./Death Films Gossip Gallery Newman Film Posters Newman Dvds @ Amazon Search Site He was born Paul Leonard Newman on the 26th of January, 1925, in Shaker Heights, an affluent suburb of Cleveland. His father, Arthur, was Jewish and ran a profitable sports goods store. His mother, Theresa (nee Fetzer), was Catholic and helped out in the shop, while raising Paul and his brother Arthur (later a producer and production manager). Young Paul was bright and good at sports. He also showed an early interest in theatre, something that Theresa encouraged. He made his acting debut at 7, as the court jester in a school production of Robin Hood. On his return, he won an athletic scholarship to Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, a liberal arts college affiliated to the Episcopal Church. Here he played football till the Luke in him burst forth again. After "an incident" at a local bar, he spent the night in Knox County Jail and was summarily thrown off the team. Needing a replacement extra-curricular activity, he returned to drama, appearing in several college productions, and in summer-stock in Wisconsin, with the Williams Bay Repertory Company. He also met and married actress Jackie Witte, who quickly gave birth to a son, Scott. But as one life began, so another ended. In 1950, Arthur Newman Sr passed away, leaving Paul to run the family store. A decision had to be made - stay in Cleveland where there would be security for his young family, or continue to pursue his dream of acting. Paul chose to risk it. He sold his share in the business to his brother and moved Jackie and Scott to New Haven, Connecticut, where he joined the graduate drama programme at prestigious Yale University. During breaks in classes, he travelled down to New York to seek work, in 1952 scoring a recurring part in The Aldrich Family. This was a popular show based on a radio series and following a middle class family through their lives on Elm Street, Centerville (this Elm Street helped form the American suburban idyll, later so hilariously assaulted by Freddie Krueger). 1952 also brought the single biggest influence on Newman's later career. Moving to New York, he was accepted at the renowned Actors Studio, studying The Method under Lee Strasberg and Elia Kazan. He learned quickly. By the next year, he was a hit in his big Broadway debut, Picnic, winning a Theatre World Award. More importantly, he was spotted by Warner Brothers executives, who signed him up. (These were the last days of the Star System, when big studios would contract would-be screen gods, and groom them for stardom)...(scroll down). Paul Newman - The Man Everyman Would Want to Be Returning to New York and the stage, he starred in The Desperate Hours. There was plenty of good TV work, too. This was the Golden Age of American television, with many series featuring live performances by the world's best-known actors. He appeared twice in You Are There, historical re-enactments hosted by Walter Cronkite, and twice in The Web, which had earlier starred Grace Kelly, James Dean and an up-and-coming actress named Joanne Woodward. There was The Mask, the Goodyear Television Playhouse and the Philco Television Playhouse (the last two having also featured Woodward). For Philco, he starred in The Death Of Billy The Kid, with Jason Robards, while for the Producers' Showcase he appeared in Our Town, starring Frank Sinatra and Eve Marie Saint, playing the youngster who sings Love And Marriage. Then, suddenly, at the age of 31, Newman's breakthrough came. In Somebody Up There Likes Me (with his Silver Chalice co-star Pier Angeli), he played Rocky Graziano, a young tearaway who finds trouble on the streets and then in jail, gets drafted, goes AWOL and then finds redemption in the boxing-ring. Alternately troubled and effusive, Newman was superb, bringing great depth to the character. At last, he was on his way. Things moved fast. In The Helen Morgan Story, he played a gun-runner and con-man who gets involved with the '30s singing star of the title. Then in New Zealand-set war romance Until They Sail, back with his Somebody Up There director Robert Wise, he was involved with four sisters (including Jean Simmons and Piper Laurie) and a murder. Both these movies were released in 1957, a landmark year for Newman for off-screen reasons, too. For a start, he won a Golden Globe as Most Promising Newcomer, an award he shared with Anthony "Psycho" Perkins and John "Er, The Pit And The Pendulum?" Kerr. Then, while filming his next picture, The Long Hot Summer, he became involved with co-star Joanne Woodward, who'd that year won the Best Actress Oscar for The Three Faces Of Eve. Divorce from Jackie Witte soon followed. A year later, he would marry Woodward, beginning one of Hollywood's longest unions. When later asked why he never strayed, Newman famously said: The Long Hot Summer, based on the work of William Faulkner, saw Newman as Ben Quick, drummed out of one Mississippi town for the revenge-burning of a barn, then turning up in Frenchman's Bend. Here he works for big cheese Orson Welles and is pushed into a relationship with Welles' daughter (Woodward). Tense and well-made by debuting director Martin Ritt (like Paul a free-thinker and libertarian and with whom Newman would make some of his better pictures), it was another hit, and won Newman Best Actor at Cannes...(scroll down). Paul Newman - The Face of Cool The film was one of the biggest grossers of the year - despite the fact that Williams hated it and went out telling cinema queues to go home - and sealed Newman's image as "a troubled opportunist whose sex appeal was balanced by his seeming contempt for women". It also earned him his first Oscar nomination. Next came The Left Handed Gun, where he once again played Billy The Kid (a role originally intended for James Dean), this time as an essentially decent child ruined by a tempestuous temper. Incredible, really, that at 32 Newman could still play teenagers. Then came his first comedy, actually a thoroughly out-of-character rough-house sex comedy called Rally 'Round The Flag, Boys!, where a small town protests at the building of a missile base nearby. Co-starring were Woodward and a young Joan Collins. Then there was The Young Philadelphians, where he was a young lawyer whose grand social aspirations are set against his sense of loyalty when his best friend is accused of murder. Robert Vaughn was Oscar nominated for his efforts as the alleged killer. After Rally Round The Flag, Boys!, Newman had returned to the New York stage in another Tennessee Williams effort, Sweet Bird Of Youth. Then, back in Hollywood, he bought himself out of his contract with Warner Brothers, and was soon enjoying two more big hits. First was Otto Preminger's Exodus, an adaptation of Leon Uris's novel about the foundation and early defence of the state of Israel. Then came John O'Hara's From The Terrace, where he played a high-financier who's married into wealth and must choose between his beautiful but faithless wife (Woodward once more) and true love with a much younger woman. Next came Paris Blues, another movie with Martin Ritt, this time addressing feminism and civil rights, with Newman as a rising jazz star in France. Louis Armstrong and Diahann Carroll also featured, as did Sidney Poitier. Ten years later, in 1971, Paul would form a new production company with Poitier, along with Barbra Streisand and Steve McQueen. Called First Artists, it would be inspired by United Artists, its role being to give performers a chance to produce their own projects...(scroll down). Paul Newman - The Face of the 20th-Century After this, and an appearance in Ritt's collage of Hemingway stories, Adventures Of A Young Man, Newman stuck with Ritt once more for another of his best-known roles, in Hud. Here Melvyn Douglas played a straight-laced landowner, battling to keep his ranch going in the face of an arid landscape and a bad boy son. This is Paul, drunken, libidinous and arrogant - another of Newman's total b##tards, who comes close to raping housekeeper Patricia Neal. To further prove that point about serious recognition, Neal won a Best Actress Oscar, and Douglas Best Supporting Actor. Newman himself was nominated as Best Actor. Next there was the black comedy What A Way To Go!, where Shirley MacLaine donates millions to the tax-man and is promptly sent to a psychiatrist. In therapy she discusses how each of her husbands was killed by their pursuit of money - Newman featuring alongside Gene Kelly and Robert Mitchum. Then it was back to Martin Ritt for The Outrage, a remake of Kurosawa's Rashomon, which told the tale of a rape/murder from four different vantage-points, Newman playing a Mexican bandit. Lady L, directed by Peter Ustinov, had an elderly woman recounting her loves and bawdy adventures, Newman co-starring with Sophia Loren and David Niven. Then came Harper, written by William Goldman who'd soon pen one of Newman's greatest roles. Here Paul played Lew Harper, a top-line PD called in by Lauren Bacall to find her missing hubbie, Robert Wagner appearing as her suspect pilot friend and Strother Martin as a manic cult leader. This was followed by Torn Curtain, sadly one of Hitchcock's weaker efforts, where Paul played a rocket scientist who appears to defect to the East. 1967 brought two more classics. In Hombre (my own personal favourite Newman movie), yet again directed by Ritt, he played a half-breed Apache who's accepted by whites when they think he's white too, but shunned when they discover he's not. Then, when bad guys attack their stagecoach, they really don't care what colour he is, as long as he saves them. And then came Cool Hand Luke where, as Lucas Jackson, he cuts the heads off parking-meters and is condemned to Road Prison 36. Refusing to ever back down, he gets pulverised then befriended by George Kennedy's Dragline, then wins over the men by scoring them rest-time and very nearly eating 50 eggs. But he doesn't win over Strother Martin's boss-man ("What we have here is a failure to communicate") whose punishments for Newman's escape attempts become ever more brutal. Luke will not stop, though. His prison number, 37 (it's said), was a reference to the Bible, Luke 1:37, which says simply: It was a fantastic movie (and a lucky break, as Telly Savalas was down to play Luke but wouldn't fly back from Europe), with Newman Oscar-nominated once again (Kennedy, naturally, won one). Paul moved on to The Secret War Of Harry Frigg where, as an another incorrigible guard-house escapee, he's promoted to 2-star general and sent to break out five one-star generals captured in Italy. They can't break out on their own because none of them will accept orders from the others. That year, 1968, also saw Newman and Woodward campaign full-time for Democratic presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, then battling against Tricky Dicky Nixon. 1969 was another big year. First there was Winning where he played Frank Capua, an obsessive indie-car racer who's losing his wife (Woodward again) to his main rival (Wagner again). The movie was a very public admittance of his real-life love for car-racing, which he'd now take up in deadly earnest. In 1972, he'd drive his Lotus Elan to victory at Thompson, Connecticut. In '77 he came 5th in the 24-hour Daytona meeting, then two years later came 2nd at Le Mans. '76 brought the first of 4 SCCA National titles in the D-production category, and he was still winning big races well into his sixties. Beyond this, he fielded his own indie drivers - big names like Al Unser, Teo Fabi and Keke Rosberg - and, in 1983, joined up with Carl Haas to form the famous Newman-Haas team...(scroll down). Paul Newman & Joanne Woodward - 50 Years of Marriage And '69 also brought that William Goldma-penned role, as Butch in Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. Here he teamed up with Robert Redford's Sundance, robbed trains, fled from the most persistent trackers in the West, famously escaping by jumping off a cliff (in a chase from the virtually unseen hunter which is as gripping and terrifyingly Kafkaesque as you could hope to see), and went to Bolivia (via New York) where they unsuccessfully took on hundreds of soldiers. Oh, as an aside, there's a reason why the New York segment of Butch is a montage of photos. Director George Roy Hill had wanted to use the sets of Hello Dolly, being filmed on the next soundstage, but was refused at the last minute. Consequently, he took stills of Newman, Redford and Katherine Ross on the Hello Dolly set and mixed them in with genuine old photos of the Big Apple. As the Seventies began, Newman worked once more with Woodward and - showing that he likes a familiar team around him - Cool Hand Luke director Stuart Rosenberg, on WUSA. Here Paul played another cynical drifter, this time getting work at a New Orleans radio station with sinister connections to a ruthless right-wing organisation. Paul just doesn't care till he's challenged by Woodward and his former Best Newcomer rival, Anthony Perkins. Now there were two massive hits. Back with Redford and George Roy Hill for The Sting, Newman played master con-man Henry Gondorff who, down on his luck in the '30s, teams up with young prankster Redford to take revenge on gangster Robert Shaw, who's had a mutual buddy murdered. Smart, funny and possessing a brilliant finishing twist, the movie was a monster. It also re-popularised the ragtime music of Scott Joplin which, as it happens, was WAY out of fashion by 1936...(scroll down). Paul Newman - The King of Mature Cool Next Newman took a series of more interesting roles. In The Drowning Pool, re-teamed with Woodward and Rosenberg, he reprised the part of Lew Harper, investigating a blackmail case in Louisiana, while getting involved with an old flame (Woodward) and her vampish daughter (a young Melanie Griffith). Then he played William Cody in Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill And The Indians, a sprawling work that discussed the plight of Native Americans as well as the creation of legends. Newman now faced a difficult time. First, in 1978, his only son Scott died of an overdose, prompting Paul to set up the Scott Newman Foundation, devoted to educating people about drug and alcohol abuse. Professionally, too, it was said that he was finished. In Robert Altman's gloomy thriller Quintet, he played a seal-hunter in a future ice age, who seeks his brother in a ruined city where dogs feed on the dead. Then came When Time Ran Out, another star-studded disaster flick where Paul had to lead hotel guests to safety when a South Pacific volcano blew up, Jacqueline Bisset providing the love interest. Neither film impressed many. But 1981 saw a dramatic turn in Newman's fortunes. In Fort Apache: The Bronx, he was tough copper Murphy, battling crime and cynicism in trying to bring justice to a hard-up community. Then came Absence Of Malice where he played the wholly innocent son of a dead Mob boss, who's named by journalist Sally Field as the subject of a murder investigation - an allegation that causes his whole life to fall apart. Both Newman and Melinda Dillon were Oscar-nominated. And then came another classic, The Verdict, directed by Sidney Lumet and written by David Mamet. Here Newman was washed-up lawyer Frank Galvin, a drunken ambulance-chaser who gets a chance at redemption when he risks taking a medical malpractice suit to trial, rather than settling out-of-court. Trouble is, just when all is looking good, James "the f***ing Prince of Darkness!" Mason enters as the defence lawyer. For the second year running, Newman was Oscar-nominated, as was Mason. 1982 saw him start up the Newman's Own brand, selling pasta sauces, microwaveable popcorn and the like. All profits were to go to charity, particularly the Hole In The Wall Camp (the Hole In The Wall Gang being Butch Cassidy's crew). This was a summer camp in Ashford, Connecticut, for kids with cancer, AIDS and other blood-related diseases. Julia Roberts would later join the board. In the autumns, inner-city kids would attend on the Discovery programme. Incredibly, Newman's Own would be an outrageous success, launching an organic line run by Paul's daughter and, by 2002, donating over $125 million to charity. Ever-humble, Newman joked that "The embarrassing thing is that my salad dressing is now out-grossing my films". When asked about his philanthropy, he simply stated "You can only put so much stuff in your closet". Throughout the Seventies, Newman had pretty much put his directorial career on the back-burner. After 1972's The Effect Of Gamma Rays On Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds, where Woodward played a rough middle-aged woman dreaming of a kinder life, all was quiet till 1980's The Shadow Box. This, again with Woodward, followed the hopes, dreams and cruel realities of three terminally ill patients in hospital, and saw Newman Emmy-nominated as director. Now, after the triumph of The Verdict, he helmed and starred in Harry & Son, where he played a redundant construction worker who can't get work, fighting with son Robby Benson, who could get work but doesn't want it. Woodward appeared once more, as a friend who fancies Newman, with Ellen Barkin as her daughter and Benson's sexy partner. In 1987, Newman would revisit his past by directing Woodward, as well as John Malkovich and Karen Allen, in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie...(scroll down). Paul Newman - Newman & The Rolex Daytona Three years passed before the next burst of activity. 1989 saw him in Shadow Makers, as General Leslie R. Groves, commander of a secret plant in New Mexico, making the first atomic bomb. Then Blaze had him as Earl Long, pragmatic and hard-living governor of Louisiana in the '50s, who falls for stripper Lolita Davidovich and fights for Civil Rights. And then there was the Merchant-Ivory production Mr And Mrs Bridge, following the stiff marriage of a stuffy Kansas City lawyer and his painfully restrained wife through the '20s and '30s. As his wife, Woodward would be Oscar-nominated again, as she had been back in 1973 for Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams. 1994 also brought Nobody's Fool where, as naughty loser Sully Sullivan, he seeks compensation for his bad knee, rediscovers his family and flirts once more with Melanie Griffith, the wife of his boss, Bruce Willis. Still convincingly roguish after all these years, Paul was Oscar-nominated for the 9th time. Clearly still guilty about this, the Academy now gave him another statue, this time for his humanitarian efforts. Sticking with Nobody's Fool director Robert Benton (as he had done with directors so often before), next came Twilight, where he played a retired cop delivering blackmail money for dying actor Gene Hackman. Then he stole all his scenes in Message In A Bottle, as the father of widowed shipbuilder Kevin Costner. Next came another great performance in a weakish movie with Where The Money Is, where he played a bank robber who fakes a stroke to get out of jail and then plots a heist with restless nurse Linda Fiorentino. The play ran at the Westport Country Playhouse in Paul's Connecticut hometown, the artistic director being wife Joanne. That year also saw the release of Paul's biggest movie in years, Sam Mendes' Road To Perdition. Here he played Irish mobster John Rooney, who sends hit-man Jude Law after the young son of his best hit-man, Tom Hanks, when the kid witnesses one of Hanks' murders. Excellent stuff, and proof positive that, in his late seventies, Newman has more vitality than most actors of one-third his age. Paul Newman, quite rightly, is a screen legend. Bridging the gap between larger-than-life studio stars and today's more realistic variety, he's been on top for nearly 50 years, as well as becoming a champion racing driver and a philanthropist of inordinate generosity. Perhaps retirement is now on the cards - but rest assured he'll still fill his time well. Death | Filmography | Gallery | Gossip | Tributes Paul Newman Dvds & Books @ Amazon.com | Paul Newman Posters | Photos Steve McQueen | Robert Redford | Marlon Brando | Victor Saville A page for your tributes has just been added. Paul was surrounded by his family at his New England farmhouse. When the end came, he was holding the hand of his wife Joanne Woodward. They had celebrated 50 years of marriage in January. Newman had been gravely ill with lung cancer for some months and decided six weeks ago to spend his final days at home. Two days before his death, he told his wife that he was going to stop taking drugs which doctors said would give him a few more days of life. He stopped all medication except morphine and died on his terms and with dignity. George Clooney said: ‘He set the bar high for the rest of us. Not just actors, but all of us. He will be greatly missed.’ Julia Roberts said: ‘He was my hero.’ The world does now seem strange and a little empty when so big a star is no longer in it. Somewehere in so many of our lives, at some moment or other, his work has touched us and maybe changed just a little part of us. It has for me and I'm sure that is the same for millions all over the world. If a man who had everything could be so generous in spirit then why can't a mere mortal like me not be the same? A page for your tributes has just been added. - Paul Page |