Paul Newman Dies at 83
www.nytimes.com - 27th Sep 2008
James Dean: The cause was cancer, said Jeff Sanderson of Chasen & Company, Mr.
Newman's publicist.
If
Marlon Brando and
James Dean defined the defiant American male as a sullen rebel,
Paul Newman recreated him as a likable renegade, a strikingly handsome figure of animal high spirits and blue-eyed candor whose magnetism was almost impossible to resist, whether the character was Hud, Cool Hand Luke or Butch Cassidy.
He acted in more than 65 movies over more than 50 years, drawing on a physical grace, unassuming intelligence and good humor that made it all seem effortless.
Yet he was also an ambitious, intellectual actor and a passionate student of his craft, and he achieved what most of his peers find impossible: remaining a major star into a craggy, charismatic old age even as he redefined himself as more than Hollywood star. He raced cars, opened summer camps for ailing children and became a nonprofit entrepreneur with a line of foods that put his picture on supermarket shelves around the world.
Mr.
Newman made his Hollywood debut in the 1954 costume film “The Silver Chalice,” but real stardom arrived a year and a half later, when he inherited from
James Dean the role of the boxer Rocky Graziano in “Somebody Up There Likes Me.” Mr.
Dean had been killed in car crash before the screenplay was completed.
It was a rapid rise for Mr.
Newman, but being taken seriously as an actor took longer. He was almost undone by his star power, his classic good looks and, most of all, his brilliant blue eyes. “I picture my epitaph,” he once said. “Here lies
Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown.”
Mr.
Newman's filmography was a cavalcade of flawed heroes and winning antiheroes stretching over decades. In 1958 he was a drifting confidence man determined to marry a Southern belle in an adaptation of “The Long, Hot Summer.” In 1982, in “The Verdict,” he was a washed-up alcoholic lawyer who finds a chance to redeem himself in a medical malpractice case.
And in 2002, at 77, having lost none of his charm, he was affably deadly as Tom Hanks's gangster boss in “Road to Perdition.” It was his last onscreen role in a major theatrical release. (He supplied the voice of the veteran race car Doc in the Pixar animated film “Cars” in 2006.)
Few major American stars have chosen to play so many imperfect men.
As Hud Bannon in “Hud” (1963) Mr.
Newman was a heel on the Texas range who wanted the good life and was willing to sell diseased cattle to get it. The character was intended to make the audience feel “loathing and disgust,” Mr.
Newman told a reporter. Instead, he said, “we created a folk hero.”
As the self-destructive convict in “Cool Hand Luke” (1967) Mr.
Newman was too rebellious to be broken by a brutal prison system. As Butch Cassidy in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969) he was the most amiable and antic of bank robbers, memorably paired with Robert Redford. And in “The Hustler” (1961) he was the small-time pool shark Fast Eddie, a role he recreated 25 years later, now as a well-heeled middle-aged liquor salesman, in “The Color of Money” (1986).
That performance, alongside Tom Cruise, brought Mr.
Newman his sole Academy Award, for best actor, after he had been nominated for that prize six times. In all he received eight Oscar nominations for best actor and one for best supporting actor, in “Road to Perdition.” “Rachel, Rachel,” which he directed, was nominated for best picture.
“When a role is right for him, he's peerless,” the film critic Pauline Kael wrote in 1977. “Newman is most comfortable in a role when it isn't scaled heroically; even when he plays a bastard, he's not a big bastard ” only a callow, selfish one, like Hud. He can play what he's not ” a dumb lout. But you don't believe it when he plays someone perverse or vicious, and the older he gets and the better you know him, the less you believe it. His likableness is infectious; nobody should ever be asked not to like
Paul Newman.”
But the movies and the occasional stage role were never enough for him. He became a successful racecar driver, even competing at Daytona in 1995 as a 70th birthday present to himself. When he won his event, he made the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest winner in his race class.
In 1982, as a lark, he decided to sell a salad dressing he had created and bottled for friends at Christmas. Thus was born the
Newman's Own brand, an enterprise he started with his friend A. E. Hotchner, the writer. More than 25 years later the brand has expanded to include, among other foods, lemonade, popcorn, spaghetti sauce, pretzels, organic Fig
Newmans and wine. (His daughter Nell
Newman runs the company's organic arm.) All its profits, of more than $200 million, have been donated to charity, the company says.
Much of the money was used to create a string of Hole in the Wall Gang Camps, named for the outlaw gang in “Butch Cassidy.” The camps provide free summer recreation for children with cancer and other serious illnesses. Mr.
Newman was actively involved in the project, even choosing cowboy hats as gear so that children who had lost their hair because of chemotherapy could disguise their baldness.
Several years before the establishment of
Newman's Own, on Nov. 28, 1978, Scott
Newman, the oldest of Mr.
Newman's six children and his only son, died at 28 of an overdose of alcohol and pills. His father's monument to him was the Scott
Newman Center, created to publicize the dangers of drugs and alcohol. It is headed by Susan
Newman, the oldest of his five daughters.
Mr.
Newman's three younger daughters are the children of his 50-year second marriage, to the actress Joanne Woodward. Mr.
Newman and Ms. Woodward both were cast ” she as an understudy ” in the Broadway play “Picnic” in 1953. Starting with “The Long, Hot Summer” in 1958, they co-starred in 10 movies, including “From the Terrace” (1960), based on a John O'Hara novel about a driven executive and his unfaithful wife; “Harry & Son” (1984), which Mr.
Newman also directed, produced and helped write; and “Mr. & Mrs. Bridge” (1990),
James Ivory's version of a pair of Evan S. Connell novels, in which Mr.
Newman and Ms. Woodward played a conservative Midwestern couple coping with life's changes.
When good roles for Ms. Woodward dwindled, Mr.
Newman produced and directed “Rachel, Rachel” for her in 1968. Nominated for the best-picture Oscar, the film, a delicate story of a spinster schoolteacher tentatively hoping for love, brought Ms. Woodward her second of four best-actress Oscar nominations. (She won the award on her first nomination, for the 1957 film “The Three Faces of Eve,” and was nominated again for her roles in “Mr. & Mrs. Bridge” and the 1973 movie “Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams.”)
Mr.
Newman also directed his wife in “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds” (1972), “The Glass Menagerie” (1987) and the television movie “The Shadow Box” (1980). As a director his most ambitious film was “Sometimes a Great Notion” (1971), based on the Ken Kesey novel.
Read full story at www.nytimes.com
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NYT | Paul Newman Dies at 83
"Paul Newman achieved what most of his peers could not: remaining a major star into charismatic old age," wrote the New York Times today, after the death of Paul Newman. "If Marlon Brando and James Dean defined the defiant American male as a sullen rebel, Paul Newman recreated him as a likable renegade, a strikingly handsome figure of animal high spirits and blue-eyed candor whose magnetism was almost impossible to resist, whether the character was Hud, Cool Hand Luke or Butch Cassidy."
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Paul Newman, a titan of Hollywood, is dead at 83
Newman, one of the last of the great 20th-century movie stars, died Friday at his home in Westport, Connecticut He was 83.
The cause was cancer, said Jeff Sanderson of Chasen & Company, Newman's publicist.
If Marlon Brando and James Dean defined the defiant American male as a sullen rebel, Paul Newman recreated him as a likable renegade, a strikingly handsome figure of animal high spirits and blue-eyed candor whose magnetism was almost impossible to resist, whether the character wa
Paul Newman Dead at 83
If Marlon Brando and James Dean defined the defiant American male as a sullen rebel, Paul Newman recreated him as a likable renegade, a strikingly handsome figure of animal high spirits and blue-eyed candor whose magnetism was almost impossible to resist, whether the character was Hud, Cool Hand Luke or Butch Cassidy.
He acted in more than 65 movies over more than 50 years, drawing on a physical grace, unassuming intelligence and good humor that made it all seem effortless. Yet he was also an ambitious, in
The Loss of a Legend: Paul Newman Dies
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The handsome, piercing blue-eyed Newman was initially compared to
The Loss of a Legend: Paul Newman Dies
A giant in the film industry -- as well as the food industry with his Newman's Own charitable brand -- the Oscar winner redefined the matinee idol with his rebellious, confident characters in such '60s film classics as 'Cool Hand Luke' and 'The Hustler' and mid-career in films like 'The Sting' and 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' opposite good friend Robert Redford.
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PAUL NEWMAN: WE WON'T FORGET YOU
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Paul Newman, a screen hero for more than half a century and the head of a philanthropic food empire for the past 25 years, has died, it was announced Saturday. He was 83.
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E! Online Actor, racer, philanthropist Paul Newman dies at 83 Orlando Sentinel - 1 hour ago Oscar winner, actor's actor, race-car driver, philanthropist, role model on the screen and off, Paul Newman epitomized American cool for half a century. Paul Newman, coolest hand in Hollywood, dies at...Full Article @ google news
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Paul Newman dies at 83
Legendary star of ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' and ''The Sting'' had cancer
Screen Legend Paul Newman Dies at 83 of Cancer
Screen legend Paul Newman has died at age 83 of cancer.
Paul Newman Passes Away at 83 from Lung Cancer
Paul Newman, a fascinating, talented, and charitable man, passed away at his home in Westport, Connecticut on Friday night. Even though he had quit smoking decades ago, lung cancer finally got the best of him, and his death is reported as “unexpected.”
In an e-mailed statement to the press, Newman’s five daughters said that “Our father was a rare symbol of selfless humility, the
last to acknowledge what he was doing was special. He will be
profoundly missed by those whose lives h
Paul Newman, one of the last of the great 20th century movie stars, is dead at 83
Paul Newman in films was a likable renegade, a strikingly handsome figure of animal high spirits and blue eyed candor whose magnetism was almost impossible to resist, whether the character was Hud, Cool Hand Luke or Butch Cassidy.
www.nytimes.com
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Hollywood Legend Paul Newman Dead at 83
Above: The ‘50 Eggs’ scene from Cool Hand Luke - one of the greatest movies of all time.
One of Hollywood’s greatest actors, Paul Newman, has died at the age of 83.
He was surrounded by friends and family at his Westport, Conn. home before losing his long battle with cancer.
Famed for his intense blue eyes, his [...]
Paul Newman Dead At 83
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Aljean Harmetz's salute to "one of the last of the great 20th-century movie stars" offered a fine summary of his life, films, passions and philanthropy. The obituary concluded with a quote to remember from the man himself:
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George Clooney is quoted as saying,
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He starred in such films as:
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"The Insider" confirms that Hollywood screen legend and noted philanthropist Paul Newman died Friday after a bout with cancer. The iconic star was 83.
Newman passed away at his farmhouse near Westport, CT, says the Associated Press, which adds he was "surrounded by his family and close friends."
A giant in the film industry -- as well as the food industry with his Newman's Own charitable brand -- the Oscar winner redefined the matinee idol with his rebellious, confident characters in such '60s film cl
There was simply no one else like Paul Newman
Paul Newman was one of the last two greats of his generation. There is only Clint Eastwood left now, I think. He trained in the method style with Lee Strasberg and in the beginning he was criticised for being a mini Marlon Brando. He was a bit younger than Brando, and Brando was the Big Star. But he moved away from that, and established his own style. He wasn't a second anybody: he was very much Paul Newman.
He is undoubtedly in the top 10 of all-time great movie stars
INF SALUTES PAUL NEWMAN
His death yesterday signaled the end of a Hollywood era, but with films like Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, The Sting, Hud, Somebody Up There Likes Me and The Color of Money in his resume, Paul could definitely take his final bow with pride.
The Oscar-winner was as successful in his personal life as he was on the big screen. He could boast an incredible 50 years of marriage to his wife Joanne Woodward - almost unheard of in Hollywood. Once, when asked about infidelity, he said: &quo
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World mourns "king of cool" Paul Newman
(Reuters)
Reuters - Images of actor Paul Newman, who died late on Friday, adorned newspaper front pages around the world on Sunday, his piercing blue eyes vying for attention alongside headlines of the global financial crisis.
