Paul Newman

Paul Newman
Paul Newman in 1958
Born	Paul Leonard Newman January 26 1925(1925-01-26) Shaker Heights, Ohio, U.S.
Died	September 26 2008 (aged 83) Westport, Connecticut, U.S.
Education	Kenyon College (BA) Yale University
Occupation	Actor, film director, race car driver, entrepreneur
Years active	1949–2007
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Jackie Witte​ (m. 1949; div. 1958)​ Joanne Woodward​ (m. 1958)
Children	6, including Scott, Nell, and Melissa

Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, race car driver, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Silver Bear, a Cannes Film Festival Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. His wife of 50 years was Joanne Woodward, herself an Oscar-winning actress.

Newman's major film roles include The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Harper (1966), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), The Sting (1973), The Towering Inferno (1974), Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981), and voice role of Doc Hudson in the first installment of Disney-Pixar's Cars as his final acting non documentary role, with his archival voice recordings being used again in Cars 3 (2017), nine years after his death. A ten-time Oscar nominee, Newman was awarded an Academy Award for Best Actor for The Color of Money (1986).

Newman won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open-wheel IndyCar racing. He was co-founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which he donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity, as well as establishing several charitable organizations. He was known not only as a great actor, racer, and philanthropist, but as a man of character who sincerely devoted his time and energies to making the world a better place for all.

Biography

United States Navy portrait of Paul Newman

Newman was born January 26, 1925, in Shaker Heights, Ohio, the second son of Theresa Garth (née Fetzer, Fetzko, or Fetsko; Slovak: Terézia Fecková; and Arthur Sigmund Newman Sr., who ran a sporting goods store. His father was Jewish, the son of Simon Newman and Hannah Cohn, Jewish emigrants from Hungary and Congress Poland, respectively. Paul's mother worked in his father's store, while raising Paul and his elder brother, Arthur. She was a practitioner of Christian Science, having been born to a Catholic family in Peticse in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day Ptičie, Slovakia). Newman followed no religion as an adult, commenting "I’m half Protestant, half Jewish. But I’ve always thought of myself as a Jew because it is harder.”

Newman showed an early interest in the theater; his first role was at the age of seven, playing the court jester in a school production of Robin Hood. At age 10, Newman performed at the Cleveland Play House in a production of Saint George and the Dragon, and was a notable actor and alumnus of their Curtain Pullers children's theater program. Graduating from Shaker Heights High School in 1943, he briefly attended Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, where he was initiated into the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity.

Newman served in the United States Navy in World War II in the Pacific theater. Initially, he enrolled in the Navy V-12 pilot training program at Yale University, but was dropped when his colorblindness was discovered. Boot camp followed, with training as a radioman and rear gunner. Qualifying in torpedo bombers in 1944, Aviation Radioman Third Class Newman was sent to Barbers Point, Hawaii. He was subsequently assigned to Pacific-based replacement torpedo squadrons VT-98, VT-99, and VT-100, responsible primarily for training replacement combat pilots and aircrewmen, with special emphasis on carrier landings. He later flew as a turret gunner in an Avenger torpedo bomber. As a radioman-gunner, his unit was assigned to the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill along with other replacements shortly before the Battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945. The pilot of his aircraft had an earache and was grounded as was his crew, including Newman. The rest of their squadron flew to the Bunker Hill. Days later, a kamikaze attack on the vessel killed several hundred crewmen and airmen, including other members of his unit.

After the war, Newman completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in drama and economics at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio in 1949. Shortly after earning his degree, he joined several summer stock companies, most notably the Belfry Players in Wisconsin and the Woodstock Players in Illinois. He toured with them for three months and developed his talents as a part of Woodstock Players. He later attended the Yale School of Drama for one year, before moving to New York City to study under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Oscar Levant wrote that Newman initially was hesitant to leave New York for Hollywood, and that Newman had said, "Too close to the cake. Also, no place to study."

Newman with second wife actress Joanne Woodward in a publicity photograph for the 1958 film The Long, Hot Summer

Newman was married twice. His first marriage was to Jackie Witte from 1949 to 1958. They had a son, Scott (1950 –1978), and two daughters, Susan (born 1953) and Stephanie Kendall (born 1954). Scott, who appeared in films including Breakheart Pass, The Towering Inferno, and the 1977 film Fraternity Row, died in November 1978 from a drug overdose. Newman started the Scott Newman Center for drug abuse prevention in memory of his son; it closed in 2013. Susan became a documentary filmmaker and philanthropist, with Broadway and screen credits, including a starring role as one of four Beatles fans in I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), and also a small role opposite her father in Slap Shot. She also received an Emmy nomination as co-producer of his telefilm, The Shadow Box.

Newman met actress Joanne Woodward in 1953, on the production of Picnic on Broadway. It was Newman's debut; Woodward was an understudy. Shortly after filming The Long, Hot Summer in 1957, he divorced Witte to marry Woodward. They married early in 1958. The Newmans moved to 11th Street in Manhattan before buying a home and starting a family in Westport, Connecticut. They remained married for 50 years until his death in 2008. Woodward has said "He's very good looking and very sexy and all of those things, but all of that goes out the window and what is finally left is, if you can make somebody laugh... And he sure does keep me laughing." Newman has attributed their relationship success to "some combination of lust and respect and patience. And determination."

They had three daughters: Elinor "Nell" Teresa (b. 1959), Melissa "Lissy" Stewart (b. 1961), and Claire "Clea" Olivia (b. 1965). Newman was well known for his devotion to his wife and family. When once asked about his reputation for fidelity, he famously quipped, "I have steak at home. Why should I go out for hamburger?" He also said that he never met anyone who had as much to lose as he did. In his profile on 60 Minutes, he admitted he once left Woodward after a fight, walked around the outside of the house, knocked on the front door and explained to Joanne he had nowhere to go. Newman directed Nell alongside her mother in the films Rachel, Rachel and The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. Newman and Woodward also acted as mentors to Allison Janney. They met her while she was a freshman at Kenyon College during a play which Newman was directing.

In June 2008, it was widely reported in the press that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was receiving treatment for the condition at the Sloan-Kettering hospital in New York City. A. E. Hotchner, who partnered in the 1980s with Newman to start Newman's Own, told the Associated Press in an interview in mid-2008 that Newman had told him about being afflicted with the disease about 18 months earlier.

Newman died at his home in Westport, Connecticut on the morning of September 26, 2008. He was cremated after a private funeral service.

Career

Newman arrived in New York City in 1951 with his first wife, Jackie Witte, taking up residence in the St. George section of Staten Island.

He made his Broadway theater debut in the original production of William Inge's Picnic with Kim Stanley in 1953. While working on the production, he met Joanne Woodward, who became his second wife. He also appeared in the original Broadway production of The Desperate Hours in 1955. In 1959, he was in the original Broadway production of Sweet Bird of Youth with Geraldine Page and three years later starred with Page in the film version. During this time Newman started acting in television. His first credited role was in a 1952 episode of Tales of Tomorrow entitled "Ice from Space." In the mid-1950s, he appeared twice on CBS's Appointment with Adventure anthology series.

Newman's first film for Hollywood was The Silver Chalice (1954), co-starring Italian actress Pier Angeli. The film was a box-office failure, and the actor would later acknowledge his disdain for it.

In February 1954, Newman appeared in a screen test with James Dean, directed by Gjon Mili, for East of Eden (1955). Newman was tested for the role of Aron Trask, Dean for the role of Aron's twin brother Cal. Dean won his part, but Newman lost out to Richard Davalos. That same year, as a last-minute replacement for Dean, he co-starred with Eva Marie Saint and Frank Sinatra in a live, color television broadcast of Our Town which was a musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder's stage play.

After Dean's death, Newman replaced Dean in the role of a boxer in a television adaptation of Hemingway's story "The Battler," written by A. E. Hotchner, that was broadcast live on October 18, 1955. Additionally, Dean was originally cast to play the role of Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me; however, with his death, Paul Newman inherited the role. The Dean connection had further resonance as Newman was cast as Billy the Kid in The Left Handed Gun, a role originally earmarked for Dean.

In 1958, he starred in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), opposite Elizabeth Taylor. The film was a box-office smash, and Newman garnered his first Academy Award nomination. Also in 1958, Newman starred in The Long, Hot Summer with his future wife Joanne Woodward, with whom he reconnected on the set in 1957 (they had first met in 1953). He won Best Actor at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival for this film. He and Woodward also appeared on screen earlier in 1958 in the Playhouse 90 television play The 80 Yard Run. The couple would go on to make a total of 16 films together.

Major films

Newman starred in The Young Philadelphians (1959), a drama film which co-starred Barbara Rush, Robert Vaughn, and Alexis Smith, which was based on the 1956 novel, The Philadelphian, by Richard Powell.

Newman in The Hustler (1961)

He followed up with leads in Exodus (1960), From the Terrace, (1960), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Torn Curtain (1966), Harper (1966), Hombre (1967), Cool Hand Luke (1967), The Towering Inferno (1974), Slap Shot (1977), Absence of Malice (1981), The Verdict (1982) and Nobody's Fool (1994). He teamed up with fellow actor Robert Redford and director George Roy Hill for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973). After his marriage to Woodward they appeared together in The Long, Hot Summer (1958), Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!, (1958), From the Terrace (1960), Paris Blues (1961), A New Kind of Love (1963), Winning (1969), WUSA (1970), playing Harper for a 2nd time in The Drowning Pool (1975), Slap Shot (1977) Harry & Son (1984), and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990).

Newman at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival

In addition to starring in and directing Harry & Son, Newman directed four feature films starring Woodward. They were Rachel, Rachel (1968), based on Margaret Laurence's A Jest of God; the screen version of the Pulitzer Prize–winning play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972); the television screen version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Shadow Box (1980); and a screen version of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie (1987). Twenty-five years after The Hustler, Newman reprised his role of "Fast Eddie" Felson in the Martin Scorsese–directed film The Color of Money (1986), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. In 1994 Newman played alongside Tim Robbins as the character Sidney J. Mussburger in the Coen Brothers comedy The Hudsucker Proxy.

Twenty-first-century roles

In 2003, Newman appeared in a Broadway revival of Wilder's Our Town, receiving his first Tony Award nomination for his performance. PBS and the cable network Showtime aired a taping of the production, and Newman was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or TV Movie.

Newman's last live action movie appearance was as a conflicted mob boss in the 2002 film Road to Perdition opposite Tom Hanks, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His last live action appearance overall, although he continued to provide voice work for films, was in 2005 in the HBO mini-series Empire Falls (based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Richard Russo) in which he played the dissolute father of the protagonist, Miles Roby, and for which he won a Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy. In 2006, in keeping with his strong interest in car racing, he provided the voice of Doc Hudson, a retired anthropomorphic race car, in Disney/Pixar's Cars – this was his final role for a major feature film as well as his only animated film role. He also voiced the character in the first Cars video game which was also his only video game role as well as in the short film Mater and the Ghostlight. While not in the second film Cars 2 (2011), his voice was later used in the third film, (which was done through the use of archive recordings) Cars 3 (2017), for which he received billing, almost nine years after his death.

Newman retired from acting in May 2007, saying: "You start to lose your memory, you start to lose your confidence, you start to lose your invention. So I think that's pretty much a closed book for me." He came out of retirement to record narration for the 2007 documentary Dale, about the life of NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt, and for the 2008 documentary The Meerkats, which is his final film role overall.

Newman was scheduled to make his professional stage directing debut with the Westport Country Playhouse's 2008 production of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, but he stepped down on May 23, 2008, citing his health concerns.

Philanthropy

With writer A. E. Hotchner, Newman founded Newman's Own, a line of food products, in 1982. The brand started with salad dressing and has expanded to include pasta sauce, lemonade, popcorn, salsa, and wine, among other things. Newman established a policy that all proceeds, after taxes, would be donated to charity. He co-wrote a memoir about the subject with Hotchner, Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good. Among other awards, Newman's Own co-sponsors the PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award, a $25,000 reward designed to recognize those who protect the First Amendment as it applies to the written word.

In 1983, Newman became a Major Donor for The Mirror Theater Ltd, alongside Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino, matching a grant from Laurence Rockefeller. Newman was inspired to invest by his connection with Lee Strasberg, as Lee's then daughter-in-law Sabra Jones was the Founder and Producing Artistic Director of The Mirror. Paul Newman remained a friend of the company until his death and discussed at numerous times possible productions in which he could star with his wife, Joanne Woodward.

Another beneficiary of his philanthropy was the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a residential summer camp for seriously ill children located in Ashford, Connecticut, which Newman co-founded in 1988 so that kids living with serious medical conditions could, in his words, “raise a little hell.” It was named after the gang in his iconic film, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and the real-life, historic Hole-in-the-Wall outlaw hangout in the mountains of northern Wyoming. Newman's college fraternity, Phi Kappa Tau, adopted his Connecticut Hole in the Wall camp as their "national philanthropy" in 1995. The original camp expanded to become several Hole in the Wall Camps in the U.S., Ireland, France, and Israel. In 2012, it was renamed the SeriousFun Children's Network, the name chosen to acknowledge Newman's playful humor and the impact that fun can have on the lives of children with serious medical conditions. This global family of summer camps and programs for children with a serious illness which has served over a million children and family members since its inception.

In 2006, Paul Newman also co-founded Safe Water Network with John Whitehead, former chairman of Goldman Sachs, and Josh Weston, former chairman of ADP, to improve access to safe water to underserved communities around the world.

On June 1, 2007, Kenyon College announced that Newman had donated $10 million to the school to establish a scholarship fund as part of the college's $230 million fund-raising campaign. In giving the donation Newman said, “This fund ... is meant to be more than just a gift to a college. I believe strongly that we should be doing whatever we can to make all higher education opportunities available to deserving students.”

Newman was responsible for preserving lands around Westport, Connecticut. In 2011, Paul Newman's estate gifted land to Westport to be managed by the Aspetuck Land Trust.

Auto racing

Newman was an auto racing enthusiast, and first became interested in motorsports ("the first thing that I ever found I had any grace in") while training at the Watkins Glen Racing School for the filming of Winning, a 1969 film. Because of his love and passion for racing, in 1971 Newman agreed to star in and to host his first television special, Once Upon a Wheel, on the history of auto racing. It was produced and directed by David Winters.

Newman's first professional event as a racer was in 1972 at Thompson International Speedway, quietly entered as "P. L. Newman," the name by which he continued to be known in the racing community.

He was a frequent competitor in Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) events for the rest of the decade, eventually winning four national championships. He later drove in the 1979 24 Hours of Le Mans in Dick Barbour's Porsche 935 and finished in second place. Newman reunited with Barbour in 2000 to compete in the Petit Le Mans.

From the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, he drove for the Bob Sharp Racing team, racing mainly Datsuns (later rebranded as Nissans) in the Trans-Am Series. He became closely associated with the brand during the 1980s, even appearing in commercials for them in Japan and having a special edition of the Nissan Skyline named after him. Among his last major races were the Baja 1000 in 2004 and the 24 Hours of Daytona in 2005.

During the 1976 auto racing season, Newman became interested in forming a professional auto racing team and contacted Bill Freeman who introduced Newman to professional auto racing management, and their company specialized in Can-Am, Indy Cars, and other high-performance racing automobiles. The team was based in Santa Barbara, California and commuted to Willow Springs International Motorsports Park for much of its testing sessions.

Their Newman Freeman Racing team was very competitive in the North American Can-Am series in their Budweiser sponsored Chevrolet-powered Spyder NFs. Newman and Freeman began a long and successful partnership with the Newman Freeman Racing team in the Can-Am series which culminated in the Can-Am Team Championship trophy in 1979. Newman was associated with Freeman's established Porsche racing team which allowed both Newman and Freeman to compete in SCCA and IMSA racing events together, including the Sebring 12-hour endurance sports car race. This car was sponsored by Beverly Porsche/Audi. Freeman was Sports Car Club of America's Southern Pacific National Champion during the Newman Freeman period. Later Newman co-founded Newman/Haas Racing with Carl Haas, a Champ Car team, in 1983, going on to win eight drivers' championships under his ownership. Newman was also briefly an owner in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series when he co-founded a research-and-development #18 team with Hendrick Motorsports' Greg Sacks behind the wheel - the team shut down after two seasons after losing their primary sponsor. The 1996 racing season was chronicled in the IMAX film Super Speedway (1997), which Newman narrated.

Having said he would quit "when I embarrass myself," Newman competed into his 80s, winning at Lime Rock in what former co-driver Sam Posey called a "brutish Corvette" displaying his age as its number: 81. He took the pole in his last professional race, in 2007 at Watkins Glen International, and in a 2008 run at Lime Rock, arranged by friends, he reportedly still did 9/10ths of his best time.

Newman was posthumously inducted into the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) Hall of Fame at the national convention in Las Vegas, Nevada on February 21, 2009.

Newman's 35 year car racing career was chronicled in the documentary Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman (2015).

Legacy

Upon Newman's death, the Italian newspaper (a "semi-official" paper of the Holy See) L'Osservatore Romano published a notice lauding Newman's philanthropy, also commenting that:

In his films he was the tough guy and the braggart, the rebel and the conquistador. In reality Newman was a generous heart, an actor of a dignity and style rare in Hollywood quarters.

"He and (Marlon) Brando are gone now, and they pretty much defined screen acting in the '50s," said Jim Arnold, who wrote movie reviews for 39 years for St. Anthony Messenger magazine. "That kind of defined the end of a generation in Hollywood."

"A gentleman's sense of character always came through" in Newman's performances, said Joseph Cunneen, who reviewed movies for 20 years for the National Catholic Reporter weekly newspaper. "There was a human generosity behind it all that makes him different from the usual Hollywood star."

Numerous tributes also came from the car racing world, where the expertise and passion for racing shown by the icon they knew as "P.L." inspired and enriched the lives of so many.

Paul Newman’s Own summed up his life:

Paul Newman's craft was acting. His passion was racing. His love was his family and friends. And his heart and soul were dedicated to helping make the world a better place for all.

Newman was nominated for an Academy Award in five different decades. In addition to the awards Newman won for specific roles, he received an honorary Academy Award in 1986 for his "many and memorable and compelling screen performances" and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his charity work in 1994.

In 1992, Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward were recipients of Kennedy Center Honors. In 1994, the couple received the Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, an award given annually by Jefferson Awards.

Newman's other awards include Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for The Long, Hot Summer and the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival for Nobody's Fool, and in 1968 Newman was named Man of the Year by Harvard University's performance group, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals.

The 2008 edition of Sport Movies & TV – Milano International FICTS Fest was dedicated to his memory.

In 2015, the U.S. Postal Service issued a 'forever stamp' honoring Newman, which went on sale September 18, 2015. It features a 1980 photograph of Newman by photographer Steve Schapiro, accompanied by text that reads: 'Actor/Philanthropist'.

Newman and Woodward were the subject of a 2022 docuseries by Ethan Hawke, The Last Movie Stars, which was broadcast on HBO Max.

Published works

• Newman, Paul. Compiled by Nell Newman and Ursula Hotchner Newman's Own Cookbook. Contemporary Books, 1986. ISBN 978-0809251551
• Newman, Paul and A.E. Hotchner. Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good. Doubleday Publishing, 2003. ISBN 978-0965814966

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Borden, Marian Edelman. Paul Newman: A Biography. Greenwood, 2010. ISBN 978-0313383106
• Hastings, Max. Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45. Knopf, 2008. ISBN 978-0307263513
• Lax, Eric. Paul Newman: A Biography. Atlanta: Turner Publishing, 1996. ISBN 978-1570362866
• Levant, Oscar. The Unimportance of Being Oscar. Pocket Books, 1969. ASIN B0007FH29K
• Levy, Shawn. Paul Newman: A Life. Crown, 2010. ISBN 978-0307353764
• Morella, Joe, and Edward Z Epstein. Paul and Joanne: A Biography of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. W H Allen, 1989. ISBN 978-0491032094
• Powell, Richard. The Philadeplphia. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1956.
• Weiner, Ed. The TV Guide TV Book: 40 Years of the All-Time Greatest Television Facts, Fads, Hits, and History. HarperPerennial, 1992. ISBN 978-0060553258

External links

All links retrieved November 21, 2022.

• Paul Newman IMDb
• Paul Newman Turner Classic Movies
• Paul Newman Find a Grave
• Newman's Own
• Newman's Own Foundation

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