Paul Newman: A Life On Screen

“Yeah, I met him on my first ‘official’ date with Drew. We had been seeing each other while she was going out with this guy, then I called to say it was over after getting tired of that business, only for her to tell me that she just called it quits with him for good. So, to seem cultured and romantic, I asked her out on a date - a train ride to Stratford for lunch and a matinee of Merry Wives of Windsor. We walked down to the river afterward and, while sitting on a bench, noticed a couple walking toward us. The man seemed really familiar to me due to his walk and his posture; I thought it was a neighbour or a friend of my parents. When he got closer, I realized it was Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. My mom loved Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, which we had watched together on t.v. After seeing those movies, then Cool Hand Luke one Saturday afternoon at the end of high school, I was a fan. I rented as many movies of his as I could after that, so I recognized the walk, despite his sunglasses and ball cap. I was so awed and surprised that I barely acknowledged Joanne Woodward. I believe my salutation was "Holy Shit!"
After shaking his hand, which he informed me had been burned on the element of their hotel room kitchenette, the four of us briefly talked about the plays they had seen, including the Merry Wives of Windsor. Joanne Woodward did most of the talking - at one point, while Ms. Woodward and I went on about the merits of the production, Paul Newman winked at Drew from over his shades. They walked along, I called my mom from the train station payphone, and the marital commitment of Drew and I experienced a blessed foreshadowing from one of Hollywood's longest, happiest marriages due to a chance meeting on an unlikely first date.

Hey, you'll have to email me and tell me how things are going for you so far. You must be a real New Yawka by now! I think Craig and I are serious about coming to stay with you some weekend, maybe in the spring.
We'll talk soon (do you have a phone number?)

Bart”

Watching movies is a communal activity negotiated in a private mental/emotional sphere. Whenever I go to a movie, I try to look back at least once at the crowd. There is something almost religious in the way that a group of strangers go under a shared trance as they watch a movie.

I had an epiphany over the last year regarding social dynamics in general, and family dynamics specifically. It’s strange that so many of us get cues from the mass media as to how a “normal” family conducts itself. For example, from watching television families, dinner is a time when parents sit at both ends of the table, usually commenced with some kind of prayer or silence and people dig in. The substance of conversation is the events of the day. With kids it’s the uncomfortable questions about what they learned at school. With parents its the bills or some other pedestrian chatter about grown up stuff. Although obviously familial tradition plays its part in perpetuating the dinner time ritual, the mass media also plays its part in showing us what the normative form of discussion should be.

Similarly, our conduct as to what is proper social behavior is also conditioned by television and film. I have always been an appropriater of pop cultural artifacts. Sayings, clothing and behavior has long been at least partially dictated in terms of what I have viewed on the screen. Extending Turkle’s idea of a fragmented identity created through multiple online identities, I have appropriated the behavior and attitude of a number of pop cultural icons to create my own fragmented. And could there be a cooler cat to steal from than Paul Newman?

Just this summer I was visiting some relatives in Italy, I noticed a moment inspired by Paul Newman. An older relative would ride his bicycle around his small village feeding chickens, goats and dogs. And whenever I would walk beside him as he rode, I subconsciously started whistling “Rain Drop Keep Falling On My Head”, the song that played as Paul Newman’s Butch Cassidy charmed Katharine Ross’ Etta Place in “”Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”. In large part, I believe I learned how to conduct myself in romantic situations by watching people like Paul Newman. Hey, I have to blame someone.

~

It is strange how we can develop an opinion of the “real” identity of a screen icon. I believe most people would say they think Mr. Newman is a decent man. See “Newman Remembered as a Good Neighbor and a Good Friend”

But why? Is it his long standing marriage to Joanne Woodward? How about his charitable work with “Newman’s Own”? How about his “Hole-in-the-wall gang” camps for kids? I am sure they all play some role.

However, I believe it was his earnest struggle with some of the more unseemly parts of the human condition in his multitude of roles which conveyed the decency of the man. Think of characters like Eddie Felson in “The Hustler” or Frank Galvin in “The Verdict”. Rightly or wrongly, the largely positive perception of the man was shaped by the composite of his fragmented identities on screen. And fortunately, unlike most people who pass away, we can easily revisit his presence.

Paul Newman died of cancer on September 28, 2008. He was 83.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/movies/28hotchner.html?ref=movies

Newman Remembered as a Good Neighbor and a Good Friend
NY Times
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
Published: September 27, 2008

Paul Newman and A. E. Hotchner lived about 10 minutes from each other in Westport, Conn. The two men, longtime friends, owned boats together. “As a matter of fact,” Mr. Hotchner said Saturday in an interview, “a couple of wretched boats.”

They would go out on Long Island Sound, drinking beer and scaring the fish. “We were terrible fishermen,” he said. Then the motor would stall. “We’d get out there in the middle of the sound and then it would poop out,” Mr. Hotchner said. “The police would say, ‘Those two guys have to be towed in again.’ There’s this major movie star being towed in by the police.”

Remembrances of Mr. Newman, the actor and philanthropist who died on Friday at his home in Westport at the age of 83, poured forth around the country on Saturday. But few remembered Mr. Newman the way his friend and neighbor did in Westport, a Fairfield County town of about 26,000.

Mr. Newman and Mr. Hotchner, 91, a playwright, novelist and biographer, had been friends for more than 50 years.

In 1982, they founded Newman’s Own food company. One night just before Christmas in 1980, they made a batch of salad dressing with oil and vinegar. They poured the dressing into wine bottles and then gave them as gifts to their neighbors. “It was a lark,” Mr. Hotchner said, a lark that would turn into Newman’s Own, which has donated all its millions of dollars of profits to charities.

In 1988, Mr. Newman and Mr. Hotchner founded a different sort of enterprise: the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Ashford, Conn., a free camp for children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. One camp grew into other camps, nationally and globally.

The two men first met in the mid-1950s, when Mr. Hotchner adapted an Ernest Hemingway short story, “The Battler,” for television. James Dean was to play the lead, but he had died in a car crash. So the director, Arthur Penn, gave the role to a little-known actor named Paul Newman.

“Paul was an unadorned man,” Mr. Hotchner said. “He was simple and direct and honest and off-center and mischievous, and romantic and very handsome. All of these qualities became the generating force behind him.” He added: “He was the same man in 2008 that he was in 1956 — unchanged, despite all the honors and the movie stardom, not a whisper of a change. And that’s something, the constancy of the man.”

Mr. Newman was the best man at Mr. Hotchner’s wedding in 1970. When Mr. Hotchner remarried last June, Mr. Newman was the best man again. “He’s the best man in my life, so why wouldn’t he be at my wedding?” he said.

Mr. Hotchner said he last saw Mr. Newman at the actor’s house in Westport a few days ago, when Mr. Newman was losing strength in his battle with cancer. “We didn’t really talk about anything other than some funny things that happened,” Mr. Hotchner said. “As I was leaving, I said, ‘Well, I’ll keep in touch.’ He said, ‘Yeah, it’s been a hell of a ride.’ I guess I’ll always remember that.”