Icon, Paul Newman, born 85 years ago ~ a lifetime of film memories

Paul Newman

(Photo/NCM)

Paul Leonard Newman was an actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, auto racing enthusiast, and he served in the United States Navy in World War II.

Paul Newman passed away on September 26, 2008.  He would have been 85 on January 26, 2010.

Newman showed an early interest in theater, and his interest was encouraged by his mother. So much so that at the age of seven he made his acting debut. He played the court jester in a school production of Robin Hood.

Newman won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for his performance in the 1986 Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money, with Tom Cruise, and eight other nominations. three Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy award, and many honorary awards. Here is a screen test:

According to Paul Newman: 

Acting isn't really a creative profession. It's an interpretative one."

Paul Newman also 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.

Newman was a co-founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which Newman donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity.

Newman made his Broadway theater debut in the original production of William Inge's Picnic with Kim Stanley. He later appeared in the original Broadway productions of The Desperate Hours and Sweet Bird of Youth with Geraldine Page. He would later star in the film version of Sweet Bird of Youth, which also starred Page.

Newman's first movie for Hollywood was The Silver Chalice (1954), East of Eden (1955) with Burl Ives, followed by Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), as boxer Rocky Graziano; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), opposite Elizabeth Taylor and The Young Philadelphians (1959), with Barbara Rush and Robert Vaughn.

Newman was one of the few actors who successfully made the transition from 1950s cinema to that of the 1960s and 1970s. Newman starred in Exodus (1960), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Harper (1966), Hombre (1967), Cool Hand Luke (1967), The Towering Inferno (1974), Slap Shot (1977), and The Verdict (1982). He teamed with fellow actor Robert Redford and director George Roy Hill for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973)

Paul and his wife, Joanne Woodward, appeared together in the feature films 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), The Drowning Pool (1975), Harry & Son (1984), and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990). They both also starred in the HBO miniseries Empire Falls, but did not have any scenes together.

In addition to starring in and directing Harry & Son, Newman also directed four feature films (in which he did not act) 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), Towering Inferno (1974) with Fred Astaire, 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).

Every time I get a script it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why."   Paul Newman

Twenty-five years after The Hustler, Newman reprised his role of "Fast" Eddie Felson in the Martin Scorsese-directed The Color of Money (1986). 

Toward the end of Newman's career he appeared, in 1993, in a Broadway revival of Wilder's Our Town, (film version was in 1955 with Frank Sinatra) from which he earned his first Tony Award nomination for his performance.  His last screen appearance was as a conflicted mob boss in the 2002 film Road to Perdition opposite Tom Hanks.

Newman continued to provide his voice for films and kept up with his strong interest in car racing.  He even provided the voice of Doc Hudson, a retired race car in Disney/Pixar's Cars and also narrated for the 2007 film Dale, about the life of the legendary NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt.  That was Newman's final film performance in any form. Newman also provided the narration for the film documentary The Meerkats, released in 2008. 

Newman announced that he would entirely retire from acting on May 25, 2007.  He stated that he did not feel he could continue acting at the level he wanted to.

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."

Paul Newman passed away sixteen months later after making that statement.