Paul Newman, R.I.P.

Ah, shit. I knew this was coming. I loved Paul Newman ever since I saw The Sting when it first came out; I must have seen that movie eight times between 1974 and 1976 alone. That one, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid (another one I've seen so many times over the years that I can practically repeat the dialogue scene by scene) and Cool Hand Luke are still my faves of his — although, if I cared about hockey more than I actually do, Slapshot would probably be up there, as well. Newman was omnipresent on screen at a time when I was first really discovering the magic of the movies, and he pretty much formed my early concept of what a movie star was. Also, the fact that a smallish (he's generally thought to have been around 5'9") Jewish guy with curly hair could not only become famous but also be so attractive to women was a real fucking revelation to my impressionable young mind.

Newman always seemed to me like a pretty rare and swell dude — he did a ton of great work as a philanthropist, activist and humanist, got himself named to Richard Nixon's "enemies list" in the early 70s (something tells me he was on Whiny Joe Lieberman's, as well) and never really bought into the Hollywood bullshit. He will definitely be missed.

Back in the mid-80s, when I was killing time between high school and college working in the legal department of Chicago-based corporate giant Beatrice Foods, Beatrice was sponsoring Newman's car team at the Indy 500. The company bussed a bunch of employees out for one of the days to watch the Indy time trials; not being remotely interested in motorsports, I didn't go, but my friend Tommy from the mail room did. At one point during that afternoon, Tommy — a chatty, hilarious and very smooth black kid (think Morris Day of The Time with a gheri curl) — was sitting in the special Beatrice seating area, loudly holding forth in extremely humorous fashion about how, "That Paul Newman ain't shit, who does he think he is, I could drive that car faster than he can," etc. After about ten minutes of this, he finally turned to his right and noticed that Paul Newman was, in fact, sitting in the seat next to him; according to my other friends who witnessed this, Newman had been there pretty much the whole time, struggling unsuccessfully to keep a straight face while Tommy talked his incessant stream of shit. "Hi, I'm Paul Newman," he said, those famous blue eyes twinkling as he offered Tommy his hand. "Mr. Newman!" Tommy shouted, grabbing his hand and not missing a single beat. "Man, I loved you in The Verdict!"

Comments

[Greg Barbera]

a few years ago some older woman came up to me at work and told me that "paul newman had nothing on me."

a co-worker asked me what the woman said. i told her and she said, "you mean the guy with his face on salad dressing bottles?"

kids.

[stu]

To celebrate his life we got pizza, drank wine, and watched one of his funniest featuring roles--that of a crazed bohemian painter in the 1964 Shirley MacLaine vehicle "What a Way to Go." RIP indeed.

[Dan E]

Nice one, Stu — I forgot all about that one. In fact, I only saw it once, about 35 years ago, but now that you mention it I can still remember how much I laughed when I saw him getting tangled up in that painting contraption.

[HoustonLuann]

Set your life more easy get the mortgage loans and all you need.