WESTPORT, Conn. - Paul Newman, the Academy-Award winning superstar who personified cool as the anti-hero of such films as "Hud," "Cool Hand Luke" and "The Color of Money" — and as an activist, race car driver and popcorn impresario — has died. He was 83.
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Newman died Friday after a long battle with cancer at his farmhouse near Westport, publicist Jeff Sanderson said. He was surrounded by his family and close friends.
In May, Newman had dropped plans to direct a fall production of "Of Mice and Men," citing unspecified health issues.
He got his start in theater and on television during the 1950s, and went on to become one of the world's most enduring and popular film stars, a legend held in awe by his peers. He was nominated for Oscars 10 times, winning one regular award and two honorary ones, and had major roles in more than 50 motion pictures, including "Exodus," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Verdict," "The Sting" and "Absence of Malice."
Newman worked with some of the greatest directors of the past half century, from Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston to Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese and the Coen brothers. His co-stars included Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Bacall, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks and, most famously, Robert Redford, his sidekick in "Butch Cassidy" and "The Sting."
He sometimes teamed with his wife and fellow Oscar winner, Joanne Woodward, with whom he had one of Hollywood's rare long-term marriages. "I have steak at home, why go out for hamburger?" Newman told Playboy magazine when asked if he was tempted to stray. They wed in 1958, around the same time they both appeared in "The Long Hot Summer," and Newman directed her in several films, including "Rachel, Rachel" and "The Glass Menagerie."
With his strong, classically handsome face and piercing blue eyes, Newman was a heartthrob just as likely to play against his looks, becoming a favorite with critics for his convincing portrayals of rebels, tough guys and losers. "I was always a character actor," he once said. "I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood."
Newman had a soft spot for underdogs in real life, giving tens of millions to charities through his food company and setting up camps for severely ill children. Passionately opposed to the Vietnam War, and in favor of civil rights, he was so famously liberal that he ended up on President Nixon's "enemies list," one of the actor's proudest achievements, he liked to say.
A screen legend by his mid-40s, he waited a long time for his first competitive Oscar, winning in 1987 for "The Color of Money," a reprise of the role of pool shark "Fast" Eddie Felson, whom Newman portrayed in the 1961 film "The Hustler."
Newman delivered a magnetic performance in "The Hustler," playing a smooth-talking, whiskey-chugging pool shark who takes on Minnesota Fats — played by Jackie Gleason — and becomes entangled with a gambler played by George C. Scott. In the sequel — directed by Scorsese — "Fast Eddie" is no longer the high-stakes hustler he once was, but rather an aging liquor salesman who takes a young pool player (Cruise) under his wing before making a comeback.
He won an honorary Oscar in 1986 "in recognition of his many and memorable compelling screen performances and for his personal integrity and dedication to his craft." In 1994, he won a third Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, for his charitable work.
His most recent academy nod was a supporting actor nomination for the 2002 film "Road to Perdition." One of Newman's nominations was as a producer; the other nine were in acting categories. (Jack Nicholson holds the record among actors for Oscar nominations, with 12; actress Meryl Streep has had 14.)
As he passed his 80th birthday, he remained in demand, winning an Emmy and a Golden Globe for the 2005 HBO drama "Empire Falls" and providing the voice of a crusty 1951 car in the 2006 Disney-Pixar hit, "Cars."
But in May 2007, he told ABC's "Good Morning America" he had given up acting, though he intended to remain active in charity projects. "I'm not able to work anymore as an actor at the level I would want to," he said. "You start to lose your memory, your confidence, your invention. So that's pretty much a closed book for me."
He received his first Oscar nomination for playing a bitter, alcoholic former star athlete in the 1958 film "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." Elizabeth Taylor played his unhappy wife and Burl Ives his wealthy, domineering father in Tennessee Williams' harrowing drama, which was given an upbeat ending for the screen.
In "Cool Hand Luke," he was nominated for his gritty role as a rebellious inmate in a brutal Southern prison. The movie was one of the biggest hits of 1967 and included a tagline, delivered one time by Newman and one time by prison warden Strother Martin, that helped define the generation gap, "What we've got here is (a) failure to communicate."
Newman's hair was graying, but he was as gourgeous as ever and on the verge of his greatest popular success. In 1969, Newman teamed with Redford for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," a comic Western about two outlaws running out of time. Newman paired with Redford again in 1973 in "The Sting," a comedy about two Depression-era con men. Both were multiple Oscar winners and huge hits, irreverent, unforgettable pairings of two of the best-looking actors of their time.
Newman also turned to producing and directing. In 1968, he directed "Rachel, Rachel," a film about a lonely spinster's rebirth. The movie received four Oscar nominations, including Newman, for producer of a best motion picture, and Woodward, for best actress. The film earned Newman the best director award from the New York Film Critics.
In the 1970s, Newman, admittedly bored with acting, became fascinated with auto racing, a sport he studied when he starred in the 1972 film, "Winning." After turning professional in 1977, Newman and his driving team made strong showings in several major races, including fifth place in Daytona in 1977 and second place in the Le Mans in 1979.
"Racing is the best way I know to get away from all the rubbish of Hollywood," he told People magazine in 1979.
Despite his love of race cars, Newman continued to make movies and continued to pile up Oscar nominations, his looks remarkably intact, his acting becoming more subtle, nothing like the mannered method performances of his early years, when he was sometimes dismissed as a Brando imitator. "It takes a long time for an actor to develop the assurance that the trim, silver-haired Paul Newman has acquired," Pauline Kael wrote of him in the early 1980s.
In 1982, he got his Oscar fifth nomination for his portrayal of an honest businessman persecuted by an irresponsible reporter in "Absence of Malice." The following year, he got his sixth for playing a down-and-out alcoholic attorney in "The Verdict."
In 1995, he was nominated for his slyest, most understated work yet, the town curmudgeon and deadbeat in "Nobody's Fool." New York Times critic Caryn James found his acting "without cheap sentiment and self-pity," and observed, "It says everything about Mr. Newman's performance, the single best of this year and among the finest he has ever given, that you never stop to wonder how a guy as good-looking as Paul Newman ended up this way."
Newman, who shunned Hollywood life, was reluctant to give interviews and usually refused to sign autographs because he found the majesty of the act offensive, according to one friend.
He also claimed that he never read reviews of his movies.
"If they're good you get a fat head and if they're bad you're depressed for three weeks," he said.
Off the screen, Newman had a taste for beer and was known for his practical jokes. He once had a Porsche installed in Redford's hallway — crushed and covered with ribbons.
"I think that my sense of humor is the only thing that keeps me sane," he told Newsweek magazine in a 1994 interview.
In 1982, Newman and his Westport neighbor, writer A.E. Hotchner, started a company to market Newman's original oil-and-vinegar dressing. Newman's Own, which began as a joke, grew into a multimillion-dollar business selling popcorn, salad dressing, spaghetti sauce and other foods. All of the company's profits are donated to charities. By 2007, the company had donated more than $175 million, according to its Web site.
"We will miss our friend Paul Newman, but are lucky ourselves to have known such a remarkable person," Robert Forrester, vice chairman of Newman's Own Foundation, said in a statement.
Hotchner said Newman should have "everybody's admiration."
"For me it's the loss of an adventurous freindship over the past 50 years and it's the loss of a great American citizen," Hotchner told The Associated Press.
In 1988, Newman founded a camp in northeastern Connecticut for children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. He went on to establish similar camps in several other states and in Europe.
He and Woodward bought an 18th century farmhouse in Westport, where they raised their three daughters, Elinor "Nell," Melissa and Clea.
Newman had two daughters, Susan and Stephanie, and a son, Scott, from a previous marriage to Jacqueline Witte.
Scott died in 1978 of an accidental overdose of alcohol and Valium. After his only son's death, Newman established the Scott Newman Foundation to finance the production of anti-drug films for children.
Newman was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the second of two boys of Arthur S. Newman, a partner in a sporting goods store, and Theresa Fetzer Newman.
He was raised in the affluent suburb of Shaker Heights, where he was encouraged him to pursue his interest in the arts by his mother and his uncle Joseph Newman, a well-known Ohio poet and journalist.
Following World War II service in the Navy, he enrolled at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where he got a degree in English and was active in student productions.
He later studied at Yale University's School of Drama, then headed to New York to work in theater and television, his classmates at the famed Actor's Studio including Brando, James Dean and Karl Malden. His breakthrough was enabled by tragedy: Dean, scheduled to star as the disfigured boxer in a television adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's "The Battler," died in a car crash in 1955. His role was taken by Newman, then a little-known performer.
Newman started in movies the year before, in "The Silver Chalice," a costume film he so despised that he took out an ad in Variety to apologize. By 1958, he had won the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for the shiftless Ben Quick in "The Long Hot Summer."
In December 1994, about a month before his 70th birthday, he told Newsweek magazine he had changed little with age.
"I'm not mellower, I'm not less angry, I'm not less self-critical, I'm not less tenacious," he said. "Maybe the best part is that your liver can't handle those beers at noon anymore," he said.
Newman is survived by his wife, five children, two grandsons and his older brother Arthur.
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Maroon87
09-27-2008, 03:41 PM
Reg isn't Reg without Paul Newman
By Terry Frei
Special to ESPN.com
(Archive)
And the No. 1 star ... Paul Newman.
The great actor and man died of cancer on Friday, and reactions and tributes are pouring in.
In "Somebody Up There Likes Me," he gave a knockout performance. His talent sizzled in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." He made all the shots in "The Hustler" and took home the Oscar in the sequel, "The Color of Money." He played the hell out of his roles in "Hud" and "Harper." He deserved the checkered flag for his work in "Winning." Raindrops kept falling on his head, but the fall didn't kill him in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." He pulled the con off with aplomb in "The Sting."
But, to many, his best and most memorable work was as Reg Dunlop in "Slap Shot."
The words came from Nancy Dowd's script.
The inspiration and many of the lines came from her brother Ned's experiences and tape recorder before he played Ogie Ogilthorpe in the movie.
The performance was all Newman.
It was so unforgettable for those who saw it, they most likely have seen it a thousand times on cable, on Beta or VHS, on DVD, and most important and most numerous, in their minds.
It was so unforgettable and the movie was so great, the plans to remake it are ludicrous and even more troubling than the straight-to-DVD sequels. But after the success of the ridiculous "The Longest Yard" remake, anything can happen in a movie marketplace too often reliant on short memories or no memories at all, on former "Saturday Night Live" troupe members (some of whom can act and some of whom cannot) and on stupidity.
"Slap Shot," the '77 original, was so memorable -- largely thanks to Newman -- that even the barest of outlines or references to lines summons the scenes and Reggie's wicked grin.
Dunlop, despite what some of the fans screamed, didn't stink:
• As sportscaster Jim Carr would have agreed before asking the listeners to keep the questions within the boundaries of good taste, Dunlop represented the old guard of the Federal League -- and did it well.
• Sportswriter Dickie Dunn reveled in Reg's praise, offered with a newspaper in one hand and a beer in the other. Reg read: "'To see the three Chiefs make a scoring rush, the bright colors of their jerseys ... flashing against the milky ice, was to see a work of art in motion.' That's good writin', Dickie."
• After noting that they brought their toys, Dunlop challenged the Hanson brothers to show the Chiefs what they had ... besides foil.
• From the bar, Dunlop went home with the lady in the red dress and won at least $5 in the process. Every one of the Chiefs thought he was the greatest. At least that's what he told the lady in the red dress -- his estranged wife.
• Dunlop refused to admit defeat after the announcement of the mill closing.
• He couldn't name names, but Dunlop let it slip to Dickie that a senior citizen's community in a southern state was in the market for a hockey team and could be the Chiefs' salvation. And he knew that if Dickie wrote it, and endorsed it, everyone would think it must be true and begin fantasizing about snatching off-ice diversions in F-L-A.
• Dunlop learned enough about Charlestown to know that the dog in the statue saved Charlestown in the 1938 flood. That disclosure didn't exactly impress Lily Braden.
• Dunlop riled Dave Carlson into being "a killer" (and "a mess") by playing on his sympathies and getting even obtuse Dave to notice "an expression of sadness" on his face.
• Dunlop's pep talks were better than Knute Rockne's. Sometimes, he asked the boys to play it smart, but when it got beyond that, he was inspiring. "Tonight, we got our fans with us! They spent their own dough to get here, and they came here to see us. All right, let's show 'em what we got, guys. Get out there on the ice and let 'em know you're there. Get that [bleeping] stick in his side, let 'em know you're there. Get that lumber in his teeth, let him know you're there!"
(Can I get a "Hallelujah!"?)
• Dunlop ran a tight enough ship that the Hansons knew they should listen to "The Star-Spangled Banner." All the way through. No matter what the referee was threatening.
• Dunlop claimed he hadn't been able to call Francine because he was on the phone every waking moment with the guy who owned the Chiefs ... or so he said, until he found out the owner was a woman, Anita McCambridge, who he couldn't talk out of folding the team for a tax write-off, and he offered his thoughts on how her son might turn out.
• When Dunlop wasn't drinking beer, he was drinking Canadian Club and water.
• Wearing No. 7, he skated well enough to pull it off.
• In a taped game-day radio appearance Dunlop had told the boys to listen to, he told host Jim Carr (whose rug was in place) about his plans for an opponent so adept at using his stick for carving that he was called Dr. Hook: "I'd like the folks to come down and watch us cream them punks from Syracuse ... I am placing a personal bounty on the head of Tim McCracken. He's the coach and chief punk on that Syracuse team. ... A hundred bucks of my own money for the first of my men that really nails that creep."
(Can I get another "Hallelujah!"?)
• Dunlop hated "Lady of Spain."
• Finally, he told the boys he wanted to win the championship, but that he wanted to win it clean. Old-time hockey. Toe Blake. Dit Clapper. Eddie Shore. Playing it straight. Not like clowns, goons, freaks in a sideshow.
(And we never found out what happened after he went to the Minnesota Night Hawks.)
Yes, the performance was all Newman.
One regret is that Newman made "Winning," a 1969 release, first. That piqued his interest in auto racing, and he ended up the influential co-owner in Newman-Haas Racing on the open-wheel circuit.
If he had made "Slap Shot" first, maybe he would have ended up an NHL owner, talking sense into his brethren at key moments.
Farewell, Reg.
Farewell, Mr. Newman.
You can't be remade.
Terry Frei is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He is the author of the just-released "'77" and "Third Down and a War to Go."
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