Paul Newman: Search & Destroy (now also RIP)

The Hudsucker Proxy
Mr. & Mrs. Bridge
The Verdict
Fort Apache the Bronx
Slap Shot
The Towering Inferno
The Sting
The MacKintosh Man
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
The Secret War of Harry Frigg
Cool Hand Luke
Hud
The Hustler

In several of these he is the best thing about them admittedly.

Nobody's Fool should've been his Oscar. He does a funny caricature in Altman's Buffalo Bill in the Indians, even if it's a bit long.

reported to have lung cancer:

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2008/06/facing_it.php

I saw a tabloid at the market on Monday.

This thread should have gone on longer.

: (((

saw The Verdict and Slap Shot earlier this week. think this guy is probably my favourite actor.

Butch Cassidy is truly brilliant. I don't like the musical interlude all that much, but I understand why it's there, considering how dark the rest of the film is really.

* His character is insufferably righteous, though, and I wish Rossen had made a whole movie around George C. Scott's character.

Hmmm. I don't know how righteous he is really, though. He comes on strong at the end, but what has he learned? Possibly more bad lessons than useful ones. The movie doesn't answer the question of whether Burt is right about him and that whole "born loser" thing. He certainly has an argument there.

but yeah OTM -- a movie about Burt could have gotten even darker and deeper than one about Fast Eddie. But, hey, it was 1961, and thematically, it's still a very groundbreaking movie.

movie doesn't answer the question of whether Burt is right about him and that whole "born loser" thing

OTM...and I'm inclined to think he IS, and that's where Newman's charisma interferes.

But his charisma is a big part of the point -- it's all he's got!

Ok shit... I have to watch this movie again. Karagarga will be good to me this evening, I have confidence.

Basically it breaks down like this:

Eddie: I coulda been a contender! I got poetry in me!

Burt: Go cry, emo kid.

The suspicion that Eddie's just a blue-eyed charmer is the subtext running through The Color of Money, and it's one of that film's few grace notes: he's aware of Tom Cruise's shallowness and, like Burt, wants to manipulate it.

TCM showed a trailer of The Outrage (Rashomon remake) the other night, and man, Paul shoulda left the Mexican-bandit hamming to Eli Wallach.

blaze!

OK so nothing from the BIG papers but RIP big guy...

WESTPORT, Conn., Sept 27, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Remembering the life and legacy of Paul Newman, Newman's Own Foundation has issued a statement. The statement, from Vice-Chairman Robert Forrester, follows:
"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.
"Paul had an abiding belief in the role that luck plays in one's life, and its randomness. He was quick to acknowledge the good fortune he had in his own life, beginning with being born in America, and was acutely aware of how unlucky so many others were. True to his character, he quietly devoted himself to helping offset this imbalance.
"An exceptional example is the legacy of Newman's Own. What started as something of a joke in the basement of his home, turned into a highly-respected, multi-million dollar a year food company. And true to form, he shared this good fortune by donating all the profits and royalties he earned to thousands of charities around the world, a total which now exceeds $250 million.
"While his philanthropic interests and donations were wide-ranging, he was especially committed to the thousands of children with life-threatening conditions served by the Hole in the Wall Camps, which he helped start over 20 years ago. He saw the Camps as places where kids could escape the fear, pain and isolation of their conditions, kick back, and raise a little hell. Today, there are 11 Camps around the world, with additional programs in Africa and Vietnam. Through the Camps, well over 135,000 children have had the chance to experience what childhood was meant to be.
"In Paul's words: "I wanted to acknowledge luck; the chance and benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others, who might not be allowed the good fortune of a lifetime to correct it."
"Paul took advantage of what life offered him, and while personally reluctant to acknowledge that he was doing anything special, he forever changed the lives of many with his generosity, humor, and humanness. His legacy lives on in the charities he supported and the Hole in the Wall Camps, for which he cared so much.
"We will miss our friend Paul Newman, but are lucky ourselves to have known such a remarkable person."

RIP indeed. My parents will be bummed, they were huge fans.

My mom too. PN spoke at my college graduation because JW was in my graduating class, so madre hyperventilated.

It's weird, I don't have a defining performance in my head to draw on as being a favorite; I'd say he was more someone who transcended film if that makes any sense. Obviously his public profile vis-a-vis politics and philanthropy was a large part of that. Still, first thing that leapt to my mind was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, so that.

http://

http://videodetective.com/photos/039/001650_1.jpg

(In some ways, Ned, you and I are very different people)

True, true.

Oh man... :-( RIP

Sad news. His performances in "Hud" and "Cat on A Hot Tin Roof" have always meant a lot to me, his kind of masculinity is missing nowadays from Hollywood.

I remember a story years ago in which Robert Redford said that Paul Newman was sadly senile and mentally incapable these days. But I think it was a JOKE. Right?

Surely he was one of the most beloved actors of his generation.

RIP

Oh, I see that Dr Morbius reported on PN's cancer back in June, just 2 days or so before I met the legendary Dr Morbius in fact. I bet Mr Morbius will have a view on PN.

:(

Wow RIP - very sad

...so really, they're all gone now, right? The star-legends...who is left of "Classical Hollywood," ? Only Bacall now

oh, and Taylor, or what's left of her

there never has been, nor will there ever again be, a handsomer jew. RIP.

my mom is gonna be bummed. she has always maintained that paul newman is the most attractive man ever to have lived.

"His likableness is infectious; nobody should ever be asked not to like Paul Newman."

This is really sad, RIP. Feel like watching The Sting tonight.

Ebert remembers

Newman looked like a god in his youth. He radiated a "healthy" ideal of American masculinity / sex appeal that was in sharp contrast to say, Brando, but it's interesting to compare the two in terms of how they held up - Newman was just one year younger, but look at Brando's physicality by the time of the Godfather, versus a still-sexy Butch Cassidy & the Sundance King, and Sting era Newman!! No one remembers this... I guess Brando had just let himself (physically) go by then..

Or maybe it's all the race car driving that kept him well-preserved

sigh

http://theroadshowversion.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/newman.jpg

http://www.legayblog.com/images/2008/04/25/080425paulnewman01.jpg

RIP. :(

Aw man, rest in peace.

http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb171/pablokjolseth/george/slapshot-2.jpg

http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n138/thegregage/Metal/slapshot256.jpg

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTcyMjQzMDg5Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwNzkzNzM2._V1._SX262_SY400_.jpg

Very handsome guy. Made some watchable movies. (Too bad that Sometimes a Great Notion was such a bomb. It could have been a contender.) Seemed personable enough. "All profits to charity" put him in a different class from Gene Autry or Bob Hope. RIP.

http://www.dvdactive.com/images/reviews/screenshot/2007/3/5_copy0.jpg

:( :( :(

Like Burt Lancaster, he didn't become a great actor until his fifties, after which that husky Glenlivet-stained voice was its own pleasure.

His spaghetti sauce is first-rate.

aw, man...:-( RIP.

he shot parts of that HBO movie Empire Falls at my great aunt and great grandmother's house.

his salad dressings also had the best crazy stories on the labels too

I enjoyed many of his films and he was an amazing icon in American culture.

Perhaps a model for the right way to handle celebrity?

I wish Torn Curtain (on TCM yesterday) wasn't the last thing I saw him in during his lifetime.

I agree with Super Cub - he seemed like a very genuine and humble chap. Also, he had the most beautiful eyes in the world.

RIP.

Well. I guess it's all a matter of taste then. I wouldn't out Sting-era Newman in the same league as Tango-era Brando, physically speaking. Also I don't know, I don't think of Clint Eastwood as a "classical Hollywood movie star," since his stardom continued unabated long after that era was over. Maybe i'm alone there. I forgot Kirk Douglas was even alive

“Would you mind taking off your shirt, so I can see your t**s?” Hardly the most gracious thing ever (and hardly the most logical).

Stars have their own logic!

After seeing Altman's The Player, Newman complimented him for not letting the audience "see the tits they wanna see" (Greta Scacchi's) and showing them the ones they DIDN'T want to see (Cynthia Stevenson's).

I wouldn't out Sting-era Newman

lol typo

I only have two contributions to this thread:

1) "Cool Hand Luke" is such a great movie. RIP.
2) I have been hearing the name "Dahlia Lithwick" for years from a friend of mine talking about people he with whom he to college and it was very, very jarring to see Ned link it on this thread.

Just trying to scare ya!

classic body of work, but still, the first thing I think of when I think of Paul Newman is Scott Walker's "Time Operator"...

Now I wouldn't care if you're ugly
'Cos here with the lights out I couldn't see
Just picture Paul Newman
He looks a lot like me

Ebert remembers some more

"I'm Paul Newman, and first off I want to apologize for making 'The Silver Chalice'."

You'll never hear Jim Caviezel say the equivalent.

REDFORD: There were a lot of times we played these gags on each other and they were great fun. And one of them was that he used to -- when he went into racing, he just drove me crazy talking about racing, because he was obsessed with it, and, obviously, great at it -- by the way, great at it.

And I said, "Geez, can't we talk about something else?" He said, "Well, I want to take you up to the track and we'll do this and we'll do that." So for his 50th birthday, I happened [to be], in Connecticut, to find a trashed Porsche and it was just totally demolished and I had them wrap it up and leave it on his kitchen back step, wrapped in paper with a ribbon around it, that said "Happy 50th."

And so a couple weeks went by and I didn't hear anything, and then I went up to my house a couple weeks later and walked in the living room and there was this gigantic box in the living room, and it was so heavy you couldn't lift it.

In fact, it was so heavy, it had created an imprint on the floor, and this was a rented house. Well, by the time I crobarred it out, there was just this block of metal that had been taken down.

The [towing service] came and took it away, and they said, "This is great." I said, "OK, look, hang on." And I called a friend of mine who was a sculptor in Westport.

I said, "If I give you some material, can you create a sculpture." He said, "That's great, absolutely." So these guys come take the thing over to her, and she did a sculpture. I said, "Make it a garden sculpture."

So she did. Had the towing guys take it to Newman's garden and just plump it there. Now, to this day, neither of us had ever spoken about that, never even -- that was -- there were many other situations like that, but that was ...

QUESTION: No one ever says "gotcha?"

REDFORD: No, no. That would diminish it. No. The idea was you just never acknowledged it.

Does anybody remember that Academy Awards thing where they had a bunch of actors and comedians trying to sell you a monkey one after the other and the last of all was Paul Newman who pwned everyone who had gone before?

that was Letterman's year.

The cameos on Letterman were great... "where the hell are the singing cats?"

I haven't seen any of his directorial efforts in years, but remember Woodward being good in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds.

Rachel, Rachel unavailable on DVD. Worth watching?

I so hope this anecdote is true:

In Newman's Connecticut home, he had a letter framed in his bathroom, from a rancher in a remote Western state. The rancher's letter said his family grew all their own food, but recently had won a jar of Newman's spaghetti sauce at a church raffle. The rancher wrote how much they liked the product, and also wrote that he'd mentioned it to a friend, and the friend told the rancher that Newman was also an actor. The rancher wrote that if his acting was as good as his sauce, they'd be on the lookout for some of his movies.

This one is great:

http://images.plumgoodfood.com/images/Kristin/aphotos/treeoflife/tol2/200lg/200020662000224.jpg

Didn't know that Nobody's Fool is oop on dvd :>( Wonder how long it'll stay that way.

I saw Rachel, Rachel tonight for the first time. Much better than I expected. That may have something to do with just having seen The Swimmer (same year), where just about everybody is an ugly caricature, but other than the requisite overkill in the Elmer Gantry scene, I thought Newman's pacing was just right. Woodward's excellent--the doctor in Sybil is pretty much all I'd ever seen her in before this. The Estelle Parsons subplot is handled well, and the aging-parent stuff rings very true. Teacher films always interest me. I laughed at the one kid, maybe 10, who romps into the school with a couple of toy six-shooters on his belt. He'd be jailed coming off the bus today.

Excellent print, too. Too excellent--I suspect they were screening a DVD.

you can't tell?

Well...a perfect print matched to a DVD? Probably not--I'm a really poor audiophile, too. But if it's a normal print, with the normal imperfections, of course. Which is why I think it was a DVD tonight, unless Rachel, Rachel underwent a major restoration.

New print of his second directorial effort in Brooklyn for a week:

http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-11-02/film/deserved-second-act-for-paul-newman-s-sometimes-a-great-notion/

From Michael Ontkean's intro/reminiscence to Jonathon Jackson's The Making of Slap Shot: Behind The Scenes of The Greatest Hockey Movie:

One Saturday night I coaxed my teammate Reg Dunlop (51 years young) into Lower Manhattan and CBGB's to see and hear some brand new music. As the Ramones rattled the walls, Reggie grinned from ear to ear and shouted "This is what we're doing every day on the ice!"

Newman. Ultimate Punk with a heart of rowdy, unbounded generosity. Lead singer and gang leader with giving hands of perpetual cool, Paul never wavered in his delight with "Slap Shot", maintaining his experience was "The most fun I ever had making a movie - absolutely!"

"Rescreened" Nobody's Fool last night, first time since mid nineties. Its amiability is its drawback; it has a TV movie all's-well-that-ends-well attitude that results in facile resolutions (and the film composer should've been shot). But, boy, Newman's at the peak of let's-make-it-look easy, and, yeah, he should've won his overdue Oscar for this instead of TCOM.

This time 'round Melanie Griffith less impressive than Jessica Tandy.

Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the loser cop.

Bruce Willis asked to be uncredited because he felt his action film reputation would hurt the film.

Michael Koresky on queerness and sexual freedom in Newman's Rachel, Rachel

https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/queer-now-1968/

it'll take more than Koresky and jumper cables to turn RR's engine

Really enjoyed the Last Movie Stars documentary series. (Good job Ethan Hawke!)

Made me realize I don't think I've ever seen a Joanne Woodward movie. And there are a shit-ton of Paul Newman movies I haven't seen, although not that many that seem like I need to — he made a good number of clunkers and middlebrow fare. Fascinating in particular how much he seemed to lack confidence in his own acting. He knew that he knew how to look good on camera, but he had a hard time opening up as an actor.

There's also a shit-ton of Woodward movies, but maybe try one of her first big hits, The Three Faces of Eve, a rather hokey tale of "multiple personalities," but yep she acted her ass off, won won Oscar, Golden Globes, other---also let fly in The Fugitive Kind, which is Tennessee Williams as Hail, and The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds,one of the many she did produced and directed by Newman (their daughter Nell Potts is also real good in that). She can be more low-key and subtle, but those are the ones that come first to my unsubtle mind.

Sybil, where she plays Sally Fields' psychiatrist.

Yes, more multiples, aieee!

agree that Last Movie Stars series was excellent

also such a great, nuanced portrayal of a real relationship. impressed that hawke & the family were able to achieve that but somehow didn’t diminish either Paul or Joanne in the process. like, by showing that it wasnt perfect it still somehow didnt affect my overall opinion.

plus god those long movie clips were so great

I remember seeing an interview with Newman talking about Color Of Money where he talked about how much he enjoyed working with Scorsese and that he'd love for him to cast him again - "I'm still here, you know!". Never happened. :(

Actually I have seen The Miracle Worker, so there’s one. But there are clips from all those Woodward movies and many more in the documentary. Some looked interesting but none leapt out as must-sees. It’s interesting that for somebody who had as long a career as she did, and won basically all the awards you can win, she doesn’t really have a single movie or performance in the “all-time great” canon. Her movies don’t really have much of a critical presence — unlike Newman, who has several films I grew up regarding as classics, she’s not someone you hear about or read about much even if you’re into movies. Some of that is probably just sexism, since she made lots of melodramas and women’s pictures. But even compared to other top actresses of her era — Shirley MacLaine, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe — it doesn’t feel like she has much of an enduring footprint.

Lol never mind The Miracle Worker is Anne Bancroft. See what I mean?

Woodward is fine in the Newman-directed Rachel Rachel and as the victim of Newman's quiet haute bourgeois suppression in Mr. and Mrs. Bridge.

Judging Woodward, a fine actor, is hard because she paid as much if not more attention to raising kids.

Mr. and Mrs. Bridge is one that has interested me — maybe because it’s one of her few high profile roles that came out while I have been a moviegoing adult.

And yeah, this series very much portrays the imbalance in the relationship when it came to taking care of the kids. Tho to Newman’s credit he used his clout to make a lot of movies with her.

I dunno, The Wicker Man is pretty widely regarded as a classic. I can't actually think of any other movies he was in, so in terms of percentages he's up there with John Cazale.

Hang on. There was Breaker....

Ah, sorry. I'll get my coat.

lol I have in fact seen more Edward Woodward movies than Joanne Woodward movies ...

One of the best, most underappreciated actors of his generation. The reactions itt to his death at the time are striking.

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds,one of the many she did produced and directed by Newman (their daughter Nell Potts is also real good in that).

A favorite of the Cahiers du Cinema critics in the 1970s. Eli Wallach's daughter is also good in it.