Pushing and pulling…pummeling and kneading until the flesh is ready…is ripe. And only then did the body rise from a supine position to its full cut and thrust.
‘And action….!’ Actor Paul Newman, who died the other day, has had a career which straddles the golden Hollywood age of personality acting and the Actors’ Studio approach of the generation which followed. He reflected the traditional whilst anticipating the modern.
Thus whilst you may account Steve McQueen or Clint Eastwood more reflective of the genre, nobody quite equates with or indeed surpasses Paul Newman for originality in combining different style of technique and approach.
As a matter of fact, had he been born 40 years later he’d undoubtedly be a huge star today in the style of, but undoubtedly better at it than, George Clooney.
For Paul Newman set the mark. He’s been copied by all the leading men who followed from Brad Pitt and including George Clooney.
Fact is though Newman was uncopyable, because he had so many different components. He was as corny as Kansas, or Gary Cooper; and he could have stepped out of a musical by Charles Strouse or Meredith Wilson.
He was the consummate Alpha male- witty, urbane, ironic and sardonic whilst at the very same time behaving like a well-brought up Jewish boy afraid of offending.
He was the perennial anti-hero whilst being as perfectly-formed and good-looking as any Hollywood leading man.
There is something for me about watching a Paul Newman performance which always sends me into fits of tears.
It’s like listening to a Charles Strouse song. The nostalgia, sentimentality and longing for a way of life which probably never existed (well, maybe for some) encapsulates for me the essence of Paul Newman’s appeal and it is possibly the ease of his persona set against this implicit longing which makes him an object of maternal adoration.
The Brad Pitt of my generation, Paul Newman first came to my attention as an upwardly mobile lawyer in ‘The Young Philadelphians’ ‘Long Hot Summer’ and ‘From the Terrace’ followed and then there was ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’(on which he resisted Elizabeth Taylor as his co-star).
My favourites- ‘The Prize’- written by Ernest Lehmann (and probably the basis of Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Torn Curtain)- and directed by Mark Robson who, over lunch in the Seventies, told me he considered Newman not only a great actor but a gifted comedian too. And ‘Harper’- the film which Frank Sinatra rejected and which clinches Paul’s image as the glib, sardonic, ironic, and gorgeous anti-hero.
I got to meet Paul Newman- oh yes, I did, in 1968 (I think) when he was stomping for Senator Eugene McCarthy at New York City’s Advertising Club.
His publicist, Warren Cowan, told me to catch him if I could. And I did.
A notoriously bad interview, he was loosening up when the session was brought to an abrupt halt. Someone entered the room shouting, ‘He’s dead. He’s dead. Martin Luther King has been assassinated’.
So what to say in memoriam? The image has no resemblance to the man who was fat, short and whose piercing blue eyes seemed to reflect inwardly in person. The son from his first marriage was a suicide and he was sued for the salad dressing he claimed was his own by the owner of a small cafe where he used to dine.
The ‘hamburger vs. steak’ cliche about his long-term marriage to Joanne Woodward won’t hold up, as stuff is already coming to light about his numerous affairs. I myself am in receipt of a letter during the Seventies alleging an affair which goes back to the Sixties.
And…having been on a couple of Newman film sets, I can confirm the self-assurance and panache come from the pulling and pumping of the body builders and the masseurs.
Still, he was good to work with: professional, responsive and fair-minded. He liked his co-workers and directors. And they liked him in return. I recall reading his comments to Bob Redford about George Roy Hill. ‘Gee, Bob, I miss him’. ‘Well, so do I’. ‘Yeah, but I miss him alot’
We’ll all miss you too, Paul luv. And well done! Very well done.
