Fred2Blue

A fortnightly rant, FL-S style with a bowed head for the fine folks in Coleytown:

Yesterday, the world lost a rightous human being.

Silver screen-legend, activist, part-time race car driver, and philanthropist Paul Newman has died following a long bout with cancer. He was 83 years old.

Talk about a life lived well.

Newman was an Academy Award-winning actor that starred in some of the best Hollywood has ever produced: Cool Hand Luke, Hud, The Hustler, Exodus, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting and more recently The Verdict, Mr. & Mrs. Bridge and The Road to Perdition.

He was born in Paul Leonard Newman in Cleveland, Ohio. His father was a German-Jewish shopkeeper, his mother Catholic-Hungarian. He said he considered himself Jewish, because “it is more challenging.” Newman was married to award-winning screen and stage actress, Joanne Woodward.

The screen performance of Newman’s I enjoyed the most was his portrayal of Reggie Dunlop, the loud-mouthed, drunken, womanizing, washed-up minor-league hockey player/manager in Slapshot.  Newman once said that this portrayal came closest to his true personality.  HA!

Newman was a very un-Hollywood Hollywood icon.  He shunned life in the Hills of Beverly for the Coleytown neighborhood of Westport, Conn.

While I was still living in Connecticut, I used to buy business suits at the store in Westport where Newman bought his attire.  One Saturday morning, as the sleeves of my suitjacket were being pinned, my very impressed saleswoman whispered to the tailor and me, “Mr. Newman is downstairs.”  Where his friend and co-star Robert Redford would walk through the front door of the same store, Newman was more cloak-and-dagger.  Entering the store from the basement, Newman often kept his distance from fans and even Westport neighbors he didn’t know.  He was a very private man.

Newman was also LOL funny, apt to playing some memorable practical jokes on co-stars and crew.  Two incidences come to mind:  he once filled a director’s trailer with popcorn, then he battered and deep-fried the same director’s favorite pair of fleece-lined winter gloves.  But perhaps the most talked about practical joke involved co-star and friend Robert Redford.  From Newman’s biographer Eric Lax:

(His cars) became a joke with friends such as Robert Redford, who once gave Newman a Porsche as a present. The car, however, was a wreck — dented from an accident and missing its engine. Redford paid a dump truck driver to deposit the car in Newman’s driveway with a note attached: “Happy birthday.”

Newman had the car compressed, then placed in a wooden box at the Redford estate with a nasty letter. He conceded that Redford won the gag by never acknowledging the box.

But perhaps the part of his life that was most-noble involved philanthropy. With friend and business partner A.E. Hotchner, Newman founded Newman’s Own, a terrific product line including salad dressing, spaghetti sauce, lemonade, popcorn, and chocolate bars. All of Newman’s Own’s profits go to charity.  In 25 years, Newman’s Own has contributed over $250 million to causes such as one of Newman’s favorites, The Hole in The Wall Gang, which helps kids with cancer.

What a mensch.

Here’s a video remembrance:

Godspeed, P.L.