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Photo: Peterson/Getty I had hoped he would stay alive if only to spite the doomsayers. For nearly a year the press has been writing premature obits for Paul Newman. His cancer treatments tipped them off. Asked about his health, Newmans reply was always a terse, “I’m doing nicely.” Now he isn’t. Now, at 83, he’s gone. I’m not going to say acting has lost one of its last legit icons. That’s obvious. "He set the bar too high for the rest us," said George Clooney, "not just actors but all of us." The funny thing is Newman was always slightly embarrassed by his fame, by all the awards he received for his philanthropy, and especially by the body beautiful and blazing blue eyes that made him a star. That’s why he took all the bullshit vanity out of his acting. A peak Newman performance—and I can think of dozens of them—radiated smarts, sexual cool, wry wit and a keen eye for the con just around the corner. Think of him as Fast Eddie Felson in Robert Rossen’s *The Hustler*, avidly going cue stick to cue stick with Jackie Gleason’s Minnesota Fats around the combat zone of a pool table. Twenty-five years later, Newman would win his only Oscar for playing the older, wiser Eddie in Martin Scorsese’s *The Color of Money*, telling new kid Tom Cruise, “You’ve got to be a student of human moves. See, all the greats that I know of, to a man, are students of human moves.” Newman was an honors student in human moves. The family and friends he left behind can tell you that. Start with his actress wife Joanne Woodward, who hated that he raced cars. And yet Newman conned her into putting up with it for 40 years. Newman was nothing if not persuasive. Ask his five surviving children, his neighbors in Westport, Connecticut, the kids with life-threatening diseases who benefited from the Hole-in-the-Wall camps he funded with profits from Newmans Own organic products. "Im the only Oscar winner with his mug on a bottle of salad dressing," Newman told me once, laughing at the absurdity of it. Did everyone like Paul Newman? Hell, no. Obama man Newman was on a lot of right-wing enemies lists, starting with Nixons. He wore the label like a badge of honor. The critic David Thomson was turned off by Newmans alleged "uneasy, self-regarding personality," and "a smirking good humor" that Thomson termed "more appropriate to glossy advertisements than to good movies." If, like me, you think that Newman was the leading litmus actor of his generation, the one who bridged the Greatest Generation to the boomers and beyond, theres no way you cant take his life personally and treasure it. • 1973 Rolling Stone cover story: The Redoubtable Mr. Newman • 1983 Rolling Stone cover story: Paul Newman Takes the Stand
Posted: 9.27.08
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