Great man, Great Actor Gone
Paul Newman, a genuine Hollywood legend, died yesterday.
I was shocked and saddened to hear this, even though I knew he announced a few months ago he was too ill to continue acting and retreated in seclusion to his Connecticut home. He was a sensational talent, an irresistible screen presence, a blue-eyed delight. He was one of my favorite actors, and starred on some of my all-time favorite films: Cool Hand Luke, Slap Shot, The Hudsucker Proxy, and Road to Perdition. He’s been in many, many others films I’ve liked, but those four are part of a set of movies that are just special, awe-inspiring, and even deeply personal to me. These are films I’ve seen so many times I can’t count: I own them on DVD, and I’ll pop them into the player every once and while for inspiration.
Newman seemed ubiquitous throughout his career, but in fact he wasn’t: According the the IMDb, Paul Newman had an acting career that stretched back fifty-five years, and he appeared in sixty-four films (he had seventeen additional appearances on anthology or live drama television shows). This is one and one-sixth movie per year. If you figure a time commitment of four months per movie, he kept a darn casual work schedule. Plenty of time for car racing, inventing salad dressings, and an impressive body of charitable work.
Part of this was probably being choosy about his roles. every marquee-level actor has the misfortune or poor judgement to wind up fronting the occasional turkey, but Paul Newman managed to keep his bad film quotient very low. He probably has the highest number of quality performances in excellent films by percentage than anyone of his caliber. In fact, he considered his very first starring role his worst: The Silver Chalice (d. Victor Saville, 1954).
The Paul Newman films I’d call ill-considered on his part were really just curiosities, rather than examples of out-and-out bad cinema. And at least the ones I’ve seen there is a solid reason he consented to star in them. Paul Newman was not an “anything for a paycheck” actor: in fact I think these films were a reflection of his loyalty to his movie-industry associates.
When Time Ran Out (d. James Goldstone, 1980) was an overblown, silly bit of bombast, the door slamming closed on the disaster-film craze of the 1970s. It was produced by disaster-movie maven Irwin Allen, and by all accounts he had everything to do with that dumptruck full of money they backed up into Newman’s driveway for appearing in The Towering Inferno. Newman knows how to repay a favor, apparently.
He also co-starred with Lee Marvin in a nearly forgotten low-budget movie called Pocket Money (1972), an intensely boring little movie about shady cattle dealings in Mexico. A strange, Western-feeling film with an improbable jazz soundtrack and a theme song done by Carole King. Paul Newman probably consented to do this movie for the director: Stuart Rosenberg, the director of Cool Hand Luke. It also featured a few of his co-stars from that earlier classic: Wayne (”M*A*S*H”) Rogers and Strother Martin.
There is an interesting relationship between Paul Newman and Strother Martin (1919-1980). One of the finest character actors of his time, he worked with John Ford and Sam Peckinpah on big-budget Westerns, as well as starring in wonderful schlock like Ssssssss (1973) and The Brotherhood of Satan (1971), he appeared four times with Paul Newman (Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Pocket Money, and Slap Shot). In fact, you can define Strother Martin as a character actor by his on-screen relationship with Newman: “What we have here… is failure to communicate.” Strother Martin’s acting career started roughly the same time as Paul Newman’s, but he appeared in twice as many films and TV shows. I guess character actors have to work harder.
You could define Strother Martin without Paul Newman, but he would seem less compelling. The same goes for Paul Newman and Hollywood: His presence and influence made the movie industry a much better place. The same goes for all of us: Everyone who appreciated and enjoyed Newman were made a little better for having known and loved his work.
–Skot C.