Paul Newman--A Brief Appreciation

Although all men are mortal as we all learned early, it still seemed odd to me to hear Saturday morning that Paul Newman had died.    Most of you have probably already seen the retrospectives about his life and it's not my intention to do a big review on his career as  an actor, celebrity, part-time political activist and, perhaps most importantly for humanity, as a philantrophist with all the food products in supermarkets his company, Newman's Own, made devoting all profits to charities like the "Butch and Sundance" themed "Hole in the Wall" Summer  Camps for kids with cancer. 

He never did outrageous things and all the interviews I saw him give always betrayed a refreshing lack of interest in himself as the subject of serious speculation.  (This is a trait often found among America Midwesterners: a desire for reticence and not blowing your own horn.)  

   Unlike a lot of Newman fans, I was not a big fan of his most famous role, that of the boisterous chain-gang anti-hero in "Cool Hand Luke" (1967)  I thought the film , well, "cool" as a kid, but later I saw the movie's easy jabs at authority pretty heavy-handed and the main character a little too pleased with himself to be credible in that grim prison situation.  (Besides, Strother Martin steals the film as a fascistic prison warden.  It is to Newman's credit that he used Strother Martin in character roles in many of his subsequent movies.)  But if anybody could make Cool Hand Luke go over, it was Newman. Imagining some actor like Kirk Douglas or Kevin Costner in such a part is painful; they would really have put the movie way over-the-top.  

The rest of his work as an actor I'm pretty much in tandem with popular opinion on. I was a little disappointed that more mention wasn't made of the private-eye film "Harper" (based on Ross MacDonald's "The Moving Target") he made in 1966.   So I included a scene of him and another of my favorite performers, Janet Leigh, who played his ex-wife in the movies. (Movie private eyes always have ex-wives, ever notice that?) 

  Here Newman  plays a beat-up modern shamus who is weary of all the greed, violence  and sordidness  of the southern California high-flyers who hire him to sort out their nasty messes.  But he's no angel, either, as the clip, one of the best in the film, shows. 

But first, here's a story I got on an e-mail a few days before Mr. Newman's passing.          

 A Michigan woman and her family were 

vacationing in a small New England   town where Paul Newman and his 
 family often visited.

One Sunday morning, the woman got up early 
to take a long walk. After a brisk five-mile hike, she decided to treat 
herself to a double-dip chocolate ice cream cone.
She hopped in the car, drove to the center 
 of the village and went straight
to the combination bakery/ice cream parlor.
 There was only one other patron in the store:

 Paul Newman, sitting at the counter having 
 a doughnut and coffee.   The woman's heart skipped a beat as her 
 eyes made contact with those famous baby-blue eyes.
 The actor nodded graciously and the 
 star-struck woman smiled demurely.

       "Pull yourself together!" she chides 
herself. "You're a happily married woman with three children,
 you're forty-five years old, not a 
teenager!"

 The clerk filled her order and she took the 
 double-dip chocolate ice cream cone in one hand and her
  change in the other. Then she went out the 
door, avoiding even a glance in Paul Newman's direction.

 When she reached her car, she realized that 
 she had a handful of change but her other hand was empty.
 Where's my ice cream cone?  Did I leave it 
 in the store? Back into the shop she went, expecting to see the
 cone still in the clerk's hand or in a holder on the counter or something!  No ice cream cone was in sight..

 With that, she happened to look over at 
Paul Newman.
His face broke into his familiar , warm , 
 friendly grin and he said to the woman,   "You put it in your purse."