| Paul Newman |
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Page 1 of 3  1925 - 2008 A movie star for 50 years with over a dozen signature roles, a race car champion winning his final race at age 70, and a tremendous humanitarian who gave hundreds of millions of dollars to charity, Paul Newman lived such a full life that even his megahit “Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid” was just a blip on his personal radar screen.  Starting out as a movie rebel (but not as sullen as Dean or Brando), Paul Newman etched out a career of acting masterpieces that encompassed so many highs that it is hard to think of another actor who compares. His 50-year marriage to Joanne Woodward was an uncommon occurrence in Hollywood. And as Newman himself called it, “the joke that got out of hand” (his "Newman’s Own” food products) makes generous contributions to many different charities which will continue years after his death. Paul Newman was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1925 and raised in nearby Shaker Heights. His father was Jewish and the owner of a sporting goods store. His mother was a former Catholic turned Christian Scientist who encouraged Paul in his interest in theatre arts. After graduation from high school, he enrolled briefly at Ohio University before joining the Navy during World War II. He became a radioman on torpedo bombers in the Pacific after being rejected from pilot training for being colorblind. After the war, he attended Kenyon College on an athletic scholarship, but an injury ended his football aspirations. Even though his major was English, he was mainly interested in theatre. He met his first wife, Jackie Witte while in summer stock in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. They married in 1949. (They had 3 children—Scott, Susan, and Stephanie). After another year in a repertoire company in Illinois he put acting on the sidelines. His father had died and he was needed to run the sporting goods store. In 1951 he sold his interest in the store to his brother and enrolled in Yale University to study acting. Traveling to New York on occasional TV auditions he won a role on an early TV sitcom called “The Aldrich Family.” He then took the next step by moving to New York-- enrolling in 1952 in Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio in New York. Classmates included James Dean and Marlon Brando. Within a year, he would start appearing in small roles in some of TV’s earliest live anthology drama programs that were based in New York: “Tales of Tomorrow,” “You Are There,” “The Web,” and “Goodyear TV Playhouse.”  In 1953 he made his debut on Broadway in “Picnic” as Alan Seymour (this is where he met his 2nd wife, Joanne Woodward who was an understudy)—and spotted by executives from Warner Brothers. He was signed to a contract and put in 1954’s “The Silver Chalice,” a Biblical epic failure for which Newman publicly apologized years later. (He took out an ad in Variety.) He should not have—even though the film was a financial flop, Newman’s motion picture debut was not the embarrassment that he perceived.  In fact, his scenes with Pier Angeli are quite good—so good that he was paired with her again two years later in his first motion picture success “Somebody Up There Likes Me” about boxer Rocky Graziano. Although James Dean was originally cast in the role prior to his death, the picture made Paul Newman a star. |