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Saturday, September 27, 2008

By his works ye shall know him
Posted by Jill | 5:53 PM

It's become fashionable in right-wing circles to pooh-pooh the social activism of left-leaing actors. "They should just shut up," we hear. Of course when Chuck Norris claims to have done two tours in Iraq, or Charlton Heston advocates for guns, the right says nary a word. But if Brad Pitt decides to hold a contest for building green homes in New Orleans for those displaced by Hurricane Katrina, his motives must somehow be suspect.

Oddly absent from the right's vitriol was Paul Newman. Perhaps it was because he was Hud and Cool Hand Luke and Rocky Graziano and Butch Cassidy and Fast Eddie Felson -- "manly men" that didn't threaten Republicans. Or maybe it was his late-life fascination with race cars, which gave him manly-man cred among the NASCAR set. Or perhaps it was just that aside for his support for Eugene McCarthy, which landed him on Richard Nixon's enemies list, his was a quiet activism, one that later in life manifested quietly, almost stealthily, on supermarket shelves all over America, where even people who watched American Idol and NASCAR might buy a jar of Newman's Own brand salsa to have with their chips on Super Bowl Sunday. It was an activism that manifested in the concept of the Hole-In-The-Wall Camps, named for one of his most beloved films, for kids with serious illnesses.

Not for Newman the self-promotion of Don Imus, who seems to think he can make up for his horrific misogyny, hostility, and racism by using the kids from his own ranches as human shields. Newman just very quietly went about becoming a philanthropist with little fuss, while continuing an astonishing body of celluloid masterpieces well into his Social Security years.

It's hard to believe that someone like Paul Newman could exist. Here was this Jewish guy, one of the most drop-dead gorgeous men ever to occupy this planet, who played men that men admired and over whom women swooned. Here was a guy who could have womanized his way through Hollywood for five decades, but instead married actress Joanne Woodward and created one of the longest-lasting love stories in the industry's history. He was an actor who could easily have been typecast into beefcake roles but instead proved he could do anything, including showing a deft hand at comedy. When he decided he wanted to race cars, he became an adept racer instead of just a dilettante. And when his little business bottling his own vinaigrette salad dressing took off like a shot, he decided that the business model of his burgeoning business should be to pour his own profits into charity. None of this ten percent horsepuckey for Paul Newman. Instead, over $250 million in proceeds from the sale of the Newman's Own products have been plowed into charitable work.

Because Newman was so involved in the world around him, it was easy to believe that he would just go on forever. Because how could the world possibly go on spinning without Paul Newman in it? And yet today, here we are, and he is gone -- and yet not gone. Because we have five decades of brilliant film work to enjoy, and Sockarooni spaghetti sauce to eat, and the example he set to follow, and just hope that we can make even a small fraction of the difference in the world that he did.

I wanted to find a clip of the scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in which Butch and Sundance blow up the train, but alas I couldn't find one. But you could do worse than to remember Newman by this riveting scene from Road to Perdition -- the kind of performance that can only come from seven decades of living.



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7 Comments:
Blogger Toby said...
*sigh* I just got home from work and saw this ... I feel so very very sad....
9/27/08, 9:26 PM  
Blogger Rhode Island Rules said...
He was an amazingly talented person who was also a great human being. Being the same age as my parents and having lived through the great depression surely made a mark on him. That is one of the reasons his performance in The Sting is so spot on, he lived it, he knew it.
I always had a crush on him and he will always remain in my heart.
9/27/08, 10:33 PM  
Blogger The Minstrel Boy said...
in one of his last interviews with gene shalit, newman was reminded about how his opposition to the war in vietnam, his unflinching support of civil and voting rights had earned him a spot on nixon's famed "enemies list."

newman crinkled up those glorious eyes in a wicked smile and said "yeah, i'm still very proud of that award."
9/28/08, 10:59 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Thank you for posting the clip from Road to Perdition. Though there are many fine Paul Newman performances in many great movies, I thought he was at the top of his form in that one, and most of the most powerful, moving scenes in the movie centered around him.

Such a great loss to us all.
9/28/08, 2:15 PM  
Blogger Phil said...
That was a very beautiful send off.
Beautiful

He started racing at 47, long after most guys have washed out and he was a real contender, no bullshit, the man raced hard.
His financial largesse will be hard to match by any living being, a couple come to mind but there is no matching his sincerity.
One movie he made with Henry Fonda that I have not seen mentioned anywhere was filmed outside of a small Central Coast Oregon town called Newport , I have had quite a few drinks in one certain bar that the crew hung out in during production, that is as close as I can claim to meeting the man, twenty years after the fact but I can tell you, from the hard scrabble ways of that small logging community, the man was a legend years ago.That movie portrayed life in the logging business at the time to a tee.

RIP Mr. Newman.
9/29/08, 1:07 AM  
Blogger Phil said...
Once A Great Notion, I believe it was called and as long ago as it has been, I want to say Ken Kesey wrote the screenplay.
9/29/08, 1:12 AM  
Blogger Phil said...
OK, "Sometimes A Great Notion".
1971, I was eleven.
I was right about Kesey though.
9/29/08, 1:18 AM  
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