Paul Newman Legendary Actor, Entrepreneur, Activist, and Humanitarian
1925-

Acting is a question of absorbing other peoples personalities and adding some of your own experience.
P NEWMAN

The legendary screen actor with the most famous blue eyes in the motion picture industry is also a loving family man, a successful entrepreneur, a political activist, and a generous humanitarian. Never one to take himself seriously, Paul Newman has often quipped that it’s a bit embarrassing that sales of his Newman’s Own famous salad dressing is outgrossing his films. An intensely private man, Newman prefers to talk about his charitable endeavors—-the Scott Newman Foundation for drug rehabilitation or the Hole in the Wall Gang camps for kids with life-threatening diseases.
Life for Paul Leonard Newman began in the comfortable Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, Ohio, on January 26, 1925. The second son of Arthur and Theresa Newman, Paul and his older brother, Arthur, enjoyed a middle-class upbringing, thanks to the success of his father’s sporting goods store. Paul acted in plays in Shaker Heights High School before enlisting in the navy in 1943. Though he hoped to hecome an aviator, doctors discovered that Paul was color-blind, so he served as a radio operator aboard torpedo bombers in the South Pacific during World War II.
After his discharge from the navy in 1946. Newman returned to Ohio, where he enrolled in Kenyon College. He played football, ran a campus laundry service, and embraced his passion for acting. Paul graduated from Kenyon in 1 949 and spent a year in Chicago working in local theater, but he had to return home when his rather died.
By then Newman was married to actress Jacqueline Witte, who was pregnant with their first child. Newman took over running the sporting goods store, but his aptitude wasn’t retail sales work. He sold the business a year later and returned to acting.
Newman studied at the Yale Drama School before moving to New York City to attend the famed Actors Studio. He made his Broadway debut in William Inge’s 1953 production Picnic. It was during that time that Newman met southern actress Joanne Woodward. In 1958, after a difficult and painful divorce for Newman, he and Woodward wed. They have been together ever since, raising three daughters, Nell, Melissa, and Clea, along the way. (Newman also had three children by Witte—Scott, Susan, and Stephanie.)
Newman’s classically handsome features and mesmerizing blue eyes only added to his appeal. He was also a bit lucky, for he came into acting at a time when live television dramas were aired on shows like Playhouse 90. The small-screen medium opened up many opportunities for actors beyond the theater stage. It was not long before Warner Brothers Studio signed him to a film contract.
His first film, the ridiculous biblical saga The Silver Chalice (1954), was so bad it might well have been his last. He fared much better in his next role, portraying boxing great Rocky Graziano in Somehody Up There Likes Me (1956). The critics applauded Newman’s terrific performance, and his acting career was well on its way.
Over the next decade Newman became one of the biggest box-office draws, starring in such acclaimed films as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ‘(1958), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Cool Hand Luke (1967), and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1 969). He also appeared in several films with Woodward, including The Lang Hot Summer (1958), From the Terrace (I960), Paris Blues (1961), and A New Kind of Love (1963). He made his directorial debut with Rachel, Rachel in 1968. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.
In 1 969 Newman cofounded First Artists’ Production Company with colleagues Sidney Poitier and Barbra Streisand. In the 1970s Newman appeared in some forgettable films such as Buffalo Bill and the Indians and the disaster epic The lowering Inferno, but he wowed audiences once again when he reteamed with his Butch Cassidy costar Robert Redford in The Sting. The film walked away with seven Oscars, including Best Picture. In the 1980s and 1990s, a maturing Newman was still as charismatic as ever. He continued to select challenging projects to star in and direct. He turned in great performances in Absence of Malice (1981), The Verdict (1982), Message in a Bottle (1999), and Where the Money Is (2000). He also directed wife Woodward in The Glass Menagerie (1987).
Newman has appeared in more than fifty films and has earned eight Academy Award nominations (the last for the 1994 film Nobody’s Fool). The Oscar eluded him until he reprised his role as pool hustler Eddie Felson in the 1986 film The Color of Money (1986). In response to his win, Newman quipped, “I’m on a roll. Maybe I can get a job.”
Though well into his seventies, Newman is more active now than when he was making three motion pictures a year. When tragedy struck the Newman family in 1978, when his son, Scott, died of a drug overdose, Newman founded the Scott Newman Foundation. Since its inception in 1980, the foundation has helped thousands of children, families, and communities to overcome the dangers of alcohol and other drugs through its many education programs. Each summer the Rowdy Ridge Gang Camp in California opens its grounds to hundreds of families, mothers, and children recovering from the effects of alcohol and drug abuse as well as those whose lives have been affected by domestic violence.
A longtime kitchen aficionado, Newman used to give out bottles of his specially mixed salad dressing as Christmas presents. The dressing became so popular that Newman and his friend A. K. Hotchner founded Newman’s Own food company in 1982. The first product they marketed was Newman’s Olive Oil and Vinegar dressing. At the end of the first year Newman gave away approximately $1 million dollars to charity. Today the product line includes several salad dressings, pasta sauces, a steak sauce, two types of lemonade, four kinds of salsa, ice cream, and gourmet popcorn. All profits from the sale of his products goes to educational and charitable organizations. To date, Newman’s Own has donated over $1 25 million dollars.
Newman’s Own gives its founder a creative outlet very different from acting. With the help of Hotchner and his wife, Ursula, and with funds from Newman’s Own, Newman founded the Hole in the Wall Gang camps, located in Ashford, Connecticut, in 1986. Another passion is auto racing. While preparing for his role in the 1968 film Winning, Newman went to a racing school to learn how to drive. He was a born natural and began competing. In 1979 Newman finished in second place in the Le Mans twenty-four-hour race.
In recent years Newman has been recognized more for his life’s work than any single project. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Newman two honorary Oscars—-one for recognition of his many memorable screen performances and professional integrity, the other, the Jean Hersholt
Humanitarian Award, for his tireless charity work. In 1992 Paul and Joanne shared the Kennedy Center Honors with Lionel Hampton, Ginger Rogers, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Paul Taylor.
What is so refreshing about this multitalented actor, director, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and fearless race-car driver is his unabashed humbleness. When asked what he would like his epitaph to say, the quick-witted Newman responded, “Here lies Paul Newman, who died a flop because his eyes turned brown.” Turning serious for a moment when asked how he would like to be remembered, Newman quietly replied, “Just that I was part of my times. That’s all.”
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