(EDITOR’S NOTE: I am a huge, huge movie fan and Paul Newman is one of my all-time favourite actors, so when I saw this feature posted on Facebook by Turner Classic Movie, I had to share it with readers of BAHAMAS CHRONICLE and add it to my archives.)
Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, voice actor, film director, producer, race car driver, IndyCar owner, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He won and was nominated for numerous awards, winning an Academy Award for his performance in the 1986 film The Color of Money, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy Award, and many others. Newman’s other roles include the title characters in The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Harper (1966) and Cool Hand Luke (1967), as well as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), The Sting (1973), and The Verdict (1982). He voiced Doc Hudson in the first installment of Disney-Pixar’s Cars as his final acting performance, with voice recordings being used in Cars 3 (2017).
Newman won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open-wheel IndyCar racing. He was a co-founder of Newman’s Own, a food company from which he donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of January 2017, these donations have totaled over US$485 million. He was a co-founder of Safe Water Network, a nonprofit that develops sustainable drinking water solutions for those in need.
In 1988, Newman founded the SeriousFun Children’s Network, a global family of summer camps and programs for children with serious illness which has served 290,076 children since its inception.
Newman was married twice. His first marriage was to Jackie Wittenfrom 1949 to 1958. They had a son, Scott (1950–1978), and two daughters, Susan (born 1953) and Stephanie Kendall (born 1954). Scott, who appeared in films including Breakheart Pass, The Towering Inferno, and the 1977 film Fraternity Row, died in November 1978 from a drug overdose. Newman started the Scott Newman Center for drug abuse prevention in memory of his son. Susan is a documentary filmmaker and philanthropist, and has Broadway and screen credits, including a starring role as one of four Beatles fans in I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), and also a small role opposite her father in Slap Shot. She also received an Emmy nomination as co-producer of his telefilm, The Shadow Box.
Newman met actress Joanne Woodward in 1953, on the production of Picnic on Broadway, it was Newman’s debut and Woodward was an understudy. Shortly after filming The Long, Hot Summer in 1957, he divorced Witte. He married Woodward early in 1958. The Newmans moved to 11th Street in Manhattan, before buying a home and starting a family in Westport, Connecticut. They were one of the very first Hollywood movie star couples to choose to raise their families outside California. They remained married for 50 years, until his death in 2008. They had three daughters: Elinor “Nell” Teresa (b. 1959), Melissa “Lissy” Stewart (b. 1961), and Claire “Clea” Olivia (b. 1965). Newman was well known for his devotion to his wife and family. When once asked about his reputation for fidelity, he famously quipped, “Why go out for a hamburger when you have steak at home?” He also said that he never met anyone who had as much to lose as he did. In his profile on 60 Minutes he admitted he once left Woodward after a fight, walked around the outside of the house, knocked on the front door and explained to Joanne he had nowhere to go. Newman directed Nell alongside her mother in the films Rachel, Rachel and The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds.
Newman was an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church.
Newman was scheduled to make his professional stage directing debut with the Westport Country Playhouse’s 2008 production of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, but he stepped down on May 23, 2008, citing his health concerns.
In June 2008, it was widely reported in the press that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was receiving treatment for the condition at the Sloan-Kettering hospital in New York City. A. E. Hotchner, who partnered in the 1980s with Newman to start Newman’s Own, told the Associated Press in an interview in mid-2008 that Newman had told him about being afflicted with the disease about 18 months prior. Newman’s spokesman told the press that the star was “doing nicely”, but neither confirmed nor denied that he had cancer.
Newman died on the morning of September 26, 2008, in the presence of his family. He was 83 years old. His body was cremated after a private funeral service near his home in Westport.
