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Cool Hand in a Hot Tin World: A Paul Newman Tribute

Written by Adam A. Donaldson Monday, 29 September 2008 13:23

It was sad, though not unexpected news, this weekend to hear that Paul Newman had passed away from cancer at the age of 83. Certainly the signs were there this past spring, when he passed on directing Of Mice and Men for the Westport Playhouse in Connecticut, where he lived. But the death of a Hollywood legend is always shocking even when we know its coming. It’s reinforcement that there’s an era of filmmaking that we’ll never see again.



But his future as one of Hollywood’s most assured leading men, as well as the possessor of the most famous set of blue eyes in film, was never guaranteed. In his first film under contract from Warner Bros. Newman felt he was so terrible in the costume drama The Silver Chalice (1954) that he took out an ad in the trades apologizing to anyone that had seen it. He needn’t have worried. After spending much of the 50s on TV, Newman graduated to film full-time in 1958 playing outsider Ben Quick in the family drama The Long Hot Summer. The same year he shot to stardom with the film version Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (see below).

Newman’s filmography reads like a must watch list of some of the best films of all time, including numerous award winners, which yielded two Oscars for himself in the process (one honorary and the other for Best Actor a year later for The Colour Of Money). But much of Newman’s later life has been punctuated by charity and philanthropic work, which includes his line of Newman’s Own products. The profits from products ranging from salad dressing to salsa to popcorn, after taxes, have all gone to charity, raising a total of $200 million so far.



In 2007, Newman said that he was officially retiring from acting. "You start to lose your memory, you start to lose your confidence, you start to lose your invention. So I think that's pretty much a closed book for me," he told ABC News. But Newman’s legacy was already secured; an acting career to be envied by anyone, a passion in race car driving, and a reputation of caring that’s only surpassed by the dollar amount he’s given to charitable causes. Not bad for the guy that actually finished 19th on Richard Nixon’s enemies list.

Select Newman Filmography:

1) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) Tennessee Williams may not have been very fond of this adaptation of his play, but the fact of the matter is that this was one of the biggest hits of 1958, and made Newman’s star status official playing opposite Elizabeth Taylor and Burl Ives.

2) The Hustler (1961) Like a lot of Newman’s films, the action starts off lightly but as we delve deeper into the story’s world we’re caught drowning in the emotional turns as selfish actions give way to terrible consequences. Hustler, like its sequel, The Colour of Money, deals with corrupting influence of money versus the love of the game. Perhaps there’s a reflection here with Newman’s future philanthropic endeavours.

3) Hud (1963) Adding a touch of darkness to his own indisputable charm, Newman plays the title character, a brash, hard-drinking, hard-living, reckless young man who cares of nothing but himself in spite of the influence of his principled father (Melvyn Douglas). Newman somehow manages to take the viewer from admiration of Hud’s roguish charm to derision of his thuggish selfishness.

4) Cool Hand Luke (1967) As the irrepressible Luke Jackson, Newman influenced a generation of troublemakers and malcontents to rebel against a repressible system; perfectly timed with the growing civil disobedience of the late 60s. The nameless captain’s most quoted line, “What we’ve got here, is… failure to communicate,” becomes Luke’s ultimate declaration of an unbroken spirit.

5) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) This film is often cited as having one of the best movie shootouts of all time, but really, would all that gunfire really matter if it weren’t for the relationship and camaraderie developed between the two men getting shot at. Part of the final shot is the romance of going out in a blaze of glory, but what it really is about is the virtue of taking fate by your own terms.

6) The Sting (1973) Newman teamed-up with his Butch cohorts Robert Redford and director George Roy Hill to tell more tales of crime and friendship set only a few decades after Butch and Sundance. Perhaps the best film about the con game made ever, Newman plays the mentor while Reford plays the pupil, as this 30s-era tale of grifting become one of the biggest commercial and critical successes of ’73.

7) The Towering Inferno (1974) In Irwin Allen’s celebrity filled disaster epic about a burning office building in San Francisco, Newman teams up with fire chief Steve McQueen to save partygoers from “blazing suspense.” Had this movie been made a few years later, the Newman character would have undoubtedly been the guy responsible for the cut corners that start the fire. But at heart Inferno is a buddy picture with two heroes of separate strengths played by two of the biggest actors of the day.

8) The Verdict (1982) The actor won his seventh Best Actor Academy Award nomination for playing an alcoholic lawyer trying to turn his career around by taking a medical malpractice case to trial. The legal drama was cited for its strong acting and direction, all from a script written by David Mamet with a formula that’s yet to be duplicated with any real success.

9) Road to Perdition (2002) Although legendary in Hollywood for being the hero we love to root for, Newman, in his last, live action appearance on the big screen, turns menacing as the manipulative mob boss that orders the death of his most-trusted assassin, Michael Sullivan (played by Tom Hanks). In a movie filled with one kind of ugly criminal or another, you just know inherently that Newman’s is the most dangerous of all.

10) Cars (2006) In his final big screen role, Newman combined two of his loves: acting and cars and came up with the role Doc Hudson. As the stately, 1951 Hudson Hornet, Newman brought grace and gravitas to the traditional mentor role. One could practically see Newman’s blue eyes in Doc Hudson’s windshield.