A Legend Dies. RIP Paul Newman [Breaking News]

MayorBob.

Posted to Etcetera on Sat Sep 27, 2008 at 02:12:08 PM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.

Paul Newman, who parlayed his rugged good looks and thespic skills into a half century career and a place as one of America's most beloved film stars, has died of lung cancer at his home in Connecticut.  The 83-year-old Newman's film career spanned 52 years and included parts in films which feature in many peoples' best films of all time.

His trademark roles included: the unscrupulous Hud Bannon, a convict simply named Luke, one half of filmdom's ultimate bank robber duos, one of the greatest pool hustlers of all time, one half of filmdom's ultimate con men duos, and an aging ice hockey player/coach in one of the best sports movies ever made.  Over that career, he was nominated for an Oscar nine times, winning one in 1986 for his second portrayal of Fast Eddie Felson in The Color of Money.  He played opposite some of the most beautiful leading ladies of the day: Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Julie Andrews, and Sally Fields just to name a few.  But, unlike his screen pairing, since 1958 he really only had one leading lady in life --Joanne Woodward.

Newman was much more than a film actor, however.  Playing the part of a race car driver in 1969's Winning began a lifelong love of the sport.  An unabashed liberal, he once ended up on Richard Nixon's enemies list -- "the highest single honor I've ever received" - according to Newman.  In 1982, he and a friend founded Newman's Own, a food company which sells everything from pasta sauce to salad dressing to popcorn to pet food.  After taxes are paid on the profits, the proceeds are plowed back into a number of charitable and educational projects near and dear to Newman's heart.  For all his success and the adulation bestowed upon him, he rarely took himself seriously and his life wasn't without its quota of tragedy - he lost his son Scott to drug overdose in 1978.  His sense of humor and self-deprecating charm was on display in a biography he wrote for the program to a play he appeared in:

"Paul Newman is probably best known for his spectacularly successful food conglomerate. In addition to giving the profits to charity he also ran Frank Sinatra out of the spaghetti sauce business. On the downside, the spaghetti sauce is outgrossing his films. He did graduate from Kenyon College magna cum lager and in the process begat a laundry business which was the only student-run enterprise on Main Street. Yale University later awarded him an honorary doctorate of Humane Letters for unknown reasons. He has won four Sports Car of America National Championships and is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest driver (70) to win a professionally sanctioned race (24 hours of Daytona, 1995). He is married to the best actress on the planet, was number 19 on Nixon's enemy list, and purely by accident has done 51 films and four Broadway plays. He is generally considered by professionals to be the worst fisherman on the east coast.