Paul Newman
 

I'm honestly surprised that we don't have an official thread for a true legend in Hollywood, at least an official thread didn't come up in a search. Newman was a true genius at what he did, and he's currently my second favorite actor of all-time, right behind Clint Eastwood. I've only seen a couple of movies from him so far - Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, Cool Hand Luke, Road To Perdition, Cars, and The Color Of Money - but I still think he's deserving of being my second favorite actor of all-time. I have Torn Curtain sitting of my DVD shelf to watch, and with a duo between my second favorite actor and my second favorite director -Alfred Hitchcock - I know that I'm going to like it. I wish I could've gotten into him before he died, though. I'm still really glad that I started seeing him in movies, because I probably never even would've thought about him that much if it hadn't been for Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. I know there has to be some more of his fans here at MoFo.

http://www.insidesocal.com/outinholl...,,newmann2.jpg http://balajoe27.files.wordpress.com...aul-newman.jpg

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph...l_1202903c.jpg http://csos.movieset.com/download/mo...aul-newman.jpg

Re: Paul Newman
 

We all certainly expressed our admiration and listed favorites in THIS THREAD.

Re: Paul Newman
 

That's the thread I saw, but I wasn't sure if that could be counted as an official thread for him.

Re: Paul Newman
 

I think another thread is okay, as some people might want to discuss him without doing it in the context of his death. But that thread's still a good resource on the man, to be sure. :)

Re: Paul Newman
 

Amazing actor, and a very good guy.

Re: Paul Newman
 

I'd be interested to know if Torn Curtain (1966) lives up to your expectations. It certainly didn't make it to mine when I saw it when it first came out. I remember it as slow-paced and lacking any chemistry between Newman and Andrews. The signature item to me in Torn Curtain was the prolonged killing of the Soviet agent who keeps telling his amateur assailants, "You can't kill me. I'm a professional." I recall Hitchcock saying on a talk show back then that he wanted people to see how really difficult it can be sometimes to kill someone (that is demonstrated much better by better directors years later in Blood Simple). Trouble is, everything else in the film seemed to take forever to transpire, too. Maybe the targeted secret formula was a more interesting prize if one is into advanced mathematics.

If you want to see a really good spy story starring Newman, hunt up a copy of the 1963 film, The Prize, with Newman as a writer of paperback mysteries who wins the Nobel Prize for Literature based on a more prestigious book he wrote years ago when first starting his writing career and which the public had been ignored for decades. Reporters can't believe that he prides himself on writing interesting mysteries, so he gives them an example of a possible plot concerning the character played by Edward G. Robinson, based on changes he observed in Robinson's character within a period of two days. Robinson's character is an escapee from behind the Iron Curtain and is to be the recepient of the Nobel Peace Prize. But as Newman observes the man and his niece leading up to the awards ceremony, the more he's convinced there is something wrong. In the background, there are two men--one from the US and one from Italy--sharing the prize for medicene, one of whom is convinced the other stole his idea; and the jealous wife of another recepient who wants to have--or at least seem to have--an affair with Newman because she thinks hubby is playing around with his lab assistant. The story moves quickly, plenty of thrills, lots of snowy foreign locales, and Newman gets ample opportunities to play the wise-cracking bad-boy that he does so well.

I think you'll like The Prize much more than Torn Curtain.

Re: Paul Newman
 

Re: Paul Newman
 

U go Classicqueen13

Re: Paul Newman
 

I got his new book. Here's a very short excerpt.

____________________________________



MORT SAHLWAS A CONTROVERSIAL POLITICAL SATIRIST
AND STAND-UP COMEDIAN WHO FIRST BEFRIENDED PAUL IN
THE MID-1950s


How many movies have you seen where Paul Newman
comes in in the morning and puts his head into a sink full of
ice? I think he’s done it in thirty-eight pictures. Dreams die
hard.
Paul loved taking those long saunas. We’d go into one, and
he’d take a big brandy snifter and fill it full of ice cubes and
Scotch. He would tell me about his mother, and he would cry.
She used to bait him. If there was anything bad in the
newspapers about him—reviews, say—she’d clip and mail
them to him just for torture.


Paulcouldbeverymorose.“Whycan’tpeoplebe
tolerant?” he’d say. “Maybe it’s impossible to get through the
night without three bottles of Scotch. If anybody can get
through the night with asnake,you should leave them alone
—because at least they got through the night.”
Paul used to drink through the night.
I don’t know what it was all about, unless it’s people not
being equal to the task. Every actor I’ve ever known thought
he was getting a pass. And I’m sure down deep Paul thought
he was stealing the money and wondering when it’s all going
to catch up with him. People who don’t feel good about
themselves will do anything to feel better. Philanthropy is
supposed to make them feel better, but it only works a few
minutes at a time.
Hehadsomuchgoingforhimofcourse—marriage,
stardom; but even with work there were always challenges. In
the days when Paul was constantly said to be working in the
shadowofMarlonBrando,evenafterPaulhadreally
emerged, he never won the awards. Steve McQueen bothered
him for a time, too; he felt McQueen was the rise of the
illiterate in acting. Paul wanted to be seen as an intellectual:
“You don’t know how lucky you are,” he’d say to me. “All I
get is applause, but you get respect.”

I've seen a healthy chunk of Paul Newman's movies and I have never seen him stick his head in a sink full of ice.

If Newman was that big of a drinker, that's probably why he seemed like the real McCoy in The Verdict (1982).

I loved his work in The Hustler, Hud, Harper, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy..., and The Sting. He was badly miscast in an otherwise decent Hitchcock movie, Torn Curtain.

...and "Slapshot" and " The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean".