Paul Newman

I've spent a large part of my day reading about Paul Newman - a truly amazing person. It is sad to see the passing of such a legend but it was his time.

Paul once said something like "show me a man with no enemies and I'll show you a man with no character." Maybe Paul Newman was the exception that proves the rule because it seems nobody anywhere has anything bad to say of the man. He was an accomplished actor, a loving husband, a selfless humanitarian and maybe most extraordinary - a regular guy.

People posting meetings with Newman on various threads on the Internets uniformly praise Newman for being such a humble, likable guy in person. He was not just cool incarnate - he was niceness incarnate. It's as if Newman's guiding principle was to live life with a "there but by the grace of God go I" mentality.

Vanity Fair recently had a very good profile of Paul Newman and this was perhaps the anecdote that summed up Paul Newman the man best:

This past year, at one of the usual meetings of parents and children at the original camp, Newman showed up; crowds pressed close. The mother of one little girl spoke to Ray Lamontagne, the head of the camp’s board. Her daughter wanted to tell Paul Newman something, but she couldn’t get over to him because she was in a wheelchair. Lamontagne fought his way through the crowd and brought Newman back to the little girl, and he knelt down by her wheelchair. “For the first time in my life I have a friend,” the little girl told him. “I’ve never had a friend before, because I’ve been in a wheelchair most of my life, so kids avoided me. So thank you, Mr. Newman, for this camp.” Newman had tears in his eyes.

He had already said, “I wanted to acknowledge luck. The beneficence of it in many lives and the brutality of it in the lives of others, especially children, who might not have a lifetime to make up for it.”

Perhaps my favorite Newman role was as Reg Dunlop in Slap Shot (maybe the best sports movie ever made). It is also interesting to play the "what if" game regarding his roles. For instance - Newman supposedly turned down the role of Dirty Harry (a role that Frank Sinatra also supposedly turned down). It has also been written that Newman was offered the role of Quint in Jaws - a role that went to Robert Shaw. And speaking of Shaw - enjoy this bit from another Newman classic - The Sting.