Legendary actor and Cleveland native Paul Newman dies at 83

Armed with grace, wit, charm, good looks and an anti-hero smirk, Paul Newman was one of the most charismatic movie stars in history. A top box-office draw for decades, Newman also succeeded on Broadway, in live television, as a race car driver, food entrepreneur and philanthropist. He donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charities and opened a string of summer camps for terminally ill children.

Newman, who was born in Cleveland Heights and grew up in Shaker Heights, died Friday of cancer. He was 83. Joanne Woodward, his wife of 50 years, was at his side at their home in Westport, Conn., along with other family members. "He quietly succeeded beyond measure in impacting the lives of so many with his generosity," said his daughters in a statement released Saturday. "Dad was incredibly grateful for his good fortune. In his own words: 'It's been a privilege to be here.' "

Newman starred in more than 50 films, including a sterling array of American classics: "Hud," "The Hustler," "Cool Hand Luke," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Sting."

He was nominated for ten Academy Awards, beginning with his portrayal of Brick Pollitt in Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" in 1958, through 2002, for his crusty Irish mob boss in "Road to Perdition." He won the Oscar for best actor in 1987 for playing Fast Eddie Felson (a reprisal of his "Hustler" role) in Martin Scorsese's "The Color of Money." Newman moved easily from playing battered tough guys (boxer Rocky Graziano in "Somebody Up There Likes Me"), to comedy (captain of the bankrupt hockey team in "Slap Shot"), to drama (the last-chance lawyer in "The Verdict").

But motion pictures were just one fold in the cloth.

At 47, he became a race car driver, winning four amateur championships and finishing second at the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race.

At 57, he unleashed his hobby of cooking upon the world with the Newman's Own line of salad dressings, spaghetti sauces, popcorn, lemonade, salsa and cookbooks. The company's slogan: "Shameless exploitation in pursuit of the common good."

All Newman's Own after-tax profits go to charities -- at last count, more than $250 million -- including disaster relief, affordable housing, the arts and education.

In 1988, he co-founded the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Ashford, Conn., to create a fun summer experience for children suffering from cancer, sickle cell anemia, AIDS and other blood diseases. It would grow to 13 camps in seven countries. Of his vast charitable endeavors, Newman said, "I don't think there's anything exceptional or noble in being philanthropic. It's the other attitude that confuses me."

Newman was also politically active. In 1978, he was a U.S. representative to the United Nations sessions on nuclear disarmament. He wrote Op-Ed pieces for the New York Times about environmental protections and civil rights and was a major donor to the Democratic Party and civil rights groups.

Opposed to the war in Vietnam in the 1960s, he participated in several anti-war demonstrations and campaigned during the 1968 Democratic presidential primaries for anti-war candidate Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota. He was a delegate for McCarthy at the infamous, riot-inflamed Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968.

His support of Democrats and liberal causes landed him on President Richard Nixon's notorious "enemies list."

Newman possessed a great, dry sense of humor, delighted in pulling practical jokes and often had tongue firmly planted in cheek.

"I have been fortunate in my lifetime to be tapped for a reasonable abundance of honors, but none delighted me more or elevated me in the eyes of my children more than my placement as No. 19 on Mr. Nixon's enemies list," he once quipped. "I do not anticipate encomium of similar consequence. But then, hope springs eternal."

He also penned commentaries and cartoons for The Nation. It's hard to imagine how Newman could have possibly packed any more living into his 83 years.

Not bad for a kid whose dad was hoping he would work in the family business -- a sporting goods store on East 12th Street in Cleveland.

Dragon slayer in early years Paul Leonard Newman was born Jan. 26, 1925, the second son of Arthur and Theresa Newman. The family, including older brother Arthur Jr., lived briefly on Renrock Road in Cleveland Heights before moving to a large home on Brighton Road in Shaker Heights.

Arthur Newman Sr. and Paul's uncle, Joseph, ran Newman-Stern Co.different side of family and separate from newman outfitters and newman adler stores, which came later to Cleveland: The business, which started by selling radios as the Electro-Set Co. in 1915, evolved into one of the nation's largest sporting goods stores. In 1921, it moved into its primary location at 1740 East 12th Street at Walnut Avenue in downtown Cleveland.

Arthur, whose family came from Germany, was Jewish, and Theresa was a Catholic from Slovakia who later converted to Christian Science. Their youngest son, not especially religious, once remarked that he considered himself a Jew "because it is more challenging."

Newman attended Shaker Heights public schools and dabbled in youth productions, including, at age 11, starring in "St. George and the Dragon" at the Cleveland Play House in 1936. He recalled the role in a letter to then artistic director Josie Abady in 1991. "I poured salt on the dragon's tail and slew him," he wrote. "Arising simply out of fictional bravery -- HUD, HARPER, BUTCH CASSIDY, Governor Earl Long, Mr. Bridge and others, for which now you must suffer the credit or the blame. Think about that."

Following his discharge, Newman enrolled in Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, in the fall of 1946. Known as "PL" Newman, he played some football, acted in plays, ran a student laundry and drank a lot of beer. He did not distinguish himself in academics and joked later that the honors he earned at Kenyon were "Magna Cum Lager."

Next came summer stock in Williams Bay, Wis., and a repertory company in Woodstock, Ill. There he met and married actress Jacqueline Witte. Newman had his eye on an acting or directing career, but his dad died in 1950, and Newman and Jackie moved back here.

Newman worked for Newman-Stern but also kept his hand in acting with a few parts in Cleveland radio and television. One TV gig was doing live commercials for National City Bank. His family sold its share of the business in 1951, freeing Newman to pursue his artistic interests. He enrolled in the Yale School of Drama and moved his family to New Haven, Conn.

Newman and Jackie had three children: Scott, Susan and Stephanie. (Scott, a stuntman and actor born in Cleveland, died of a drug and alcohol overdose in 1978. Newman created what is now the Scott Newman Center for drug-abuse prevention and education.) Newman was extremely hesitant to talk about the loss of Scott, but he did tell Time magazine in 1982, "we were like rubber bands, one minute close, the next separated by an enormous and unaccountable distance. I don't think I'll ever escape the guilt."

His other great regret was that his dad, Arthur Sr., did not live to see Paul's great success. It started in the early 1950s.

In short order, Newman went from Yale to the Actors Studio in New York, where he studied method acting under Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan and Martin Ritt. After a brief and forgettable stint on TV's "The Aldrich Family," Newman landed his first big Broadway role in 1953, playing Alan Seymour in the Joshua Logan-directed "Picnic." The cast included a 23-year-old understudy named Joanne Woodward.

His "Picnic" success led to roles on several live TV dramas, other Broadway hits -- "The Desperate Hours" and Kazan's production of "Sweet Bird of Youth" -- and a contract at Warner Bros. Newman's first film was the hugely forgettable period piece "The Silver Chalice" in 1954. But two years later, on loan to MGM, he scored as boxer Rocky Graziano in "Somebody Up There Likes Me."

"Sometimes you pick up certain mannerisms from characters that you play," Newman said of the nine weeks he spent with the former middleweight champ. "The only two things that ever stuck were from Rocky. I never used to spit in the street. Now I spit in the street; it sickens my wife. I never used to swear. Now, it's not worth being in the same room with me."

The long, hot marriage Newman was part of a new wave of actors who emerged in the late 1940s and early 1950s that included Marlon Brando, James Dean and Montgomery Clift. They were the third great Hollywood generation, following the original silent-era stars (Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin) and the icons of the golden age (Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis).

Years later, Newman offered a short list of the actors he considered truly first rate: "Brando, Lee J. Cobb, Olivier, and Joanne."

Joanne Woodward first teamed on film with Newman in "The Long, Hot Summer" in 1958. It was the first of their 11 films acting together (Newman also directed her in five others).

The sands of time have muffled much of the intrigue swirling around the Newman-Woodward romance and the end of his first marriage. But soon after Newman divorced Jackie, he married Woodward, on Jan. 29, 1958, in Las Vegas at the Hotel El Rancho Vegas.

They abandoned the Hollywood life and Beverly Hills in 1962, moving to an 18th century farmhouse in Westport, Conn. (they also had an apartment in Manhattan). Newman and Woodward had three daughters, Elinor "Nell," Melissa "Lissy," and Claire "Clea," and two grandchildren.

The longevity of the Newman-Woodward marriage is the exception to the Hollywood rule, where relationships are often measured in months. But Newman was characteristically reticent to share his views on it in public, usually offering a laugh line: "Maybe she puts something in my food?"

Woodward once explained that "sexiness wears thin after a while, and beauty fades. But to be married to a man who makes you laugh every day, ah, now that's a real treat."

Acting career accelerates Newman made his share of lame studio films but bought his freedom from his Warner Bros. contract in 1960. That's when his career truly took off.

It was his films of the 1960s that brought him to the forefront of fame. Beginning with "The Hustler" in 1961, with Newman's Fast Eddie Felson trying to out-pool-shark Jackie Gleason's Minnesota Fats, and continuing through a string of movies: "Hud," "Harper" "Hombre," and "Cool Hand Luke." The 1967 chain gang classic introduced power-egg-eating and the phrase "What we've got here is a failure to communicate" to the pop-culture lexicon.

In 1969, Newman made the racing movie "Winning" with Woodward and Robert Wagner. After training behind the wheel for his role, he was hooked and took up racing fervently in 1972. He later won races as an amateur and professional and became co-owner of Newman-Haas Racing (now Newman/Haas/Lanigan). In 1995, at age 70, he was part of a driving team that won the Rolex 24-hour endurance race at Daytona.

At track events, he shunned the limelight and the press, staying in the pits and garages, trying to play down his movie fame. Newman said driving a finely tuned automobile at very high speeds left him with a sense of "grace," something that was hard to come by in other areas of life.

But it was another movie from 1969 that re-established him as one of the most popular stars of American cinema. Written by William Goldman and directed by George Roy Hill, the film was a new-fangled anti-western of sorts, a comedy-adventure about two doomed but lovable bank robbers called "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

Originally, Newman was supposed to play the Kid, the fast-drawing legend who gets the beautiful Katharine Ross. But he chose Butch because he thought it was the more interesting part. It is a testament to Newman's sense of himself that he was willing to share so much screen time with the equally handsome and charming Robert Redford as Sundance. "Paul Newman is the least starlike superstar I've ever worked with," Goldman, a great hater of Hollywood phonies, once wrote. "He's an educated man and a trained actor and he never wants more close-ups. What he wants is the best possible script and character he can have. And he loves to be surrounded by the finest actors available. Many stars, maybe even most, don't want that competition."

"Butch" was a huge success, and the two reteamed with Hill four years later to make "The Sting," in which Newman played wily con artist Henry Gondorff, mentoring another Redford "Kid," Johnny Hooker. It was the No.¤1 movie of 1973 and won seven Oscars, including best picture.

He made his share of clunkers, too, notably the disastrous disaster flick "When Time Ran Out" with Jacqueline Bisset and William Holden ("An all-star cast is on the run when Mother Nature blows her top!").

Newman didn't think much of his own film acting until he had been at it more than 20 years.

"I had a fairly long and detailed formal education in the theater at Yale and at Kenyon. But almost everything I learned about being an actor came from those early years in New York at the Actors Studio," he said. "There's not a performance that I can look at comfortably until after, oh, the late '70s I would say, with any sense of satisfaction. So it's been a learning process."

Those later performances include "Absence of Malice," in 1981, in which he played a businessman wronged by newspaper reporter Sally Field, and "The Verdict" in 1982, with Newman as desperate, alcoholic Boston attorney Frank Galvin. Both performances received best actor nominations.

The author Larry McMurtry, whose novel "Horseman, Pass By" became the movie "Hud," was once musing about which stars would replace the great screen icons of the 1930s and 40s. He was looking for people you could identify with, fantasize about and even look up to. He was greatly disappointed with many actors of the late 20th century, deriding them as either "dope freaks or pretty boys." Except one: Newman.

"He is probably the only actor of his generation," said McMurtry, "to achieve that elusive dual quality of maturing while somehow remaining the same."

As tenacious as a terrier By the 1990s, Newman was able to segue from leading man to supporting actor -- a difficult twist for film legends.

He played the corporate schemer Sidney J. Mussburger in Joel and Ethan Coen's "The Hudsucker Proxy" in 1994, was Kevin Costner's crusty, Budweiser-coveting dad in "Message in a Bottle" in 1999, and played Tom Hanks' surrogate-father in "Road to Perdition" in 2002.

Although he moved easily between drama and comedy, the films he chose to direct veered toward the serious: "Sometimes a Great Notion," based on the Ken Kesey novel and co-starring Henry Fonda; "Rachel, Rachel" and Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie," both starring Woodward.

His handsome face and striking blue eyes put him on the giant screen, but he went out of his way to make un-pretty movies, to dodge the romantic lead and act despite his million-dollar looks.

The other thing that stood out about Newman was his tenacity. He took on so many endeavors all at once.

"He's extremely hard-working; that's something he got from his dad," said author and film critic Shawn Levy, who is writing a Newman biography. "Art Newman helped keep Newman-Stern, a big, downtown sporting goods store, going during the Depression. No one needed water skis in the Depression. I think that work-ethic persists in Paul. He's referred to himself many times as a terrier. He says, 'I will get that bone.' That's how he approached acting."

Newman was still taking chances late in his career. He snagged a Tony nomination for playing the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" in 2002 and said returning to Broadway after a 35-year absence was "like sticking a rifle in your mouth."

His last film role, fittingly, was as the voice of an aging race car, Doc Hudson, in the animated hit "Cars" in 2006.

Realizing he was unable to work anymore "at the level I would want to," Newman retired from performing in May 2007. "You start to lose your memory," he said. "You start to lose your confidence. You start to lose your invention."

Butch, Sundance will live forever By most accounts Newman was someone who loved life and lived fully the loves of his life: his wife, his children, his grandchildren, his friends, his competitive drive, his causes, his cooking.

Longtime friend Redford summed it up well, after spending an evening with Newman in the late '80s. "Here's old Paul," he said. "He looks great, feels great, has lots of money, gives to great causes, he's in love with his wife, he races cars when he wants to, makes a movie when he wants to, he's incredibly happy and still has that face that looks the way it did when he was 20. God, by the time we got home, I wanted to shoot myself."

Newman and Redford might have ridden off into the sunset in a number of Butch and Sundance sequels, except for one key fact. "Too bad they got killed in the end," said Newman, "¤'cause those two guys could have gone on in films forever."

Actually, they did.

Redford paid homage to the movie by naming his film institute and enormously influential festival after his character. Newman named his camp for sick children after Butch's gang: "The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp."

Butch also lives forever on DVDs and all-movie channels. So does Hud Bannon roping a calf, Henry Gondorff rigging a poker deck, Fast Eddie lining up a shot, Luke Jackson hacking off parking meters.

It's make-believe. Just like a kid in a cowboy hat, fingers as six-shooters, running around the streets of Shaker Heights.

"I suppose the best actors are children," said Newman. "To the extent that you can sustain and maintain that childlike part of your personality, that is probably the best part of acting."

( I met Paul Newman in Chicago in 2002, during press interviews for the film “Road to Perdition.” Several of the quotes in this story are from those interviews. Newman was noticeably proud of his hometown. The last thing he said was, “Be sure to say hi to Cleveland for me.” )