The Guardian (29/Sep/2008) - 'He was born to play flakes and conmen'
(c) The Guardian (29/Sep/2008)
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/sep/29/paulnewman
- keywords: Academy Awards, David Thomson, Paul Newman, Robert Altman
'He was born to play flakes and conmen'
Newman's best work came out of his scepticism about the movies, says David Thomson
As a young man, Paul Newman was so handsome he developed a sneer as if to frighten away the fans - the women, especially - who assumed he was ready and available. There were times when this arrogant manner seemed ready to dismiss not just most of his work, but anyone who took it seriously. He seemed to be saying, "Can't you see - I'm not like this. I'm a real person, unfairly afflicted with movie looks. I'm Jewish!"
Newman was 30 when he first appeared in a movie; it meant he was a grown man, with hard-earned experience, before he started pretending in public. He had been three years in the Navy, as a radio operator; he had helped run his father's store in Cleveland; he had been married and had children.
Later in life, the sneer fell away, along with the prettiness, until he was left a stoical old man with pain and losses, as well as the abiding perplexity that anyone should take him or acting that seriously. By then, he was one of the finest and most resolute old men in pictures - some achievement in a culture horrified by age.
In The Silver Chalice, Newman's first film, he played Basil, a Greek who had decorated the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper. They made such films in those days, and Newman was so disgusted he took an ad in Variety apologising for it. That's not what actors were supposed to do, and he seemed like a graduate of the Yale Drama School and the Actors Studio, begging to be taken seriously. That, or a man who knew already how phoney most films were.
Newman filled the part that James Dean was to have played in Somebody Up There Likes Me (the story of boxer Rocky Graziano), and he revelled in the athleticism of the role. But, truth to tell, most of his early films now look as silly as he feared. He got his first Oscar nomination for Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, and there's no doubt that he and Elizabeth Taylor made one of the most suggestive erotic images of the late 50s. The look and the jazzy title made a sensation, but few realised what Tennessee Williams' story was really about. Still, it's nice to imagine Taylor whispering to Newman in the steamy close-ups, "Don't worry because you're Jewish - I am, too!"
The general public refused to notice Newman's uneasiness, but now it is palpable in a handful of very silly movies he made in the late 50s. In 1961, he was rescued by a fine Walter Tevis novel, The Hustler, and the role of Eddie Felson. The film was done with grit and no glamour, as well as a lot of hard-learned pool, and Felson was a knife to scrape away Newman's jammy smile. The lesson was clear: as something other than a beauty, a simple hero and a nice guy, Newman had talent to burn. He got a second Oscar nomination, and the first real one.
Still, he had to battle the way the business wanted to see him: he was another charlatan in Sweet Bird of Youth; he was superb as the cynical older brother in Hud; and he found a true outsider status in Hombre and Cool Hand Luke. But the 60s were just as full of worthless pictures.
In 1969 and 1973, Newman made two films for director George Roy Hill with Robert Redford: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Sting. They were very well made, highly entertaining, but as daft as The Silver Chalice. They were also just about the only times Newman really yielded to being adorable - though hindsight suggests that he swallowed the drug far less than his co-star Robert Redford, for whom Sundance became a beguiling but misleading Camelot.
Newman tried to make up for the sugar with such sour roles as the Judge in John Huston's The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, the foulmouthed hockey player in Slap Shot and, for Robert Altman, the lead in Buffalo Bill and the Indians. Delivered as a satire on America's bicentenary, this was one of the great failures of Newman's career. In truth, he was born to play flakes and conmen: they released his own mixed feelings about himself.
In the 80s, Newman began to talk of retiring, but did not quite stop, and in later years - with iron gray hair, and a hard, chiseled face in which one may see his Hungarian origins - Newman began his old-timers, among them Nobody's Fool, Twilight, Road to Perdition, and Empire Falls.
Hollywood does not really approve of, or know how to treat old people, but that was no surprise to Newman. Just a year younger than Marlon Brando and several years older than James Dean, Newman only came into pictures after they had given up the ghost - in fact or in spirit. Yet he made a career out of defying his own stardom. He made enough films as a weak man struggling to be brave - The Hustler, The Verdict, Twilight - and enough about a fraud wondering whether to be honest (Buffalo Bill and the Indians) to repay close attention. He outlived his beauty, his uneasiness and his bright blue eyes, and he came into that mixture of elegy and remorse that is the lot of most old men - if they are lucky. He was absurdly popular as a young man, and then waited or endured until that had worn off, and he could face all the abiding tests of honesty without glamour or celebrity to divert him.
