Age, Biography, and Wiki
Paul Leonard Newman was born on January 26, 1925, in Shaker Heights, Ohio. He passed away on September 26, 2008, at the age of 83. Newman was renowned for his roles in films like "Cool Hand Luke," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," and "The Color of Money," for which he won an Academy Award. Throughout his career, Newman was also a successful race car driver and a dedicated philanthropist, founding organizations like Newman's Own and the SeriousFun Children's Network.
| Occupation | Civil Rights Activists |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 26 January 1925 |
| Age | 100 Years |
| Birth Place | Cleveland Heights, Ohio, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Aquarius |
| Country | U.S |
| Date of death | 26 September, 2008 |
| Died Place | Westport, Connecticut, U.S. |
Height, Weight & Measurements
Although specific details about Paul Newman's height and weight are not widely documented, he was known for his charming on-screen presence and distinctive blue eyes.
In 1967, he starred in Martin Ritt's Hombre. The film received many good reviews. Also that year, he starred in Stuart Rosenberg's Cool Hand Luke. Newman was nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards. In 2005, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, considering it "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". Critic Roger Ebert wrote, "Luke is the first Newman character to understand himself well enough to tell us to shove off. He's through risking his neck to make us happy. With this film, Newman completes a cycle of five films over six years, and together they have something to say about the current status of heroism".
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Dating & Relationship Status
Newman was married twice. His first marriage was to Jackie Witte from 1949 to 1958. He then married Joanne Woodward in 1958, with whom he remained until his death in 2008. They had three daughters together and also raised Newman's three children from his previous marriage.
Newman won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing. He co-founded Newman's Own, a food company that donated all posttax profits and royalties to charity. As of May 2021, these donations totaled over US$570 million. Newman continued to found charitable organizations such as the SeriousFun Children's Network in 1988 and the Safe Water Network in 2006. Newman was married twice and fathered six children. He was the husband of the actress Joanne Woodward.
After the war, Newman completed a Bachelor of Arts in drama and economics at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, in 1949. Shortly after earning his degree, he joined summer stock companies, including the Belfry Players in Wisconsin and the Woodstock Players in Woodstock, Illinois. He toured with them for three months and developed his talents. He later attended the Yale School of Drama for one year before moving to New York City to study under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Oscar Levant wrote that Newman initially was hesitant to leave New York for Hollywood, and that Newman had said, "Too close to the cake. Also, no place to study." Newman arrived in New York City in 1951 with his first wife Jackie Witte, taking up residence in the St. George section of Staten Island.
In 1958, he starred in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opposite Elizabeth Taylor. The film was a box-office smash, and Newman garnered his first Academy Award nomination. Also in 1958, Newman starred in The Long, Hot Summer with his future wife, Joanne Woodward, with whom he reconnected on the set in 1957 (they had first met in 1953). He won Best Actor at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival for this film. He and Woodward also appeared on screen earlier in 1958 in the Playhouse 90 television play The 80 Yard Run. The couple would go on to make a total of 16 films together.
Also in 1987, Newman directed a screen version of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie starring his wife, Joanne Woodward, John Malkovich, and Karen Allen. The film was in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Variety called it "a reverent record" of the Williams play "one watches with a kind of distant dreaminess rather than an intense emotional involvement", and cited the "brilliant performances ... well defined by Newman's direction".
Although he continued to provide voice work for movies, Newman's last live-action appearance was in the 2005 HBO mini-series Empire Falls (based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Richard Russo), in which he played the dissolute father of the protagonist, Miles Roby, and for which he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.
Newman was married twice. His first marriage was to Jackie Witte from 1949 to 1958. They had a son, Scott (1950–1978), and two daughters, Susan (born 1953) and Stephanie Kendall (born 1954). Scott, who appeared in films including The Towering Inferno (1974), Breakheart Pass (1975), and Fraternity Row (1977) died in November 1978 from a drug overdose. Newman started the Scott Newman Center for drug abuse prevention in memory of his son. Susan is a documentary filmmaker and philanthropist, and has Broadway and screen credits, including a starring role as one of four Beatles fans in I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), and also a small role opposite her father in Slap Shot. She also received an Emmy nomination as co-producer of his telefilm, The Shadow Box.
Newman met actress Joanne Woodward in 1953, on the production of Picnic on Broadway. It was Newman's debut; Woodward was an understudy. Shortly after filming The Long, Hot Summer in 1957, he divorced Witte to marry Woodward. The Newmans moved to East 11th Street in Manhattan, before buying a home and raising their family in Westport, Connecticut. They were one of the first Hollywood movie star couples to choose to raise their families outside California. They remained married for 50 years until his death in 2008. Woodward has said "He's very good looking and very sexy and all of those things, but all of that goes out the window and what is finally left is, if you can make somebody laugh... And he sure does keep me laughing." Newman has attributed their relationship success to "some combination of lust and respect and patience. And determination."
They had three daughters: Elinor "Nell" Teresa (b. 1959), Melissa "Lissy" Stewart (b. 1961), and Claire "Clea" Olivia (b. 1965). Newman was well known for his devotion to his wife and family. When once asked about his reputation for fidelity, he famously quipped, "Why go out for a hamburger when you have steak at home?" He also said that he never met anyone who had as much to lose as he did. In his profile on 60 Minutes, he admitted he once left Woodward after a fight, walked around the outside of the house, knocked on the front door and explained to Joanne he had nowhere to go. Newman directed Nell alongside her mother in the films Rachel, Rachel and The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. Newman and Woodward also acted as mentors to Allison Janney. They met her while she was a freshman at Kenyon College during a play Newman was directing. Film critic Shawn Levy, in his biography Paul Newman: A Life (2009), alleged that Newman had an affair in the late 1960s with divorcée Nancy Bacon, a Hollywood journalist, that lasted one and a half years. In an article in the Irish Independent, which stated also that Levy's claims "caused outrage" and were widely considered "an attempt to sully the image of a revered cinematic legend and committed philanthropist", the affair was reportedly denied by a friend of Newman's wife, Joanne, who said she was upset by the claim. Levy criticised the tabloid newspaper, the New York Post, which had a long-standing feud with Newman, for focusing on and emphasizing this aspect of his biography.
In 1983, Newman became a major donor for The Mirror Theater Ltd, alongside Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino, matching a grant from Laurance Rockefeller. Newman was inspired to invest by his connection with Lee Strasberg, as Lee's then daughter-in-law Sabra Jones was the founder and producing artistic director of The Mirror. Paul Newman remained a friend of the company until his death and discussed at numerous times possible productions in which he could star with his wife, Joanne Woodward. In June 1999, Newman donated $250,000 to Catholic Relief Services to aid refugees in Kosovo.
Newman was a lifelong Democrat, although he endorsed and voted for Independent candidate John B. Anderson in 1980, who was a liberal Republican, instead of the incumbent Democratic president, Jimmy Carter. For Newman's support of Eugene McCarthy in 1968 (and effective use of television commercials in California) and his opposition to the Vietnam War, Newman was placed nineteenth on Richard Nixon's enemies list, which Newman claimed was his greatest accomplishment. In 1964, he and his wife, Joanne Woodward, supported Lyndon B. Johnson for president. During the 1968 general election, Newman supported Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey and appeared in a pre-election night telethon for him. He was also described as a "vocal supporter" of gay rights and same-sex marriage.
Newman linked with the so-called Malibu Mafia to promote progressive issues in politics. This was a group of wealthy men in the Greater Los Angeles area who met to discuss politics. Backed by them, Newman and his wife went to Washington in 1976 to speak in favor of breaking up Big Oil into separate components. Newman supported their 1980s effort to establish a bilateral Nuclear Freeze to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the US and the Soviet Union. He said he would stand up for Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential election as long as there was cold Budweiser and Nuclear Freeze involved.
In 1992, Newman and his wife, Joanne Woodward, were recipients of Kennedy Center Honors. In 1994, the couple received the Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, an award given annually by Jefferson Awards. Newman won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for The Long, Hot Summer and the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival for Nobody's Fool.
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| Husband | Jackie Witte (m. 1949-1958) Joanne Woodward (m. 1958) |
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Net Worth and Salary
At the time of his death, Paul Newman's net worth was estimated at around $80 million. However, his estate was valued at over $600 million, largely due to the success of his business ventures, including Newman's Own, which donates its profits to charity.
In 1970, Newman produced and co-starred with Woodward in Stuart Rosenberg's WUSA, based on Robert Stone's novel A Hall of Mirrors. Newman and his partner John Foreman purchased the rights for $50,000. The film flopped both commercially and critically. However, Newman later said that it is "the most significant film I've ever made and the best". In 1971, Newman directed and starred in Sometimes a Great Notion based on Ken Kesey's novel. Although several directors were considered, it was announced that Newman would direct. However, Richard A. Colla was signed to direct the film in May 1970. Five weeks after principal photography began, Colla left the project due to "artistic differences over photographic concept", as well as a required throat operation. At the same time, Newman broke his ankle and the production shut down on July 29. As co-executive producer, Newman considered replacing Colla with George Roy Hill, but Hill declined the offer, so when filming resumed two weeks later, Newman was directing. Also that year, Newman hosted David Winters' made-for-TV documentary Once Upon a Wheel. Winters said that at the time Newman had publicly stated he didn't want to do television and turned it down for this reason until he pitched his vision to him. Newman, a race car enthusiast, said, "The show gives me a chance to get close to a sport I'm crazy about, I love to test a car on my own, to see what I can do, but racing with 25 other guys is a whole different thing. There are so many variable, the skill demanded is tremendous." Bob Bondurant, Newman's driving instructor who appears in the film, explained that Once Upon a Wheel was a passion project for Newman "because he wanted to learn how to drive", and that he refused projects that would have paid him a much larger salary. The project marked Newman's return to television after a decade long absence, and his first time as the lead of a program. During post-production, Winters said that Newman, who liked what he saw, gave him the idea to add some footage to sell it as a theatrical film worldwide. Upon its release, the documentary generally received good reviews for its directing, pace, photography, music, and human interest stories.
Career, Business, and Investments
Newman's career spanned over six decades, with notable roles in films like "The Hustler," "Hud," and "Nobody's Fool." He was also a successful race car driver, winning several championships. His business ventures included the establishment of Newman's Own, a food product company that has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charity since its inception.
In addition to his acting and racing pursuits, Newman was a dedicated philanthropist. He founded the SeriousFun Children's Network (previously known as The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp) and supported various charitable causes throughout his life.
Born in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and raised in Shaker Heights, the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, Newman showed an interest in theater as a child and at age 10 performed in a stage production of Saint George and the Dragon at the Cleveland Play House. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in drama and economics from Kenyon College in 1949. After touring with several summer stock companies including the Belfry Players, Newman attended the Yale School of Drama for a year before studying at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg. His first starring Broadway role was in William Inge's Picnic in 1953.
In 1969, Newman co-starred with Woodward in James Goldstone's car racing film Winning. It was one of the top-grossing film that year in the US reaching the thirteenth position and grossed $14,644,335.
Finally that year, along with Barbra Streisand and Sidney Poitier, Newman formed First Artists Production Company so actors could secure properties and develop movie projects for themselves.
In January 1995, Newman was the chief investor of a group, including the writer E.L. Doctorow and the editor Victor Navasky, that bought the progressive-left wing periodical The Nation. Newman was an occasional writer for the publication. He endorsed Green Party candidate Ralph Nader in the 2000 presidential election. He endorsed Howard Dean's presidential campaign in 2004.
During the 1976 auto racing season, Newman became interested in forming a professional auto racing team and contacted Bill Freeman, who introduced Newman to professional auto racing management, and their company specialized in Can-Am, Indy Cars, and other high-performance racing automobiles. The team was based in Santa Barbara, California, and commuted to Willow Springs International Motorsports Park for many of its testing sessions.
(key) ( Bold – Pole position awarded by qualifying time. Italics – Pole position earned by points standings or practice time. * – Most laps led. )
Social Network
During his lifetime, Newman was not known for having a significant presence on social media platforms. However, his legacy continues to inspire and influence contemporary actors and philanthropists.
In February 1954, Newman appeared in a screen test with James Dean, directed by Gjon Mili, for East of Eden (1955). Newman was tested for the role of Aron Trask, Dean for the role of Aron's twin brother Cal. Dean won his part, but Newman lost out to Richard Davalos. That same year, as a last-minute replacement for Dean, he co-starred with Eva Marie Saint and Frank Sinatra in a live, color television broadcast of Our Town, which was a musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder's stage play. After Dean's death, Newman replaced Dean in the role of a boxer in a television adaptation of Hemingway's story "The Battler", written by A. E. Hotchner, that was broadcast live on October 18, 1955. That performance led to his breakthrough role as Rocky Graziano in the film Somebody Up There Likes Me in 1956. The Dean connection had additional resonance. Newman was cast as Billy the Kid in The Left Handed Gun, which was a role originally earmarked for Dean. Additionally, Dean was originally cast to play the role of Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me; however, with his death, Newman got the role.
Newman's first film for Hollywood was The Silver Chalice (1954), co-starring Italian actress Pier Angeli. The film was a box-office failure, and the actor would later acknowledge his disdain for it. In 1956, Newman garnered much attention and acclaim for the role of Rocky Graziano in Robert Wise's biographical film Somebody Up There Likes Me. That year, he also played the lead in Arnold Laven's The Rack. In 1957, Newman worked again with director Wise in Until They Sail. Also that year, he acted in Michael Curtiz's The Helen Morgan Story.
In 1961, he starred in Robert Rossen's The Hustler. The film, which was based on a book of the same name by Walter Tevis, tells the story of small-time pool hustler "Fast Eddie" Felson (Newman), who challenges a legendary pool player (Jackie Gleason). The film was a critical and financial hit. In the best actor category Newman won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and the Argentinian Film Festival, at the Academy Awards he was nominated. Stanley Kauffmann, writing for The New Republic, praised the principal cast, calling Newman "first-rate".
In 1968, Newman directed Rachel, Rachel starring Woodward and based on Margaret Laurence's A Jest of God. According to Woodward, Newman didn't like the book and had no intention of directing the film. He changed his mind when Woodward couldn't find any other director. To do the project, the pair accepted a deferred payment. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Picture and won two Golden Globes including Best Director.
Education
Newman attended Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and later graduated from the Yale School of Drama. He also studied at Ohio University for a brief period.
In summary, Paul Newman's life was marked by his remarkable achievements in film, philanthropy, and business, leaving behind a legacy that continues to inspire and support charitable causes.
Newman showed an early interest in the theater; his first role was at the age of seven, playing the court jester in a school production of Robin Hood. At age 10, Newman performed at the Cleveland Play House in a production of Saint George and the Dragon, and acted in their Curtain Pullers children's theater program. Graduating from Shaker Heights High School in 1943, he briefly attended Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, where he was initiated into the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity.
Newman served in the United States Navy in World War II, in the Pacific theater. He enrolled in the Navy V-12 pilot training program at Yale University, but was dropped when his colorblindness was diagnosed. He later recounted that it was "a bit more complicated" than colorblindness. He also "couldn't do the mathematical things that being a pilot requires". A subsequent test found that he was not colorblind. Boot camp followed, with training as a radioman and rear gunner. He performed poorly as a gunner, and a friend from the service recounted in Newman's posthumous memoir that his friends lied to Navy trainers so he could pass.
Qualifying in torpedo bombers in 1944, Aviation Radioman Third Class Newman was sent to Barbers Point, Hawaii. He was assigned to Pacific-based replacement torpedo squadrons VT-98, VT-99, and VT-100, responsible primarily for training replacement combat pilots and aircrewmen, with special emphasis on carrier landings. He later flew as a turret gunner in an Avenger torpedo bomber. As a radioman-gunner, his unit was assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) with other replacements shortly before the Battle of Okinawa in spring 1945. The pilot of his aircraft had an earache and was grounded, as was his crew, including Newman. The rest of their squadron flew to the Bunker Hill. Days later, a kamikaze attack on the vessel killed several hundred crewmen and airmen, including other members of his unit.
Even though Newman followed the pluralistic Unitarian Universalism movement as an adult, he called himself a Jew, "because it's more of a challenge". When he applied to Kenyon College after the Navy he gave his religion as "Christian Scientist", but apart from that he did not deny that he was Jewish. He recounted in his posthumous memoirs having a "strong sense of otherness" as a youth because he was half-Jewish. His heritage "got in the way of my sitting at the 'A' table, which was important to me," but he received no instruction on his Jewish heritage. He only knew that "if you were Jewish, some avenues were shut to you," and that "hurt me and my brother a great deal." Newman deflected the pain with humor, sometimes doing Yiddish voices "for laughs." He was excluded from a high school fraternity because he was Jewish, and got into a "bloody fight" in the Navy because a sailor used an anti-Semitic slur. A family friend recounted that the "stigma" of being Jewish was strong in Shaker Heights at the time. "Paul didn't seem Jewish at all, but he paid a price, he had a rough time."
One beneficiary of his philanthropy is the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a residential summer camp for seriously ill children located in Ashford, Connecticut, which Newman co-founded in 1988. It is named after the gang in his film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and the real-life, historic Hole-in-the-Wall outlaw hangout in the mountains of northern Wyoming. Newman's college fraternity, Phi Kappa Tau, adopted his Connecticut Hole in the Wall camp as their "national philanthropy" in 1995. The original camp has expanded to become several Hole in the Wall Camps in the U.S., Ireland, France, and Israel. In 1988, Newman founded the SeriousFun Children's Network, a global family of summer camps and programs for children with serious illnesses. In 2006, Newman also co-founded Safe Water Network with John Whitehead, former chairman of Goldman Sachs, and Josh Weston, former chairman of ADP, to improve access to safe water to underserved communities around the world.
On June 1, 2007, Kenyon College announced that Newman had donated $10 million to the school to establish a scholarship fund as part of the college's $230 million fund-raising campaign. Newman and Woodward were honorary co-chairs of a previous campaign.
Newman was an auto racing enthusiast and first became interested in motorsports ("the first thing that I ever found I had any grace in") while training at the Watkins Glen Racing School for the filming of Winning, a 1969 film. According to his instructor Bob Bondurant, his love and passion for racing, Newman agreed in 1971 to star in and to host television special Once Upon a Wheel, on the history of auto racing. Newman's first professional event as a racer was in 1972 at Thompson International Speedway, quietly entered as "P. L. Newman", by which he continued to be known in the racing community.
From the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, he drove for the Bob Sharp Racing team, racing mainly Datsuns (later rebranded as Nissans) in the Trans-Am Series. He became closely associated with the brand during the 1980s, even appearing in commercials for the brand in Japan and having a special edition of the Nissan Skyline named after him. At the age of 70 years and eight days, Newman became the oldest driver to date to be part of a winning team in a major sanctioned race, winning in his class at the 1995 24 Hours of Daytona. Among his last major races were the Baja 1000 in 2004 and the 24 Hours of Daytona once again in 2005.
In 1968, Newman was named Man of the Year by Harvard University's performance group, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. The 2008 edition of Sport Movies & TV – Milano International FICTS Fest was dedicated to his memory. In 2015, the U.S. Postal Service issued a 'forever stamp' commemorating Newman, which went on sale on September 18, 2015. It features a 1980 photograph of Newman by photographer Steve Schapiro, accompanied by text that reads: 'Actor/Philanthropist'.
Since the 1970s, Newman Day is an event celebrated at Kenyon College, Bates College, Princeton University, and some other American colleges. On Newman Day, students try to drink 24 beers in 24 hours, based on a quote attributed to Newman about there being 24 beers in a case, and 24 hours in a day, and that this is surely not a mere coincidence. In 2004, Newman requested that Princeton University disassociate the event from his name, due to the fact that he did not endorse the behavior. He cited his creation in 1980 of the Scott Newman Center, "dedicated to the prevention of substance abuse through education". Princeton disavowed any responsibility for the event, responding that Newman Day is not sponsored, endorsed, or encouraged by the university itself and is solely an unofficial event among students.
On October 26, 2017, Paul Newman's Rolex Daytona wristwatch was auctioned in New York by Phillips Auctions for $17.5 million, making it one of the most expensive wristwatches ever sold at an auction. On September 3, 2022, Lime Rock Park, a road course in Lakeville, Connecticut, named the straight of the circuit past the Esses before The Uphill the Paul Newman Straight during the Historic Festival 40.
