PAUL NEWMAN not only outlasted virtually all of the major stars who re-invented screen acting after World War II – Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Burt Lancaster – but was bigger than any of them.
The impossibly handsome, blue-eyed icon – who played anti-heroes, lovable rogues and regretful senior citizens with equal aplomb – was on the list of top 10 ticket sellers 14 times between 1963 and 1986, topping the list in 1969 and 1970.
He received nine Oscar nominations, winning Best Actor for reprising his “Hustler” role as Fast Eddie Felson in “The Color of Money” (1987), a year after winning a lifetime-achievement Oscar.
He also received the Academy’s humanitarian award in 1994 for his charitable ventures.
Newman had a solid résumé as a Broadway and TV actor but his screen career began inauspiciously.
He tested to play Dean’s brother in “East of Eden,” but director Elia Kazan turned him down – his intensity was too similar to Dean’s – and Warner Bros. instead assigned Newman to “The Silver Chalice” (1954) playing a Greek who designs the framework for the cup used at the Last Supper.
“That I survived it was extraordinary good fortune,” said Newman. “I was wearing this tiny little Greek cocktail dress . . . It was the worst film made in the 1950s. My first review said that ‘Mr. Newman delivers his lines with the emotional fervor of a train conductor.’ ”
“The Left Handed Gun,” a sexually ambiguous portrait of Billy the Kid written by Gore Vidal, didn’t fare much better, but Newman lucked out when Dean died in a car crash and he inherited what became his breakthrough role. Newman’s endearing performance as Rocky Graziano in the biographical film “Somebody Up There Likes Me” (1956) finally made him a star. Newman solidified his standing in a string of films with his second wife, Joanne Woodward, beginning with “The Long Hot Summer” (1958).
He received recognition as a serious actor – and his first Best Actor nomination – for “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1959) with Elizabeth Taylor. His sensitive performance as an impotent alcoholic mourning the death of a football buddy suggested much more than could be spelled out on the screen because of censorship.
Like few stars before or since, the camera loved Newman, with his piercing blue eyes, athlete’s physique and classical features. He was able to redefine male sexuality for Hollywood by tempering the persona of a brooding anti-hero with a captivating, self-deprecating sense of humor.
Like the greatest stars of Hollywood’s Golden Era, Newman rarely, if ever, entirely disappeared into a role. His best movies use his enormous star presence and his gifts as an actor, sometimes one of great subtlety, to illuminate a gallery of characters.
Thus he was able to go from the impotent (and probably closeted) football player in “Roof” to the rebellious prisoner of “Cool Hand Luke,” to the potty-mouthed hockey coach in “Slap Shot,” one of his few successful forays into outright comedy.
Newman scored his biggest hit when he teamed with Robert Redford in the revisionist western classic “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1968). Their light-hearted chemistry was so beguiling to audiences that they reunited to play con artists in “The Sting,” which won the Best Picture Oscar for 1973, and were planning to shoot another movie together last year when Newman’s health faltered.
As he entered his 70s, Newman offered several memorable summing-up performances that landed him two more Oscar nominations.
He was touching as a ne’er-do-well forced to confront his long-forgotten son in “Nobody’s Fool” (1994) and a ’30s gangster who orders the execution of his adopted son in his final on-screen performance, “The Road to Perdition” (2002).
Newman, who had tapped into his lifelong interest in auto racing with his role as a racer in “Winning” (1969) finished up his movie career by lending his voice to the animated feature “Cars” (2006).
“I started my career giving a clinic in bad acting in the film ‘The Silver Chalice’ and now I’m playing a crusty old man who’s an animated automobile,” he joked with the self-deprecating wit that informed many of his screen appearances. “That’s a career arc for you, isn’t it?”