Hot and Covered...Remembering Paul Newman, Humanitarian and Actor

The Method

Actor Paul Newman died Friday, Sept. 26, at 83, after a long battle with cancer

In the decade after World War II, three soulful studs went from Broadway to Hollywood. Marlon Brando, James Dean and Paul Newman became movie stars in the 50s and helped revolutionize the craft. Of these three, way back then, Newman seemed the least unique. He wasn't Brando, though he had studied at the Actors Studio and starred on Broadway in a Tennessee Williams play. He wasn't Dean, though he nearly played Dean's brother in Elia Kazan's East of Eden.

But unlike the other two, Newman stuck it out. Instead of leading his talent in weird and wayward directions, like Brando, or smashing it to pieces on a California highway at 24, like Dean, he just kept getting better, more comfortable in his movie skin, more proficient at suggesting worlds of flinty pleasure or sour disillusion with a smile or a squint. And of the three, he was the most conventionally gorgeous. How many teenage girls had that famous poster of Newman — his face in monochrome, his eyes a startling sky blue — tacked to their bedroom walls?

Then Newman did something really remarkable: he sustained that early promise for five decades. He grew old and gray but not fat and cranky; he was recognizably, at any moment in his film career, Paul Newman. He did cool things well, like racing cars, and made doing good seem cool, with the Newman's Own brand of foods that has donated about $250 million to charity. His politics remained responsibly liberal; his public voice retained its wit and equanimity. He deprived the tabloids of the scandal headlines they love: no rap sheet, no rehab stints, no notorious affairs. And no messy divorce; indeed, no divorce at all, once he became a public figure. He married Joanne Woodward (his second wife) in 1958; this past January they celebrated their golden wedding anniversary. He was the movie star who could have been your prized next-door neighbor. To a great extent, the image had to be the man. That's why Newman, who died Friday at 83 after a long battle with cancer, was not just the iconic movie star of his age — he was one of the last public figures to lead an exemplary life.

Mark Kauffman / Time Life Pictures / Getty