Paul Newman (1)Critiques

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man by Paul Newman is a 2022 Knopf publication.

This a great way to present a memoir. I thoroughly enjoyed the various excerpts from people who knew Paul Newman personally, and those who knew him mainly from a professional standpoint, while Paul fills in all the rest. This creates more of a well-rounded view of him as a person, and it was interesting to see it all come together so fluidly.

Paul Newman was very easy on the eyes- and yes, he knew this- but his looks seemed to make him more insecure about being taken seriously as an actor.

Now that I’ve learned a bit more about him, I see that he was very different from many actors. I think. His musings show a man who thinks deeply, but didn't take himself too seriously. He was also a person who was surprisingly filled with a lot of self- doubt. He seemed almost bemused by his success as an actor, but also acknowledged that it came at a cost.

Though I didn’t agree with his spiritual philosophy, an area of his thinking I was disappointed in, to say the least- but I do find that no matter how ‘normal’ an actor - or any other entertainer, for that matter- can seem, they usually fail to realize they don’t live in the same reality as the rest of us.

Still, despite that one big difference of opinion- I thought this was a solid effort by everyone who took part in it. The latter years of Paul’s life are not part of this memoir-for reasons that will be explained if you read the book- which was too bad, as he accomplished a great deal in his final years.

Still, I found the memoir interesting, and it gave me insight into Newman’s inner thoughts, his private life, his regrets, and various internal conflicts. I also enjoyed hearing about his professional relationships, and the anecdotes he shared about his movie making adventures with his fellow co-stars and friends.

Overall, this is a different approach for a memoir, but it was well-executed and quite effectively.

The format for this memoir/autobiography of one of Hollywood’s most respected actors is a bit unconventional. About 80% of the narrative are Paul Newman’s own words as recorded in transcribed interviews with one of his best friends from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. The other 20% are comments from friends and movie industry colleagues as well as relatives. Newman’s equally famous wife, Joanne Woodward, also weighs in periodically in the book as do his children from two marriages. The story of Newman’s life is extremely candid, revealing the warts as well as what was behind “those eyes.” Drinking played an important part of Newman’s life, but unlike classic alcoholics, he seemed to know exactly when he was about to go over the alcohol cliff and then defied that gravity. His work was never affected by his drinking, nor, apparently were the relationships with his family and friends. In many respects, Paul Newman was a functioning drunk. I made a list of Newman’s films that I wanted to either watch for the first time or revisit. In some cases, I couldn’t remember whether or not I had seen them. The list is about seven movies long. Having the back story on his making of these films should give me a new perspective on them as I watch them all these years later. I wouldn’t consider myself a Paul Newman fan necessarily, but I have always liked his movies, and this book made me appreciate Newman as a man and an actor much more. I highly recommend it to fans and others like myself.

Thought it was a good account of Paul's life using his and the perspectives of others close to him. He did reveal himself and its was interesting to see how he progressed through his years learning more about himself and the meaning of life. Therin lies the legacy that he has left and lessons from his life. Was he a flawed man, yes, he was but who that has walk this earth is not? Some interesting anecdotes and stories about other greats in the movie industry during the hey days.

En 2008, Paul Newman encargó a su mejor amigo que entrevistara a los actores y directores con los que trabajó, a sus amigos, a sus familiares, a su psiquiatra y a Joanne Woodward, para crear una historia oral de su vida. Después de escuchar y leer lo que otros decían de él, Newman dictó su propia versión de su vida. Ahora, estas memorias perdidas mayor parte narradas por él-, van a ser publicadas.

I read the book and I've read the reviews below, and while I can agree with some of the comments made (knahs, rosalita) I still enjoyed the book very much and found it insightful.
Certainly not one of those gushing 'showbiz' biogs where everything is wonderful and aren't we so lucky to be let in on the stars private lives.
He was a man with flaws, we all do in some way or other, at least he had the balls to admit to some of them.

Fascinating, honest look by someone who was wildly successful but who never got over his childhood wounds, no matter how much he insisted he had. Combinging his recollections with interviews from friends and family highlighted the dichtomy present throughout the book and so important to acting -- the difference between what a person feels and what others see in that person.

A very private man comes clean on his own terms. He's excessively hard on himself, but disarmingly honest and modest. A memoir to respect.

It is based on interviews with Newman's family and friends, and Newman himself during the years 1986-1991. The tapes were apparently lost/misplaced and recently rediscovered, then compiled directly into this book. Paul's voice and personality come through. He was a beautiful, talented, flawed, man. You can't put this book down.

A lot of this book was brutal - and I wish I hadn't read it. While Newman certainly had a brutal, dysfunctional childhood, he was not a decent person. While married to his first wife, he continued to impregnate her while having an affair with Joanne Woodward. Did either of them have any moral integrity on this? Did he really understand how his first wife and children from that marriage felt. He also seems to have been an alcoholic since his days in the Navy and would consume an entire case of beer at a time. He seemed to want to blame his son's addictions and death on his film career but yet he admits that he does not have any memory of the birth or bringing his son home from the hospital. He would take his son out on drinking binges and did not discourage his son from drinking. He even makes a statement that he never had a sense of his children as being people and that in was in the last few years Joanne Woodward became not a wife, not an actress, not a sex object, but a person. While his charities have helped a lot of people, this man needed help that he did not get. At least he seemed to have recognized his shortcomings in these tapes. And I guess being an actor, he could escape the person he was and become someone else.

If you are reading this thread, I'm guessing you already know who Paul Newman is (if you don't, please post and tell me!) so I won't waste words on an introduction other than to say he is considered one of the greatest movie stars of the past century, starring in a slew of iconic films. He was also renowned for a more than 50-year marriage to fellow actor and Oscar-winner Joanne Woodward. Their relationship was idealized as the perfect romantic union, but as this new compiled memoir (and the accompanying HBO Max docuseries The Last Movie Stars makes clear, neither of those accomplishments — a stellar career and a loving relationship — were enough to make Newman feel like he deserved all the acclaim.

Indeed, what stands out in my mind after reading this book is that a man casually assumed to "have it all" could have felt like such a failure to himself. It was a jarring discovery and made me feel sad that he couldn't enjoy his success as we did. Early in his career, Newman studied at The Actors Studio, renowned for producing Marlon Brando, among others, who drew upon their own memories and emotions to inform the characters they portrayed. Newman said he felt like a fraud in those classes, calling himself an "emotional Republican" unable to feel anything very deeply. It's a small consolation to read that as he grew older he did start to become more in touch with those deepest feelings, a rewarding development for himself and his friends and family.

Indeed, without that inner thaw, this book probably wouldn't exist. It initially consisted of hundreds of hours of taped interviews between a writer friend and Newman, his friends, family and colleagues. At some point a few years before his death, Newman abandoned the project but left behind all the transcripts for his daughters to do with what they wanted. They chose David Rosenthal to go through the transcripts and cobble together a somewhat unconnected series of chapters on various topics, with Newman's own words forming the backbone of the narrative interspersed with sometimes lengthy commentary from others relevant to that particular topic. The result is raw but restrained, comprehensive but leaving the reader wanting more, and ultimately an important corrective that reveals the real-life man beneath the myth and the legend.

I was hoping for an honest account of one of my favorite actor's lives and perspective, but it really doesn't live up to that expectation. The way it was written - extracted after the fact from a long series of interviews - leaves a lot of gaps and unknowns in the story. It comes across as not quite finished, needing review and revision, and perhaps reflection. Of course it was compiled after he had died, and from 20+ year old interviews and recordings, so in that way it is unique and somewhat remarkable. Formatting - which includes comments and interview extracts from those around him - is quite interesting and definitely helps to shape the story and the image it leaves. It isn't really a memoir, more of an autobiography in that it covers his life from start to finish in a more or less linear fashion. A memoir should be a story from a life, a part of it, perhaps an important part of his professional career, and it is not that. I believe that it leaves a lot of room for a definitive biography, maybe even from the same people that compiled this book.

The book started out strong when it told the story about inventing and marketing the salad dressing. The story was a nice mix of fact and humor. As the book continued it ran out of gas about midway and it was a struggle to finish.

What these two men did was commendable - I am not talking about the salad dressing - I am talking about them giving most of the profits to charity.

One thumb up.

The first part of this book is a funny and insightful look at the difficulty in trying to bring a natural product to mass market. No bottling company wants to deal with Newman since his salad dressing lacks preservatives and he insists in using fresh ingredients - the horror. The later part of the book deals with the children camps he funded with the profits from this endeavor

This is two books rolled into one. First PL and Hotch write a humorous story of their trials and tribulations starting a whimsical food empire with humble beginnings in Newman's basement, then just as you're enjoying a breezy book, BAM, they sucker punch you with a moving story of helping gravely ill children with their Hole in the Wall Gang camps.

It seems cliched to write this, but...
I laughed, I cried.

When I heard the news this morning that Paul Newman had died, I, like everyone else, immediately recalled memorable scenes from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cool Hand Luke, The Sting, and many other films he made during his Hollywood career. He had a steady gaze, a solid resonating voice, and a confident way of delivering a line — dramatic or comedic — that only truly great actors can manage. Some words are overused in this celebrity-obsessed culture. “Great”, however, is appropriate for someone like Newman.

Off-screen, Newman had genuine class and charisma, too. He was married to Joanne Woodward for 50 years, drove race-cars professionally, and created the wonderful Hole-in-the-Wall-Gang* camps for children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. It’s this latter aspect of Newman’s life (and his book) that I’d like to chat about for a few paragraphs today.

About twenty-five years ago, “Newman’s Own” salad dressings started to pop up in grocery stores. It wasn’t just another commercial product with a celebrity label. It was a fund-raising machine for dreams. For many years Newman had made his own salad dressing at home for family and friends. He even bottled it once for guests to take home from a holiday party. It was so good that his friends pleaded with him to go into business selling it. He turned them down again and again. Then the idea of charity entered the equation and he became a man on a mission.

Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good is Newman’s own account of his venture into the world of business and, more specifically, the strange world of business for no profit. He and his co-author, A. E. Hotchner, tell the often humorous stories relating to his insistence on no food preservatives, his search for the right bottle, the story behind the goofy product labels, and his iron-clad rule of wiping the financial ledgers clean every year with no money left over. He paid the bills, pocketed nothing for himself, and left everything to charities. Everything. Over $200 million dollars. Each year the company started over with a zero balance.

Once the business was established, he began creating a series of Hole-in-the-Wall-Gang camps for severely sick kids. These were children whose worlds had been taken over by clinical tests and long hospital stays. They needed fun and sunshine, too. The camps gave them a chance to be outdoors with other kids like themselves. Doctors were nearby, of course, but the hospital walls were gone. In that environment, they were no longer different. They were not “the kid with cancer”. They were kids, pure and simple. They were invited to have the kind of fun most kids take for granted. And they were free to have the time of their lives.

The “Newman’s Own” line of products now goes far beyond his original home-made salad dressing. The Hole-in-the-Wall-Gang continues to thrive, too.

Sure, I think of Paul Newman’s classic movies when I hear his name. But even more often — when I’m cooking or having a salad; every time I open a bottle of Italian dressing or a jar of spaghetti sauce — I glance at his silly label, think back a few years when I first read Shameless Exploitation, and smile for all those kids Paul Newman gave (and continues to give) happy childhood memories. That’s his legacy, too.

* The Hole-in-the-Wall-Gang is, of course, the name of Butch Cassidy’s band of outlaws depicted in Newman’s most memorable film.

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