Paul Leonard Newman
Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 — September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, and auto racing enthusiast. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for his performance in the 1986 Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money and eight other nominations three Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy award, and many honorary awards. He also won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open wheel IndyCar racing.
Newman was a co-founder of Newman’s Own, a food company from which Newman donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of October 2008, these donations had exceeded US $250 million.
Newman was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland), the son of Theresa (née Fetzer or Fetsko; Slovak: Terézia Fecková)and Arthur Samuel Newman, who ran a profitable sporting goods store. Newman’s father was Jewish, the son of immigrants from Poland and Hungary;Newman’s mother, who practiced Christian Science, was born to a Slovak Roman Catholic family at Ptičie (formerly Pticsie) in the former Austria–Hungary (now in Slovakia). Newman had no religion as an adult, but described himself as “a Jew”, stating that “it’s more of a challenge”. Newman’s mother worked in his father’s store, while raising Paul and his brother, Arthur, who later became a producer and production manager.
Newman showed an early interest in the theater, which his mother encouraged. At the age of seven, he made his acting debut, playing the court jester in a school production of Robin Hood. 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. Newman enrolled in the Navy V-12 program at Ohio University, hoping to be accepted for pilot training, but was dropped when it was discovered he was color blind. He was sent instead to boot camp and then received further training as a radioman and gunner. Qualifying as a rear-seat radioman and gunner in torpedo bombers, in 1944, Aviation Radioman Third Class Newman was sent to Barber’s Point, Hawaii. He was subsequently assigned to Pacific-based replacement torpedo squadrons (VT-98, VT-99, and VT-100). These torpedo squadrons were responsible primarily for training replacement pilots and combat air crewmen, placing particular importance on carrier landings.
He later flew from aircraft carriers as a turret gunner in an Avenger torpedo bomber. As a radioman-gunner, he served aboard the USS Bunker Hill during the Battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945. He was ordered to the ship with a draft of replacements shortly before the Okinawa campaign, but by a fluke of war, was held back because his pilot had an ear infection. The rest of his detail died.
After the war, he completed his degree at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, graduating in 1949. Newman later studied Drama at Yale University, graduating in 1954, and later studying under Lee Strasberg at the Actors’ Studio in New York City.
Oscar Levant wrote that Newman initially was hesitant to leave New York for Hollywood: “Too close to the cake,” he reported him saying, “Also, no place to study.”
The Newmans lived away from the Hollywood environment, making their home in Westport, Connecticut. Paul Newman was well known for his devotion to his wife and family. When asked about infidelity, he famously quipped, “Why go out for hamburger when you have steak at home?”
Newman was scheduled to make his professional stage directing debut with the Westport Country Playhouse’s 2008 production of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, but he stepped down on May 23, 2008, citing health issues.
In June 2008 it was widely reported that Newman, a former chain smoker, had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was receiving treatment at Sloan-Kettering hospital in New York City. Photographs taken of Newman in May and June showed him looking gaunt.Writer A.E. Hotchner, who partnered with Newman to start the Newman’s Own company in the 1980s, told the Associated Press that Newman told him about the disease about eighteen months prior to the interview. Newman’s spokesman told the press that the star was “doing nicely,” but neither confirmed nor denied that he had cancer. In August, after reportedly finishing chemotherapy, Newman told his family he wished to die at home. He died on September 26, 2008, aged 83, surrounded by his family and close friends. His remains were subsequently cremated after a private funeral service near his home in Westport.
