Paul Newman's Coming of Age

This week will feature a TV feast of his movies, showing the seriously sexy young stud of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," "The Long Hot Summer," "The Hustler," "Hud," "Sweet Bird of Youth" and others that brought Paul Newman fame in his thirties.

But almost alone among superstars of our time (Clint Eastwood is the only other who comes to mind), Newman eased gracefully into a partnership with Robert Redford in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Sting" in his forties, followed by "Fort Apache the Bronx," "The Verdict," and "Absence of Malice" after 50, capped with his only Oscar for reprising Fast Eddie in "The Color of Money" at 61.

His on-screen persona as a cocky risk-taker was deepening over those years into a knowing, damaged yet decent-at-heart older man, but it was only after he turned 70 that, for my taste, Paul Newman did the vintage acting of his life in a serious of movies written by arguably the best American novelist of our time, Richard Russo.

In the 1994 "Nobody's Fool," Newman was paired with Jessica Tandy in her last picture as a denizen of one of Russo's falling-apart old New England mill towns, as the irresistible reprobate Sully, finding some semblance of redemption (but not that much) for a totally selfish life.

This was followed by Russo's stylish geezer noir, "Twilight," a made-for-HBO film in which Newman played an elderly PI with his peers James Garner and Gene Hackman, still spry enough to bed Susan Sarandon and, more age-appropriately, Stockard Channing.

All this was only prelude to Newman's bringing to life, again for HBO, in the four-hour film of "Empire Falls," Russo's epic novel, Max Roby, a hyperactive food-in-his-beard, scheming, swindling father and grandfather who lights up the TV screen, more a creation than a performance.

In between, Newman did a turn as an imprisoned bank robber who fakes a stroke and sits frozen in a wheel chair for much of the mediocre "Where the Money Is," not moving a muscle even when Linda Fiorentino gives him a lap dance. Now that's what AARP members would call an award-winning performance.

Young or old, Paul Newman was a star for half a century by the classic definition that, when he was on the screen, it was hard to see anybody else. New generations will keep discovering the man who invented cool before most of us knew that the condition had a name.

Exits: Paul Newman and Robert Redford

“Certain friendships,” Robert Redford once said about Paul Newman, “are too good and too strong to talk about.” This month, Redford broke his silence to say that the final movie they planned to make together was not to be:

"It's not happening, sadly. Paul and I were planning to do a film version of Bill Bryson's wonderful book ‘A Walk In The Woods.’

"I got the rights to the movie four years ago, and we couldn't decide if we were too old to do it. Then we decided, 'Let's go for it.'

"But time passed, and Paul's been getting old fast. I think things deteriorated for him. Finally, two months ago he called and said, 'I gotta retire.' The picture was written and everything. It breaks my heart."

Like their other work together, it would have been about the friendship of men, two old college buddies walking the Appalachian trail from Georgia to Maine.

Toward the end of life, biology is destiny. A British actor of the past century, A. E. Matthews, who worked to the age of 90, explained, “I get up every morning, look at the obituaries in the Times and, if my name isn’t there, get dressed and go to work.”

But last spring, the 82-year-old Newman told an interviewer, "I’m not able to work at the level I would want to. You start to lose your memory, you start to lose your confidence, you start to lose your invention. So I think that's pretty much a closed book for me."

Redford at 71 has a new picture coming out next month, “Lions for Lambs,” which he directed and plays a leading role in. More polemical than his previous work, Redford hopes the movie will encourage young people “to take command of their voice" in American politics.

Over long careers, Newman and Redford personified an alternative American manhood to the full-throttle macho of John Wayne and the young Clint Eastwood--a more complex mix of strength, wit and sensitivity. (Newman turned down "Dirty Harry.")

Off-screen, they lived away from Hollywood--Newman in Connecticut, Redford in Utah--lives of social responsibility rather than movie-star celebrity.

In 1968, my path crossed Newman’s as we both stepped out of our working lives to oppose the war in Vietnam. When I invited him to lunch with a dozen magazine editors, he told me the prospect of talking about himself was so unnerving he had stayed too long in a steam bath to calm down. Sitting next to him, I had to titrate the balance of beer and ice water to keep him relaxed and hydrated as he eloquently described his feelings about the war.

In the early 1980s, our mutual friend A. E. Hotchner wrote about their light-hearted efforts to bottle and sell Newman's salad dressing. Since then, a line of Newman's Own products has earned $200 million for charity.

Meanwhile, Redford was creating a mecca for independent film makers in Sundance, Utah and giving their work recognition and commercial opportunities.

As Newman exits from the public stage and Redford keeps working for the public good, those repeated showings of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" on TV are reminders of how much actors can accomplish in what we call real life.