The Weirdness of Paul Newman

The LRB Podcast

London Review of Books

Society & Culture

4.4 • 581 Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2023

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The screen legend and salad dressing philanthropist Paul Newman recorded hundreds of personal interviews before destroying the tapes. The surviving transcripts, worked into a recent memoir and documentary series, reveal a more complex Newman than his on-screen laconicism would suggest. Bee Wilson speaks to Malin Hay about Newman’s mystique – his passivity, his domesticity and his irresistible blue eyes. Find Bee's article and further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/paulnewmanpod Sign up to our Close Readings podcast subscription: https://lrb.me/closereadingspod Get in touch with the podcasts team: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the LRB podcast. I'm Malin Hay.
0:15.9	My guest this week is B Wilson, a frequent contributor to the LRB, whose subjects have included curry, a talking
0:22.3	mongous, palm oil, poison pen letters, and Maria Montessori. Today, though, we'll be talking about
0:28.3	Paul Newman. Bee has written a piece in the latest issue about the actor, director, racing car
0:33.7	driver and salad dressing philanthropist, who starred in Cool Hand Luke,
0:42.0	Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Hustler, as well as in ten films with his wife,
0:43.6	the actress Joanne Woodward.
0:49.1	B's piece is a review of a new biography, Paul Newman, The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man,
0:56.1	edited by David Rosenthal, as well as The Last Movie stars, a six-part documentary series directed by Ethan Hawke, which examines Newman and Woodward's relationship. So, B, thank you so much for joining
1:01.8	me today. It's a pleasure. Thank you. I'll just start by asking you about this book title,
1:07.9	The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man. Do you think that's a fair assessment of
1:12.1	Paul Newman's life? What was ordinary about him and what was extraordinary about his life?
1:17.2	In a way, I think the thing about that title is it's one of the most cliched titles I can
1:23.2	imagine for someone's memoir, and actually the memoir is far more interesting than you'd imagine
1:28.1	from that. But in a way, yes, it completely fits in that, I mean, you look up Paul Newman on IMDB,
1:36.1	he starred in or was appearing as voiceover in 85 movies. He also directed, I think, maybe six.
1:46.1	I think it describes him something like screen legend
1:48.3	and owner of the most famous pair of blue eyes in Hollywood or in film history.
1:55.2	That's pretty extraordinary.
1:57.6	And he also produced some films.
1:59.3	And he was a car racer and a salad dressing entrepreneur i mean you almost can't get more extraordinary or strange than that and yet he was brought up in the suburbs in ohio and could have just gone into the family business running his father's
2:18.3	sporting goods store. So yeah, the title, I think maybe they could have tried a bit harder
	...

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