Paul Newman: A Life with Joanne Woodward

Some nights Paul Newman walked alone through the theater district, hoping and dreaming. "It was one of the greatest moments in the American theater," he later recalled. "Not just Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, but all sorts of emerging playwrights were turning out masterpieces. It was a dynamic time, and I wanted to be a part of it. I imagined it was like Elizabethan London at the time of Shakespeare." In September 1950 Newman had a brief flirtation with a young actress, Sally Kellerman, while his wife on Staten Island tended to their kids. 

Sally's big hopes rested on her auditioning for the Actors Studio. Three days before, the actor who was to appear with her came down with the flu. In desperation, Sally asked Paul to play a scene with her from Battle of Angels, an early play by Tennessee Williams. He readily agreed, wanting to enter the august precincts of the school that virtually every actor on Broadway had praised. Watching Paul emote were other actors climbing the ladder to fame, the attendants included Karl Malden, Rod Steiger, Eli Wallach, and Kim Stanley. Sitting by himself in the corner, and looking sullen, was an enigmatic, rather intense young actor, James Dean. Although many of these actors had already gone through their initial training, they'd shown up that particular afternoon because Lee Strasberg had announced a party for them. Paul was introduced to burly Rod Steiger, who seethed with intensity both on and off the stage. He had his Hollywood debut in the 1951 film Teresa, starring Pier Angeli, in which he'd played Angeli's boyfriend's pshychotherapist. "You've got something, kid," Steiger told Newman. "You just don't know how to express it yet."

Paul would later confess to Geraldine Page, "If I had known all those talented actors were sitting out there judging me, I would have passed out." Geraldine herself was on the dawn of one of her greatest successes. She was soon to win the role of the Southern spinster in Tennessee Williams's Summer and Smoke. At the time, Paul could not have imagined that one day he'd co-star with her in both the stage and later, in 1962, the movie version of another Tennessee Williams play, Sweet Bird of Youth. In addition, Paul was awed to meet Karl Malden, who didn't need acting lessons but often dropped into the Actors Studio. Of course, Paul recognized the brilliant actress walking toward him as Kim Stanley. Instead of reaching out to shake his extended hand, she kissed him on both cheeks and congratulated him on his performance in Battle of Angels. "She was one of the most intense women I'd ever met," Newman told Marlon Brando. 

"There was a turbulence in her face, like a woman who'd known trouble all her life." Weeks later, he'd tell Shelley Winters, "I think I kind of fell in love with Kim Stanley the first day I met her. I know it sounds like I had a schoolboy crush, but she made me feel that I'd married the wrong woman. Kim seemed to be the woman I'd been waiting for all my life. In many ways, Kim seems so interesting, but the real girl of my dreams is Joanne Woodward." The Actors Studio changed Paul's life and brought him into contact with some of the stellar lights in the American theater, especially the Method Acting visionary Lee Strasberg, director Elia Kazan, and producer Cheryl Crawford. "I have nothing but sympathy for you," Kazan told Paul. "In your case, you're probably hoping for a defining role like Marlon Brando had when he played Stanley Kowalski. Year after year I see actors living the illusion and growing older as their dreams don't come true. Don't let that happen to you. Take the work you're offered. Chances are you won't be as lucky as Brando. Become a working actor instead. But who knows? Maybe I'll be the guy who directs you in your defining role." 

In later life, in reference to his successes at the Actors Studio, Paul referred to it as a case of "Monkey see, monkey do. I just sat there and watched how actors like Julie Harris and Maureen Stapleton pulled it off. I had enough sense not to open my big mouth. In truth, I never became a true Method actor," Paul said. "I was more of a cerebral actor. Lee Strasberg taught me to draw upon memory of past experiences. Of course, that caused a lot of inner turmoil and pain in me. I came to realize I'd buried certain parts of my life. Going to the Actors Studio was like lying on a headshrinker's couch." In years to come, Paul would have only the highest praise for the Actors Studio, and he greatly contributed financially to its support. "I learned everything I know about acting at the Actors Studio." 

Even after he'd signed to join the Picnic cast, Paul continued to pursue additional work with his new MCA agent, John Foreman. Paul referred to his performances in teleplays as, "the best thrill in town, a totally new experience for me. I was able to play all kinds of roles, since I hadn't been categorized." In July of 1953, Foreman landed Paul a TV role in "The Bells of Damon." In September of the same year, a part in another teleplay, "One for the Road," would also be presented to him. One morning at the offices of MCA, the agent had an attractive young blonde-haired actress waiting outside to see him as well. As Foreman opened the door to his office to let Paul out, Joanne Woodward jumped up from her seat. Foreman introduced her to Paul, who apologized for "eating into your time. We got carried away." But there were no great sparks, no love at first sight.

"My introduction of these two was a historic moment in theater and film history," Foreman recalled. "And they couldn't have seemed less interested that day. Who could have predicted what was to come?" "I hated him on sight," Joanne Woodward later recalled. "He was pretty and neat like an Arrow Collar ad. He looked like a snobby college boy type in a seersucker suit, the kind insurance salesmen wore in summer making the rounds in my native Georgia." Like Paul, Joanne had been born a winter baby but not into freezing weather. When she entered the world on February 27, 1930, it was 70 degrees Fahrenheit in Thomasville, Georgia, a town that had once flourished as a winter resort, lying only ten miles north of the Florida border.

With her blonde hair and pixie face, she looked at the world through inquisitive green eyes. By the age of five, she had become an avid movie-goer. She told her parents, Wade Woodward and Elinor Trimmier Woodward, that she wanted to grow up to become an actress like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Ironically, at the time of her birth, her mother had wanted to name her after Joan Crawford, but after prolonged wheedling, her Southern relatives succeeded in getting the child named Joanne instead. When Elinor took Joanne to see Laurence Olivier playing the melancholy Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Joanne developed her first serious crush. That same year of 1939, when the newspapers announced that the premiere of Gone With the Wind was to be held in Atlanta, Joanne begged her mother to take her. In school it was revealed that Joanne had a high I.Q., and she excelled in her grades. Life seemed so happy in the Woodward household that she later said she was devastated when her parents announced that they were divorcing. "It took years for me to adjust to that," she said. Returning to Greenville, she appeared in a local production of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie-ironically, the same play in which Paul Newman had appeared during his own school years in Ohio. In 1987, Joanne would star in a film version of that same play, directed by none other than Paul himself.

Persuading her mother to let her go to New York, Joanne arrived there by train at the age of twenty-one. Until she got work in the theater, she planned to support herself on the sixty dollars a month her father gave her. Almost immediately she enrolled in the Neighborhood Playhouse, which, like the Actors Studio, trained the aspiring stars of tomorrow. At the Playhouse, she studied under the great dramatic coach, Sanford Meisner, who warned her to "get rid of that Southern drawl, or you'll appear only in plays by Tennessee Williams." Like Paul, Joanne signed with MCA, under whose management she pursued roles in live television dramas. She appeared in an original teleplay, Penny, which aired on June 9, 1952. Between jobs, Joanne liked to hang out with her fellow actors; she had long cups of coffee with Rod Steiger, a newly made friend of Paul's. As a result of attending a casting call, she was summoned to appear before Joshua Logan, who asked her to read a scene from the upcoming play he was directing, Picnic. Amazingly, he liked her reading and hired her to understudy both Janice Rule, playing Madge, and also Kim Stanley playing Millie, Madge's younger sister. 

When Joanne reported for work the next day, Logan introduced her to Paul. "We've met before," she said winking at Paul. As Picnic went on the road, opening in such cities as Cleveland, Joanne began to look at Paul with a different eye. "He wasn't conceited at all. In fact, I found him rather modest for such a good-looking man. He had a protective wall around him when I met him, but deep down he was a sensitive man with the soul of an artist. He just didn't want the world to know that." On the road, Paul began to date Joanne in a casual way. They often met for lunch in some dreary coffee shop or treated themselves to a late night dinner together after the evening's performance. Sometimes Paul didn't tell Joanne good night until two o'clock in the morning. During the run of Picnic, Paul had been seeing more of Joanne than his wife Jackie. Officially Paul assured fellow cast members that he and Joanne were "just friends." But no one, especially Joshua Logan or Kim Stanley, believed that. It was suspected that Paul had occasional sleepovers at Joanne's apartment on Fifty Sixth Street in New York. It was a five-flight walkup. He learned what breakfast at the Woodward household was like. It meant walking down to the street and purchasing two hot dogs from a street wagon vendor and carrying them back up those five flights.

When Rod Steiger learned about Jackie's second child, he said jokingly that Paul seemed to want to keep his wife "barefoot and pregnant," and stashed safely out of sight in Long Island while he pursued his stage career. Paul told Steiger that Jackie had "abandoned forever" her dream of becoming an actress. With Paul away from the house most of the time, Jackie had become a full-time housewife and mother. Word had gone out along Broadway and had even reached Hollywood that a hot new star was appearing on Broadway, taking over for Ralph Meeker in Picnic. "It didn't match the excitement that Brando had generated," Shelley Winters said, "during his performance in A Streetcar Named Desire, but the word was out to catch Newman's act." In the fall of 1953, just before one of his performances, during his second week as Hal in Picnic, he was alerted by Logan that both Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe were in the audience. "I wasn't so afraid of Marilyn, but of Sinatra. For some reason, I thought he'd make fun of me. I knew he hated Method actors like Brando." Sinatra was still depressed and almost suicidal over the recent breakup of his marriage to Ava Gardner. But, in spite of Paul's fears about meeting him, Frank warmly extended his hand and congratulated Paul on his performance. "You're great, kid," Sinatra told him. "Originally Logan wanted Brando for the part. That jerk would have fucked it up big time." Paul accepted their invitation for an apres-theater dinner. Every head in the restaurant turned to watch Marilyn slither across the restaurant floor while Newman and Sinatra were virtually ignored.

Newman deciphered the real purpose of the visit. Marilyn was lobbying for the role of Madge in the movie version of Picnic. "Janice Rule would be okay," Marilyn said, "but she's got no sex appeal." Newman said that being in the presence of two fabled stars, and accepted by them as an equal, was going to his head even more than the wine. Elia Kazan called Karl Malden and asked him to coach Newman, grooming him for a screen test. Malden had already been promised the role of the priest in On the Waterfront and told Kazan: "I've got to have something really hot to show Sam Spiegel. You select the girl to work with Newman." Malden had been impressed with the acting of Joanne Woodward, and he asked her to rehearse with Newman. She gladly accepted. "There was a definite chemistry between the two," Malden recalled. He worked tirelessly with both Joanne and Paul until he felt they were "camera ready." Then he called Kazan. "I've found your stars," Malden said. "Newman and Woodward as a couple will sizzle on the screen. You can give them a screen test and shoot the results over to Spiegel." Kazan seemed delighted with the test and sent it to Spiegel. Weeks went by and there was no response from the producer.

"Paul was very nervous," Malden said. "He knew there was a lot at stake." When word came in from Spiegel, it was a devastating blow to Paul. The producer had promised the role of the young fighter Terry Malloy from Hoboken to Frank Sinatra, who was virtually claiming "native son status," being the most famous man to ever emerge from this then-grimy New Jersey port city. There were more surprises awaiting both Kazan and Newman. "Who knows why, but Marlon finally changed his mind without anyone twisting his arm," Malden recalled. "I had to wonder if all this talk about Paul Newman or Frank Sinatra playing the part lead Marlon to think it over. How could he pass up that part?" As for Joanne, perhaps she never thought that she had a serious chance to play the female lead. Instead, the role went to another similar blonde actress, Eva Marie Saint. When Brando finally accepted the role, Spiegel dropped Sinatra, who threatened to sue him. "The reason is money," Spiegel told Kazan. "I can get my investors to double the bankroll with Brando instead of Sinatra." While filming On the Waterfront, director Elia Kazan plotted his next feature film, East of Eden, eventually released in 1954. His fantasy cast included Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando, playing brothers, even though physically the two actors did not look alike. Both Clift and Brando turned down the parts of a modern day Cain and Abel story, as portrayed in the best-selling John Steinbeck novel.

During the casting of On the Waterfront, Kazan had considered Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward for the leading players. Now, although he remained secretive about the casting of East of Eden, he once again considered Paul teaming with Joanne. But seemingly every other day, he thought James Dean and Julie Harris would bring more sensitivity to the roles. "Julie Harris has the part," Kazan explained to Newman. "Your girlfriend, Joanne Woodward, would have been terrific in the part, but Julie Harris fits more the part. By the way, I saw Julie yesterday at the Actors Studio. She said she adores you." "She's not my type," Paul said, putting down the phone. At that point in her life, Joanne still had not committed to Paul. "How could I?" she asked Rod Steiger. "He's still married with a wife that's pregnant again." 

Teleplays kept coming Joanne's way, and in 1954 she could be seen on TV in such dramas as The Dancers, Unequal Contest, Interlude, Five Star Final, Segment, Welcome Home, and Homecoming. It was her role in Interlude that brought her to the attention of Fox executive Buddy Adler. He promised Joanne a film contract, which was slow in coming. In letters, she kept Paul posted, promising that she'd soon be joining him in Hollywood. Paul was up for yet another movie role in 1954 during the casting of Battle Cry, based on the Leon Uris' novel of marines in World War II, which had a key role for the young soldier Danny Forrester. Bill Orr, the son-in-law of Jack Warner, conducted a joint screen test of both Paul and Joanne. "They came in with a preconceived idea of what they wanted to do in the scene," Orr said. "First they rolled around on a mattress and on the floor, and then they rolled around on a blanket. I had suggested to Warner that he give the role of Danny to James Dean. Dean could pull this one off. Newman came off as a jerk." Paul told his comrades at the Actors Studio, "Maybe I'll be more like Humphrey Bogart in Hollywood. He never sold out to any studio, and I won't either." 

Elia Kazan, the director of East of Eden, said that during the shooting, had to listen to James Dean's lovemaking sessions with Pier Angeli night after night. "My dressing room was across the hall from Dean's. I could actually hear them making love through the thin walls. Dean was very vocal. The sex would usually end in a big argument. After one of these blow-ups, Dean always got drunk. I don't know how I ever finished the picture with him." Whilst, Joanne Woodward flew into Los Angeles. She had signed a contract to film Interlude, starring Dick Powell, as part of a presentation on TV for the Four Star Playhouse. The American singer, producer, actor, and director, Dick Powell, was her co-star. He was famously married to June Allyson, MGM's fading sweetheart of the 1940s. Joanne knew Powell from his 1940s tough guy roles at RKO and less so for his 30s musicals, often starring Ruby Keeler, including 42nd Street. In Interlude, Joanne played a young woman in love with an older man, Dick Powell. Throughout the shoot, Powell had high praise for her acting talent. At the show's wrap, Powell sent a print of her work to Buddy Adler, who had only recently won an Oscar for the 1953 film From Here to Eternity, starring two of Paul's friends, Frank Sinatra and Montgomery Clift. At the time Adler previewed Joanne's work, he was hoping to replace Darryl F. Zanuck as head of production at Fox. Adler, like Powell, was so impressed with Joanne's screen work that he showed clips to Zanuck, who was still his boss. The cigar-chomping studio boss wasn't impressed. 

Zanuck said. "She won't put out from what I hear. Besides, I hear she dates only fags like that writer, Gore Vidal. Sign her up if you want to. But if she fucks up, you're to blame. Fox isn't into losing money." While performing on Broadway in The Desperate Hours, Paul accepted the lead in Philco Television Playhouse's The Death of Billy the Kid, which would be aired on July 24, 1954. The drama of William H. Bonney (Henry McCarthy was his real name) was re-written by Gore Vidal. At the time, newspapers were referring to Vidal as the "beau" of Joanne Woodward. Fred Kaplan, in his biography of Gore Vidal, quotes Joanne as saying, "I think we had gotten to that point had Gore said, `Let's get married,' I might very well have done so. Because I was very fond of him. Many people have had that sort of marriage. I can't imagine how long it would have lasted. I think I would have driven Gore crazy, probably." Both Paul and Joanne configured themselves as Gore's celebrity supporters, as did Eleanor Roosevelt, when he unsuccessfully ran for Congress in a Republican district in New York State in 1960.

Joanne played a pivotal role in the film noir, A Kiss Before Dying, released in 1956. It had a stellar cast which included Hollywood heartthrobs Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter. Around that time, Kim Stanley told Paul he was right for the role of Bo Decker in Bus Stop, and she promised to secretly lobby for him. Brooks Clift, her secret lover, claimed she didn't lobby very hard, because she believed that Paul was too pretty and not rough enough around the edges. "He is just too polished a gentleman to play a hayseed like Bo Decker. Paul has 'class' written on his face." "As Picnic clearly showed, you don't have that wild streak in you to play Bo," William Inge said to a disappointed Paul. "I've got a god damn wild streak in me, and I'll fucking show you," he told Inge. "Paul sensed a strong rivality with Albert Salmi, who deliberately gave Paul bad advice," Steiger said, "although I don't know that for sure. Frankly, I think Paul wanted Albert Salmi to bomb in Philadelphia, the way that Cliff Robertson had bombed. If Salmi also were fired, then Paul could step into the role. He knew every line of the play." Brooks Clift claimed that Paul and Kim Stanley had another tiff when he learned that she didn't really back him for the role. Not knowing of Paul's own involvement with Kim Stanley, Albert told him of his private flirting with Stanley. This made Paul doubly jealous of his rival, although he managed to conceal that. Produced by Roger L. Stevens and Robert Whitehead, Bus Stop opened to rave reviews on May 2, 1955 at the Music Box Theater in New York. 

At this point, Albert Salmi had not yet learned of Paul's attempt to steal the role from him. Tenaciously Newman was still clinging to his dream of playing Bo. He was certain that a movie of Bus Stop would be made, and he told Steiger that "Salmi is not photogenic. His rough looks are okay on stage, but not in a close-up." The next morning, Newman encountered Rod Steiger at the Actors Studio and swore him to secrecy about what he was to tell him. "My dream is about to come true," he said. "Paul Newman and Marilyn Monroe starring in Bus Stop. I can see our names linked in movie marquees across the country." "Perhaps," Steiger said skeptically. "But you've got the billing wrong. Any actor will always have to play second fiddle to Marilyn." To Paul's surprise, he learned that Elvis Presley had appeared in the audience to see Bus Stop. "I heard through Logan that Elvis also wants to play Bo," Albert said. "If he's really serious, he'll get the part. Let's face it: Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe would be the box office attraction of the decade." Paul warned Albert "not to worry. There's no way in hell that Colonel Tom Parker will let his moneymaker do a straight dramatic part." When that news reached Paul, he called Logan and practically demanded that he get the part. "I can play Bo. Marilyn and I have great chemistry together. Besides, you owe me one." During an afternoon at the Actors Studio, Kim Stanley encountered Paul, "Sorry, honey, I've got bad news. Logan, that bastard, has cast Don Murray." 

"Murray's got no fire," Newman said. "He's a nice-looking boy-next-door type." Paul was crushed, but he tried to be gracious about his loss. "I'm the loser. I'm horribly disappointed. But Marilyn is such big box office, and she is right for the role. You and I have seen her act at the studio. We know how good she is. None of us believe that she's the lightweight her fans think of her." Even so, Don Murray got an Oscar nomination that year as Best Supporting Actor. In time, Albert Salmi learned about Paul's behind-the-scenes maneuvering to grab the role of Bo Decker from him. Although they would work together in Bang the Drum Slowly (1956), he never really forgave him.

During the shooting of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, there was tension in the Newman/Woodward marriage over his heavy drinking. "She's nitroglycerine and I'm diesel fuel," Paul explained to filmmaker George Roy Hill. There was more trouble awaiting Joanne in her marriage, widely interpreted at the time as the most enduring in Hollywood. That trouble arrived on the set of Butch and Sundance in a very shapely form. A spunky pin-up model turned into reporter, Nancy Bacon had posed for provocative pictures using the name "Buni." This brunette beauty had been hired to write a fluff piece on the production for Confidential magazine, her first interview was with Paul Newman himself. That "interview," on and off,  would last for eighteen months. According to Bacon, after Paul made love to her, he felt what he called his "heart attack time." Apparently, all that beer and Scotch drinking was often interfering with his sexual prowess.

News of the affair spread rapidly across the Hollywood grapevine, no doubt reaching Joanne. Paul's heavy drinking was problem enough for his marriage, but his affair may have proved too much for Joanne to handle. It was Joyce Haber, the gossip columnist, who first broke the news that the Newmans might be on the verge of breaking up. Writing for The Los Angeles Times, she reported that "the Newmans are living apart, according to friends, and will soon get a divorce," although she admitted that these were just "fascinating rumors, so far unchecked." To counter her revelation, the Newmans took out a $3,000 half-page ad in The Los Angeles Times. It read: "RECOGNIZING THE POWER OF THE PRESS, FEARING TO EMBARRASS AN AWESOME JOURNALIST, TERRIFIED TO DISAPPOINT MISS HABER AND HER READERS, WE WILL TRY TO ACCOMMODATE HER FASCINATING RUMORS BY BUSTING UP OUR MARRIAGE EVEN THOUGH WE STILL LIKE EACH OTHER." It was signed: "Joanne and Paul Newman." Eventually, Bacon decided that she didn't want to carry on with an affair going nowhere. She lied to Newman (who harbored a  deep sense of guilt), telling him that she was going to marry another man. He hardly reacted in front of her, but wished her all the best of luck. "I finally said to myself, I can do better. I told him, `You're always drunk, and you can't even make love'." Nancy Bacon reportedly had liaisons with other actors such as Errol Flynn and Rod Taylor. She alleged to have been a roommate of Marilyn Monroe and friends with Elizabeth Taylor, Jayne Mansfield, Judy Garland, and Sharon Tate. 

"For two people with almost nothing in common, we have an uncommonly good marriage," Paul told the tabloid press in London in 1969. As for Joanne, she seemed to be getting tired of all that talk about what a sex symbol and box office sensation Paul was. "Look, he's forty-four, got six children, and snores in bed. How can he be a sex symbol?" Newman was thrilled to learn he’d made Richard Nixon’s enemies list, supposedly because Nixon was jealous because Newman made the cover of Life magazine when Nixon hadn’t and because of Newman’s support for Paul McCloskey, a Nixon opponent in 1972. Reportedly Nixon once told John Foreman, “Newman is a first-rate actor even if he thinks I’m a lousy politician.” Although Newman was survived by five children and an older brother as well as his wife, he left most of his considerable fortune to Joanne—including significant real estate holdings and the Connecticut estate—and the rest to charity. Asked once how Joanne and he managed to stay together for so long, Newman replied, “I never ask my wife about my flaws. Instead I try to get her to ignore them and concentrate on my sense of humor. Joanne believes my character in a film we did together, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge comes closest to who I really am. I personally don’t think there’s one character who comes close to me, but I learned a long time ago not to disagree with her.” Not too long before his death, Newman was asked if he had any advice to give aspiring actors. “Study your craft and know what’s special about you. Find out what everyone does on a film set, ask questions and listen, which means don’t do things where you court celebrity, and give something positive back to our society.” For his very, very long life and highly successful career, that is exactly what Paul Newman did. Nothing more needs be said. —Paul Newman: A Life (2009) by Lawrence J. Quirk