Paul Newman: "Joanne Woodward looked like sixty or seventy million bucks"

Joanne Woodward knew that Newman was the right guy for her, but if he refused to divorce his wife, then she'd come to terms that he was definitely wrong for her. So Joanne threw herself into her work, ignoring Newman's pleas for keeping on waiting for his big decision. Joanne gave him a six-month ultimatum, and her absence during this probing time would prove to be the catalyst needed to Newman's divorce from Jackie Witte. If Somebody Up There Likes Me  had made Paul a star, Until They Sail  turned him into a matinee idol. His role as Larry Maddox in The Helen Morgan Story was somewhere between the two. Larry could love up the women as well as the army officer in Until They Sail, but he was an amoral heel. Newman and Ann Blyth play well together and have a particularly good scene when Larry confronts Helen when she comes home drunk. Newman must have felt certain frissons of recognition as the story played out, as Helen drank at first to deal with sorrow and disappointment, then became undeniably addicted to alcohol. Newman was not ready to admit to himself that there were times he relied on liquor for hope and happiness a little too much to be healthy. 

Despite its glossy, melodramatic surface, the picture works as a study of loneliness in the show-business of the 1940s against which even money and success are no barriers. Newman, who by now knew that often the worst kind of loneliness could afflict someone trapped in an unhappy marriage and separated from the one they truly loved, identified more with Helen's character than with Larry's. At least he knew Joanne was too controlled a person to turn to drink the way he and Helen Morgan did. Michael Curtiz was never a man to praise actors unduly; while getting the best out of them, he could give them a hard time in the process. He remembered Newman as thoroughly professional and attentive: “But he wouldn’t take any sass from me or anyone else.” Curtiz recalled Newman saying something along the lines of “if criticism is honest, I’m all for it. But if it’s done just out of meanness, I’ll walk away from it.” Although Larry has romantic feelings for Helen, at the film’s conclusion he seems to undergo a complete character change, picking Helen up at the nuthouse, taking her to her old nightclub where he’s assembled hundreds of her friends, and implying that he’ll never leave her again. Earlier it’s revealed that he even sent dozens of bouquets to her and signed other people’s names to the cards so that she wouldn’t feel forgotten.

Filming another Twentieth Century-Fox loan-out, From the Terrace, Newman had to battle to get Fox to cast Joanne as his wife, just as he’d had to battle to get her the spousal assignment in Rally ’Round the Flag, Boys! but at least this was a more dramatic, juicier part. In fact, Woodward as the snobby wife made Newman's ex-wife Jackie at her worst seem sylphlike by comparison. Joanne told reporters that she and Paul could get out all their own frustrations with each other by screaming at each other in character on the set. Once that was done, they could go home and make like turtledoves. Myrna Loy was appearing in a supporting role as Newman’s mother. She recalled returning to Twentieth Century-Fox, where she had made some earlier films, and discovering that her dressing room was bare. “Noticing the tributes stacked in Paul Newman’s dressing room, I realized that I was yesterday news.” But when she walked out on the set, the crew all gave her a standing ovation. They then proceeded to subject Paul to merciless teasing, asking Myrna who that “kid” she was working with was and if she was giving acting lessons on the side now. Paul took all the teasing good-naturedly. Myrna Loy told her biographer, James Kotsilibas-Davis, that “Paul Newman was very sweet about it, displaying none of the cockiness of so many young stars. He gave me a lot to work from as his dissolute mother, a real departure for me. One scene—I’m sitting in front of a mirror telling him to go for his own good—is a stunner. Paul was already a pro.” 

After the artistically bankrupt experience of Exodus (Newman couldn't convince Otto Preminger to sign Joanne on board over Eva Marie Saint), Newman was ready for the stimulating challenge of The Hustler. Eddie Felson, the pool hustler, was maybe his most memorable role. The picture was filmed mostly on location in New York City, to good advantage. The director, Robert Rossen, had a terminal illness and knew that The Hustler  would be his one of his last films. “We had three weeks of rehearsals, using television technique,” Newman said, “where you lay out tape on the floor to mark the sets.” The Hustler emerged as a very suffocating and artistic film, though pool is not exactly the most cinematic of subjects. The atmospheric, moody photography of the film illuminates the bleak, depressing vistas of poolrooms, gin joints, crummy hotel rooms, and seedy bus terminals with startling clarity. Newman is completely convincing as Eddie Felson, a character nothing like Tony Lawrence of The Young Philadelphians. Newman was a winner in his role, and Eddie despite a major moral victory at the film’s conclusion, is pretty much a loser all of the way. In an early scene, after he beats the great Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason), he’s so afraid people will think it was a fluke that he self-destructively plays Fats again and again until he’s sick from fatigue and has lost all of the $10,000 he’d won. 

Newman’s acting hides clues to Eddie’s character instead of laying it all out on the line as other actors might do. That’s why the picture is nearly over before we’re sure if Eddie Felson is a good guy or a bad guy or something in between; Newman keeps us guessing about him, never playing it heroically or like Eddie was nothing more than a sleaze. Paul is very convincing when he takes the girl (Piper Laurie) to a fancy restaurant for dinner and looks awkward as hell. Newman’s climactic speech after the girl’s suicide, when in disgust he parts company with Gordon, is also excellent. Actor Don Koll worked on The Hustler and recalled: “There’s a kind of caste system in Hollywood, where stars don’t mingle with bit players,” Koll said. “It just isn’t done. But when we were on location Newman told me that it was a relief to be free of the caste system, that he could mingle with everyone and be his friendly self, because basically he’s a very down-to-earth guy.” Newman received an Academy Award nomination for his work in The Hustler. When Maximilian Schell won for Judgment at Nuremburg, Joanne’s behavior backstage was for some shockingly childish. She refused to congratulate or even speak to Schell and, in her own words, “made a spectacle of myself,” cursing and rudely denouncing the Academy and the voters. When Joan Crawford heard about it, she thought the woman who had been named after her had more serious problems than just bad fashion sense. “The impression was that Paul was a basically nice guy who was run around by the nose by his wife,” Jack Garfein, a television director that Newman had met at the Actors Studio, commented. “Did Paul ever really ask or demand that she sublimate her career or needs in favor of his? Paul was just as disappointed, more so, when he lost the award to Schell, but he was gracious. I think Joanne embarrassed him terribly that night.” 

A. E. Hotchner, novelist and long-time friend of the Newmans, thinks Garfein was wrong. “Paul really was proud, if a bit startled, by her wife's support. Their marriage was one of the few authentic in Hollywood and that stirred envy and much tongue lashing. Paul laughed about Joan Crawford thinking she was more beautiful than Joanne. Geez, Joanne was a truly beautiful woman, she was gorgeous. Paul thought Crawford was a blabbermouth and not so beautiful even in her prime.” As Paul recounted to Stewart Stern: "Joanne gave birth to our first child together, Nell, in 1959, in California. The first time as an adult I remember crying—including when my father died—was when I saw Joanne in the hospital that day, ashen, with a dry mouth and lying on a gurney, headed into an elevator on her way to the delivery room. I was so staggered. Joanne came back from the hospital wearing this bellhop hat and a very stylish dress; she looked like sixty or seventy million bucks. When Lissy was born a couple of years later, I had my camera out and took billions of pictures of her. When I think of those pictures, it reminds me how Joanne handled our babies’ introduction into our home with such class and foresight." 

Newman’s next 1961 film project was Paris Blues, in which he was again teamed with his wife Joanne. Newman and Sidney Poitier played expatriate jazz musicians in Paris who become involved with tourists Joanne Woodward and Diahann Carroll. In Harold Flender’s novel, there was only the black couple, but Hollywood had to add a couple of whites or it was no sailing. The Newmans were attracted by the social consciousness of the piece, although the film is a bit dated about gender politics. Paris Blues was under the auspices of a production company, Pennebaker, set up by the one and only Marlon Brando, who was too occupied with other matters to push his—at that time, not too  considerable—weight around. Newman contemptuosly named him "Don Brando". Brando never took to other actors whom he considered professional rivals, like James Dean, Monty Clift or Paul Newman. 

Newman began filming the adaptation of Sweet Bird of Youth a short while afterward Paris Blues. His involvement with the project had begun back in 1959 when he starred in the stage play at Tennessee Williams’s request. Richard Anderson, who’d appeared with Newman in Long Hot Summer, was appearing in The Highest Tree on Broadway at the same time and compared notes with Newman on occasion. “He revealed acting wasn’t his first choice,” Anderson said. “He was really an organization man. Explaining further, he wanted to be attached to the nuts and bolts of the game. It surprised me . . . most actors didn't have other plans.” Apparently even as early as 1959, Newman was thinking of branching out into directing and even other non-acting business pursuits, although it would be some time before any of his plans came to fruition. In the film, Newman comes off as too theatrical and self-aware and, at thirty-six, too old for the part. 

Although he does have his moments, Newman clung for dear life to the guidance Elia Kazan and Geraldine Page gave him and was too afraid to play Chance on the screen. Elia Kazan recounted to James Grissom: "Paul Newman was often unsure of his performance in the play. He never fully trusted himself as Chance Wayne. He gave some rocky performances, and I noticed that when he felt confident about his work, he ran from the theatre and hopped on his motorcycle and was gone. On the nights when he felt he hadn't done so well, he would linger at the stage door. Gerry noticed this and began to bolster him from the stage, through the performance." Tennessee Williams praised his favorite actress, saying to Grissom: "Geraldine Page is a great actress. It wasn't that she simply had talent, she had a genius, a maddening intellect that came with a supernatural vision of people. She pushed me. She made me a better writer and she made my plays better plays. Geraldine Page is all about getting it right, and just above that goal is getting it brilliant, which she does. She's a solitary genius."

The Newmans bought a house in Connecticut not far from A. E. Hotchner and his wife; Newman had become professional friends with Hotchner after he’d appeared on television in The Battler, for which Hotchner wrote the script. Hotchner did not waste time using the proximity to bring further ideas to his famous neighbor. The two men bought a boat and went fishing together, although they drank more beer than they caught fish. Ernest Lehman, who had written the fine scripts for Somebody Up There Likes Me and From the Terrace, had a new story he thought Paul would be interested in, a comedy-thriller entitled The Prize, with German bombshell Elke Sommer. 

Adapting from the novel The Prize by Irving Wallace, Lehman was hoping to create another North by Northwest, the brilliant thriller he had penned for Hitchcock. He even fashioned a scene that was to go one better than the sequence in North by Northwest in which Cary Grant evades pursuers by causing a scene at a fancy auction house. In the new scene, Newman, clad only in a towel, would heckle a speaker at a nudist colony. Edward G. Robinson plays a dual role as Dr. Max Stratman / Prof. Walter Stratman. Director Mark Robson, also of From the Terrace, gave Hitchcock's game a run for his money.

The first film Newman directed, Rachel, Rachel (1968) was inspired by a Margaret Laurence's novel entitled A Jest of God, which won the distinguished Canadian Governor-General’s Award. Joanne’s agent at the time, John Foreman, who had worked at MCA with Newman’s agent Myron McCormack, passed a copy of the book along to Joanne thinking she might be perfect for the role of the heroine, a woman in a small town who longs for love and excitement. Although this was not exactly typecasting, Woodward was often at her best playing characters with which she had nothing in common—something that was also true of Paul Newman. Paul wouldn’t read the novel at first—which was fine as far as Joanne was concerned, because she didn’t think he’d like it—but he agreed to go in with her and buy the film rights. Newman did his best to please Joanne when she got that certain look in her eye that meant she felt passionately about something. By now he often spoke of her “impeccable judgment.” To facilitate matters Newman started a new production company entitled Kayos Productions. Apparently Jodell Productions had met all its commitments, and Ritt’s and Newman’s film interests had gone in different directions. Considering the critical reaction to some of his movies, Newman figured he could probably direct as well as anyone. Besides, he’d gone to Yale to study stage direction, so at least he knew he’d be good with actors. 

The Newmans had been friends with the writer Stewart Stern since he’d written a teleplay Paul had starred in and particularly admired, Thundering Silence. Stern also did the screenplay for The Rack, as well as such notable films as Rebel without a Cause and The Ugly American. He was their first choice to turn A Jest of God into a screenplay. They got in touch with him, and he agreed to take on the project, although there were times when he nearly came to regret it. Stern would meet with Joanne and Paul at their home for story conferences by committee. Stern found that Joanne had her ideas and Paul had his, and what he had to say made little impact. Soon their story conferences metamorphosed into polite disagreements, then arguments, then finally screaming matches. One afternoon the three of them had a quarrel about whether the heroine would “pleasure” herself in bed in the prone position or face-up. Stern told them that, in essence, too many cooks were spoiling the broth and that he would work on the script with Paul or Joanne but not both of them. He stormed out of the house and went home. Now came the difficult part of finding a studio that would be willing to finance the picture. Newman was a megastar at this point, and he could probably have gotten financing for just about anything he starred in, but his wife just wasn’t as bankable. To his amazement and disillusionment, this major movie star found certain executives failing to return his phone calls. 

Newman was told by studio executives that the story was too downbeat, that it wasn’t commercial enough (which it wasn’t), that Joanne Woodward wasn’t a big enough name by then. “How about using another actress?” some inquired, gaining Newman's wrath. Newman knew that his wife’s heart was set on making this picture, and by now he wanted it for her as much as she did. She may have pressured him into getting interested initially, but he loved her and didn’t want her to be disappointed. As Stewart Stern put it with consummate insight born from years of friendship: “He is constantly trying to provide a setting where the world can see what he sees in her.” Also, Kayos Productions was going to wind up with egg on its face if it didn’t get the money to make the picture somewhere. Newman claimed that he decided to direct Rachel, Rachel because he couldn’t get anyone else to do it. Although Rachel, Rachel  is never as devastating as it could have been, it remains a picture of depth and meaning. The best line comes after surgery when the nurse tells her she’s out of danger. “How can I be out of danger if I’m not dead?” Rachel asks her.

Newman’s instincts were right in revising the screenplay and putting together so many rough cuts until it was perfect, for Rachel, Rachel is often poignant and never descends into soap opera as he was afraid it would. It was one portrait of alienation that would flourish in the next decade, with films like Five Easy Pieces or Taxi Driver. Estelle Parsons enjoyed working with Newman and was impressed by the self-effacing attention he gave to Joanne and the other actors. “He wanted to showcase his wife’s talent to maximum advantage, and he succeeded,” she said. Newman and Joanne won Golden Globes and the New York Film Critics’ Award as Best Actress and Best Director. Shortly after Rachel, Rachel was released, Newman got a strange phone call. A woman’s voice said, “You did it beautifully—what is  your name?” The woman was apparently struggling to remember who she had phoned, even though she had placed the call. When a bemused Newman told her his name, she said, “Yes, yes,” and told him it was Patricia Neal, his old co-star from Hud, calling to tell him how much she had loved Rachel, Rachel. Neal had suffered a massive stroke three years earlier and even then still had trouble remembering names of people she knew well. Newman was touched she had taken the trouble to phone him, even if he had as much difficulty expressing it as she did. 

Following the apocalyptical WUSA (1970) with low-brow fanfare like Pocket Money (1972) by Stuart Rosenberg, however, may not have been as screwy as it seemed. It may well have been a calculated attempt to win back those members of the audience—the Moral Majority and Heartland USA types who saw Newman as some kind of commie pinko. No matter how many times Newman was asked, he never gave a satisfactory answer about his reasons to make WUSA or exactly what message he was trying to get across. Robert Stone (the writer of WUSA) didn't get along with director Rosenberg. "My role was cut", explained actress Cloris Leachman, "a lot of stuff was left in the cutting room floor. The studio wasn't interested and Rosenberg gave in." —Sources: "Paul Newman: A Life" (2009) by Lawrence J. Quirk and "Paul Newman: Blue-Eyed Cool" (2022) by James Clarke