Paul Newman (1925-2008).(In memoriam)

Paul Newman began his film career in the mid-fifties, a period of transition within the Hollywood cinema. Although in the rebel mould of Marlon Brando and James Dean who also evidenced the changes taking place both within the industry and beyond in the culture at large, Newman developed his own unique persona. Like Brando and Dean his background was diverse and included The Actors Studio and Broadway. While Brando and Dean communicated a primal physicality, intensity and a primitive emotionalism, Newman's persona, although rooted also in the physical, was marked by irony, self-deprecating humour, a cultivated sensibility and intelligence. This inflected his physical presence, producing a sexual appeal which was aestheticized and beautiful. In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Newman and Elizabeth Taylor are treated as beautiful complements. (Newman's partnership with Robert Redford may be considered a male couple equivalent.) Newman was gifted with a handsome boyish face and a proportionate lovely body. He never gave the impression of being self-conscious of his beauty, which made it all the more appealing. His photogenic quality stayed with him through his long career, and he aged into a beautiful older man.

Newman's most famous roles, in The Hustler, Hud and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, cast him as an outsider/bad boy. This contemporized his image and allowed him to evolve with the changes that took place in the sixties. Newman was an accomplished leading man and his oeuvre covered a range of genres and styles, from his wonderful comic performance in McCarey's Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys, to the ...