Paul Newman: The Extraordinary Life of An Ordinary Man, A Memoir
What a memoir!
This project fascinated me from the moment I heard about it: in 1986, Paul Newman began working on a memoir, recording his thoughts and sitting for interviews, and requesting his closest family and friends also sit down and speak—unflinchingly honestly—as well.
He plugged away at the project for about five years before shelving it entirely, which his daughters think is because he got too bogged down and had too much material to sift through. At any rate, what has been pieced together in these 'memoirs' is nothing short of extraordinary.
For many (yours truly included), Paul Newman was a blue-eyed babe who could act, loved his wife like no other, and had a strong sense of social justice, and that's where the exploration ended. But to read this and to find out all of the personal demons he battled about every facet of his life was an eye-opener.
Paul is very candid that it was easy to be the handsome actor Paul Newman, but that it was all a façade for the tortured man who was dealing with the troubles of emotionally distant parents, alcoholism, and a general listlessness about who he was and who he wanted to be, while everything else was going on. There's not one portion of this book that doesn't have an undercurrent of this not measuring up to it.
And then there's the storied love affair between Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, directly from the source. Let me tell you, reading that Joanne once created a 'Fuck Hut' for the two of them was not on my Bingo card for Old Hollywood memoirs, but here we are. Theirs was a love that was carnal and hot from the moment they met—trust me, from Paul's graphic description of what they'd do backstage to practice dancing—through the decades. Of course there were tough times due to his alcoholism, but this was a couple who put in the work and came out the other side stronger than ever.
It was refreshing to read about how deeply Paul loved Joanne, too, because you sometimes get the vibe that people are like "Okay, sure, she was obsessed with him but come on, he was Paul Newman, surely he got around," and to find out that that wasn't the case (don't spoil The Last Movie Stars for me, I can't watch it in Canada so I have no idea what's been said in it!), that he was just as obsessed with her, that he credited so much of his success to her, was great.
There isn't that much in the way of Old Hollywood gossip—his daughters are upfront about this in the foreword—but there's just enough to satisfy me; like the fact that Paul had no idea how to truly comfort Elizabeth Taylor after she was widowed on the set of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or that he and Robert Redford tried to be friends off set but it just never worked out or that Tom Cruise idolized him when he finally got the chance to work with him in the '80s.
Ultimately, this is a very satisfying memoir, one that truly lives up to its name: this is the extraordinary life of an ordinary man.
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