I didn’t know who Paul Newman was until 2008, the year he died. Even then, I was only aware of a mere footnote in his legacy: his style, which menswear articles would sing eternal hosannas about for its exemplary nonchalance. It wasn’t until last year that the man’s life would inform mine, and profoundly. Newman’s five-decade-spanning filmography would get me through one of the toughest summers of my life.
A month before I left for New York, I saw my first Newman film. A good friend and old-movie nut had prescribed The Young Philadelphians (1959). In it, Newman plays Tony Lawrence, a young man trying to become a big-time lawyer despite humble beginnings and a hazy lineage. His mother’s class consciousness keeps her from revealing the real identity of his father: a blue-collar Irishman she gets it on with after her rich but impotent husband dies on their wedding night. With questionable pedigree, Tony struggles toward his big aspirations, including loving the upper-crust woman he wants to. It’s a movie about resolve; where hurt, hard work, integrity, and charm can get a guy no matter the limitations set upon him. Newman could communicate Tony’s ambition in those famous blue eyes, which shone steely intensity even in the film’s black and white.In a city like New York that runs on urgency 24/7, that performance stayed with me as I blazed through my first year. I got through journalism military school and churned out news about Harlem (even if each trip to the projects made my balls retract from fear). I stood outside the Condé Nast building and swore I’d end up inside, then landed an internship at GQ magazine months later. I was wholly responsible for myself — I cleaned my own floors, cooked my own meals, and marched myself to where I needed to be. The first round was mine, and I was raring to knock the city out on the second. By the time I graduated, I was set: promised a paid gig at a men’s lifestyle site and offered internships by two big magazines. Then, as the summer began to warm the city up, I lost it all. While follow-ups on the job were suddenly ignored, both magazines had gone with other candidates. And, as if on biblical cue, I experienced the worst thing that can happen to a New Yorker: my apartment was plagued with bedbugs.
The infestation put the job search on pause. Besides multiple fumigations and packing everything I owned into plastic bags like a refugee, conspicuous bug bites on my face and body didn’t go too well with an interview suit.
Living in self-quarantine, movies helped me forget my itchy state. I started with a faith-instilling re-watch of Philadelphians. One Paul Newman movie led to another, and to more still as characters with so much daring began to bolster me. As a cocky pool shark in The Hustler or an actual hustler in Sweet Bird of Youth, he plays guys who strive to the point of being stubborn. When challenges arose or people came a-threatening, charismatic outlaws Billy the Kid and Butch Cassidy smirked with relish, or his eponymous jailbird in Cool Hand Luke clenched his jaw in stoic silence, ready to accept a beating to prove a point.
In a week, I’d seen all of Newman’s movies from the ‘60s. I could feel him staring me down, telling me in that crisp drawl, “Get your ass out of bed, son. It’s time.†In the next few days, I coughed out as many job applications as I could. Indebted to the man and inspired, I was intent on seeing all 58 of his films.
Populating his roles in the ‘70s were faded heroes and wisecracking wretches. Historical figures like Buffalo Bill and Judge Roy Bean rule their little Wild West kingdoms by the gun, becoming corrupted by a deluded sense of power or justice. In Slap Shot (1977), he plays a hockey coach who rallies for more blood to get his team more buzz. These weren’t like Newman’s mid-century males whose egos were shattered and restored as character; these guys are beyond reproach, but at least capable of one last shot at redemption.
I wasn’t too keen on these louts but they kept me in fighting form as the rejections came in — from a culture blog, a Jersey-based tabloid, even a website that reviews men’s underwear. Finally, applying as a barista, I was told: “You belong behind a desk answering phones.â€
By then, it became painful to watch Newman in the ‘80s and ‘90s. The good looks were weathered and that wry grin had been traded for a scowl. Still, the hardened men he played — be it an alcoholic lawyer in The Verdict, or a gruff old construction worker estranged from his family in Nobody’s Fool — are tireless. In The Color of Money, he’d reprise his role as Fast Eddie from The Hustler, an old-timer pitting his pool cue against a young Tom Cruise. It was a statement that even in old age, a man never denies himself a good challenge.
Fall was approaching and I was down to Newman’s last few films when a little luck finally came my way: a promising men’s startup had offered me work as an editorial assistant. The day I got the news, I was walking in the thick of a Times Square crowd. I was cold, broke, anonymous, alone, and reaching the end of my 20s — but entirely hopeful.
Newman had walked this way before. At 28, he was just making headway as a TV and Broadway actor. He worried about supporting a wife and two kids in New York, and about making a dad who was successful in business proud.
His dad never lived to see him hit it big in the movies a couple years later. Or see his son married to the same woman for over 50 years, become a champion car racer in his 70s, or continue to soar as an actor, humanitarian, and even businessman into his 80s while contemporaries like Brando and McQueen burned out.
Newman would have turned 87 this month. Doesn’t matter, his style would be referenced and classics replayed for generations. But he’s also the best kind of icon — the kind that makes you want to be a better man. Icons, they live on, but as he’d exemplify in roles and life, real men endure.