the rix mix

He was around forever, not so long ago with Letterman discussing Indy cars, & beating Leno in a go kart race, two fellow automobile crazies.

I was in Park Theater in Roselle Park, a Saturday, I'd watched some cartoons & westerns, movies ended, theater cleared out, I ducked down in my seat & stayed, easy when you're about 3 feet tall. Adults entered, some high schoolers, late afternoon show. Lights dimmed. Long Hot Summer came on, sweaty sex Southern theme (Faulkner, not Tennessee Williams), Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Orson Welles.
The Long Hot Summer
seems to know what a flirt you are.
Seems to know your caress
isn't mine to possess.
How could someone possess a star?*
I was clueless. The usher waving flashlight beam in my face telling me I had to leave. Adult entertainment.

Joanne Woodward made that afternoon so memorable. Of grownup movie stars, she was my first love. Newman already had her. & stayed with her for fifty years. Love is better than grand.

Paul was in some wildly popular movies. Very cool actor with teenagers from late Fifties into Seventies. The Hustler; Hud; Harper; Cool Hand Luke; Butch Cassidy; The Sting. A few dogs in there, too. Some of the characters' potboiler names: Ben Quick, Brick Pollitt, Ram Bowen, Chance Wayne, Hud Bannon, Steve Sherman, Lew Harper. Adult entertainment.

So much of his film acting was such a pleasure to watch. The Hustler; Hud (beyond antihero into yuk territory; Cool Hand; Sometimes a Great Notion; Drowning Pool; over-the-top Buffalo Bill & The Indians; Slap Shot; The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, a peculiar John Huston movie; Absence of Malice; The Verdict; Mr. & Mrs. Bridge; Nobody's Fool; Road to Perdition. Directed Rachel, Rachel & produced They Might Be Giants for Joanne Woodward. Let tough guy character actor Richard Jaeckel loose in Sometimes A Great Notion, got Richard a deserved Oscar nomination.

Newman was always linked in my mind with Marlon Brando & James Dean. Dean is three movies, two Oscar nominations, & a fatal car crash. Marlon, the greater actor, lost control of his weight & his career. Newman had a sense of vocation as well as of craft. Every project had his attention, nothing was make-or-break. He got to drive race cars in Winning & fought Steve McQueen for top billing, equal pay & dialogue in Towering Inferno, & moved on. He had a career being Paul Newman, self-deprecating as he used his name to channel millions into good causes, but the movie roles were singular. Even Fort Apache The Bronx, at once depressing & weird, like you'd seen it all on Kojak without the R rating, has it's pleasures with Paul Newman running around in it.

*Nobody ever points out that the career of lyricist Sammy Cahn coincides with the long decline of the so-called "Great American Songbook." I just did.

Labels: culture, obituary