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You can tell Paul Newman loves to tell the story, even though it’s a joke that turns him into a punch line. His mouth curves into a CinemaScope grin as he recalls an afternoon just a few years back when he was a celebrity guest at one of the many fundraising events that crowd his calendar. Midway through, he found himself the focus of a curious gaze cast by a youngster of 12 or thereabouts. The boy asked him who he was, and what he did for a living, so Newman responded.
The boy appeared skeptical.
Amused by the reaction, Newman asked his inquisitor if he ever had seen any of his movies. Like, maybe Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Or The Towering Inferno? The Sting? Something? Anything?
At length, the youngster allowed that he had indeed seen Newman in Cool Hand Luke. Pause. On television. Longer pause. Just a few days earlier.
Finally, after another brief interlude of deafening silence, the child looked Newman straight in the eye and remarked: “I guess they can really make you look younger on TV, huh?”
Newman roared with laughter. And then replied: “Yeah, I guess they can.”
Of course, he adds, it could have been worse: “At least he didn’t ask if I’m the guy who sells all the salad dressing.”
Truth to tell, Newman does indeed look a bit older, move a little slower, and sound a great deal raspier than he did during the 1960s, a period when—in movies as diverse as The Hustler, Hud, and, yes, Cool Hand Luke—he chronically confounded critics by proving a dreamy Hollywood hunk could actually impress as a serious actor.vvv
Read the complete story in the
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