Paul Newman the actor, director, race car driver, political activist and philanthropist has died - and a buoyant strain of the American spirit has gone with him. He was 83 when he succumbed to cancer at his home near Westport, Conn., on Friday.
For all his adult years, he imbued each of his arenas with unique, muscular vivacity. Mr. Newman wore the mantle of his superstardom lightly. Honored as an actor and a humanitarian, respected for putting forth liberal views without condescending to opponents, he was a Renaissance man and a stand-up guy.
With Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting , Mr. Newman became part of our national pop fantasy life. From So mebody Up There Likes Me to Nobody's Fool, he never stopped being an actor other actors looked up to.
Kids who've never seen any of his movies except Cars (where he was the voice of Doc Hudson) recognize him from the picture on the "Newman's Own" label that started out with salad dressing and branched out to spaghetti sauce and beyond, ultimately garnering $250 million in profits that he gave to charity. When they get old enough to watch documentaries about the key political movements of the 1950s and 1960s, from civil rights to the presidential campaign of Eugene McCarthy, they'll see Mr. Newman in the thick of things.
Appreciating Mr. Newman's art will always be an American rite of passage, because no other actor reached maturity in front of the camera with as much breadth and verve - and stayed there. Among the great American actors, he was the happy warrior. Like Marlon Brando and James Dean, Mr. Newman could play, to perfection, misfits, louts, outlaws, troubled souls and rebels. Even when his characters met tragic ends they could leave fans energized and optimistic.
He got emotionally spent audiences to applaud and cheer at the close of his milestone performance as the title character of The Hustler, when his pool shark wins back his pride in the pool hall and declares to his satanic ex-manager Bert (George C. Scott), "[If your boys] just bust me up, I'll put all those pieces back together, and so help me, so help me God, Bert ... I'm gonna come back here and I'm gonna kill you." Mr. Newman could pull you through the travails of men who suffered anguish and loss and make you believe they could still hold their destiny in their own two hands.
