A Posthumous Memoir Reveals Paul Newman in His Own Words - The New York Times

Decades into his singularly palmy vocation arsenic an actor, Paul Newman offered a frank admission. “I americium faced with the appalling information that I don’t cognize anything,” helium said.

Newman was successful his 60s erstwhile helium made this confession, by which clip helium had starred successful a lifetime’s worthy of seminal films, including “Cat connected a Hot Tin Roof,” “The Hustler,” “Hud,” “Cool Hand Luke” and “The Verdict.” He was an instantly recognizable if reluctant celebrity, idolized for his calm manner, his piercing bluish eyes and his seemingly storybook matrimony to the arsenic accomplished Joanne Woodward. He had raised a household and held a spot on President Nixon’s enemies list for his advocacy of wide causes. He went connected to thrust racecars and immerse himself successful philanthropy.

Yet Newman, who died successful 2008, was dogged by self-doubt, perpetually questioning his choices and plagued by past mistakes. “I’m ever anxious astir admitting to failure,” helium said. “To not being bully enough, to not being right.” Despite his hesitations, helium added, “I americium definite that cipher tin ever beryllium liable for what different radical are. You tin lone beryllium liable for who you are.”

Newman does not clasp backmost connected delicate topics: He digs heavy into his memories and reflects astatine magnitude connected his hard childhood, the earlier matrimony helium abandoned earlier helium wed Woodward, his excessive drinking and the nonaccomplishment of his son, Scott, who died from an accidental overdose of drugs and alcohol.

The vulnerability that Newman reveals successful the publication is astonishing adjacent to radical who knew him intimately. “I thought helium was Superman, until my aboriginal 20s and adjacent aft that,” said Clea Newman Soderlund, the youngest of the actor’s 5 daughters. Though she was acquainted with galore of the stories her begetter shares, she said, “I decidedly didn’t cognize however analyzable and however traumatizing they were for him.”

The memoir is not the effect of Paul Newman sitting down astatine a keyboard and typing retired his idiosyncratic history. The publication is assembled from 5 years’ worthy of interviews that the histrion gave, betwixt 1986 and 1991, to Stewart Stern, the screenwriter (“Rebel Without a Cause”) and a adjacent friend.

Stern himself died successful 2015, astatine a clip erstwhile the interviews were presumed lost; those transcripts were lone precocious recovered, on with transcripts of conversations that Stern conducted with Newman’s household members (including Woodward) and collaborators similar Elia Kazan, George Roy Hill and Martin Ritt.

Their voices are besides included successful the book, fulfilling Newman’s tendency that they buttress his accounts of events — or, erstwhile necessary, contradict his misapprehensions — and supply a fuller representation of who helium was.

“He was fascinated by this thought of however radical viewed him versus however helium felt astir himself,” said his girl Melissa Newman. “I ever had this imaginativeness of my dada lasting beside a elephantine billboard of himself. And he’s waving astatine the bottommost of the billboard, going, ‘I’m implicit here.’”

In precocious September, she was speaking from the rustic abode successful Westport, Conn., that she called the “hippie home,” which her parents bought immoderate 60 years agone (and she aboriginal bought from them), stuffed from apical to bottommost with mementos from their lives and careers: photos of her begetter with Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong, and of her parent washing dogs successful the room sink.

On the different broadside of the Aspetuck River was different household dwelling, a wood-paneled barn location whose décor was dominated by a ample representation of Newman as Buffalo Bill. The way betwixt the 2 properties went implicit a footbridge and past a treehouse that galore years ago, Soderlund said, was wherever Woodward “used to spell and fell from each of america erstwhile she couldn’t instrumentality it anymore.”

It was successful a laundry country connected this property that a household friend, the filmmaker and shaper Emily Wachtel, recovered a locked furniture containing a tranche of Stern’s interviews with Newman’s colleagues and confidants. Later, Wachtel discovered that a retention portion held the transcripts of Newman’s ain interviews with Stern.

“There were these boxes that said ‘P.N. history,’ and I opened them and it was similar 5,000 pages,” Wachtel said. “The household hadn’t seen them.”

With the assistance of a literate agent, the Newman household sold a biographical task based connected the transcripts to Knopf, and with the publisher’s help, David Rosenthal — a seasoned publication and mag exertion — was hired to compile the worldly into a memoir.

Rosenthal, who has antecedently edited works by Hunter S. Thompson and Carrie Fisher, said helium was utilized to “people who present their books successful buying bags,” and wasn’t rattled by the imaginable of starting from reams of unorganized interrogation pages delivered successful a banker’s box.

Though determination was immoderate treatment of releasing the publication arsenic an oral history, Rosenthal said that presenting it arsenic a memoir from Newman was much profound and powerful. “You’ve got capable of his dependable to marque it archetypal idiosyncratic without substantially changing anything,” helium said.

And the Newman who comes done successful his interviews is hardly the unflappable prima that audiences thought they knew. “There is simply a enactment of sadness that permeates truthful overmuch of his aboriginal adulthood,” Rosenthal said. “This is simply a feline who is not comfy successful his ain skin, and who was precise obsessive astir things that went wrong.”

Beginning with a country of himself seated connected a sofa successful his room where, Newman says, “I conscionable smoked a associated and remembered with implicit clarity the full representation of my boyhood hometown,” helium recounts his upbringing successful Shaker Heights, Ohio. Newman’s begetter helped tally the family’s sporting-goods company, drank heavy and seemed uninterested successful his children. His mother, by contrast, practically fetishized him, and Newman compares himself to 1 of her dogs “who became cancerous and truthful obese they could hardly move, and my parent would support feeding them chocolates until she killed them with kindness.”

Newman, who was Jewish connected his father’s side, experienced antisemitism astatine schoolhouse and successful the Navy during World War II. He recounts getting into a combat with a chap sailor who called him a slur, utilizing his wrestling skills to propulsion his hostile to the crushed and injure his arm. “When helium got disconnected the floor, helium could lone determination 1 hand,” Newman says. “The combat was called disconnected and nary 1 bothered maine again.”

Yet his warfare acquisition endowed Newman with small maturity oregon idiosyncratic absorption — helium compares it to “being successful a touring institution of ‘Taming of the Shrew’ going done Schenectady, Poughkeepsie and upstate New York.” As an undergraduate astatine Kenyon College, helium threw himself arsenic into drinking, chasing women and the acting enactment his parent encouraged him to pursue.

He rapidly joined Jackie Witte, a chap play pupil with whom helium had 3 children. But thing successful him was not afloat activated until helium met Woodward successful the 1953 Broadway accumulation of William Inge’s “Picnic.” As Newman says: “Joanne gave commencement to a intersexual creature. She taught him, she encouraged him, she delighted successful the experimental. I was successful pursuit of lust.”

Newman’s matter with Woodward was hardly concealed, and though helium yet divorced Witte and joined Woodward, helium regretted hurting the children helium had with Witte and failing to explicate his actions to them. “I saw myself arsenic determination successful the middle,” Newman says. “A small of bad, a batch of bully — and I provided. But what I did conscionable didn’t person immoderate class.”

His astronomical ascent arsenic an histrion continued: Newman was nominated for 10 competitory Academy Awards and won for “The Color of Money” successful 1987. (He besides received an honorary Oscar successful 1986 and the Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award successful 1994.)

But his beingness was hardly escaped of disappointment and tragedy. He wrestled with his drinking, a wont helium knew was self-destructive but says “unlocked a batch of things I couldn’t person done without it.” And helium was shattered erstwhile his son, Scott, who had led a peripatetic beingness successful his father’s shadiness and was receiving psychiatric treatment, died successful 1978 astatine the property of 28.

“I recognize that determination is adjacent thing grotesque successful saying ‘Forgive me,’” Newman says. “The vigor up determination that represents that kid volition conscionable springiness maine the digit and say, ‘Well, what americium I expected to bash with that?’”

Melissa Newman said that they considered withholding her father’s reflections connected Scott from the book, but decided “it was clip for it.”

“That is simply a small fraught,” she said. “But if it tin service immoderate purpose, it’s a cautionary communicative — to person radical recognize determination is nary magic potion which makes parents capable to woody with a concern similar that, adjacent with each the resources successful the world.”

The daughters were not wholly definite what brought an extremity to Newman’s interviews with Stern — “Five years of talking astir yourself is simply a batch of time, and Dad didn’t precisely emotion talking astir himself,” Soderlund said — nor what became of those archetypal recordings, though they believed their begetter destroyed tapes and were not definite why.

But Melissa Newman said her father’s volition granted them support to people a biography of him, and the sisters felt the publication provided a important accidental to acceptable the grounds consecutive astir him and Woodward, who is 90 years aged and has kept a backstage beingness since she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

“We conscionable felt arsenic though his bequest wasn’t being taken of,” Melissa Newman said. “More radical cognize James Dean oregon Elizabeth Taylor. Nobody knows who my dada is.”

They besides allowed immoderate of the interrogation transcripts to beryllium work successful a caller documentary mini-series, “The Last Movie Stars,” astir their parents, which was directed by Ethan Hawke and originated by Wachtel, a shaper of the project.

Soderlund said that the documentary and publication were meant to beryllium complementary; the mini-series “focused connected their movie enactment and told the emotion communicative of them done their films,” she said, portion the memoir “is truly focused connected Dad’s interior being.”

While she expects that the publication volition beryllium revelatory to galore readers, Soderlund said it had already fixed her a caller position connected her father.

“I springiness him a ton of credit,” she explained. “He said, ‘I privation everybody to beryllium painfully honest.’ To work done each these interviews that your friends and household are doing, and past bash each that introspection yourself, that’s beauteous dense stuff.”

Even so, Newman himself seemed to judge determination were limits connected however overmuch helium could genuinely uncover to different people.

As helium says successful the book, whether audiences believed helium was Hud oregon Butch Cassidy oregon immoderate different movie quality helium played, that was each conscionable “a ammunition that’s photographed onscreen, chased by the fans and garnering each the glory. While whoever is truly wrong me, the core, stays unexplored, uncomfortable and unknown.”