Legacy Matters

Paul Newman

When I heard about Paul Newman's death, I was away for the weekend for my high school reunion so I didn't have a chance to what others had written, but then I already knew he was a remarkable man. I had already  written about the legacies he was creating.  Paul Newman's Legacies

  "If I leave a legacy, it will be the camps," Newman says.

Breitbart obit
Paul Newman, known for his piercing blue eyes, boyish good looks and stellar performances in scores of hit Hollywood movies, has died, his foundation said Saturday. He was 83.
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"Paul Newman's craft was acting. His passion was racing. His love was his family and friends. And his heart and soul were dedicated to helping make the world a better place for all," Foundation Vice-Chairman Robert Forrester said.

Newman played youthful rebels, charming rogues, golden-hearted drunks and amoral opportunists in a career that encompassed more than 50 movies. He was one of the most popular and consistently bankable Hollywood stars in the second half of the 20th century.  Two of his most popular movies included "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) and "The Sting" (1973), in which he co-starred with an equally popular and handsome actor, Robert Redford.

Newman was also a philanthropist, a health food mogul -- he once quipped that his salad dressing was making more money than his movies -- a race car enthusiast and a leftist political activist.

New York Times, Paul Newman, a Magnetic Titan of Hollywood

If Marlon Brando and James Dean defined the defiant American male as a sullen rebel, Paul Newman recreated him as a likable renegade, a strikingly handsome figure of animal high spirits and blue-eyed candor whose magnetism was almost impossible to resist, whether the character was Hud, Cool Hand Luke or Butch Cassidy.

He acted in more than 65 movies over more than 50 years, drawing on a physical grace, unassuming intelligence and good humor that made it all seem effortless.

Yet he was also an ambitious, intellectual actor and a passionate student of his craft, and he achieved what most of his peers find impossible: remaining a major star into a craggy, charismatic old age even as he redefined himself as more than Hollywood star. He raced cars, opened summer camps for ailing children and became a nonprofit entrepreneur with a line of foods that put his picture on supermarket shelves around the world.
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he remained fulfilled by his charitable work, saying it was his greatest legacy, particularly in giving ailing children a camp at which to play.

“We are such spendthrifts with our lives,” Mr. Newman once told a reporter. “The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.”

Daily Mail online

Newman's own departure was long and gentle, until cancer took hold. By choice, he faded from films gradually, taking fewer and fewer major roles - a diminuendo that was all the more striking when compared with Redford's sustained career as an actor-director.

In truth, though he had major roles in more than 50 motion pictures Newman preferred his private life to the feverish fakery of Hollywood.

The Boston Globe Blue-eyed idol put an indelible stamp on movies, philanthropy

Burial plans are unknown, although Newman expressed a desire to have his ashes strewn across the lake where he built the first Hole in the Wall Camp.

"I always admired the fish," he said.

Neoneocon didn't need to remind me of how sexy he was and how he aged awfully well.  She found the YouTube videos, only one of which I borrowed 

He was a Man of Natural Virtue.

Gerard Vanderleun in A Life and a Love Less Ordinary pays tribute to the Newmans' marriage

I watch this montage and I think of the old 60s poem that ends, "With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world." And I also think that sometimes, if you are careful and keep your vows, love can endure. All in all, it would seem that Newman's life and love and marriage were, in the end, his greatest achievement. His films were merely the means.

An appreciation in the New York Times,
Paul Newman wore his fame lightly, his beauty too.

My favorite may be Dahlia Lithwick's piece on Slate

One version of the story has the kid look from the picture of Newman on the Newman's Own lemonade carton to Newman himself, then back to the carton and back to Newman again before asking, "Are you lost?" Another version: The kid looks steadily at him and demands, "Are you really Paul Human?"

Paul Newman left a Great Legacy of how to be a great man even if a movie star.  Thankfully, we'll always have his movies and by buying his salad dressings, his lemonade and his popcorn, we can support his legacy.