Paul Newman (52 page)

For all the movie stars at the track that weekend, it was Dale Earnhardt Jr., who had a small speaking part in the film, who got the biggest ovation on premiere night. And it was Richard Petty, the beloved outlaw king of NASCAR, and also a voice in the film, who had the most charming response to what he saw: “You sit there for a couple
of minutes and say to yourself, ‘How dumb can I be to sit here and watch cars talk to each other?’ Then all of a sudden you’re right dead in the middle of the movie, man, and you don’t realize that they aren’t really people”—a review any Method actor would be proud to have in his scrapbook.

B
ACK IN
January 2000, when he turned seventy-five, there had been a nice party at the house in Westport that included a video greeting from Jimmy Carter. It would be tough to top that, but Joanne had some ideas.

One day a few years later Newman was using the men’s room at a Broadway show, and a fellow beside him said, “I understand the Emerson String Quartet is playing for your eightieth birthday.” “How do you know that?” Newman asked. “Because I play for the Emerson String Quartet,” he replied. In fact, Joanne had made the arrangements two years before the big day, and when January 26, 2005, finally came, the Newmans celebrated at home once again with some seventy-five of their friends and family members.

A
ND STILL
he refused to slow down, to stop moving forward. “I don’t seem to be living up to my timetable” is how he put it.

In 2006, on the grounds of the newly renovated Westport Country Playhouse, he became a partner in the Dressing Room, a high-end organic restaurant that specialized in locally grown and raised food products and bore a certain casual elegance that Newman insisted upon. His partner was the successful young chef Michel Nischan, a ponytailed advocate of sustainable restaurant practices and, as it happened, a Westport resident. They were an unlikely pair—Nell Newman had actually introduced Nischan to her father in hopes that he would talk him
out
of his desire to get into the restaurant business. But they got along very well, each realizing after their initial meetings that they had the same vision in mind. “After I talked,” Nischan recalled of his first proposal to Newman, “he got up and hugged me and said, ‘That’s what I want. Can you help us?’”

Each man invested $1.5 million, with Newman assuring an additional $500,000 to meet any overruns. They chose the menus together, with Newman insisting on his famous hamburger recipe and on pot roast made with brisket; Nischan instituted a strictly seasonal food-sourcing policy. Part of the profits from the Dressing Room would be funneled back into the Playhouse. But the opening of the restaurant was meant to revitalize downtown Westport as well. The parking lot would be the site of a regular farmers market, for instance, and Newman was looking into holding go-kart races there. “Main Street used to be filled with small, individually owned, resident-owned businesses,” he said. “Now it’s Cartier and the Gap, and they have no hook into this community. We’re going to try and make this place a Main Street again.”

He loved buzzing about the restaurant, kibitzing about the hamburger buns, banning steak from the menu, trying different desserts. (“It looks like a turd on the plate,” he said of a chocolate soup, “but it’s delicious.”) And if the idea that they could see those famous blue eyes enjoying a meal enticed diners into the place, the very idea that the boss was a living legend could rattle the staff. “Not long ago,” recalled Nischan, “one of the girls got so nervous that he went over and put his arm around her and said, ‘You know, if you pinch me I say ouch.’”

I
N FACT
, he was ambivalent about the iconic stature that he had achieved and that could fluster a young waitress. On the one hand he was contemptuous because so much of it depended on the vagaries of fortune. “Living legend?” he sneered to an interviewer. “All right, then. But what do I have to do with that? The answer is ‘very fucking little.’”

At the same time, he was genuinely concerned that the position he had reached, whether deserved or not, belonged to him and his heirs and his charities, to deploy and exploit and profit from, and to nobody else. He had seen the power of putting his face on a bottle of salad dressing, and he didn’t want the fruits of such a brazen act to fall to anyone but the parties he chose. In 2006 and 2007 he appeared before the judiciary committee of the Connecticut state legislature to lobby for a law protecting the images of public figures as a kind of property,
a so-called “right of publicity.” In particular, he and his fellow witnesses Christopher Plummer, Charles Grodin, and James Naughton were concerned about the new technologies that gave anyone the ability to manipulate, duplicate, alter, or misrepresent the public images of celebrities. “What I am talking about is ownership of self,” Newman said in his testimony. “To me, that is nothing less than theft.”

But he was opposed in both legislative sessions by such filmmaking interests as NBC Universal, Sony Entertainment, and the Motion Picture Association of America. Twice the bill died when the session ended without its coming to a vote.

Which, of course, simply meant that, eternal terrier, he would have to come back and give it another try.

J
UST AS HE HAD ALWAYS ENJOYED PLAYING KNAVES AND HANGING
with the boys and acting like it was an ordeal to present himself as anything more than scruffy or comfortable, so he enjoyed becoming a codger who was entitled to fuss and slough off decorum—within limits, of course.

In addition to burning his tuxedo, as he claimed, he had taken to wearing a pair of cheaters on a string around his neck (and not some fussy designer glasses, either, but cheap pairs of specs sometimes held together with tape), and among his favorite fashion accessories was a black ball cap with gold letters reading “Old Guys Rule.” He cut such a dubious figure, in fact, that good friends could sometimes fail to recognize him. One evening in the summer of 2007 he was headed to the Manhattan celebrity watering hole Elaine’s for a party celebrating A. E. Hotchner’s upcoming nuptials, and he had some trouble opening the door to the place. Elaine Kaufman, the famously cantankerous owner, noticed a scraggly fellow trying to get inside her restaurant and braced for action. “I saw some guy fumbling with the door,” she remembered. “I thought it was one of the Second Avenue drunks. I was about to tell him to hit the road, but it turned out to be Newman.”

He loved moments like that, and he bragged about the effects of his advanced years, quoting Bette Davis’s saw that “old age is no place for sissies.” When a reporter inquired about his health, he responded with pride, “I go to the doctor once a year to have my face scraped. All the rough edges—it’s sore as hell. It’s what they call a precancerous growth.
One of those choice things that come with age.” Another journalist was surprised to encounter him in tears. “My eyes have no tolerance for cold anymore,” he explained. “I was just out on the terrace. People think I’m filled with poignant memories.”

But in truth these were minor physical limitations in a vital and active man. He still walked or rode a stationary bike most days, and he still lifted weights. When he was in a hotel in a strange city (he preferred to check in under the alias Mr. Leonard), he could often be found getting his daily exercise by climbing the stairs. He liked to talk himself down—“I’m a dinosaur: antediluvian, antiquated. I mean, I’m on my last legs.” But he still carried a great deal of force, decisiveness, and authority.

One thing that had changed, those close to him noticed, was that he didn’t seem to feel so defensive about the space between the person who he considered himself to truly be and the person defined by his celebrity. “I’m more comfortable in my own skin,” he admitted. “I don’t scurry for cover these days.” He even gave the occasional autograph with a smile and no complaint. He had mellowed. Some.

But he was realistic. He knew that he couldn’t keep on as he had forever, perhaps not even for very long, and he made plans for when he would be unable to see to everything he wished to. He transferred his partnership stake in Newman’s Own to the Newman’s Own Foundation, effectively making a charitable donation of his portion of a thriving business. He did it in two installments: the first in 2004 was valued at $76.6 million; the second, the following year, was valued at $40.374 million. The foundation had already given away upward of $250 million in its first twenty-five years. When it eventually disbursed this infusion of $117 million, the sum would push close to $400 million.
*

Some of the gifts he oversaw in this period were massive, such as the $10 million he donated to Kenyon College to establish a scholarship
fund for minorities and underrepresented groups. And some were equally staggering because they were so particular, personal, and unheralded. In July 2007 he sent a check for $5,000 to the drama club of Ypsilanti High School in Michigan in response to a letter of solicitation—one of thousands the Newman’s Own offices received each year—for help raising funds so that the students could perform at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. “The enclosed contribution is sent with every good wish for continued success in your worthy endeavors,” a note accompanying the check read. It was no surprise at all that he was a charter member in 2007 when
Business-Week
magazine decided to select names for a Philanthropic Hall of Fame.

A
ND HE
was still working, although only in the mode of
Cars—
with his voice rather than in person. He narrated
Dale
, a full-length documentary about stock-car legend Dale Earnhardt that proved to be the most-watched program ever in the history of Country Music Television, the cable network that produced it. He narrated
The Price of Sugar
, also a documentary, which advocated for fair trade practices in Caribbean agriculture. And he narrated
The Meerkats
, yet another documentary, about the little mongoosy critters that were a cult favorite at the time among children his grandsons’ ages.

But real acting, that was another proposition. He’d been talking about a swan song—something with Joanne, perhaps, or more beguilingly, a reunion with Robert Redford. The latter would have been the holy grail of buddy movies, and there was no shortage of interest in seeing it happen—and indeed, in being the person who managed to pull it off. Richard Russo had an idea. “I came up with not quite ten pages of the first draft of a script,” he said. “It had a couple of roguish characters and a very unique start. And I showed them to Robert Benton and I sent them to Paul. And he called me up and said he liked them but that he just didn’t feel like he could give the work the level of quality that he would want to. And I spoke to Benton later, and we agreed that if he got his teeth into the right script he would be back in a flash. He just wasn’t looking at the right stuff.”

Screenwriter John Fusco also entered the sweepstakes with a script
called
The Highwaymen
, a western about a retired gunfighter drawn reluctantly by an old partner into one last job. Newman, Fusco recalled, had a real feel for the character. “This guy just doesn’t want to do it,” Newman said at a script conference in his New York apartment. “When Bob [Redford] comes looking for him, he runs the other way. Maybe he locks himself in the shithouse and hides. He just
doesn’t want to do it.
But he’s got a duty.” There was genuine promise in the air, but someone at the studio had the idea to rewrite the script that Newman had read, and when he saw the new version, he pulled out.

In 2005 it felt like the reunion might finally happen. Redford bought the rights to
A Walk in the Woods
, humorist Bill Bryson’s account of a hiking trip taken in middle age in the company of a crusty pal. The book deals with issues of mortality, environmentalism, and friendship in a light and ironic fashion that seemed perfect for the pair. Scripts were drafted; directors were approached. (Barry Levinson was rumored to be on top of the short list.) But the process of development didn’t move quickly enough. In the summer of 2007, according to Redford, this iteration of the project died. “It’s not happening, sadly,” he said in an interview. “We couldn’t decide if we were too old to do it. Then we decided, let’s go for it. But time passed, and Paul’s been getting older fast. I think things deteriorated for him. Finally, two months ago, he called and said, ‘I gotta retire.’ The picture was written and everything. It breaks my heart.”

Soon after that phone call Newman let the world in on a secret. Talking with ABC News about organic farming and the restaurant business for a piece about the Dressing Room, he dropped a bombshell: he was through with acting. “I’m not able to work anymore as an actor at the level I would want to,” he said. “You start to lose your memory, your confidence, your invention. So that’s pretty much a closed book for me. I’ve been doing it for fifty years. That’s enough.”

Actually it was longer than that: sixty years after winning the role of Hildy Johnson in a Kenyon College production of
The Front Page
, after fifty-eight movies and five Broadway plays and ten Oscar nominations and a score, perhaps, of indelible roles, he was done being an actor.

H
E MADE
his regular tours of Hole in the Wall Camps that summer, and he followed the fortunes of Newman-Haas-Lanigan, and he ran some races of his own, and he gave Barbara Walters a good scare by whipping her around Lime Rock as part of a TV special about aging in which he looked old but hale.

As autumn approached, though, he felt poorly, and he let Joanne and his daughters know about it. He saw doctors, and worrying reports about shortness of breath and limited mobility started to circulate among friends and in gossip columns. Newman, naturally, said nothing, but it was noted that he wasn’t seen around Westport as often as previously.

In January, just as he and Joanne prepared to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary, a supermarket tabloid reported that he had undergone cancer surgery—for lung cancer, specifically—and that his prognosis was poor. Warren Cowan, still fielding media queries for his longtime client and friend as he himself neared eighty-seven years of age, issued a denial of the story, in which Newman declared, “I’m being treated for athlete’s foot and hair loss. Maybe the doctors know something I don’t.” That same month, another tabloid reported chatting with him as he left the Dressing Room after dinner one evening. “As you can see, I’m doing okay,” he said when asked if the reports of his ill health were true. “It’s all this good hometown food I eat that keeps me going.”

On the twenty-sixth he reached his eighty-third birthday; on the twenty-ninth he and Joanne marked their golden anniversary. As ever, these were family events, although celebrated in a decidedly lower key than they had been in the past. Tenderly, Newman toasted Joanne before their children and their dearest friends. “I feel privileged to love that woman,” he said. “That I am married to her is the joy of my life.”

In February the Westport Country Playhouse announced its 2008 season, and among the shows in preparation was an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s
Of Mice and Men
that would mark Newman’s professional debut as a stage director. But the hopefulness of that prospect was under cut just a few weeks later when he was a no-show at a fund-raising event for the Hole in the Wall Camps. This time Cowan’s office claimed that he’d “been having trouble with his back.” But reports were popping up in newspaper gossip columns that he had been seen
in the waiting rooms of oncologists’ offices in New York, looking frail, sporting a stringy beard, keeping quietly to himself. There was talk of a late-night ambulance trip from his Westport home. There was even a flurry of confusion one day when a number of journalists and private citizens began phoning Newman’s Own and the Hole in the Wall Association to ask if he had, in fact, died.

In April Newman wrote a new will, cementing plans to leave the majority of his estate to Joanne. There were other details seen to: selling his race cars and airplane to add to a trust fund he’d created; forgiving personal loans to his daughters and to a family employee; adding his Oscars and theatrical awards to the assets of Newman’s Own Foundation; and very carefully stipulating how Newman’s Own, the Hole in the Wall Gang organization, his racing teams, and other entities could use his name and likeness in the future. He initialed each page and signed it with a strong hand (as he did a codicil he added in July).

In May he made himself visible publicly for the first time in many months, showing up at the qualifying stage of the Indy 500, rooting on his new drivers, Graham Rahal and Justin Wilson. His appearance was shocking—almost unrecognizable. His face had acquired a little bit of jowliness as he hit his late seventies, but now it was all gone, and beneath the wisps of beard his jaw jutted out almost starkly. His hands seemed too bony to support his wristwatch or the CART championship ring he always wore, a gift from Nigel Mansell. His sweater dangled from his shoulders as if from a hanger. His pant legs seemed to stand up on their own as if there were nothing inside of them. Hale and healthy and seemingly younger than his years for so long, he had become a frail old man—one who had done great things, yes, but frail and old still.